*Ella*
Ryatt keeps a firm grip on my wrist as he leads me through his maze of a castle. Dressed in a form fitting black shirt and black pants and free of his leather armor, I can see every solid line of his body from his ripped chest to his muscular thighs. He moves like a predator honing in on its prey when we reach his bedroom–our bedroom–and shuts the door firmly behind him.
The sun is beginning to set. The curtains whisper in the cool mountain breeze as golden light floods the room through the open doors leading to the balcony. A dinner service has been laid out on a round table near one of the ceiling-height windows–steak, vegetables, salad, and bread–as well as a few plates of fruit and dessert.
Ryatt says nothing as I walk to the center of the room and look around, still in awe that this is where I live now, where I call home. It’s grander than anything I’ve ever seen in my life.
“You need to eat something,” he says from the walk-in closet. I hear clothes hitting the floor, and he steps out shirtless, gripping a fresh black shirt and suit jacket in his hands as he edges toward the bed.
“Are you not eating with me? This is a lot of food for one person.” There’s only one plate, one set of silverware. One glass of what looks like wine.
“Not tonight. I have meetings.”
I nod, biting back my disappointment as I turn to the balcony and look outside. It’s much colder up here at the peak of the mountain. The city is far below, twinkling in the golden sunset. Dark clouds are brewing, however, choking out the light with the promise of rain.
Ryatt dresses quickly and runs his fingers through his hair before pulling it back. He hasn’t shaved in several days, and his jaw is covered in a dark, thick beard that makes him look even more rugged than usual.
I watch him over my shoulder. “Do you have to go? I haven’t seen you all day.”
“I’ve been away for a long time, Ella. I have work to do.” There isn’t a single shred of emotion in his voice at all, and my heart sinks into my stomach as he turns for the door.
“Ask the house–”
“Ask the house for whatever I need, I know,” I cut in with a tinge of frustration.
He looks over his shoulder at me, his expression distant and cold.
It’s like we’re back at square one. The haze of the coven, and the Rite, has lifted.
This was never about love for him. I have to keep reminding myself of that before I break my own heart.
“Granger is leaving tomorrow for the Roguelands and will be gone for a few weeks. They’re spending a night together. Do not bother them.”
I rein in my fury at his tone, at the way he threatens me like a child to be on my best behavior. “What was in that room, Ryatt? The house opened the door for me–”
“I promised I’d answer every question you had in due course, Ella.” Ella. Not mate. Not Princess, his favorite nickname for me. I slip even further into my own head as he continues, “But right now I have to deal with my pack.”
He’s gone before I can blink, and I’m alone.
I eat dinner–alone. I shower and wander around the room in a towel–alone. I dig through his dresser and every drawer–alone. Looking for secrets. Looking for anything to occupy my time. Eventually, I pull on a pair of pajama pants and my Wellington sweatshirt, the cuffs stained with paint. Paint. How long has it been since I picked up a paintbrush? Weeks? Months?
I stand in the threshold of my new studio with rain beginning to patter against the glass ceiling. Lightning brightens the sky, and thunder rattles the glass panes of every window in the castle, but I ignore it.
When I finally abandon the studio and crawl into bed hours later, I pull the sheets to my chin and look up at the ceiling where I’d watched the Goddess paint the sky this morning. Now, the sky is filled with stars and the moon, solace against the storm raging outside. This house is alive in a way I don’t understand. My questions about it will be answered one day, I hope. Ryatt promised, and even though I’ve spent an entire night alone, I find it hard to be mad at him.
I’d been born into this kind of life. My parents, though loving and devoted to me and Isaac, spent a great deal of time delegating and ruling. There were many days I didn’t see my dad at all and many nights I’d lay awake, pretending to sleep, and waiting for him to come and check on me and tuck me in in the wee hours of the morning. He always did, even when the digital clock beside my bed read 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning.
Then Isaac became king, and I watched my brother curl into himself and throw his life away to rule. He was such a different kind of king. With no mate or children, every hour of his life was spent ruling his pack. It took a while for him to break out of those routines for Maddy.
I don’t know if I actually fell asleep or not. I slowly drift back to reality when I feel the bed shift under the weight of Ryatt joining me, his skin hot to the touch from taking a shower. I hadn’t heard him come in. In fact, I hadn’t really expected him to start sharing a bed with me at all. We haven’t talked about what this relationship should look like between us.
I’m his mate, yes. He marked me, and I marked him, which according to Amanda, is the equivalent of marriage here.
So I’m his wife, and his Luna, and his mate.
Yet, there’s nothing he wants from me besides the physical, right?
When he reaches for me I half expect that to happen, for him to slide his hand under my sweatshirt and palm my breast, to kiss my neck and nudge my legs apart. I would have let him. I would have taken what I could get from him knowing my heart couldn’t take it for much longer.
But he simply pulls me to his chest and buries his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. His arm wraps around me in a warm, possessive embrace like he’s clinging to me, like my presence grounds him in place.
He falls asleep almost immediately. Meanwhile, I fight back tears at the raw intimacy of this moment as his knee slides between mine, and his body relaxes into sleep. For the first time since I came to this strange world, I feel safe enough to let myself drift into the inky-dark and depthless kind of sleep I haven’t experienced in weeks.
But when I open my eyes again, it’s still dark. Rain splashes against the puddles on the balcony from last night's storm. Ryatt is gone, and there’s someone standing at the edge of my bed cloaked in darkness and shadows.
Commander Westfall drops a pile of clothing on the bed and says, “Get dressed. Your training starts now.”
* * *
Ten fucking miles on foot in human form. I bend over, resisting the urge to vomit as I balance my hands on my knees and gasp for breath. The first five miles had been easy enough even though the leather armor over my chest, back, and forearms is heavy, my clothes underneath soaking wet. Rain pelts my face as I squint up at the sadist of a man who’d decided, when my cheeks weren’t red enough after the first five miles, that I needed to do it again.
It's not even dawn. Whatever light of early morning there is is shielded by dark storm clouds. Also, I’m starving.
“All right,” I choke out. “Is that enough, or do you want me to run another five miles?”
Commander Westfall smirks and points to the thick wooden doors that lead back into the castle. We’re on the far side, the blue side, he called it. I was told the sun barely touches this area during the day as it’s shielded by the mountains’ shadow. It’s also relatively flat here, and just below the tree line, but my run was still mostly uphill in what felt like both directions.
Inside, there's a wide room with a tall ceiling. It’s dark, save for those magical sconces that flicker with Ryatt’s power. A sparring ring, weights, and dummies in the shape of humans and wolves litter the area.
Westfall ignores my wet clothing and motions me into the ring, tossing a wooden sword at my feet.
“I thought we were training my powers!” I seethe, fatigue and hunger coiling through my body.
“You have to be strong enough to wield them without losing control. We won’t even speak of your powers until you can prove you're physically able to control them first,” he says bitterly. “Pick up the sword.”
Here, I’m not his Luna, and he’s not the commander of Ryatt’s forces. I’m just Ella, and he is the devil who has been instructed, I gather, to not go easy on me.
So, he doesn’t.
His own wooden sword comes down on my back as I stumble through the movements he’s teaching me. “Again,” he says with no emotion in his voice. Again, again, again.
“Is this how you trained Ryatt?” I snap, reaching up to push my hair back behind my ear. I whirl, mimicking a move he made that had me on my knees with his sword pressed to my throat only moments ago. I kick out, slicing my word over his shins as I slide on my knees across the ring, but not quickly enough. He grabs me by the hair and slams me on my back, the tip of his sword pressed against my sternum.
“When he was a boy, yes. He was wielding a real sword by the time he was eleven.”
“You’ve known him that long?”
He releases his hold on me and steps back. “I’ve known your mate since he was born.”
I raise my brows as I get to my knees and rise, taking a ragged breath. “How is that possible?”
“Get me on the ground, Ella, and I will tell you.”
Well, now a fire’s been lit under my ass. I spend the next hour absolutely railing on the commander with my stupid little wooden sword. He beats the hell out of me in the process. But finally, finally, I manage to get him on the ground. I press the tip of my sword into his stomach.
“You gave me that one, didn’t you,” I pant, unable to catch my breath.
“Training has been over for an hour. I was growing bored.”
Irritation flares through my mind, but I hold firm, pressing harder. “Tell me how you knew him when he was a baby even though he was born in Rifthold to a breeder!”
Westfall’s eyes undergo a great change. Memories simmer there, some of them wistful, but most of them empty and traumatic. It causes me to let up on him and step away, tossing my sword to the side.
He sits up, his legs spread out in front of him.
“I was a prisoner in Rifthold, a slave. I knew his mother well.”