My Alpha Left Me to Die in a Silver Cage, So I Chose the Enemy Who Opened It

Leah's POV

They came for me a little after two.

By then the sun had moved past the roofline, and the light in the courtyard had gone thin and yellow. Two guards unlocked the cage and clipped a silver chain to the ring at the front of my collar. The links were cold enough to sting through Miriam's lining, and every step tugged the band against my throat.

The altar stood at the far end of the punishment yard, a raised slab of gray stone with six steps leading up to it and an iron railing along one side. Half the pack was already there. They'd left a path open down the middle, and I walked it with my eyes on the steps so I wouldn't have to see their faces.

Frost had crusted the stone. On the third step, my knee buckled, and the guard behind me yanked the chain to keep me upright. I swallowed the sound before it got out.

Allison was waiting at the top.

She had a canvas bag at her feet, gray, with a paper tag wired to the drawstring. *Confiscated. L. Marsh.* She bent, loosened the cord, and pulled something out without looking at it, the way you'd grab a dish towel.

It was a scarf. Red once, now faded to the color of old brick, the wool pilled and thin at the ends.

She draped it over the iron railing, right beside me.

"It's freezing up here," she said. "Confess, and you can at least have that. Nobody wants to watch you shake."

The memory hit before I could brace for it. Snow coming in sideways. A boy's hands tucking the end into my collar.

*There. Now you're not allowed to be cold.*

I looked at Darian. I couldn't help it.

He was standing two steps below with his arms folded, and his eyes passed over the scarf without catching on anything. No flicker. No pause. It was just a piece of red wool hanging on a rail.

He didn't remember. And he didn't tell her to put it back.

"I want my personal belongings returned," I said. "All of them. That bag is mine."

"People who've broken pack law don't get to make requests," Darian said.

"I'm not making a request about the law." I nodded at the railing. "That scarf is mine. It isn't payment for a lie."

Allison laughed softly, like I'd said something sweet. "It's a scarf, Leah."

Darian climbed the last two steps.

Then he crouched in front of me, low enough that his eyes were level with mine. He did it easily, the same way that boy had done it by the river, with his back to the wind.

Every part of me that belonged to Leah went still.

My body leaned toward him on its own. One inch, then another, the chain going slack between us. For a second I honestly thought he'd finally heard. That he was down here because he was going to listen.

His hand closed around the chain just below my collar.

Not my hand. The chain.

"Why do you always have to do this?" he asked quietly. "Why does everything have to be a fight with Allison? She's done nothing but try to help you."

The lean drained out of me so fast I almost fell back.

"I'm cold," I said. "That's all this is. The doctor told you what the silver's doing. You signed her paper. Please, take the collar off first."

His gaze dropped to my neck. Miriam's gray lining had torn on the walk over, a ragged split along the left side, and I knew what he was looking at underneath it. I felt it every time I breathed.

He looked for a long moment.

His grip on the chain didn't loosen.

"Say you're guilty," he said. "Say it in front of them, and I'll have it taken off."

"You can punish a confession later." My voice was cracking, and I let it. "You can't bring me back if I die."

Something worked in his jaw. Behind him, someone in the crowd coughed. The wind pushed the end of the red scarf off the rail, and it hung there by one corner.

"Say it, Leah."

I didn't.

I just looked at him and kept my mouth shut, and I watched him understand that this time I wasn't going to fill the silence for him.

He let go of the chain and stood.

"Fine," he said, and turned to face the yard. He didn't need the paper the guards had been practicing with. He raised his voice so it carried to the gate.

"I, Darian Voss, reject you, Leah Marsh, as my mate."

It didn't feel like words.

It felt like something hooked deep under my ribs and pulled straight out through my chest. The bond I hadn't even known was there until that moment, a warm, steady thread I'd been leaning on since I woke in the snow, tore loose in one long, ugly rip.

*Lyra...*

Her voice came back, but it was underwater. Bubbles and distance and nothing I could hold.

My legs went out. I slid down onto the stone step, my hip cracking against the edge, and caught myself on one wrist. When I pulled my hand back toward my chest, there was blood on my cuff. From my neck, I realized. The silver had shifted when I fell.

Above me, Darian made a short, sharp sound.

I looked up. His hand was pressed flat against his own chest, fingers spread, and for half a second his face was white.

Then he lowered his hand.

"Accept it," he said. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking somewhere over my head. "Right now. I'm done having you use that bond to hang on to me."

The crowd waited. Allison stood very still beside the railing.

I opened my mouth. The words were right there, the old words every wolf learns as a pup, *I, Leah, accept.*

"I..." It came out as air. My chest wouldn't fill. I tried again and got one more syllable before my throat closed around it.

I braced both hands on the step and breathed. In, out. Frost melted under my palms.

Some part of me was still waiting. I could feel it, even now. Waiting for him to come down one step and lift me up, the way he'd lifted the scarf around my neck when I was eight.

He didn't move.

So I stopped waiting.

I turned my head toward the nearest guard. Mason, again, standing at the bottom with the end of the chain looped around his fist.

"The lining," I said. "The doctor's lining. It tore. Can you put it back where it was?"

Mason glanced up at Darian.

"Please," I said. "It's not a pardon. It's cloth."

Darian said nothing. Mason climbed two steps, crouched, and tugged the gray strip back into place under the silver. His fingers were clumsy, and the lining was dark and stiff with blood on one side, but it covered the worst of it. The burn dropped from a scream to a roar.

"Thank you," I said.

He didn't answer. He went back down.

Allison picked the red scarf off the railing, folded it once, and pushed it into the canvas bag. She pulled the drawstring tight and pressed the wax seal over the knot with her thumb.

"Banishment at sunset," Darian announced to the yard. "The eastern gate. Everyone will be present."

Then he finally looked at me.

I lifted my head and held his eyes, and I thought about her. The girl by the river with snow in her hair. The one somebody had been kind to exactly once, and who had spent sixteen years waiting for him to do it again. She'd mailed boxes of gauze to strangers. She'd marched into a steward's office for the kitchen staff. Nobody had written any of that down.

I wasn't angry with her. I was just done letting her wait out here.

"I won't confess," I said. "And I won't ask you to love me again."

Something crossed his face, too fast to name.

Past his shoulder, the sun had touched the top of the eastern wall. It sat there, swollen and orange, sinking a little lower every time I breathed.

I put one hand on the step and started trying to stand.