Chapter 3

My hand had only just reached out.

I had not even touched the velvet box.

Yet Violet suddenly let out a sharp cry and collapsed backward as if every bone in her body had melted at once. One second she was clutching the necklace with theatrical indignation, and the next she was folded into Lucian's arms, one delicate hand pressed dramatically to her chest, her face draining to an alarming shade of white.

"Lucian..." she gasped, her breathing ragged and thin. "My body hurts so much. Am I... am I going to faint?"

Lucian's expression changed instantly.

His arm tightened around Violet at once. Then he flung out his free hand toward me with brutal force. There was no warning, no pause, no effort to gauge what had actually happened. Alpha power struck like a physical blow, hard and merciless, fueled by outrage he had not even bothered to question.

"Seraphina, have you lost your mind?" he snapped. "She's only human. How can you be so rough with her?"

I barely had time to brace.

The force sent me flying backward.

My body slammed hard into the corridor's cold marble wall with a sickening thud. For one blinding second, all the air left my lungs. The sharp edge of a decorative molding caught the corner of my forehead, and pain burst behind my eyes in a spray of white light.

Then came warmth.

A thin stream of blood slid down past my brow, traced the side of my face, and blurred half my vision crimson.

I sucked in a breath, but the world tilted anyway. My shoulder throbbed where it had struck stone. The back of my ribs felt as though they had been driven through with iron. Pressing a hand to my forehead, I felt more blood slick against my fingertips, hot and sticky and humiliatingly real.

Darkness washed in and out at the edges of my sight.

For a moment, all I could hear was the pounding of my own heartbeat.

"Serra, are you alright? It's all my fault... my body is just too weak..."

Violet's voice floated over me in a trembling little thread, soft enough to fool anyone who did not know her.

But she did not move.

Not once.

She stayed curled in Lucian's arms like a fragile treasure, one hand fisted in his jacket as if she alone had suffered. And from the angle his eyes could not catch, the corner of her lips lifted the slightest fraction.

Lucian did not even turn around. All of his attention was on the "fragile" human woman in his arms. He patted her back gently, his movements slow and careful, and murmured something low meant to soothe her.

From beginning to end, he never looked at me.

Holding Violet in his arms, Lucian strode toward the exit without hesitation. He walked past me as though I were something unpleasant left behind after a quarrel, some mess to be cleaned up by servants after more important people had gone.

But as he passed, his steps paused for the briefest instant.

"Seraphina," he said, and his voice was colder than the marble against my back, "this little performance of yours is disgusting."

My fingers curled against the floor.

He bent slightly, enough that his shadow fell over me again. His burning breath brushed my ear, and when he spoke next, his voice dropped low enough that only I could hear.

"You want your father's keepsake back?"

My heart lurched despite myself.

"Come to my company tomorrow," he murmured. "Get on your knees and beg for it."

Then he straightened. He carried Violet away and disappeared into the darkness at the end of the corridor, leaving the faint echo of his footsteps behind like the final notes of a sentence already passed.

The hallway fell silent.

Drops of blood fell from my chin onto the polished floor one by one, bright against the pale marble, blooming into tiny flowers so vivid they looked almost obscene. I raised a hand to wipe my face, only to smear the blood further across my skin.

A short laugh escaped me.

It sounded wrong in the silence.

Hoarse. Bitter. Thin enough to cut.

So this was the fated mate I had loved for ten years.

This was the man whose name I had carried like a vow inside my chest. The Alpha I had once treated as the center of my world, the one I had followed through every storm without asking what it would cost me. The one I had believed would someday turn around, see me clearly, and realize that the woman at his side had never once betrayed him.

How ridiculous I had been.