Chapter 4

ELARA 

Six days passed after the ceremony, and in those six days I learned exactly how small a person could be made to feel without anyone ever raising a fist.

The rejection had changed something in the pack house. Not loudly. Nobody announced new rules. But the air around me had shifted the way air shifts before a storm, and everyone seemed to sense it and adjust their behavior accordingly. The wolfless omega who had embarrassed herself by being named, by standing in the circle, by daring to feel the bond for even four seconds before it was ripped away — she was fair game now. More fair game than before, if such a thing was possible.

Beta Rhys doubled my workload on the second day. By the fourth day, three different pack members had "accidentally" knocked things out of my hands while I carried them, laughing as I scrambled to clean up the mess and apologizing to no one in particular. By the sixth day, I had stopped expecting any different.

I was carrying linens down the east corridor that morning, a stack high enough that I had to walk carefully to see over the top of it, when I heard Garrick's voice ahead of me.

"Look who it is."

I stopped walking. There was no point pretending I hadn't heard him.

He was leaning against the wall with Petra and two others I didn't recognize, all of them blocking the narrow corridor in a way that made it clear they weren't planning to move.

"I need to get through," I said.

"Do you," Garrick said, pushing off the wall. "Funny. I don't remember anyone asking what you need."

Petra laughed, the same easy, ugly laugh from the night of the ceremony.

"Please," I said. "I have work to finish."

"She has work to finish," Garrick repeated, mimicking my voice in a way that made the others laugh harder. He stepped closer, close enough that I had to stop entirely or walk into him. "You know what I think? I think someone needs to remind you where you stand in this pack. The Goddess's little joke is over. Time to remember your place."

He reached out and shoved the stack of linens out of my arms.

They scattered across the corridor floor — sheets unfolding, pillowcases sliding into the dust, all of it now needing to be washed again. I dropped to my knees automatically, scrambling to gather them before they got any dirtier, and that was when Petra's foot came down on the corner of a sheet I was reaching for, pinning it to the floor, grinding it slightly under her heel.

"Oops," she said, not even bothering to sound like she meant it.

"Move your foot," I said, and I hated how my voice sounded — small, tired, worn down to nothing after six days of this.

"Or what?" Garrick crouched down so his face was level with mine, close enough that I could smell the wine on his breath from whatever celebration he'd been at the night before. "What exactly are you going to do, wolfless? Run to the Alpha? Tell him the big bad wolves were mean to you?" He smiled, slow and cruel. "He rejected you in front of the whole pack six days ago. You think he's going to come running because Garrick stepped on a sheet?"

"Let her go."

The voice came from the end of the corridor, low and absolutely certain, and every single person in that hallway went still.

I looked up.

Damon stood at the far end of the corridor, and I had never in my life seen anyone's posture change as fast as Garrick's did in that moment. He shot upright so quickly he nearly lost his balance. Petra's foot came off the sheet like it had never been there at all.

"Alpha," Garrick said, and his voice had lost every ounce of the confidence it held thirty seconds earlier. "We were just—"

"I didn't ask what you were doing." Damon's voice didn't rise. It didn't need to. It carried down that corridor like something with weight, something that pressed against the walls. "I asked you to let her go. You're still standing there."

Garrick stepped back so fast he nearly tripped over his own feet. Petra and the other two were already retreating, eyes down, the particular posture of wolves who had just remembered exactly how far below the Alpha they stood.

Damon walked toward us. Each step unhurried, each step somehow louder than it should have been in the sudden silence of the corridor. He stopped beside me — beside the mess of scattered linens, beside Garrick, who was doing an admirable job of trying to disappear without actually moving.

"Pick it up," Damon said to him.

"Sir?"

"The linens. You threw them on the floor. Pick them up." His voice was flat, almost bored, which was somehow worse than if he'd been shouting. "All of it. Fold them properly. Then take them to be washed yourself."

Garrick's face went through several expressions very quickly before settling on the only one available to him. "Yes, Alpha."

He dropped to his knees and started gathering linens with shaking hands, not looking at me, not looking at anyone. Petra and the others had already found reasons to be somewhere else entirely.

I stayed where I was, still kneeling on the floor, suddenly unsure if I was allowed to stand without being told.

Damon looked down at me.

I made myself meet his eyes. It cost something to do that — six days of being invisible to him, of being walked past in halls, of wondering if the man who had touched my face in the stone circle had simply decided I no longer existed. And now here he was, looking at me the way he had that night. Fixed. Intense. Like I was something he hadn't finished deciding about.

"Are you hurt?" he asked. Quiet. Just for me.