Chapter 11
The fortress never slept, not really. Even when the torches burned low and shadows pooled in the corners, the walls seemed to hum with secrets. Wolves moved quietly through the halls, silent as shadows but not invisible. Every step I took echoed in my chest, my pulse pounding in time with the mark that had become part of me.
The pack was watching.
I could feel it before I heard it—the way their glances lingered, sharp and uncertain. Curiosity. Suspicion. Hatred. And worse, fascination.
Lucien didn't see them. Not fully. His attention was fixed on me, or maybe the bond itself. The heat of it wrapped around both of us, suffocating and binding in ways I couldn't untangle.
But the pack whispered.
Soft words in the corridors. Muted laughter behind closed doors. Questions I couldn't hear, rumors I couldn't stop. I tried to focus, tried to ignore it. But the bond screamed in response, each fragment of attention they gave me like a knife twisting in my ribs.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to hide.
But the fortress had become a cage, and Lucien its storm. I couldn't escape the way he watched, the way the tension between us electrified the air. Every step I took, every motion I made, seemed magnified in the eyes of the pack.
I didn't understand how it happened. One day, I was nothing to them. A prisoner. A human girl who had crossed the wrong border. The next, I was the spark that made their teeth grind, their whispers grow louder. I was the shadow that made them question, the rumor that made them uneasy.
I stopped in the hallway, letting my back press against the cold stone.
Kael's footsteps approached.
He was quiet, silent even, but the weight he carried was unmistakable. Not like Lucien—he didn't radiate danger, not in the same way. He radiated… concern. Protection. Something that set my nerves on fire in its own way.
"You shouldn't be wandering," he murmured.
"I'm fine," I lied.
He raised an eyebrow, unreadable, but I felt the undercurrent. He didn't believe me. And he didn't have to. I was beginning to understand that no one ever truly believed me—not the pack, not Lucien, not even myself.
"You're stirring things," he said, voice low. "The pack… they're talking. Watching. Waiting."
I clenched my fists. "Let them talk. Let them watch."
Kael's eyes narrowed, but he didn't argue. He simply glanced down the corridor, then back at me, tension coiling in his shoulders. "Be careful. They smell weakness in ways you can't imagine."
I nodded, though the truth was that I wasn't sure what counted as strength anymore. The mark throbbed against my chest, a constant reminder that my body wasn't mine. Lucien's anger, his desire, his frustration—all coursing through me. All of it tied to the whispers, the silent scrutiny, the judgments.
The first incident came at dinner.
I entered the hall, trying to walk with purpose, with the defiance I'd been cultivating. The pack sat at long wooden tables, their murmurs low but incessant. Heads turned subtly, eyes darting, lips pressed in half-smiles or whispers.
I felt the heat of their attention, prickling my skin, twisting my stomach into knots. I tried to ignore it, tried to focus on the food before me, on the plates that Lucien had ordered brought.
But a laugh—a soft, sharp laugh—cut across the room.
I looked up. A wolf, younger than most, leaned back in his chair, eyes glinting with mischief and cruelty. He didn't speak, not aloud, but the message was clear.
"The beast's human."
The words weren't spoken. They didn't need to be. The pack understood the look, the smirk. And worse, I could feel the bond reacting.
Lucien's presence snapped around me like a whip. He appeared beside my chair without sound, shadow and muscle, his golden eyes blazing.
"Sit," he commanded, low and dangerous.
The wolf froze.
The pack froze.
Lucien leaned closer to me, voice like a growl meant only for me. "Do not give them a reason to think you are anything but mine," he said.
The words should have comforted me, but instead they set fire to my chest. Mine? The claim was supposed to terrify, to assert dominance. And yet, I felt the anger, the heat, the almost violent pull of the bond. I was his… but in a way that didn't feel like ownership. It felt like war, constant and intimate.
I forced myself to look down, keep my expression neutral. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction of seeing me react.
After a long, silent moment, Lucien stepped back. The tension in the room snapped like a stretched wire, and whispers resumed, quieter this time.
But the seed had been planted.
Later, when I was alone in the fortress's narrow corridors, the whispers came to me in more subtle ways. A tray left outside my door with food I hadn't asked for. A shadow lingering too long in the doorway. A note, small, crumpled, slipped under my door.
"She isn't what he wants. He hates her. Stay away."
I ripped it open, heart hammering. The handwriting was jagged, hurried—someone afraid of being seen. But the message, the venom, the intent—it was clear. I was becoming a target not just of Selene, not just of Lucien's conflicted bond, but of the pack itself.
The mark flared again. Pain shot through my body, sharp and searing. The bond responded to the fear, the whisper, the manipulation. Lucien's anger, his confusion, his need to control—it all reached me in violent waves.
I stumbled to the wall, gripping the stone. My knees nearly buckled under the weight of it.
"You can't run," the voice in my head whispered. Not mine. Not Lucien's exactly. The bond itself seemed to speak, snarling, desperate.
I shook my head. "I'm not running," I said aloud, my voice trembling despite my resolve. "I will not be afraid of whispers."
But fear had its claws in me.
Kael appeared again, stepping from the shadows. "They're planning," he said softly, almost too softly. "They're testing you. Testing the bond. Testing him."
I swallowed hard. "Why me? Why are they so focused on me?"
"Because," he said, voice low, "you are what he cannot control. And that terrifies them."
The thought chilled me. Not because of Lucien—he was terrifying enough on his own—but because I was alone in the eyes of the pack. Their whispers were a net, pulling, circling, watching, waiting. I wasn't just a prisoner of Lucien's fortress anymore—I was a living, breathing symbol of the storm between us.
And the worst part? The bond had a mind of its own now.
I could feel Lucien's frustration as if it were my own. Every glance the pack threw at me, every whisper, sent a ripple through him. And every ripple came back to me, twisting the mark, burning it, making me gasp in pain.
"You have to be careful," Kael warned again. "The bond is reacting. It's not just him. It's the connection. Every time they speak against you, against him… it hurts. You can't hide it forever."
I nodded, but I couldn't stop the shiver that ran down my spine. The fortress no longer felt safe. The walls had ears, the halls had eyes. Even the torches seemed to flicker with anticipation, like they knew what was coming.
That night, when the fortress finally quieted, I lay awake on the hard mattress in my small room. The mark burned beneath my shirt, throbbing with every heartbeat. I could feel him, his frustration, his anger, his need to control. And yet, I could feel my own defiance, stubborn and stubborn, roaring back against the tide.
I clenched my fists, trying to ground myself. The whispers were everywhere. They would not stop. And neither would I.
But the mark… it pulsed again, violently. A warning.
The fortress shuddered in the night. Not from the wind, not from the stone settling. From the pack. From Selene. From the storm that had become Lucien.
And from the bond.
I knew one thing with certainty as I lay there, listening to the faint scratching at my door, the barely audible murmur of wolves just outside the walls:
This war was no longer just Lucien's.
It was mine.
And the whispers… the whispers in the pack… were only the beginning.