Chapter 3

Alaya POV:

I vaulted over the sill, my boots landing soundlessly in the deep snowdrift below.

The cold air hit my face, crisp and sharp, but my cleansed blood burned warm against the winter wind.

I stayed in the deep shadows cast by the fortress buttresses, slipping past three guards leaning against a wooden keg, their laughter slurred with mead.

Ahead rose the southern curtain wall, coated in thick rime.

Beyond that ice-locked stone barrier lay Moonlit Lake.

I dug my fingers into the frozen mortar between the stones, finding purchase with ease.

My muscles pulled me upward without a sound.

Just as my hands reached the parapet, a crushing weight slammed into my chest.

It was the suffocating, predatory aura of an apex Alpha.

My breath locked in my throat.

My boots slipped half an inch on the ice, but I caught myself, pressing flat against the cold stone.

A tall figure stepped out of the shadow of the watchtower above me.

Moonlight caught the polished silver edge of a half-mask covering the upper half of his face, accentuating a chiseled, brutal jawline.

He was draped in a massive dire-wolf pelt, his dark eyes fixing onto me with lazy amusement.

It was Kingsley Sloan.

The Royal Shadow Commander, head of the King's Inquisitorial Tribunal, answering only to the Alpha King himself.

He was the realm's executioner, a man who hunted rogue packs for sport.

"Well, now," his voice rumbled, low and rasping like blades grinding against stone. "The forgotten pup of House Bradford, scaling the battlements like a gutter thief."

I forced my racing pulse to steady, refusing to drop my chin.

"Step aside, Commander. This has nothing to do with the Crown."

"This is the King's wall, little fox," he said. "And you are standing on it. That makes it mine."

I reached for the next handhold, meaning to haul myself over the parapet. He moved one boot, and the gap I wanted was gone.

Kingsley leaned down, his gloved fingers moving fast as a striking viper.

He caught my jaw in a vice-like grip, tilting my face toward the moon.

The leather of his glove was icy, reeking of dried blood and bitter winter cedar.

Apex Alpha pressure rolled off him in waves. I still did not lower my eyes.

Then he bent, and the cold rim of the half-mask dragged down the side of my throat as he took my scent.

"A sharp tongue for a wolfless girl," he went on, his thumb brushing roughly across my cheekbone, smudging the soot away to expose the pale, porcelain skin beneath. "And hiding a face like this behind dirt. What game are you playing, little fox?"

My right hand closed around the sharpened silver pin hidden inside my sleeve, and I drove the point up into the soft hollow beneath his jaw.

"Release me, or I scream and alert the entire garrison."​

His lips tilted into a dangerous smirk, his dark eyes glinting behind the silver mask.

"Scream, then. Let us see who reaches this wall first—your father's lazy guards, or my shadow hounds." He did not pull back from my steel. He leaned into it, until the point pricked skin. "And when mine come, they will not be gentle. They will drag you back to that cell by the hair, and your mother will rot in her keep until she forgets your name." ​

I held the pin steady. "Then you will never learn what I am about to do."​

Something flickered behind the mask—the first honest thing I had seen in his eyes.

He held my gaze for three agonizing heartbeats, his grip firm enough to leave red marks on my skin.

Then he let go and took a step back, folding his arms across his broad chest.

"Go on, then," he said, his tone casual, almost bored. "Let me see what kind of fire you intend to light tonight."

His glove caught my wrist as I turned back to the parapet—not hard, only long enough for me to feel the shape of his hand through the leather.

"If you are still breathing tomorrow," he said, "I will come and find you. I am very good at finding things that do not wish to be found."

I pulled free. "Then I will make certain you have to work for it, Commander."

I did not waste a second.

I hauled myself over the icy crenelation, dropped down the outer slope of the ditch, and vanished into the snowfields beyond the castle perimeter.

Behind me, the wall stood silent; the commander was gone, as if he had been a ghost carved from the night.

I pulled my cloak tight, running through the frozen birch woods toward the dark expanse of Moonlit Lake.

In the distance, the lanterns of the keep burned bright against the black sky, festive bagpipes wailing into the night.

In less than twenty minutes, the patrol led by my eldest brother—Bernard Bradford, Captain of the Ducal Guard—would ride along this shore.

I broke through the tree line and found Breonna shivering behind a granite boulder.

Her teeth were chattering violently.

"My Lady! The lake... the water will freeze your heart! You will freeze to death!"

I stripped off the heavy woolen cloak, dropping it onto the snow.

I stood in only a thin, drenched-white linen slip, the howling wind immediately cutting into my bare arms.

"Remember your part," I said, my voice steady despite the frost coating my eyelashes. "When the horses break through the trees, scream until your lungs bleed."

Breonna choked on a sob and nodded hard.

I turned toward the lake.

Through the dark, my enhanced vision located the patch where the current ran fast, keeping the ice dangerously thin.

A faint clatter of iron hooves echoed from the birch woods, accompanied by the low, warning snort of warhorses.

I filled my chest with the freezing air, ran three paces across the frozen crust, and threw myself directly onto the black, fractured ice.