Chapter 4

RAMIEL

~•~

I had her wrist before the door swung wide.

“Tobias, child lock,” I said.

“It’s on. It’s been on since she got in.” He didn’t even sound bothered. “You think I’d drive a panicking human around with a working door?”

The wind screamed in for a second, all that road noise, and then I reached across her and pulled the door shut and the quiet slammed back down. She was breathing like she’d run a mile, staring at me, my hand still around her wrist.

“Let go of me,” she said.

“You were going to jump out of a moving car.”

“Let go!”

I let go. She yanked her arm back and pressed herself into the corner of the seat, as far from me as the leather allowed, which wasn’t far.

“You showed me that,” she said, shaking. “You showed me that on purpose, in a car, with the doors locked, where I couldn’t—what is wrong with you? What kind of person does that?”

“I needed you to stop arguing,” I sat back. and it seems like that worked”

“I tried to throw myself onto a road!”

“And now you believe me. Worth it.”

She made a sound, disgust or a laugh, I couldn’t tell, and turned her face to the window.

Up front Tobias caught my eye in the mirror. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I could feel the lecture building in him like weather.

“Say it,” I told him.

“Not in front of her.”

“She’s going to live it. She might as well hear it.”

He took a breath. “You were promised to Adelheid Cross. Promised. Both houses sat in a room and signed it. Now you stood in a courtyard full of witnesses and claimed a human girl instead.” His voice stayed level, which is how I knew he was furious. “Her father is going to call your father within the hour. Probably already has.”

“Let him call.”

“Ramiel.” The mirror again. “You don’t break a mating contract with a sentence. You know this better than I do.”

“What’s he talking about?” Sorel had turned back. “What contract? Who’s Adelheid?”

“The girl I was engaged to,” I said.

She blinked. “You were—what, you were engaged?”

“Promised. It’s not the same. It’s worse.” I looked out my own window. The hills of Caldemoor going by, the long way home like I’d asked for, like a minute would fix any of this. “Our families arranged it when we were children. It’s how the high houses keep the bloodlines where they want them. Nobody asks the two people. You just grow up knowing.”

“And you threw that away. For a stranger.” She said it slow, like she was trying to make it real in her own head. “For someone you met an hour ago.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

I didn’t answer her. The gates were already opening.

I felt the house before I saw it. My father’s fury came off the place like heat off a road in summer, rolling down the drive to meet us, and every man we passed was posted and armed and watching the car, more of them than I’d ever seen out at once. Sorel saw them too. She went very still beside me.

“Who are all these people?” she whispered.

“Stay behind me. Don’t speak unless someone speaks to you, and even then, think first.”

“Ramiel—”

“I mean it.”

The car stopped and Tobias got the door. I stepped out into that wall of heat and Sorel climbed out after me on legs that didn’t want to hold her. I walked us both up the steps and through the doors into my father’s house.

They were all there.

My father stood in the center of the hall, and the air around him was thick enough to choke on, that pressure only a sitting Alpha throws, the kind that puts younger wolves on their knees without a word. My mother beside him, our Luna, cold and perfect and looking at Sorel like something had been tracked in on a shoe. My sister off to the side, arms crossed, already enjoying it.

Nobody said hello.

“Tell me I heard it wrong,” my father said.

“Father—”

“Tell me my son did not stand in the open, in front of humans, in front of our own, and throw away a mating contract for a girl off the street.” His voice climbed with every word. “Tell me, Ramiel.”

“What you heard is the truth, father.” I answered.

The roar that came out of him shook the glass in the windows. Sorel grabbed the back of my coat. I felt her whole body lean into me.

“You were promised!” he bellowed. “To Cross blood! Signed, sealed, witnessed by both houses before you could walk, and you—” He pointed at Sorel without looking at her, like pointing at a stain. “For that? A human? You shame this house for a human?”

“If you’ll let me explain what she is—”

“I don’t care what she is!”

“Tobias.” I kept my voice flat, because one of us had to be quiet in this room. “Take her out. Wait for me.”

Tobias moved.

“That thing,” my mother said, “does not put one filthy step further into this house.”

Tobias stopped.

The whole room turned cold in a different way. Sorel made a small sound behind me, and I felt her trying to make herself smaller. This simple human girl, standing in a hall full of monsters who were deciding out loud whether she was allowed to exist.

“She stays where I can see her,” I said. “That’s not up for discussion.”

“Up for discussion.” My sister laughed. “Listen to him. You don’t get to discuss anything, Ramiel, you broke a—”

“Careful, Mira.”

“Or what?” She pushed off the wall and came closer, looking Sorel up and down with a curl to her mouth. “She’s nothing. Look at her. No scent, no blood, no name worth saying. You burned a Cross alliance for this little—”

“I said careful.” I repeated, Vassek’s growl now in my voice

She knew that tone. She’d grown up across the hall from that tone, and she knew what came after it, and for half a second the cruelty went out of her face into fear. She stepped back.

“That’s what I thought,” I said.

My father was breathing hard, the pressure in the room still pinning every wolf in it but me. I made myself walk forward, into the worst of it, until I was close enough that this was between the two of us and not a show for the room.

“I was a child when you promised me to Adelheid,” I said. “I’m not a child now. I’ll be Alpha after you, and you know what I am better than anyone in this house. There hasn’t been a wolf like me in four generations. You’ve said it yourself.”

“Don’t you dare use your blood as a—”

“It’s the truth father.” I held his eyes. No one held my father’s eyes except me. “A wolf like me does not let another man pick who he ties his line to. Not Cross. Not you. Nobody. I chose. It’s witnessed, it’s law, and it’s done.”

The hall went dead silent.

My mother’s face had gone to stone. My sister wouldn’t look at me. And my father stared at me like he was seeing something he’d built turn around in his hands and bare its teeth.

Behind me, very quietly, Sorel spoke for the first time since the doors.

“What happens to me now?”

My father’s eyes moved off me and slowly landed on her, then he smiled, and that was so much worse than the shouting that I felt my own stomach drop.

“Yes,” he said softly. “Let’s talk about what happens to you.”