Chapter 8 - Don't Cry

𝐂𝐘𝐑𝐔𝐒

"Your quarters," I showed the vermin the room we had prepared for her. 'Prepared' was generous.

The cut-out room was a dump, not at all what a spoiled brat would be used to. A thin mattress on a rusted frame, a single threadbare blanket, a cracked basin for washing. The walls were water-stained, the floor uneven stone. No windows. A torch that I doubted would work. It was the kind of room you'd throw a criminal in, and that's exactly what she was.

A princess like her would be horrified and cue the tears, the trembling lip, the silent plea for mercy. Sonya had warned us that Aurora was good at playing the victim, at making herself look pitiful to manipulate men. I was ready for it.

She stepped inside, her chains clinking softly. Those mismatched eyes swept the room once but her expression remained closed off. Then she moved to the mattress and sat down, folding her hands in her lap 

I blinked, frowning, watching her from the doorway. "Not what you're used to, is it?" I prodded, my voice sharp with taunting. "No silk sheets. No servants to warm your bed."

She didn't even look up.

The wolf—that damned creature that followed her everywhere—pushed past me and curled up at her feet. She reached down and stroked his head, her fingers gentle in his fur. 

Her shoulders slumped with a bit of relief.

"She is intriguing," Knox rumbled low in my head. "Humans are usually more reactive." 

My jaw tightened. "You really think you can keep up this act? This... martyred silence?"

Her hand stilled on the wolf's head for just a second, then continued its slow, soothing rhythm. She didn't acknowledge me at all, like I wasn't even there.

I stepped closer, looming over her. "Sonya told us how you are. How you twist things. How you make yourself look small and helpless so men will pity you." My voice dropped, laced with contempt. "It won't work on me."

She raised her eyes to mine. There was nothing in them—not one hint of defiance or desperation. 

Instead, I saw exhaustion, deep and bone-weary, settled in the hollows of her face. She held my gaze for a moment, then looked away again, back to the wolf.

I might as well have been a piece of furniture.

Something hot twisted in my chest. I was a Lycan. A Scion. A demigod. And this human—this thief, this manipulator—sat there stroking that wolf like I hadn't just shown her the hole she'd be rotting in.

"You'll start in the kitchens at dawn," I informed. "There's a list of tasks on the counter. You'll complete all of them. Every single one. If you don't, there will be consequences."

She dipped her head once. 

I should have left. The door was right there yet something about her stillness kept me rooted to the spot.

"What was your plan?" I asked, still crouched before her, my thumb now tracing the line of her jaw. "Seduce the Zeta, steal the Core, and then what? Sell it? Use it to make yourself a god?"

Her lips parted slightly, like she wanted to answer but couldn't. The wolf growled low in warning, but I ignored him.

"I've seen what humans do for power," I continued, my hand sliding down to rest against her throat—not squeezing, just there, feeling her pulse flutter beneath my palm. The rhythm of it was intoxicating, that rapid beat singing against my skin. I could feel the warmth of her blood rushing beneath the surface, could smell the faint scent of rain and fear clinging to her. It made something dark curl low in my gut. "Your kind built cities on the backs of wolves. Created wolfsbane to cripple us. Hunted us like animals for sport. And now you want our relics too?"

She swallowed, the movement shifting against my hand. Her eyes searched mine, she didn't pull away. 

"When will you try to seduce me, princess?" I asked, my voice low and taunting. "That's what you do, isn't it? What Sonya said. You wrap men around your finger, make them think you're fragile and in need of saving."

I brushed my thumb across her lower lip, slow and deliberate, watching for the telltale signs. The flutter of lashes, the hitch in breath, the subtle lean that would confirm everything Sonya had told us about her.

She just stared at me, those mismatched eyes wide and unblinking.

"You know what I am," I continued, leaning in closer until our faces were inches apart. "The Sin of Lust. I can feel desire like a wolf smells blood. When someone's using their body as a weapon, when they're trying to twist me with manufactured want—I know." My hand slid from her throat to cup her cheek, tilting her face toward the flickering torchlight. "So go ahead. Try it. See if you can do to me what you did to that idiot."

Her pulse hammered against my palm where my fingers rested near her jaw. Fear, maybe or something else but there was no surge of artificial heat, no manufactured pull trying to drag me in. Just the warmth of her skin and the rapid beat of her heart.

It unsettled me more than if she'd tried.

Knox stirred in my mind, amused. "You're enjoying this."

"We are enjoying this," I corrected, my thumb continued its slow path along her cheekbone, and I couldn't quite make myself stop.

"Nothing?" I murmured, almost to myself. My thumb stroked along her cheekbone, testing, searching for the crack in the facade. "You're not even going to try? That's your game, then. Play broken. Play helpless. Hope one of us feels sorry enough to let our guard down."

A single tear slipped down her cheek, catching the dim light before disappearing into the collar of her filthy dress. She still said nothing. 

My fingers twitched.

The tear carved a slow path down her cheek and something vile, something instinctive, rose in me, the urge to catch it before it fell. To wipe it away. 

Disgust coiled in my gut.

I seized her face instead, my hand snapping forward to grip both her cheeks, forcing her to look at me. Her skin was warm beneath my palm, too soft, too human.

"Don't," I snapped, though I wasn't sure if I meant her or myself.

Her breath hitched, the wolf surging to his feet with a snarl that vibrated through the stones. I ignored him. My thumb pressed harder into her jaw.

And the room fractured out of focus and existence.

The damp stone walls bled into something brighter and warmer, my grip loosened without my permission.

My own voice broke through the haze, higher, rough with youth. 

"Don't cry."

It wasn't the command I used now. It was soft with desperation that rattled me to my core.

A pair of green eyes stared back at me. Vivid. Wet with tears. Sunlight caught in them like shattered emeralds.

My hand reached forward.

"I'll fix it. I promise."

The scent of wildflowers. The sound of distant water, of laughter turning to sobbing.

And like it had come, the image splintered and the dungeon slammed back into place.

My grip tightened violently.

Aurora's eyes were blown wide, her breath ragged, pupils dilated like she'd seen the same ghost claw through time. Shock mirrored mine glistened in her eyes.

She saw it too.

Rage imploded through my being. 

I grabbed her harder, fingers biting into her skin. "What trick was that?" I demanded, a laugh tearing out of me—sharp, hollow, wrong. "Clever. Fuck, you almost got me." 

Her head shook violently, her mouth opening to speak but only gasps escaped. She swallowed, eyes pleading. 

"Liar."

The word tasted like iron.

The wolf pounced, snapping at my forearm. I bared my teeth, and with one swipe, I tossed him into the wall.

"Back off." Knox's voice cracked through my skull like thunder. "Now."

My vision flickered toward her chest, toward the place where the Core's energy hummed beneath her ribs embedded in her heart.

"You feel that?" Knox growled low in my mind. "It's reacting. Another pulse like that and it won't matter that you're a Scion."

A ripple of heat skimmed over my skin. I shoved her away as if she'd burned me.

She collapsed back onto the mattress but in an instant she was up. I expected to lung at me, and try to use one perceived moment of weakness to her advantage but—

She scrambled across the filthy mattress on her knees and toward the wolf.

I watched, stunned, as she dropped beside the heap of fur and muscle I'd flung into the wall. Her hands were small, scarred, trembling as slid over his ribs, checking, soothing, whispering something I didn't want to hear. 

The animal whined once, low and pained, then pressed his massive head into her lap like she was the only safe place left in the world.

My laugh died in my throat when she turned to me. Her eyes simmered with hate that could pierce flesh before she turned back to tend to him. 

For a stunned moment I could only stare. She had not been angry at the room, us taking away her luxury, or my words or my less than gentle grabbing. 

She was angry I touched some ugly farting wolf.