Aurean's ribs ached with every breath. The bruises that bloomed across his side were dark, ugly things, but not unexpected. Survival came with pain. That was the rule of the pit.
The guards dragged him back into the kennels, half-limping, half-dragged. The hounds snarled behind their gates, scenting his blood. He was tossed onto the straw-strewn floor of the slave's washroom. A shallow basin. Cold water. A crust of bread left on the stone.
He didn't touch it.
Not because of pride.
Because he was summoned.
Prince Rythe's private hall was quiet.
Lit by tall braziers and tapestries bearing the wolf sigil, it was a chamber of war and silence. Maps stretched across a long central table. A set of armor glinted in the corner, still dusted with dried blood.
Aurean was escorted in by two guards.
Still shirtless. Still bloodied. Still barefoot.
Rythe stood with his back to him, staring at the fire.
The guards left.
Silence.
Aurean knelt.
Rythe didn't speak immediately. He turned slowly, gaze raking over the damage left from the pit. His arms folded behind his back. His jaw was clenched tight.
"You should be dead," Rythe said finally. "You were meant to be."
Aurean said nothing.
"And yet," Rythe continued, voice colder than the mountain wind, "you stood back up."
He stepped closer. The scent of steel and ash clung to him. His presence was suffocating.
"What stopped you from crawling?"
Aurean lifted his eyes. His voice, when it came, was hoarse. "I wasn't taught how."
A flicker.
Rythe's lips curled into something unreadable. Not amusement. Not anger.
Something tighter. Something coiled.
He circled him slowly. "You bit an Alpha in the pit. Do you understand what that means?"
"Yes, Highness."
"You're mine. You wear my collar. You bear my mark of disgrace. If anyone punishes you now, it will be me."
Aurean remained still.
"I don't tolerate weakness in my ranks," Rythe said. "But I also don't waste weapons that refuse to break."
Another pause.
Then, in a voice like a blade unsheathing:
"Tell me the truth, Veldar. Did your father send you to kill me?"
Aurean stiffened. For a heartbeat, he thought to lie. But what purpose would that serve now?
"Yes."
"Did you believe you'd succeed?"
Aurean met his eyes. "No."
A long pause.
Rythe stepped forward, so close now his shadow fell over Aurean entirely. His voice dropped low.
"Then why come at all?"
Aurean's reply was a whisper: "Because failing him hurt less than continuing to serve him."
That gave Rythe pause.
A breath passed between them. Then another.
Finally, Rythe turned his back. "You will not be thrown into the pit again. Not yet. Heal first."
Aurean blinked.
"And then what, Highness?"
Rythe didn't turn around.
"Then we see what you're truly made of."
He waved his hand.
"Get out."
Rythe stood alone long after Aurean had left the hall.
The fire crackled behind him, but he felt no warmth. Only the weight of a thousand ghosts whispering in the stone.
He hadn't lied.
Aurean should be dead.
Any other assassin would have been executed the moment his blade failed. Rythe had slit the throats of nobles for less. Yet here the boy remained. Chained. Bruised. Collared. Still defiant, in that maddeningly quiet way that made Rythe feel like the one being dissected.
Why hadn't he broken?
Rythe poured himself a cup of wine from the decanter near the table. He didn't drink. He stared into the red swirl like it held answers.
He remembered the bite.
Aurean, bloodied and snarling like a cornered wolf, lashing his teeth into the throat of an Alpha twice his size. Not out of desperation.
Out of refusal.
Rythe knew violence. He could read it like scripture. The Omega hadn't fought to win.
He'd fought to remain his own.
That disturbed him more than it should.
Rythe drained the wine and crushed the cup in his fist.
It wasn't pity. He didn't feel pity.
It was anger.
Anger at the brokenness of the system that had forged a boy into a silent blade. Anger that Halric Veldar had fed his own child to wolves to curry favor with Kael. Anger that he—Rythe Damarion, son of the King, victor of the Northern Siege, the Crowned Wolf—couldn't stop staring into the memory of Aurean's eyes.
Eyes that didn't beg.
Eyes that didn't hate.
Eyes that simply refused to die.
He gripped the edge of the map table, jaw tight.
There was power in Aurean. Not brute strength. Not fire. Something deeper.
And Rythe didn't know yet if it was a weapon he could use…
…or a storm he couldn't contain.