Adeline's POV
The window wouldn't open.
I'd been trying for ten minutes, fingers pulling, palms pushing, nails scraping at the latch, but it wouldn't budge. Not stuck. Not broken. Just sealed, like the fortress itself was holding its breath and refusing to let me out.
"Come on," I whispered, yanking harder.
Nothing.
I stepped back and looked at the glass. Outside, the Thornwood Forest glittered under a blanket of snow. It looked peaceful. Innocent. Like a painting on a Christmas card.
But I knew better. That forest had dragged me here. And now I couldn't even open a window.
I turned back to the room. It really was beautiful, which somehow made it worse. The bed had four tall posts carved from dark wood. The fireplace crackled and popped like it was cheerful on purpose. A thick rug covered the stone floor. On the table by the door sat a silver tray, the tea Clara had brought still steaming.
Pretty cage. Still a cage.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed my hands over my face. My wrists still ached from where Russell had gripped me in the courtyard, not cruelly, just firmly, and the ghost of that lightning pain still hummed under my skin. The bond, he'd called it. Like it was normal. Like, people get bonded to strangers every day.
I'd had a plan once. A good one. Save enough money. Move north to a town small enough that Marcus couldn't find me. Adopt a dog. Maybe two. Live quietly forever.
That plan was gone.
A sharp knock at the door made me flinch so hard I nearly fell off the bed.
"Miss Thorne." A voice I didn't recognize. Low. Male. Not Russell. "The Alpha King requests your presence at dinner."
I stared at the door. "Tell him I'm not hungry."
Silence. Then: "It wasn't really a request."
My jaw tightened. Of course it wasn't.
I crossed the room and swung the door open. A young guard stood in the hallway, with brown hair, nervous eyes, and a jaw that hadn't decided if it wanted to grow a beard yet. He looked barely older than me. He also looked like he really did not want to be the one delivering this message.
"I just woke up from the most terrifying night of my life," I said flatly. "I'm not going to dinner."
The guard swallowed. "He said you'd say that. He also said to tell you," the guard glanced at a folded piece of paper in his hand, clearly reading off it, 'The kitchen closes at nine. The next meal after that is breakfast. I strongly suggest dinner."
I grabbed the paper and read it myself. Sure enough. Russell's handwriting was bold and slanted, like everything he did was slightly too big for the page.
I crumpled it.
The guard winced.
"Fine," I said. "Lead the way."
The dining room was smaller than I expected. No long royal table with forty empty chairs. Just a round table near a window, four seats, one candle in the middle. Russell was already there, reading something. He looked up when I walked in.
"You came," he said.
"Your guard implied I'd starve if I didn't."
"Finn is very convincing." Russell set down his papers and gestured to the seat across from him. "Sit. Please."
I sat. A plate appeared almost immediately: roast chicken, bread, and something with potatoes. My stomach growled before I could stop it. I hadn't eaten since yesterday morning.
Russell pretended not to notice. He started cutting his own food, as if this were completely normal.
"The window in my room doesn't open," I said.
"I know."
"Can you fix that?"
"No." He looked up. "The fortress seals certain things when a bond-claim is active. The windows in the guest wing are one of them. It's not something I control."
"Right." I stabbed a piece of chicken. "The magic. Very convenient."
His eyes narrowed just slightly. "You think I'm lying."
"I think men with power say 'I can't' when they mean 'I won't.'"
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "That's fair. Given what you've been through."
I hadn't expected that. I looked at him, really looked, and something in his expression was too open to be fake. Not pitying. Just... honest.
I hated that it made me feel better.
"You said seven days," I said. "Then the bond breaks and I leave."
"Yes."
"Then what happens to Marcus?"
Russell's fork paused. "He faces the Council of Alphas. What he did tonight, bringing armed wolves onto sacred territory, threatening a bond-claim, those are serious crimes. He won't come after you again."
"He's said that before. Not in those words, but he's always had a reason. A right. An excuse." I set down my fork. "He told me once that I belonged to him because my dad made a deal. That I had no choice."
Russell was very still. "Was the deal real?"
"No. My dad died when I was sixteen. He never even met Marcus." I looked at the candle flame because it was easier than looking at him. "Marcus just knew I had no one left to tell me the truth."
Russell didn't say anything. But his hand moved on the table, not toward me, just shifted, like he'd thought about it and stopped himself.
I appreciated that more than I could explain.
"I'm not Marcus," he said finally.
"I know that." I picked up my fork again. "I don't know if that means I can trust you. But I know you're not him."
We ate in quiet after that. Not uncomfortable, quiet. Just quiet.
When my plate was almost empty, Russell said, "I've arranged for you to have access to the stables tomorrow. If you want it. Shadowmere could use a familiar face."
My head came up. "Seriously?"
"You're good with horses. He trusts you already. And you'll need something to do for seven days, or you'll lose your mind in that room."
For the first time since the forest, something in my chest unclenched just slightly. The stables. I could work. I could be useful. I could breathe.
"Yeah," I said quietly. "I'd like that."
Russell nodded, and something shifted in his eyes, relief, maybe, that he'd said the right thing. He went back to his food. I went back to mine.
The candle popped and flickered.
Clara walked me back to the guest wing afterward, chattering about the Christmas decorations going up in the great hall and which pack elders had the most ridiculous opinions about tinsel. She made me laugh twice, which I hadn't expected.
At my door, she squeezed my arm. "Sleep. Things look less impossible after sleep."
"Or they look exactly as impossible, but you're rested enough to panic properly."
She grinned. "See you in the morning."
I went inside. Locked the door. Sat on the bed.
The bond hummed in my chest, quieter now that I'd eaten and Russell was on the other side of the fortress. But still there. Like a second heartbeat that wasn't mine.
I thought about what Clara had said eight years ago: he lost someone he loved. He won't trap you the way death trapped her.
I thought about Russell stopping himself from reaching for my hand.
I thought about the window that wouldn't open.
And then I heard it.
Voices in the hallway. Two of them. Hushed and tense.
I went still.
"can't keep hiding it from him."
"Not the time, not with the bond-claim active."
"The Council already knows, Finn. If he finds out we sat on this"
A pause.
"The human has to leave. Before the seven days. Before the bond sets. Before she finds out what she is."
Silence.
Then footsteps moving away.
I sat in the dark and stared at the door, heart hammering.
Before she finds out what she is.
What did that mean? What was I, besides a horse trainer who'd made one very bad decision on a snowy night?
I pressed my hand over my chest where the bond pulsed, warm and strange and nothing like anything I'd ever felt before.
Seven days suddenly felt much shorter.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, the part of me that had survived Marcus, the part that always knew when something was being hidden, was whispering one clear and urgent warning:
You are not safe here.
You were never safe here.
Run.