The high-backed throne of black glass was cold, even through the silver-silk of
the gown I wore—the gown that had belonged to a sister who was now a traitor and
a ghost. The silence that filled the Great Hall after Kaelen's public submission
was not a peaceful one. It was a dense, pressurized vacuum that seemed to suck
the very oxygen from the room. I sat there, the "wolfless" girl who had been
sold for a million gold credits, looking down at the most feared Alpha in the
Northern territories as he finished drying my feet with a cloth of pure silk.
His hands—large, calloused, and capable of crushing a man's skull—were
unnervingly gentle. I could feel the tremors in his fingers, a physical
manifestation of the psychic collapse he was enduring. Through the bond, our
connection was no longer a thin, icy wire of hatred. It had become a torrential
flood of his regret, so thick and dark it felt like drowning in liquid obsidian.
