The silk clings to my skin like a second betrayal.
I sat motionless on the low stone bench, arms outstretched while a pair of elder seamstresses fastened the final silver clasps of my ceremonial dress. The fabric was bone-white, stitched with threads that shimmered like frozen moonlight. It was the color of purity, of peace, of surrender. It felt like a funeral shroud.
One of the women gently twisted a thin braid into my hair, weaving in an iron charm at the end—Blackthorn custom. The metal was cold against my temple, and heavier than it should have been.
Neither woman spoke.
In fact, no one had spoken to me directly since dawn.
Even my own father had only offered a single order through the closed door hours earlier: "Be ready when they arrive."
So I sat—dressed like a gift, sealed like a debt—while the world I knew collapsed in silence around me.
The walls of the Vale Court were damp with age. Moss climbed the old stone columns like long-forgotten regrets. A pair of guards flanked the door, both avoiding my gaze. They'd seen the contract. They knew what I was being given to.
They knew what Kael Blackthorn did to his enemies.
A small silver tray was set before me, holding nothing but a black ribbon and a thin ceremonial blade. My hand trembled when I reached for the ribbon, but I forced my fingers still. I would not let them see me shake.
"You are the last daughter of the Vale," whispered one of the seamstresses, as if reciting a prayer. "It is your duty."
I didn't respond. The knot tightened in my throat, thick and bitter.
Duty.That word had already taken my mother. My brothers. My freedom.
Now it would take my body.
Outside, the low howl of a warhorn groaned through the mountains—long, mournful, final. My chest clenched.
He had arrived.
The monster.
The doors did not creak when they opened.
They slammed—thunder cracking stone. Every head in the room bowed immediately. The guards dropped to one knee. The seamstresses fell silent and scurried backward.
Only I was left upright, my body locked in place like prey caught in moonlight.
I didn't have to look to know it was him.
The weight in the room shifted. The air thickened.
Boots struck the floor—slow, deliberate, echoing like war drums. Then they stopped.
A shadow fell over me.
I lifted my gaze.
And met the eyes of Alpha Kael Blackthorn.
He was taller than I'd imagined.
Not just in stature, but in presence — vast and sharp, like the silhouette of a predator emerging from fog. Alpha Kael Blackthorn stood at the center of the chamber, cloaked in matte black armor lined with silver at the cuffs. A wolf sigil was etched into the leather strap crossing his chest — no crown, no pomp, just the mark of a killer.
He didn't speak.
His eyes did.
Cold and pale as winter ice, Kael's gaze settled on me like a blade drawn slow across the skin. Not curious. Not cruel. Just calculating. As if he were inspecting a weapon. Or prey. Or the last piece of a long-placed trap finally sprung shut.
I held my breath and met his stare, even as my lungs began to ache.
I would not look away.
Not yet.
Kael's face betrayed nothing — no hint of anger, or hunger, or recognition. His expression was carved from stone, jaw sharp, lips set in the kind of line that had never known a smile. A jagged scar curved just beneath his left cheekbone — a reminder, no doubt, of the war that made him.
He shifted his eyes to the high dais, where my father stood like a man preparing to vomit his soul.
"Do you have the contract?" Kael said at last.
His voice was low, clear, and deadly even in its calm. The kind of voice that issued death sentences with courtesy.
Alpha Roran Vale—my dad, cleared his throat and gestured stiffly to a servant, who approached with a scroll case sealed in black wax.
Kael didn't move.
"Open it," he said.
The servant did so, hands trembling.
Inside lay a parchment, older than I had expected. Its border was edged in runes—old wolf law, the kind that didn't allow annulment. My name was inked beside Kael's in fine lettering, followed by terms that blurred as my vision trembled.
This blood-bound union will bind Alpha Kael of Blackthorn to me in exchange for peace, submission, and a full cessation of territory claims. The agreement is to be enacted under oath and blood before the full moon.
That was tonight.
My father picked up the ceremonial blade from the silver tray, pricked his thumb, and pressed the blood into the parchment with a slow, painful sigh. Red soaked into the paper like a wound opening.
Then he handed the blade to me.
The room blurred again.
My fingers closed around the hilt, knuckles whitening. The blade was lighter than it looked — easier to use than I'd hoped. I looked down at my hand, then Kael's.
He hadn't moved.
Not even an inch.
I cut my thumb.
Pain flared sharp, then dulled. I pressed my mark onto the contract.
Only then did Kael move forward.
He plucked the dagger from my fingers and turned it easily in his own, as if testing the weight. Then he sliced across his palm — clean, deep, brutal.
No flinch.
No pause.
He pressed his hand against the scroll.
The blood hissed against the parchment, sealing it with a sharp crack of magic. The air pulsed. The room shifted.
The bond was made.
He was now my husband.
And I was now his property.
Kael handed the scroll to one of his men without so much as a glance, then turned his gaze back to me.
"You're mine now," he said softly, almost bored. "Try not to embarrass yourself."
I didn't feel the bond take root.
There was no sudden jolt of connection, no mystical warmth curling between our souls. Just silence. Cold, unfeeling, sterile. I was expecting something—anything—to confirm that the world had just changed. But the only thing I felt was the slow trickle of blood down my thumb and the numb ache in my knees.
The parchment had turned a shade darker where our marks bled together. The magic of the old law flared once—brief and colorless—and then vanished.
That was it.
My life was gone, and no one in the room looked surprised.
Kael stepped closer.
He didn't reach for my hand. He didn't offer a nod of acknowledgment. Instead, he reached up and tilted my chin with two fingers, slow and cold.
I stiffened.
He studied my face like a man inspecting a statue, as if weighing my value on a scale only he understood. My skin burned beneath his touch—not from desire, but from humiliation. The room was full of witnesses: guards, advisors, servants. Even my father, who now looked everywhere but at me.
"You look smaller than I expected," Kael murmured, fingers still on my chin.
I didn't respond.
"You'll need discipline."
His grip tightened, just for a second. My jaw clenched. Kael's mouth curled into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"No vow," he said, loud enough for the room to hear. "No kiss. No Luna ceremony. This union is not one of affection. It is a contract of surrender."
The words echoed like a death bell.
One of the advisors from the Vale pack shifted uncomfortably. Another cast a glance at my father, who remained frozen on the dais, face pale as ash. He didn't move. Didn't object. Didn't defend.
He never had.
Kael finally released my chin.
"Bring her," he said to his men.
Two of the Blackthorn guards stepped forward. I instinctively stepped back.
Kael's hand shot out and caught my wrist.
His grip was not violent—but firm. Final. Like steel wrapped in silk.
He leaned in close, his breath brushing the shell of my ear as he spoke, low enough that only I could hear.
"Tonight, little bride, I'll make sure you know what hell tastes like."
My pulse stopped.
Kael pulled me forward, past the stunned faces of the Vale Court, without looking back.
I had no choice but to follow.
Behind me, the blood-soaked scroll was rolled and sealed.
Ahead of me, the carriage door to Blackthorn territory opened like the mouth of a beast.
And I—bound, silent, and shivering—stepped willingly into the jaws of the wolf.
I didn't breathe until I was outside.
Even then, the air didn't help. It was too cold, too thin, too full of him. Every step down the stone steps echoed in my skull. My legs didn't want to move, but he didn't let me stop. His grip on my wrist was constant — not crushing, but absolute. Final.
Like a chain disguised as a hand.
Behind us, the heavy doors of the Vale Court slammed shut.
That was the last time I would ever see it — the cracked stone floors, the half-dead torches, the father who couldn't look at me even as I was handed off like a lamb to slaughter.
I didn't even cry.
Not because I wasn't afraid.
But because there was no room for tears in a body already filled with cold.
Kael didn't speak as we crossed the outer yard. His soldiers flanked us like shadows, and I could feel their eyes crawling across my back. I didn't know if they pitied me or envied him. Probably neither. Monsters rarely earned pity. And brides rarely earned envy—especially when they looked like me. Dressed like a doll. Carved like an offering.
The carriage waiting at the gate was nothing like the wooden carts from home. It was made of blackened iron, etched with sharp runes and trimmed in silver, drawn by two towering, snorting beasts that might have once been horses—if horses had eyes like coals and breath like smoke.
Kael opened the door himself.
He didn't gesture for me to enter.
He shoved me in first.
The inside was velvet and shadow. The moment I stumbled onto the seat, he followed, closing the door behind us with a soft click that sounded far too gentle for the violence he carried in his voice.
I dared a glance at him.
Kael sat across from me, legs spread slightly, arms resting on his thighs. Relaxed. Controlled. Dangerous.
The silence stretched.
I couldn't take it anymore.
"Why didn't you just kill me?" I whispered.
He tilted his head, like I'd asked something amusing.
Then leaned forward until I could smell the faint trace of blood on his breath.
"I could've," he murmured. "But this is better."
My throat tightened.
"You want peace?"
"I want justice."
He shifted again—then reached across the carriage, fast, and gripped my jaw.
His thumb pressed into my cheek. Not hard enough to bruise. But hard enough that I couldn't turn away. Couldn't hide. Couldn't pretend I wasn't shaking.
"I want your father to live knowing what I'm doing to his daughter. I want your pack to watch you kneel and scream and break—and know they paid me to do it."
I froze. Every muscle in my body turned to ice.
Kael leaned in closer, his mouth barely an inch from mine.
I didn't look away.
I couldn't.
If I blinked, I might break.
If I breathed, I might scream.
So I stared into the eyes of the monster I now called husband, and prayed that I'd survive the night.
The rest of the ride passed in silence.
Not the kind that settles.
The kind that waits.
Kael didn't touch me again. He didn't speak. He didn't blink. Just sat there, staring out the carriage window like I wasn't even there.
And somehow that was worse.
His words kept echoing in my mind—burning through every inch of fabric, every inch of skin, like they'd already come true.
"I'll make sure you know what hell tastes like."
Was it rage that drove him? Or pleasure?
Was there a difference to him?
The Blackthorn territory was colder than mine. I felt the shift the moment the carriage crossed the border. The trees thinned. The mist thickened. And then—nothing. No moon. No stars. Just dark woods and stone walls wrapped in silence.
When the carriage finally stopped, Kael stepped out first.
He didn't look back to see if I would follow.
Still gripping the ache in my own wrist, I stepped out onto foreign ground.
The Blackthorn stronghold towered before me like a mausoleum — carved into the mountainside, its blackened spires pierced the fog, jagged and cold. Iron torches lined the stone steps, flickering with pale blue fire that gave off no warmth. Two massive wolf statues flanked the entrance, their mouths open in permanent snarls.
This wasn't a home.
It was a warning.
Kael didn't wait. He walked like a man who owned everything — the earth beneath him, the sky above, and now the girl behind.
I stumbled to keep up, my thin shoes slipping on the frost-glazed stone.
He didn't slow.
As we neared the doors, they opened on their own. Blackthorn guards lined the walls inside, standing in silence as we passed. No one bowed. No one smiled.
They didn't look at me.
They didn't have to.
They'd already judged me. A Vale girl. The blood of traitors. The enemy's offering.
The last daughter, wrapped in white silk and silence.
Kael stopped at the top of the stairs, just before the threshold of the inner keep.
He turned his head slightly—just enough that I saw the edge of his profile beneath the torchlight. His voice came quiet, but there was no mistaking the weight in it.
"After tonight, Aria," he said, "you'll stop wondering which parts of the stories were true."
Then he walked inside.
And I followed him into the wolf's den.
Into hell.
Into him.