Well, well, Lyra…
did you just try to crawl into my brother’s bed?” Lucien’s voice sliced through the heavy room like a rusty blade, soft, mocking, and dripping with malicious delight.
His dark eyes dragged slowly over my bruised face, coming to a rest on my swollen, bleeding lip.
The blood smeared across my chin told a story, a terrible, distorted story that I knew would end in my execution.
Heat flared across my skin, a wave of sickening shame washing through my chest.
“I…” My voice caught in my dry throat.
The word choked me, rasped and weak.
“I didn’t…”
I couldn’t finish the thought.
My tongue felt like lead, heavy and useless.
What could I possibly say to defend myself?
Explain that Ronan dragged me here and forced himself on me?
They would laugh in my face.
Beg them to see the truth?
They had already decided I was a monster.
I opened my mouth to try again, but the words died instantly as heavy footsteps echoed down the stone corridor.
Kael glided into the doorway, holding Selene in his arms like a fragile, prized porcelain doll.
She rested completely against his broad chest, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, his heavy arm draped possessively over her hip as if he were displaying a trophy to the world.
The sight squeezed every drop of air right out of my lungs.
Selene’s eyes widened, her gaze taking in my bloodied mouth, the burning red imprint of Ronan’s hand on my cheek, and Ronan himself standing just inches from my trembling frame while Lucien casually leaned against the oak doorframe like an amused spectator.
“What on earth is going on in here?” Selene asked, her voice soft, sweet, and laced with a sharp, dangerous curiosity.
Her gaze flicked from Ronan to my shaking hands, her eyebrows knitting together in performative concern.
Before I could force a single breath into my chest, Ronan took a step forward.
His posture relaxed, his face smoothing into a cool, unbothered mask, as if he hadn’t just pinned me against the wall and drawn blood from my mouth.
“Why don’t you ask this wretched snake?” he drawled, his voice cool and confident.
The insult hit me like a physical blow.
My knees buckled.
Darkness flickered at the edges of my vision.
A slow, vicious smirk spread across Ronan’s lips—a look that dared me to utter a single word of contradiction.
“She threw herself at me the second I stepped into the hall,” he finished, his tone ringing with unshakeable authority.
The entire world tilted on its axis.
I felt every pair of eyes in the room lock onto me—Lucien’s amused, Selene’s burning with a quiet, sickening triumph, and Kael’s darkening into pure obsidian.
Panic seized my throat.
I shook my head violently, my breath coming in short, terrified gasps.
“N-no!
That’s a lie!” I choked out, the words tumbling out broken and desperate.
“I swear on my life…
I didn’t touch him!”
My chest tightened painfully, a thick wave of humiliation strangling me from the inside out.
My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged beast.
I wanted to tear through the stone floor and disappear into the dirt.
“Are you daring to call my brother a liar, Lyra?” Kael’s voice thundered through the chamber.
The disgust in his voice was thick, suffocating, and absolute.
He stared down at me with pure, unadulterated hatred, as if my mere presence were a disease infecting his air.
Selene buried her face deeper into Kael’s neck, a tiny, victorious smile curving her lips—not pity, not horror, but pure possession.
I dropped my head, the crushing weight of their condemnation slamming down on my broken shoulders.
Tears burned hot behind my eyelids, threatening to spill over my bruised cheeks.
“No…” I whispered, my voice breaking down the middle.
“I’m not…
please…”
The sentence withered and died.
My words were dust here.
The verdict had been decided before I ever opened my mouth, the truth burned to ash, my guilt written in stone.
A terrifying truth settled in my stomach: It didn’t matter that I was innocent.
They needed me to be the villain, and no amount of bleeding would ever change their minds.
“You have the utter audacity to try and seduce Ronan in my own house?” Kael didn’t roar this time; his voice dropped into a low, terrifying growl, strained and lethal, like a beast holding back its jaws by a thread.
His eyes burned into mine, murder flickering in their depths, his jaw set so hard the veins in his neck stood out like ropes.
My stomach churned into a tight knot.
Every inch of my skin crawled under his gaze.
Lucien let out a short, mocking laugh, pushing off the wall with a lazy, deliberate grace.
“No matter how pathetically you offer yourself up, Lyra,” he sneered, his lips curling back, “not one of us would ever touch you.”
His gaze dragged down my torn cardigan and blood-soaked clothes with a disdain so visceral I flinched.
“You are nothing but an absolute disgrace,” he continued, emphasizing every word with cruel delight, “and you are utterly, completely…
repulsive.”
The words struck like heavy hammers against my shattered ribs.
“Have you no shame left at all?” Kael spat, taking a heavy step toward me.
“You know we are officially betrothed to your sister,” he snarled, “and you still try to flaunt your broken body at us?”
The accusation cut deeper than any blade.
I hadn’t flaunted anything.
I had been dragged here against my will.
“Doesn’t that make you a cheap whore?” Lucien cut in, his voice rising sharply, throwing the word like spit in my face.
A collective murmur gasped through the doorway.
Only then did I notice the shadows in the corridor.
A crowd of house servants had gathered outside the open door, watching, whispering, drinking in my humiliation like scavengers.
Their wide, judgmental eyes sliced through what little dignity I had left.
Heat scorched my cheeks.
Shame crawled up my throat, choking off my air.
I folded my arms tightly over my chest, wishing with every fiber of my soul that the ground would split open and bury me forever.
A ragged sob burst from my throat.
I bit down hard on my bleeding lip, trying desperately to hold it back, but failed.
Tears overflowed, streaming down my face in hot, unstoppable rivers.
I was completely broken.
“Then…
REJECT ME!” The words tore from my lungs before I could stop them, raw, wild, and bleeding with total desperation.
An absolute, terrifying silence crashed over the room.
I saw Selene freeze instantly in Kael’s arms.
Lucien’s cruel smirk vanished into thin air.
Ronan stopped mid-breath.
Slowly, deliberately, the three Alphas turned their heads toward me.
The air in the room grew heavy, suffocating, and deadly cold.
Shadows seemed to pool in their eyes as a dark, unholy rage flared across their features.
The kind of rage that promised I had just crossed a line I could never step back from.
In that frozen second, I knew that asking for my freedom wasn’t a plea for mercy.
It was an invitation to a nightmare far worse than anything I had survived.
But I didn’t care anymore.
“Reject me right now!” I screamed into the silence, my voice echoing off the stone walls.
“Cut the bond and set me free!”