Page 25 of To Carve A Wolf

But my stomach turned. Because I had known better. Once.

Before the sea wind, before the hunger, before the knives and the runes and the long, cold nights praying the next full moon didn’t tear me in half.

I’d knownluxury—back when I was still a daughter of the South. Before I chose exile over obedience.

Back when I lived in my family’s estate, where everything was curated and pristine—where the air always smelled faintly of rose oil and something too sweet, like decay hiding under perfume.

Where the windows had bars not for safety, but for training. The memories came clawing through me in the dark, long after Dain had drifted to sleep. I sat by the fire, staring at the flames, and let the past creep in through the cracks in my silence.

I remembered the heat of summer trapped inside the training house. My sisters and I sitting in a line, draped in pale silks, wrists tied gently with red cord so we wouldn’t fidget. So we wouldn’t forget.

And the voice of Mistress Halra, sharp and honeyed, circling us like a serpent.

“A good Omega never lifts her gaze unless told.”

“A good Omega does not challenge. She invites.”

“A good Omega’s body is not hers. It is a gift to be given when the Alpha is ready.”

I was thirteen the first time I heard her describe—in clinical,disgusting detail—how to breathe, arch, moan on command.

My stomach had roiled. I’d bit my tongue until it bled. And Halra had smiled. “You’ll thank me when your Alpha knows your worth. When he chooses you.”

I had wanted to scream.

Instead, I waited until nightfall, crept into the washroom, and vomited until my knees gave out. That was the day I decided. I wouldn’t be what they wanted.

Not then. Not ever. And now, years later, here I was. In another gilded cage. Another locked room built by wolves who thought obedience was carved, not earned.

I fell asleep as the first rays of sun crawled across the floor like fingers trying to reach me.It wasn’t rest. It was collapse. The kind of sleep that drags you under like a tide and leaves your limbs heavy, your chest burning, your mind too fractured to dream.

But it didn’t last.I woke to cold air and emptiness. The bed beside me was already cooling. Dain’s warmth—gone. His voice wasn’t in the room. His footsteps hadn’t stirred the rug. He was gone.

I was on my feet before I could think, the blanket falling from my shoulders, the soft cotton shift clinging to my skin as I rushed to the door.

“Open it!” I slammed my fist against the wood. “Where is he?”

Two guards stood on the other side, unmoved, stone-eyed. The same bastards who’d dragged me through these halls like a corpse that refused to die.

“Let me out!” I screamed, pounding harder.

They didn’t move. I didn’t care. My fists hit harder. I kicked the door. I slammed my shoulder against it again and again until pain bloomed bright and sharp in my bones.

“Where is he? Where’s my son?”

The guards exchanged a glance—just a flicker of unease—then stepped back when I launched at them, wild and thrashing. They grabbed my arms, struggling to hold me down, and even tied, I made them work for every second.

“I’ll kill you if anything’s happened to him,” I snarled. “I’ll gut you—”

“Enough.”

The voice came from the corridor. Calm. Measured.That Beta. Garrick stepped into view, hands raised slightly, as if trying to placate a rabid animal. His eyes swept over me—hair tangled, face flushed, arms bruised from the struggle—and something like amusement flickered at the corner of his mouth.

“Let her go,” he told the guards.

They hesitated, then obeyed.

I ripped away from them and faced him, chest heaving, my wrists burning from the iron cuffs.

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