Chapter 2 · Cage Fever

His fangs were still at my throat. One wrong breath and they'd open me up.

I didn't give him the breath.

"Get off me," I said, flat and quiet. Silver netting ate at my ribs. It smelled like burnt hair, and the hair was mine.

"Two years," Vane said against my skin. His voice had gone rough, like he'd been gargling gravel. "You hid two years. And you picked my fence to die on."

"I picked the one place you'd never look."

"Wrong."

He peeled the net off me in one pull. The silver took a strip of skin with it. I bit down on the scream and tasted blood.

Then his arm was under my knees and I was off the ground.

"Put me down!"

"No."

"I can walk!"

"You can run." His chest was a furnace against my side, and it was soaking through my frozen coat. In a blizzard. Nobody runs that hot. "I've done enough chasing."

I knew that heat. Something was wrong with it.

Snow whipped sideways. Wolves in black armor fell in around us, heads down, eyes everywhere except on me. Nobody wanted to look at the Alpha's rejected mate. Nobody wanted to look at what he was carrying.

Good. Let them stare at the floor.

I got one hand loose and drove my thumb into the nerve under his collarbone. Any grown wolf would've dropped me.

Vane didn't even blink. He just tightened his grip until my ribs creaked.

"Do that again," he said, very softly, "and I'll carry you with your arms broken."

I believed him. I stopped.

The fortress swallowed us. Black granite, torches sputtering in iron cages, the smell of wet stone and old blood. I'd walked these halls as a girl on his arm, back when I thought a bond meant someone would stay. Now I counted the turns by habit and hated myself for knowing them.

We passed the stairs down to Ironroot Cells. I smelled rust and silver filings from the top step. My stomach dropped.

He walked right past them.

"Not the cells?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

"Disappointed?"

"Surprised."

"Don't be."

He didn't explain. That was his whole personality, honestly. Order, silence, bruise.

A tall shape stepped out of the torchlight ahead. Garrick Thorn, Vane's Beta. Lean, neat, and smiling like a man at a funeral he'd paid for.

"Alpha." His eyes slid to me, slow and cold. "The storm's closed every gate. Southern pass, river road, all of it. Nobody leaves until it breaks." He paused. "Shall I have the fugitive processed? There's a hanging cord ready."

"No."

"Alpha, with respect, the elders will—"

"She's mine to judge." Vane's voice dropped into the register that made grown wolves flinch. "Tell the hall she's a runaway. Execution when I say. Not before. Not by anyone else's hand."

Garrick's smile held. His nostrils flared once, just once, and his gaze flicked to the black veins climbing Vane's neck.

I saw it. Garrick saw it too. And he liked it.

"As you command," he said.

Then Vane was moving again, and the hair on my arms stood straight up.

The Alpha's bedchamber had two doors. Vane kicked the first one shut behind us and slid a bar across the second without setting me down. Iron on stone. It rang like a cell door.

Heat hit me like a wall.

A pine fire roared in the hearth, big enough to roast a deer. Furs on the floor, furs on the bed, black velvet drapes sealed tight. The air tasted like smoke and sweat, thick enough to chew. My frozen clothes started steaming on me, and my skin prickled as it thawed.

He dropped me on the edge of the bed. Not gently. Not cruelly either. Like I was something he'd just won and didn't trust.

A chain slithered out of the bedpost. Black iron, thick as my wrist. He snapped the cuff around my ankle before I could kick.

"Seriously?" I yanked at it. "I'm not a dog."

"No." He didn't look up. "Dogs listen."

"You son of a—"

The fire popped. He flinched.

Hard. Whole body. Like the sound had cut him.

He turned his back and shoved his coat off. His shirt came after it, dragged over his head, and he threw it at the wall. His back was slick with sweat, and under the firelight I saw the ridges of old scars. I saw something moving beneath his skin, too, like a second spine trying to climb out.

He braced both palms on the mantel. His knuckles cracked.

"Vane?"

Nothing. His breath came in dragging pulls, shoulders shaking.

I should've kept my mouth shut. I should've been counting exits. Door barred, window sealed, chain on my leg. One exit, and he was standing in front of it.

But I knew that sound. I'd heard it once, from his father, years ago, the night they dragged the old Alpha out into the snow.

"That's blood fever," I said slowly.

"Shut up."

"How long have you had it?"

"I said shut up."

"Because if you're going feral, you'd better chain yourself instead of me, you—"

He turned.

His eyes were gold. Not the dark amber I remembered, but molten gold, pupils blown wide and swallowing everything. A muscle jumped in his jaw. Sweat ran down his chest, over the place where my mark should've been. I looked away from it fast.

He crossed the room in three strides. The chain rattled and went tight.

I pressed back into the furs. He didn't stop until his knee hit the mattress between my legs.

"Don't," I whispered. "Vane. Don't."

"I'm not doing anything." It came out like a growl, low and ragged. "I'm just standing here."

"You're breathing me in."

"Yes."

He was. His nose brushed my hairline, then my temple, then dragged down along my jaw, and every inch he touched went hot and electric. My body knew him. That was the worst of it. Two years, a severed bond, a hundred nights of telling myself I was done, and my pulse still jumped for him like a trained animal.

I hated it. I hated him. I hated the traitor shiver crawling down my spine.

"You threw me away," I said. My voice cracked in the middle. "In front of everyone. You cut me out like I was a tumor."

His breath hitched against my neck.

I waited for the cruel answer. A sneer. Something I could hate cleanly.

He said nothing.

His forehead dropped against my shoulder. The shaking in his body eased, just a little, like a fist uncurling one finger at a time. His breathing slowed. The gold in his eyes dimmed to something closer to amber.

Then his burning hand slid down and clamped around my waist, his fingers digging in through my wet shirt like he was afraid I'd vanish.

"Why," he rasped into my skin, "does your scent still calm my beast?"