I stared into the fire until the light burned afterimages behind my eyes.
Then I turned back to the desk.
My steps were slow. Quiet.
Measured like ritual.
I opened the bottom drawer again, not for the photograph — but for the key hidden beneath it. Small, iron, worn smooth along the edges. It fit only one door in the entire keep.
A door no one dared enter without me.
The walls of this place remembered things. Screams. Promises. Pain given and taken beneath stone carved before my ancestors could speak.
They called it the Black Cell.
But I had always called it what it truly was:
The Room for Breaking.
I slid the key into my coat pocket.
Sat.
Then reached for the bellpull beside my desk.
A long cord, velvet-wrapped, trailing up to the inner corridors.
I tugged once.
No hesitation.
Just purpose.
A minute passed. Maybe two.
Then the door opened without a knock.
The guard who entered was my oldest: Commander Roen.
His boots left no sound on the floor. His face was carved from cold stone, marked by claw scars across one cheek — three strokes from a rogue bear shifter twenty years ago. He hadn't flinched then. He didn't flinch now.
He bowed his head.
"Alpha."
I looked up slowly.
"She's in her chambers?" I asked.
"Yes, my lord. Sleeping."
Good.
Let her wake in confusion.
Let the fear come before the understanding.
"Wake her," I said. "Dress her in the red collar. Nothing else."
Roen gave a short nod.
"She is to be taken to the black cell. Restrained. The floor bolts this time."
Roen's only movement was a blink.
He understood what that meant.
I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled beneath my chin.
"Bind her wrists above her head. Ankles wide. She is not to speak until spoken to. No food. No water. No interruption."
Another beat of silence.
Then I added, casually:
"Bring a camera."
Roen's jaw tightened — barely.
His voice was rough, but even. "For documentation?"
I met his eyes.
"No. For her father."
Something flickered in Roen's expression — quickly buried beneath obedience.
Then, with a short bow, he turned.
The door clicked shut behind him.
And I was alone again.
But this time, the silence didn't ache.
It pulsed.
Steady.
Certain.
It would not be blood tonight.
It would be humiliation.
It would be image.
It would be Aria Vale, bound and broken and shining with sweat — captured the same way Elira had been.
A perfect mirror.
A perfect answer.
And when Cassian opened the envelope I'd send him, he would see what justice looked like.
———
Aria – First Person POV
I woke to the sound of metal.
It wasn't loud. Not at first.
Just a subtle shift. The scrape of chain against stone. Muffled footsteps. Leather gloves. A breath.
And then—
The blanket ripped off my body.
I sat up with a sharp cry, my nightgown tangling around my thighs, heart hammering as torchlight bled across the floor in uneven lines. Two guards stood in the doorway — tall, masked, unreadable. One held a collar. The other held shackles. Both wore the red-trimmed armor of Kael's private enforcement unit.
Not soldiers.
Executioners.
I blinked against the light, my voice still hoarse from sleep. "What—what are you—?"
"Get up," one of them said.
Flat. Toneless.
My throat tightened. "Where are you taking me?"
The man closest to me didn't answer. He just reached forward, seized my wrist, and yanked me from the bed with a roughness that stole the breath from my lungs.
I hit the floor hard, knees scraping against stone.
"Stop!" I snapped. "I didn't do anything—"
The collar was red.
Dark red.
Too rich to be ceremonial, too polished to be casual.
It gleamed like lacquered blood in the torchlight as the second guard stepped forward and fastened it around my throat with one clean, fluid motion. No hesitation. No announcement. Just a cold click and a sudden constriction that made my next breath catch.
Then came the chains.
Thick, matte steel bound my wrists behind me. The weight of them was obscene — heavy enough to remind me of what I was: not a person. Not a Luna. Just a body to be moved.
My legs buckled as they pulled me toward the door.
I stumbled, barefoot and unbalanced, the stone floor shockingly cold against my soles. My gown clung to my hips, thin and useless, offering no warmth, no dignity.
"Let go of me—!"
One of them jerked my arms upward behind my back. A sharp warning.
I cried out, but it died in the stone hallway as we crossed into the darkened corridors beyond my chambers.
No candles.
No windows.
Only the steady drum of boots and the drag of my breath.
This wasn't the route to the throne room. Not the war court. Not even the dungeons I knew.
They were taking me somewhere else.
Somewhere beneath.
Down two narrow stairwells carved into the heart of the mountain. The temperature dropped with every step. My skin prickled. My lungs tightened.
The air changed.
It tasted like iron and old secrets.
Torch sconces lined the stone walls, but none were lit. Only a faint magical glow radiated from the runes engraved across the archways — a low, red shimmer, like something breathing just beneath the surface of the stone.
I tried to memorize the path. Count the turns. But panic made the world blur at the edges.
"Please," I whispered, throat raw. "Tell me what this is."
No answer.
Just the clink of my chains and the echo of my own footsteps, bare and careful, over slick stone.
And then—
We stopped.
A massive black door stood ahead of us. Taller than any door in the keep. Reinforced with a frame of thick, blackened iron etched in sharp runes that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat.
This wasn't part of the pack's usual infrastructure.
It felt older.
Built by ancestors who believed in pain as penance. In submission as law.
One of the guards stepped forward and pulled a key from his belt. I watched his hand shake as he inserted it into the lock.
The sound it made — click-clunk-hiss — turned my stomach inside out.
The door creaked open.
The air inside was different.
Thicker.
Wet.
Dead quiet.
They pulled me forward.
And I saw it.
The room wasn't large. No wider than the guest bath. But the ceiling arched like a cathedral, its stones blackened with soot and age. Torches flickered on the walls — not magical, real. They hissed and spat and cast long, twisted shadows across the floor.
There were chains everywhere.
Dangling from the ceiling.
Bolted to the floor.
Embedded into the walls in thick iron rings, rubbed shiny where countless wrists and ankles had once struggled. And in the very center — as if placed with religious precision — stood a stone pedestal.
Knee-height.
Wide enough to rest a body on.
Fitted with leather restraints at all four corners.
A single iron loop jutted from the floor before it.
My stomach turned.
"No," I said.
Soft. Weak. My body knew before my mind did.
They were going to use that.
One of the guards yanked me forward.
I struggled.
This time, I fought — not with fire, but with instinct. I twisted, tried to wrench my wrists free, kicked at the stone.
A sharp slap to the back of my leg silenced me.
I dropped forward with a grunt, knees hitting cold stone, wrists forced onto the pedestal.
Thick cuffs snapped around them with brutal finality.
My ankles were forced apart.
Strapped wide.
I couldn't close my legs.
Couldn't move an inch.
Bent. Restrained. Exposed.
Every inch of skin from shoulder blades to thighs bared beneath my thin nightdress. My face burned. My chest heaved.
But I didn't cry.
Wouldn't give them that.
Not again.
One of the guards stepped back.
The other stood for a moment longer, his gloved hand resting just below the collar.
I felt him lean close.
His breath brushed my ear.
"He'll be down shortly," he said.
And then—
They left.
The door shut behind them like the mouth of the world closing.
And I was alone.
Alone in a place that smelled of rust and sweat and fear so old it had soaked into the walls.
My breathing slowed.
My heartbeat didn't.
I couldn't lift my head.
Couldn't shift.
Couldn't scream loud enough to be heard through stone.
There was nothing left now but time.
Waiting.
And the knowledge that whatever came through that door next… would not see me as human.
Not as a wife.
Not as a wolf.
Not even as Aria.
Just flesh.
And a memory worth remaking.