Roman leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You've done well, my love. Finally, you've given me exactly what I wanted."
He left the room, whistling.
The mansion was too quiet. Every morning, Martha brought a tray of raw meat and iron-rich juice.
"Roman says you need fuel," Martha said. She didn't look at Ella's stomach. Or the way the veins in her neck were turning black.
Ella spent hours at the windows.
Gate 1: Two guards. Pulse rifles.
Gate 2: Sensors.
Every night at 2:00 AM, the lights flickered for a second. The backup generator kicking in.
She practiced with the hairpins. Her fingers were stiff. Cold.
The 'seed' wasn't a baby. It was a drain.
It didn't kick. It pulled.
She felt it deep in her marrow. A constant suction.
The tattoo was no longer a mark. It was an organ.
It pulsed under her skin. Thickening.
She woke up with frost on her breath. In a heated room.
Roman visited once a week. He didn't sleep. He sat in the chair and watched her.
"You're getting pale," he said. He sounded pleased.
"It's eating me," Ella said.
"It's perfecting you," Roman corrected. He touched her cheek. His hand was a block of dry ice.
"You don't need a wolf. You're becoming the cage."
The tattoo moved. It was a live coal.
Up her neck. Down toward the womb.
*Cost.*
Is the baby the price?
The estate was a fortress, but every fortress had a flaw. Roman's flaw was his arrogance. He believed he had broken Ella so thoroughly that she wouldn't dare to snoop.
He was almost right.
But the black vine on her chest was itching, a constant, burning reminder that something was wrong. And with Roman gone for a two-day border inspection, the silence of the house was no longer comforting—it was an invitation.
Ella waited until Martha was busy in the kitchen, the clatter of pots covering her footsteps. She moved through the hallway like a ghost.
The study door was locked, of course.
Ella stood before it, her hand hovering over the handle. She remembered a trick Leo had shown her years ago with a hairpin. It seemed silly then. Now, it was her only hope.
She pulled the pin from her messy bun. Her hands shook as she inserted it into the keyhole.
*Click.*
The sound was thunderous in the quiet house. Ella held her breath, waiting for alarms, for guards. Nothing.
She slipped inside and closed the door.
The study smelled of Roman.
Old sweat and heavy cologne.
She pushed the shelf. It moved.
A hidden room.
Ella stepped in. The light was yellow. Stark.
The air was cold.
Photos.
Hundreds.
Ella walking. Ella eating. Ella in the locker room.
He'd been studying her.
In the center. A large print. Her laughing.
Black ink across her chest:
**VESSEL.**
Her ribs felt too tight.
She turned to flee, but her foot kicked something on the floor. A metal box.
She shouldn't touch it. She should run.
But the box seemed to hum. A low, vibrating frequency that resonated with the tattoo on her chest.
She knelt down and opened it.