Wren POV
The woman waiting inside my door does not look like someone who wastes time.
She is maybe late twenties, with sharp dark eyes and the kind of stillness that belongs to people who have learned to read rooms before they enter them. She is dressed plainly. No jewelry. No expression I can name. She looks at me the way a person looks at a new piece of furniture they are trying to find a place for.
She says: "I am Maren Stone. Beta Female of this pack. Sit down."
There is one chair in the room. I sit.
She stands. She does not pace. She just stands in the center of the small space and talks, and her voice is level and clear, like someone reading from a list they have already memorized.
I will work. Kitchen first, then whatever else is needed cleaning, laundry, errands inside the estate. I will not enter the Alpha's wing under any circumstances. That means the entire west corridor and everything past the second staircase. I will not speak to Caius unless he speaks to me first. I will not leave the estate grounds. I will not use the main dining room, the library, the sitting rooms, or any shared space designated for ranked pack members.
I sit with my hands folded in my lap and I listen to every word and I do not let my face do anything.
She tells me my room is this one. I look around without moving my head much. Small. One narrow window showing the dark of the east garden. A bed with plain covers. A dresser with three drawers. A door to a bathroom barely big enough to turn around in.
My eyes find the lock on the bedroom door.
It is on the outside.
Maren watches me notice it. She does not apologize for it or explain it. She just watches my face and I make sure my face gives her nothing back.
She finishes her list. Then she asks if I have questions.
I have approximately one thousand questions. I ask the only one that actually matters right now.
"What happens if I break a rule?"
Maren looks at me for a long moment. Not a thinking pause she already knows the answer. It is more like she is deciding how honest to be with me. Then she says:
"That depends entirely on Caius's mood."
So. No floor. No clear bottom to how bad this can get. Just one man's grief and anger standing between me and whatever comes next.
Good. Fine. I have been living without a floor my entire life.
I nod like she has told me something reasonable. She gives me one more look and this one is slightly different from the others. Just slightly. Like she is seeing something she did not expect to see and she is filing it away for later. Then she leaves.
The lock clicks from the outside.
I sit on the bed and press my palms flat on my knees and breathe.
I eat alone that night.
Maren told me I would take meals in the kitchen after the staff finished, and that is exactly what I do. The kitchen is warm and smells like the tail end of dinner roasted meat, something herbed, bread. A woman I will later learn is Gerda scrubs a pot at the sink without looking up when I come in. Two other staff members finish wiping the counters and leave without speaking to me.
There is a plate set at the far end of the kitchen table.
Just the one. Set apart from where the rest of them would have sat. Far enough to make a point.
I sit down and look at it. Plain food. Enough calories to keep a person functional. Nothing extra.
I pick up the fork.
Then something slides onto my plate from nowhere.
I look up.
A boy maybe fifteen, small for his age with ears that stick out slightly and eyes that are fixed firmly on the middle distance is already walking away. He put a bread roll on my plate without stopping, without looking at me, without waiting for anything in return. He disappears around the corner before I can open my mouth.
I look down at the roll.
It is still warm.
Finn's voice comes back to me so suddenly it feels like a hand on my shoulder. We were sitting in the back corner of the pack hall once, both of us ignored at a pack celebration, and he pressed half his food onto my plate when he thought I wasn't looking. When I called him out on it he just shrugged and said: kindness from strangers is how you know you're still worth something, Wren. Pay attention to who does it and when. Those are the real ones.
I eat every bite on the plate. Both pieces of bread. Everything.
I do not waste kindness when it is offered. Finn taught me that.
The lights in the east wing go off one by one as the evening gets late. I can hear the estate settling footsteps on upper floors, a door closing somewhere distant, the muffled sound of voices in the west wing that cut off when I strain to hear them.
I do not cry when it is still light. I have rules about that too. Mine, not theirs.
But when my light is off and the room is dark and the lock is clicked shut on the outside of my door, I let it come. Quietly. The way I have been crying my whole life the kind that does not make noise, the kind that is over faster because I do not have the luxury of falling apart all the way. Finn is gone. Lyra is gone. My father sold me for whatever he got in return and did not even look sorry.
I cry for exactly as long as I can afford to. Then I stop.
I stare at the ceiling.
From somewhere in the estate far away but clear in the night quiet I hear it again. That low, restless sound. The pacing. His wolf moving in circles that do not resolve.
I press my face into the pillow.
And then something happens that makes my blood go completely cold.
The pacing stops.
And right after so close it cannot be coming from the far wing, so close it sounds like it is just outside my door
A single knock.
One knock. Quiet. Like someone who is not sure they mean to do it.
Then nothing.
I sit straight up in the dark, heart slamming, and stare at the door.
No one knocks on a servant's door at midnight.
No one except the man who owns the lock.