Chapter 5: The Prisoner's Price

The days that followed the assassination attempt were a study in surreal tension. Kaelus’s wound healed with a wolf’s unnatural speed, but the invisible wound his words had inflicted festered. He had saved me, yet he had condemned me to a deeper isolation with his cold pragmatism. I was moved to a more secure, yet slightly less Spartan, room within the main lodge—a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless. A silent, heavily armed guard was always posted outside my door.

Yet, something had shifted. A fragile, unspoken truce settled between Kaelus and me. The blatant hostility was gone, replaced by a wary, watchful silence. He no longer openly snarled or insulted me. Instead, he would bring me books from a small, hidden collection in his study—old histories, accounts of the early wars, even a book of moonlit poetry that felt wildly out of place. He would leave them on the table without a word and disappear for hours.

At first, I ignored them, seeing it as another form of psychological manipulation. But boredom and a desperate need for any distraction eventually won. The histories were dry, but one evening, tucked within a heavy tome on inter-clan politics, I found a loose, yellowed parchment. It was a fragment of a personal letter, its edges burned. The script was elegant, flowing.

“…the union was not a betrayal, but a hope. Lyra of the Silvermane and Orion of the Nightweaver saw beyond the bloodshed. They believed the ‘Curse-that-Binds’ could be a bridge, not a chain. But the purists on both sides feared it. They called it an abomination. I fear for them. I fear the Bloody Moon will not be the end, but the beginning of an even longer night…”

My breath caught. Lyraand Orion. The names from the legend of the Bloody Moon massacre. This wasn’t just history; it was a firsthand account that contradicted everything I’d been taught. It suggested the union was desiredby some, and sabotaged by extremists.

That night, when Kaelus brought my evening meal himself—a rare occurrence—I couldn’t contain my curiosity. I pointed to the parchment, which I had left on top of the book. “Where did you find this?”

He stopped, his gaze shifting from me to the parchment. A flicker of something unreadable crossed his face. “My grandfather’s private papers,” he said, his voice low. “He was… a historian. A radical. He believed there was more to the war than simple hatred.”

“He believed the Bloody Moon was a setup?” I pressed, my heart pounding.

He looked at me then, a long, searching look. The bond between us hummed faintly, not with its usual painful intensity, but with a thread of shared purpose. For a moment, it felt like we were not a wolf and a vampire, but two scholars piecing together a puzzle.

“He believed,” Kaelus said slowly, choosing his words with care, “that the truth was the first casualty of that night. And that we have been bleeding from that wound ever since.”

It was the closest we had come to a civil conversation. A tiny, treacherous spark of hope ignited in my chest. Perhaps he wasn’t just keeping me as an asset. Perhaps he genuinely wanted to uncover the truth. The wall around my heart developed a hairline crack.

The next afternoon, the guard outside my room was Derrick. His presence was a dark cloud, his hatred a palpable force. He sneered at me but said nothing. After a while, he was called away, muttering about an urgent message for the Alpha.

I was about to return to my reading when I heard raised voices from the adjacent study. The door was slightly ajar. It was Kaelus, and he was speaking to someone through a communication crystal, his voice echoing faintly but clearly.

“…understand your concerns, Elder Torin,” Kaelus was saying, his tone the cool, diplomatic one he used with the council. “But the situation remains under my control.”

A pause. I shouldn’t have been listening. I knew it was a violation. But I was frozen, the spark of hope now a cold knot of dread in my stomach.

“The vampire?” Kaelus’s voice came again, colder now, devoid of the subtle warmth I’d heard last night. “She is compliant. She knows her position. Do not worry; I am extracting every piece of useful information I can from the valuable prisoner. Her cooperation is… manageable.”

Valuable prisoner.The words struck me with the force of a physical blow. Manageable.The tiny spark of hope was extinguished, drowned in a wave of icy humiliation and rage. The books, the shared glance, the hint of a shared quest for truth—it was all a lie. A calculated performance to keep me “compliant,” to make me lower my guard so he could “extract” information.

The conversation ended. I stumbled back from the door, my hands trembling. The hairline crack in my wall didn’t just seal; it turned to solid, impenetrable steel. I had been a fool. I had almost let the bond, and a few kind gestures, cloud my judgment.

When Kaelus entered my room minutes later, his expression was neutral, perhaps even slightly softened from his council dealings. He opened his mouth to speak, maybe to ask about the texts.

I didn’t give him the chance.

“Was there something else you needed to extractfrom your valuable prisonertonight, Alpha?” I spat, my voice trembling with a fury so cold it burned. “Or have you gathered enough intelligence to satisfy your masters?”

He stopped dead, his grey eyes widening in genuine shock. Then, understanding dawned, followed by a flash of what looked like… frustration? Guilt? It didn’t matter.

“Liliana,” he began, using my name for the first time, and the sound of it on his lips felt like a fresh betrayal.

“Don’t,” I cut him off, wrapping my arms around myself, a pathetic substitute for the armor I truly needed. “Save your lies for your council. I understand my ‘position’ perfectly now. I am a prisoner. You are my jailer. That is the only truth that matters.”

I turned my back on him, staring out the small window at the moonlit forest. The bond between us twisted, becoming a conduit for my pain and his consternation. The brief, fragile bridge we had started to build had been demolished, not by an outside force, but by his own words, carefully laid as a trap. And I had fallen right into it. The only thing left was the cold certainty of my captivity and the bitter taste of my own foolish hope.