Page 61

My mouth is dry by the time his feet start to shift. Then, like the coward he is, he looks away before asking his question.

“Do it,” I demand as the silence thickens. He licks his lips, but still hesitates. Sick and tired of waiting for him to act, I growl low in my throat. “Do. It.”

Still nothing. My anger flares hotter, and I seethe. It takes a lot for me to hit my limit, but somehow he’s managed to succeed without even trying. Clenching my jaw so hard the muscles strain in my neck, I shout, “Coward!”

That does it.

His head snaps up and his eyes narrow. I don’t back down, daring him to own his actions like an Alpha. The silence is deafening, broken only by our collective breaths and the distant ticking of a clock.

A chair leg scrapes along the floor. Downstairs, a pan clatters against something hard. Someone coughs.

“Tell the truth. Why does your father hate you?”

The Alpha Command rips through the room, directed at me. There’s no room for confusion. Each word is coated in intent, demanding a satisfactory answer.

More importantly, demanding the truth.

It hits me, slamming into my chest like a five-hundred-pound weight and flattening my lungs. So heavy with authority, it’s impossible to breathe, to think, to speak.

Alphas are taught to be specific with Commands. They’re taught not to Command without deliberation and intent. Daxen’s Commands were half-hearted and lacking deliberate intent. It’s easy to comply with a Command to “stop” or “look at me.”

My father’s were sometimes the same. Until the day he Commanded me to tell him how my door got unlocked, and I discovered what it felt like to fight a Command. Not because I didn’t want to answer, but because I needed to answer without exposing Caelan.

I didn’t think anything could hurt as much as that had.

I was wrong.

My teeth bite into my tongue. My mouth fills with the taste of blood. I try to swallow it down, but my lungs fight for air, and somehow I swallow and gasp at the same time. Now I’m choking on my own blood, and my lungs are getting tighter. When I close my eyes, I can feel phantom hands wrapped around my neck, squeezing.

Think, Idril!

“I don’t know” isn’t going to work. He wants an actual answer, and I want to tell the truth.

I’m finally able to suck in a lungful of air, and oxygen returns to my brain, bringing memories shrouded in fog back into focus. I flip through them, finding the answer to Vae’s question almost immediately.

“B-because I’m no—not a boy!” I gasp, taking in another huge lungful of air with greed. “Not a boy. Not an Alpha. Not—he wanted—not me.”

The pressure around my lungs disappears. Air rushes into my lungs, and I bend over, gulping down oxygen with each heaving breath. A hand rubs soothing circles on my back, and my pitiful Bonds perk up in my chest, hopeful and naive.

It’s not one of our Mates comforting us. It’s Branwen, chair pressed right up to mine, whispering words I can’t make out thanks to the ringing in my ears.

Slowly, I sit up. My bones feel brittle, like the slightest pressure might shatter me into a thousand pieces. Vae turns to go back to his seat, but not before I see his expression.

He looks gutted.

My eyes drop to his hands, balled into tight fists at his sides. As he pulls out his chair and sits down, his fists uncurl, and his fingers flex, twitching like he’s reaching for something that’s not there.

I don’t know why my mind latches onto the movement, but I become so transfixed watching it that I don’t even notice when blood drips over my lips and down my chin.

“God’s teeth,” Branwen curses and jumps to her feet, swiping a cloth napkin from the table. She crouches in front of me, bringing the white cloth to my nose with instructions to hold it there.

I try, but my hands won’t stop shaking. My arm gives out after just a few seconds and falls to my lap. The once-white cloth, soaked red with my blood.

I throw my head back and, with an arm that feels like it doesn’t belong to me, raise the cloth back to my nose.

“Someone dispose of that before the scent of her blood becomes too strong for the scent neutralizers, and it turns into a feeding frenzy in here,” Gavran orders in a bored voice.

Branwen checks that I’m no longer bleeding before balling up the napkin and stalking out of the room. I can hear her angry footsteps head down the hall. A door slams, and a few seconds later, she returns.