Chapter 9: Behind the Facade

<Dominic>

The Blackthorne Manor had always been the home of the Alpha and his family, but it was never home to me. My home was the second property I had had built for me and my beloved  a few years back.

It was roughly half an hour's ride from the Manor, tucked far enough into the western trees that the pack rarely had reason to come this way, which to be fair, was exactly the point of it.

I let myself in without knocking, and found Alice curled into the corner of the chaise near the fire with a book open on her lap that I doubted she was actually reading. She looked up the second the door clicked shut, and her whole face softened almost immediately.

"You're late," she said, though there was no real accusation in it. She set the book aside and rose to meet me halfway across the room, her hands finding the collar of my jacket before I'd even fully crossed the threshold. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten where I lived."

"I could never." I let her draw me down for a kiss, and for a moment, everything else in my head went quiet.

She smelled warm, with a hint of something floral that clung to the back of my throat pleasantly — and her fingers worked the top button of my shirt loose, her lips meeting mine in a soft kiss.

"Long day?" she asked against my mouth.

"You have no idea." I groaned.

She pulled back just enough to look at me properly, and whatever she saw on my face made the teasing drop out of her voice entirely. "Dominic. What happened?"

I hadn't meant to let it show. I'd spent the entire ride here conditioning myself to be my usual, stoic self, but apparently she saw right through it.

"It's Tomas," I said, moving past her toward the fire. "He was ambushed near the eastern border. A shifter."

Her breath caught in her throat, "A shifter, this close to the territory?"

"Close enough." I dropped into the chair across from the hearth and let my head fall back against it, eyes on the ceiling.

Alice was quiet for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice had gone soft. She crossed the room and knelt in front of my chair, her hands settling over my knees.

"I'm so sorry," she murmured. "I know how much he means to you. To all of you."

"He's not dead."

Her brows scrunched in confusion, "But you said—"

"He's not dead, Alice." I lifted my head and looked at her properly. "Cassandra managed to keep him alive long enough for Selene to get there. He's lucky to be alive."

Something in her face shifted. It was small, so small I might have missed it if I hadn't spent two years with this woman, but I caught the exact moment her jaw tightened beneath the softness.

"So Cassandra saved him," she repeated slowly.

"You could say that. But I don't understand it." I rubbed a hand down my face, letting out a strained sigh. "She had no reason to leave her room. And yet there she was, on her knees on that floor, telling my guards where to put their hands like she'd done it a hundred times before."

"Well." Alice's voice had cooled by exactly one degree, though her hands stayed where they were, still stroking absent circles against my knees. "I imagine she had every reason."

I looked down at her. "What do you mean?"

"A girl in her position doesn't exactly get many chances to make herself useful, does she?" She tilted her head, still stroking my knees. "She saves your best warrior, in front of the whole household, and in front of you. What do you think that buys her, Dominic? Goodwill. Standing. A reason for you to start thinking of her the way you're thinking right now."

'That's not what this is,' I thought, though I didn't say it out loud, mostly because I wasn't entirely certain I believed it myself.

​"She's clever," Alice went on, rising fluidly from the floor and settling herself into my lap instead. Her arms looped loosely around my neck, her fingers tangling in the hair at my nape. "I'll give her that much. But clever isn't kind, my love."

​Her mouth found the sharp edge of my jaw, her lips warm and parting slightly as they dragged against my skin. "Don't waste your energy trying to understand that girl. Waste it on me instead."

​The suggestion sent a sudden, fierce jolt straight to my core. The proximity of her body, the intoxicating scent of her skin, awoke a sudden, ravenous hunger that burned through my exhaustion. The part of me that had spent fifteen years clawing a kingdom back out of the dirt didn't want peace; it wanted her. I wanted to lose myself in something that wasn't blood and politics.

​When her lips finally met mine, any thoughts of arguing vanished. I pulled her flush against me, my hands gripping her waist, anchoring her down as the kiss deepened. She gasped into my mouth, a sound that ended up only feeding the fire.

​I did exactly what she asked. I let Cassandra fade into the shadows of my mind, surrendering entirely to the heat of the room and the feeling of her hands on my skin. For the rest of that night, Alice made absolutely certain I had no attention left over for anything else, pulling me under a tide of breathless pleasure until the rest of the world ceased to exist.

But afterward, lying awake with her asleep against my chest, I found the thought crawling back in anyway, quiet and stubborn.

Her trying to curry favor didn't explain why she hadn't looked at me once the entire time her hands were covered in Tomas's blood, almost like my presence in the room had been the least interesting thing happening in it.

I didn't sleep much after that.

I left before the sun had fully cleared the tree line, telling Alice I had border patrols to inspect. It wasn't entirely a lie. I simply didn't mention that the patrols would have to wait.

The Manor was quiet when I arrived, and I found my way to the kitchens on instinct more than intention.

Cassandra was already there.

She sat on the counter's edge with her bare feet swinging slightly above the floor, a bowl of berries balanced between herself and the maid — Delphine, I recalled — the two of them mid-laugh over something I hadn't caught the beginning of. Delphine sensed me first. I watched the laughter die out of her face in real time, then watched her slide off her stool and duck her head like she expected to be struck.

Cassandra frowned at her, confused, until she turned and found me in the doorway.

She was on her feet instantly, smoothing her robe down like she meant to curtsy, and possibly disappear into whatever role she assumed I'd come to enforce.

"Enough of that." I raised a hand before she could get the words out. "You're the Luna of this pack. Not the help."

I turned to the corridor and called for the head-maid, who appeared with the kind of speed that told me she'd been listening from somewhere nearby the entire time.

"I'll be taking breakfast in the grand dining hall," I told her. "With my wife. Inform the kitchen. And see that the Luna is made presentable before you bring her down."

Cassandra's eyes caught fire at the word ‘presentable’, though she said nothing, and I found myself almost disappointed that she hadn't.

I made my way to the dining hall and had a maid bring up a decent bottle of wine from the cellar, sipping it slowly while I waited. When the doors finally opened again and the head-maid announced her, I nearly choked on the mouthful I'd taken.

She was — there was no other word for it — hauntingly beautiful. The pale light of the morning made her look as ethereal as she did on the eve of our wedding, and it took me a full three seconds longer than it should have to remember how to swallow.

​She was dressed in a morning gown of the finest white cambric, so sheer and lightweight that it seemed to float around her like mist. The high waistline was bound just beneath her breasts by a delicate ribbon of pale silver silk.

 The gown’s neckline was cut modestly but low enough to expose the elegant curve of her collarbone, where the skin looked as smooth as polished marble.

​Over her shoulders, she had loosely draped a matching wrapping gown of quilted silk, its edges embroidered with tiny, silver-threaded vines. It trailed slightly behind her as she moved, catching the weak morning sun and making her appear less like a creature of flesh and blood, and more like a being conjured by the light itself.

She sat across from me without a word, and the maids descended with plates of fruit and fresh bread. I told myself I would simply eat in peace. Sadly, I lasted only four minutes.

"Did you sleep well?" I asked.

"Fine, thank you." She didn't look up from her plate.

"The berries this morning. Delphine's doing, I assume."

"Yes."

I tried twice more, on the weather, on the state of the eastern gardens that I knew for a fact she visited almost everyday, and got exactly the same clipped, closed-door answers each time, delivered without a single glance in my direction, and something about it pricked at me in a way I didn't entirely understand and liked even less.

By the time the plates were cleared, I'd made up my mind about something entirely reckless.

I stood, rounded the table before she could rise properly from her seat, and closed my hand around her wrist. "You're coming with me."

She blinked up at me, startled, already opening her mouth to ask exactly where, but I didn't give her the chance. I was already pulling her toward the door, out into the cold morning air.