They Stole Her for a Breeding Den, She Chose the Alpha Who Let Her Leave novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Every Door

Mara counts the exits, bites Ronan's hand, and breaks a window latch, and Darius finds it and does not report her.

They left me alone with the door locked and a tray of food I did not touch.

Nico brought it.

He set it on the table by the fireplace and kept his eyes on the floor.

"You should eat," he said. "It's just soup."

"Is it drugged?"

He looked up, honestly shocked.

"No. Why would we drug it?"

"You drugged me in the lot."

"That was Eli." His ears went red. "That was different."

He backed out and locked the door behind him, and I heard his boots go three steps down the hall and stop.

He was posted there to keep me in.

I sat on the bed and made a list.

The window had four iron bars on the outside, set in the stone with a lip of grey mortar around each.

The fireplace was too narrow.

The door was oak, and the hinges were on the outside.

The soup came with a spoon.

I picked up the spoon and tested the handle against my thumbnail, and it bent a little.

It was cheap steel, and it was the only thing in the room that I could use.

I knelt at the window and began on the mortar around the left bar.

It was slow, and every scrape sounded like a shout.

I stopped each time the boots in the hall shifted, and I started again when they settled.

By the time the light went flat and grey over the water, I had a groove the width of my finger.

The key turned in the lock.

I threw the spoon under the bed, and I was back on the mattress with my hands in my lap before the door had finished opening.

Ronan came in alone.

He leaned in the doorway and looked me up and down, slowly.

"Still not eating," he said. "Silas won't like that. He wants you in good shape."

"Get out."

"This is my house too." He came two steps closer. "You know what I like about you? You don't look like trouble."

"I haven't done anything yet."

He laughed, a good big laugh, and the beard shook with it.

"Nine days," Ronan said. "Silas says he decides who stands first at the Claiming. But my cousin Darius is the oldest, and he thinks that's his right. We've got a bet on, the five of us."

"A bet on what?"

"On you." He grinned. "On who gets you to sit up and say please."

Heat went through me, and white hair pushed up along my wrists.

Ronan saw it.

He stopped smiling.

It was only for a moment, and then he shrugged it off and put out a hand to take my chin.

I did not think.

I turned my head and bit down on the fat of his thumb, and when he jerked back I kept hold of a mouthful of skin.

He cursed and hit me across the face with the back of his other hand.

My head rang against the stone wall.

"Little bitch," Ronan said, shaking his hand. "Next time I'll do more than slap you."

"Ronan."

The word came from the doorway, flat and quiet.

Darius stood there in the long coat, with the hall light behind him.

I do not know how long he had been there.

Ronan straightened up and wiped his thumb on his trousers.

"She bit me."

"I saw." Darius did not look at him. "Go and see to your hand."

"She needs to learn."

"Go."

It was said without any heat at all, and Ronan went.

He took his time doing it, and he stopped at the door to give me one last look.

Then Darius and I were alone, and he shut the door behind him without locking it.

I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek.

It was already hot and swelling.

He crossed the room in four strides, and I braced for him.

He went past me to the window.

He crouched in front of the left bar and ran one thumb along the new groove in the mortar.

I held my breath.

He stayed there for what felt like a very long time.

Then he stood and brushed the white dust from his thumb.

"The mortar's soft on that side," he said, without turning around. "The salt gets into it. It's the same all down the wall."

I did not say anything.

"It would take you three weeks with a spoon." He turned and looked at me, and his face gave me nothing. "Silas checks the room at the end of the week."

He went to the door.

"Eat," he said. "I'll send up a better spoon."

When the door closed, I sat very still and listened to his boots go down the hall.

They did not stop at the guard's post.

They kept going until I couldn't hear them.

An hour later Nico brought up a tray with a clean bowl, a roll of bandage, and a heavy steel spoon.

The handle was twice as thick as the old one.

I held it in my fist, and I could not tell if it was a gift or a trap.

Then I saw that Darius had not reported the groove.

Silas would have come for me by now if he had.

I ate the soup, every spoonful, and I went back to the window.

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