Page 17 of The Iron Alpha

The Tower reveals itself in layers: the functional fortress on the surface, the political structure underneath, the tensions that run through the pack like fissures in stone. Some wolves defer to Thane without question. Others don't. Some watch Aldric when he crosses the courtyard. Others look away from him, which tells me more than the watching does.

I pass two wolves in a narrow hall near the armory, speaking low enough that they don't expect a human to hear. One mentions the alpha skipping the morning inspection. The other replies with a silence that carries its own weight. Ryland, it seems, has never missed a morning inspection. Until today.

By evening, I've mapped every passage I'm allowed to access, noted which locks are iron and which are timber, counted the ravens in the yard, and learned the names of three taken women besides Margery.

I've also learned that the Tower's water system is failing. A cistern in the inner ward is leaking at the base, slow but steady, and the wolves have been working around it for weeks instead of fixing it. Wolves don't manage infrastructure. They manage territory.

I can fix that cistern. The question is whether I should.

Thane finds me in the inner ward as the light fades. "The evening meal," he says. It isn't an invitation. It's a summons.

The great hall fills at dusk. Wolves at long tables, food carried from the kitchens, the low rumble of conversation that dies and rebuilds as the pack settles into its evening routines. Thane directs me to a seat at the head table. Beside Ryland.

He's already there. I suspect someone told him I'd been walking the Tower all day. He doesn't acknowledge me when Isit. He's speaking to a wolf at his left, reviewing something, his voice low and steady.

I take my seat. Spine straight. Face composed. I don't react when my backside meets the wooden bench and the bruises he left scream against the hard surface.

The food is better than Dover's. Roasted meat, bread still warm, vegetables that have been grown in actual soil and not coaxed from Dover's walled gardens under gray skies. I eat because I need to eat, and I don't taste any of it.

Ryland's hand lands on the back of my neck. Not a grip. Not a command. Just his palm, warm and heavy, settling against my skin with the casual possessiveness of a man touching something he owns. His fingers curl against the side of my throat, and my pulse jumps against his hand before I can control it. He feels it. I know he feels it because his thumb moves once, a slow press against the tendon below my ear, and the touch is so precise it might be a reminder. Or a promise.

The hall is watching. Every wolf at every table registers where the alpha's hand is and what it means. Public performance of possession, delivered without a word, and my body is doing things beneath his palm that my mind hasn't authorized.

The heat climbs from where his fingers rest, spreads down through my collarbone, settles low in my belly. I hate him for it. I hate my body more.

He removes his hand. Returns to his conversation. The absence of his touch is louder than the contact was.

I eat the rest of my meal in silence. I think about the cistern. About Margery. About the guard rotation at the main gate. About the fact that I'm sitting beside the man who told me in that bed that he's going to turn me into what he is, and my neck is still burning where his hand was.

Ryland finishes his meal and stands. He looks down at me. "Come."

One word. The same word he'd use for a hound. I stand because the alternative is being collected, and being collected in front of his wolves is worse than walking beside him.

We cross the hall and climb the stairs. The corridor narrows around us. The chamber door is ahead, and behind it is the bed where I woke up this morning with his body against mine and his promises still settling into my skin.

He opens the door. Waits for me to enter first.

I walk in. The wreckage has been cleared. The room is clean, the fire rebuilt, fresh furs on the bed. Someone has been in here during the day. Someone has seen the broken cup, the bent iron, the cracked chest lid, and drawn their own conclusions about what happened in this room.

By tomorrow, every taken woman in the Tower will know what Godwin's daughter did to the alpha's chambers. Whether that makes me dangerous or pitiful will depend on who's telling the story.

The door closes behind me. His footsteps cross the stone. His hands are already at the lacing of his shirt.

"You left my bed this morning." His voice is conversational. He doesn't look at me. He pulls the lacing loose with one hand. "I told you the first thing you feel when you open your eyes is me. You were gone before dawn."

He lets that settle. Then: "Thane tells me you mapped every corridor you're permitted to walk. Counted my guards. Memorized the gate rotation." He pulls his shirt over his head. "Anything else I should know?"

The question is a trap. If I tell him about the cistern, I reveal capability. If I stay silent, he knows I'm hiding something. I give him the answer that costs me the least. "Your water system is failing."

Something crosses his face. Not surprise. Something closer to recognition, as if he's confirming a suspicion he's had sinceDover. He doesn't respond. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls off his boots.

I stand in the center of his chamber, firelight behind me, and I wait. I don't scramble. I don't reach for a braid that no longer exists. I look at Ryland, who took my virginity and told me he'd take the rest, and I let the silence hold everything neither of us is ready to say.

He took my body last night. He can take it again tonight. But while he was running his pack today, I was mapping it, and the map is growing, and every corridor I walked and every wolf I watched and every word Margery gave me is a stone I'm laying in a foundation he doesn't know I'm building.

With his shirt off, the low light catches the scar across his collarbone, the hard planes of his stomach, the line of muscle that disappears below his waistband. His hands go to his laces. He isn't rushing. He's watching me watch him, and the faintest edge of something crosses his face that might be satisfaction.

I should look away. My body has other plans. The heat is already building, low and traitorous, and the soreness between my thighs is no longer just pain. It's memory. His weight. His hands. The sound I made when he pushed inside me that I'll deny until I'm dead.