“Then you survive until tomorrow.” He wrapped the chain’s end around his paw, the excess links pooling in his palm like captured starlight. “One hour at a time. Isn’t that what Ari told you?”
She shouldn’t have been surprised he knew about the conversation. Nothing happened in this fortress without his knowledge. Nothing she did, nothing she said, nothing she thought if the expression on her face gave it away.
“She was helpful.”
“She was honest.” His free paw found the small of her back, claws pressing lightly through the silk. “A rare quality in this place. Come. They’re waiting.”
The ceremonial chamber dwarfed the throne room.
Elsa’s breath caught as they passed through doors carved with scenes she couldn’t interpret—battles, maybe, or religious rites, figures with too many limbs locked in combat or worship. The stone itself seemed to breathe, warm beneath her feet despite the winter that howled beyond the fortress walls.
And the crowd—
Hundreds of them. Maybe even thousands. Wolfmen packed into tiered galleries rising on three sides, their fur ranging from purest white to deepest black, their eyes tracking her with an intensity that made her skin prickle. Some wore the dark wristbands with their glowing blue gems. Others boremore elaborate markings—chains of office, perhaps, or religious regalia she didn’t recognize.
At the chamber’s far end, Sylas’s obsidian throne waited on a raised dais. Larger than the one in his private audience room. More ornate, carved with those same swirling patterns that seemed to move when she looked at them too long.
The murmuring started the moment she appeared.
Low at first—whispers that rippled through the galleries like wind through snow-laden branches. Then louder, sharper, as more and more of those alien eyes fixed on the human in their midst. The collar. The chain. The Alpha King leading her forward like a prize.
Like property.
Elsa forced her spine straight. Her chin up. Whatever they expected from her—fear, defiance, the broken submission of something already conquered—she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of meeting those expectations.
She was a navigator. She’d mapped stars that had no names, charted courses through void spaces that would swallow lesser minds. This was just another hostile territory. Another puzzle to solve.
One hour at a time.
Sylas guided her to the dais, his grip on the chain never faltering. The guards at the throne’s base straightened as he approached—Lux Knights in formal regalia, their attention snapping to their king with the precision of weapons being aimed.
And there, positioned near the dais’s edge, stood Xar.
The Lux Knight captain’s green eyes found Elsa immediately. His lips pulled back in something too deliberate to be a smile, too controlled to be a snarl. He looked at her the way a predator looked at a particularly interesting specimen—not as threat, but as opportunity.
Her pulse kicked up.
Danger. That one is dangerous.
Sylas ascended the dais, the chain tugging her along in his wake. He settled onto the throne with casual grace, arranging his limbs across obsidian as if he’d been born there. Which, in a sense, he probably had.
At the throne’s base waited a cushion. Gray silk to match her gown, positioned exactly where a pet would kneel.
“Down.” His voice carried authority that brooked no argument.
Elsa knelt.
The position forced her to crane her neck to see anything beyond the dais’s edge. Forced her to feel the weight of all those watching eyes while having no way to watch them back. Vulnerable. Exposed.
Intentional. All of it.
Sylas’s paw found her hair, claws sliding through the strands in a gesture that could have been affection or possession or both. The chain pooled across his thigh, its length a constant reminder of the distance he’d allow her.
“My people.” His voice rolled through the chamber like thunder. “Tonight, we celebrate. The grid stabilizes. The eastern quadrant holds. The villages that suffered under Fallen incursion will suffer no longer.”
Rumbles of approval from the galleries. Stomping feet—paws?—against stone, a rhythm that vibrated through Elsa’s bones.
“This protection comes at a price.” Sylas’s claws tightened fractionally in her hair. “Paid in part by the very species whose vessel crashed upon our Holy Land. The human navigator who guided us to the Moon Tear core. Who held it in her bare hands while it activated.”