Chapter 5: The Angel With Silver Eyes

Aviana's POV

I had stopped counting days.

What was the point? The days came and went the same way … dark, cold, the thin line of light under the door brightening and fading and brightening again.

My body had stopped feeling much of anything since the betrayal. The bond’s absence was a dull permanent ache now, like a missing tooth your tongue kept finding. I had stopped expecting it to feel different.

But I hadn’t stopped feeling her.

That was the one thing that kept me present.

The tiny flicker of life low in my stomach, so small still, so quiet … but there.

Every morning I pressed both hands flat against my belly and checked and every morning she was still there and that was enough to make me open my eyes for another day.

I don’t know how yet, I told her in the dark. But I am going to get you out of here.

I meant it. I just didn’t know how to make it true.

Then one evening, the guard brought the food … moldy bread, the usual, I ate it without looking … and when he left I heard it.

Or rather I didn’t hear it. The lock that kept me in everyday. It didn’t come.

I sat very still for a long time listening.

Nothing moved outside the door. The sounds of the moon festival drifted faintly from somewhere far across the grounds … music, voices, celebration. Everyone was occupied. Everyone was looking somewhere else.

I got up slowly.

Pressed my hand flat against the iron door and pushed.

It swung open.

——

After a month of staying underground, the night air that hit me felt really good. So good it brought tears to my eyes.

I stood in the doorway for one second breathing it in, and I moved.

I kept to the shadows along the outer wall, one hand trailing the stone for balance. My legs were weaker than I expected … weeks of almost nothing had taken more than I realized … but I kept moving.

Ahead of me through the distant treeline I could see the glow of the moon festival fires, hear the laughter and the drums. The whole pack, from the north, east, west and south gathered in one place.

At least I could get out of here before anybody realized.

I made it to the back garden. The one place I knew … the far corner where the wall was lower and the old stone had enough gaps and ridges to climb if you were careful.

I had mapped it in my head a hundred times over the years.

I started climbing.

My arms shook. My back pulled painfully where the wounds hadn’t fully healed. I pressed myself to the wall and kept going, one handhold at a time, focused entirely on the top edge getting closer.

Almost there.

My foot slipped.

The stone gave way beneath it and for one horrible open second I was falling … the night air rushing up around me, the ground coming fast and I threw my arms around my stomach by instinct, curling inward to protect her from the impact…

I landed in someone’s arms. Not the ground. Strong, stable arms, catching me like I weighed nothing at all.

I gasped and looked up.

The first thing I saw was his eyes.

Silver. Not grey, not pale blue … actual silver, bright and clear as moonlight on water, it was so amazing that it didn't seem entirely human even by wolf standards.

His hair was the same … white silver, falling loose around a face that was sharp-boned and still and almost painfully perfect.

He looked like something the moon had made on a night when she was showing off.

He looked down at me without moving. His eyes traveled over my face slowly … the hollows that hadn’t been there two months ago, the dark circles, the poorly healed split in my lip … then dropped briefly to my ragged clothes before coming back up.

“If you want to escape,” he said, “at least do it better than that.”

His voice was low, dry and completely unhurried.

From somewhere above us, back inside the walls, voices erupted.

“Search the grounds. Find her. Find that traitor now.”

My whole body went rigid.

I looked up at him. My eyes were already burning … I couldn’t help it, I was so tired, so deeply and completely weak … and the tears came before I could stop them.

“Please.” My voice came out barely above a whisper. “Please just let me go. I am begging you. Please.”

He looked up at the wall. At the voices getting louder, the sound of boots moving fast across stone. His arms hadn’t loosened around me even slightly.

Then he looked back down at me.

“If I put you down right now they will catch you within two minutes.” His voice was still completely calm. “And then they will kill you.”

I opened my mouth.

He kept talking.

“Agree to sign a contract. Be my Luna. And I will protect you with the last drop of my blood.”

I stared at him.

“I don’t … I don’t understand, I don’t know who you…”

“Say yes,” he said simply. “I’ll explain everything else later.”

The garden gate crashed open.

Aldric came through first, Phillip behind him, Patricia just visible at the back, and six guards fanning out around them with torches that lit the whole corner gold.

They saw us at the same moment.

Aldric stopped. His eyes moved from me to the man holding me and something happened to his face … all the authority draining out of it at once like water from a broken cup.

His knees hit the ground.

Around him, one by one and then all at once, everyone dropped.

Phillip. Patricia. Every guard. Every person present lowering themselves to the earth with their heads bowed.

I went very still in the silver-eyed man’s arms.

Lycan King.

The thought arrived slowly, like something surfacing from deep water. I looked up at him again … the silver hair, the silver eyes, the particular quality of absolute stillness he carried … and I remembered every story I had ever heard about the supreme ruler of the wolf realm.

Odd coloring. Unmistakable. Never seen in any pack because he belonged to all of them and none of them.

The Lycan King.

“Lycan King.” Aldric’s voice came out pressed and careful, his forehead nearly touching the ground.

“We apologize deeply for this situation. Please … hand the traitor over to us and return to the festival. She has already disturbed your evening with her presence and we…”

“I won’t be returning to the festival.”

His voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.

The whole garden went silent.

He looked down at me one more time and something in his expression shifted … just barely, just enough that I caught it … and then he looked back at the people kneeling in the dirt in front of him.

“I’ll be going home,” he said.

A pause that lasted exactly long enough to matter.

“With my mate.”