The Villainess's Wolf Begged Me Not to Save Her Alpha

Isabella's POV

The ritual room had been a sewing room once. I could still see the pale squares on the wallpaper where the shelves used to hang.

Now there was a long table draped in white, a changing screen in the corner, and a narrow door at the back that led down three steps into the kitchen. Ruth's kitchen. I could smell the yeast from here.

The device sat at the far end under a sheet, and I didn't look at it.

At four-thirty, an infirmary attendant handed me a cup of something thick and gray. "Ritual draught," she said. "Standard."

I drank it, because two guards were watching and Noah was walking in.

He'd changed his shirt. The bandage on his forearm was fresh, and he carried a single sheet of paper, which he laid in front of me beside a fountain pen. The pen sat next to a pair of silver restraints, as if they belonged to the same set.

"Read it if you want," he said. "It's short."

I read it.

*I, Isabella Vale, confess that I encouraged the attentions of the guard Owen Marsh. I accept the extraction of my wolf freely and of my own will, as restitution to Miss Evelyn Hart for the distress I have caused her.*

Below that was a signature line and today's date, already filled in.

"Sign it," Noah said, "and Evelyn doesn't have to keep defending herself to the whole pack. This ends tonight. Quietly."

"You wrote that I volunteered."

"It's cleaner that way."

I took Mae's folded warning out of my pocket and smoothed it flat on the table, right next to the confession. "Then attach this. If I'm signing something about my own body, the healer's warning goes in the file with it."

He picked it up and read it, and his mouth tightened at *she could die on the table.*

Then he folded it in half and slid it into his breast pocket.

"That's mine," I said.

"It's a medical note about my wife. It belongs with me."

"Then make me a copy."

"No."

He didn't explain, and he didn't have to. If that paper sat in the file, anyone who opened it later would see that he'd been told. He wasn't afraid of the confession being false. He was afraid of his own name sitting next to the risk.

"If this is mercy," I said, "why do you need me to call it my choice?"

---

The room went quiet. One of the guards shifted his weight.

I set the pen down on the table, away from the paper.

"I'm not signing."

Noah looked at the pen for a long moment, then at the guard by the door. "Bring the heavier cuff."

"Noah..." The attendant started to say something and thought better of it.

The guard came back with a band of silver as wide as my palm. He unlocked my old chain and locked the new cuff on before the skin had a chance to cool. The weight dragged my arm down onto the table.

The burn wasn't the worst part.

*Isabella.* Ceci sounded like she was calling from the far end of a long hallway. *Isabella, it's so... I'm so far...*

"I'm here," I said under my breath. "Stay with me."

Noah heard. His face did something I'd never seen it do in the book, a tiny flicker of disgust, like I'd confirmed something.

"That's the problem," he said. "That wolf has spoiled you since you were a child. She agrees with everything you feel. Once she's gone, you'll finally be able to think like an adult."

I stood up. The cuff scraped across the wood.

"She held me together the night my mother died. She ran with me every full moon. She stayed when you moved me into the servants' wing, and she still made excuses for you." My voice cracked, and I let it. "She is the only one who has stayed with me. You don't get to call her the problem."

A small sound came from the doorway.

Evelyn stood there in a white robe, one hand pressed to the crescent necklace, eyes huge and wet. "I'm sorry. I heard shouting, and I just..."

Noah turned away from me without a word and crossed the room to her.

"Hey. It's okay." He put his hands on her shoulders and lowered his voice. "Nobody's angry with you. Go sit down. It's almost over."

He walked her out with his hand on her back.

I watched his shoulders disappear through the door, and I waited to feel the old pull, the need for him to turn around and see me.

It didn't come. I sat back down and didn't ask him for anything else.

---

Procedure said the subject changed into white before extraction, attended by a woman of the household. Noah had signed off on Ruth that morning without reading the line twice.

She came in with the dress folded over her arm. The guards stepped out to wait beyond the changing alcove, and the attendant went with them.

Ruth hung the dress over the screen and didn't hand it to me.

"Stay right here," she whispered, and reached into my pocket.

She drew out the little silver key I had been carrying since the kitchen and pressed it into my good hand, still dusted white.

My fingers were shaking so hard I nearly dropped it. I tried to fit it to the new cuff anyway, and the tip skidded off the lock twice. The draught had turned my hands to rubber.

"Later," Ruth breathed. "Keep hold of it."

Somewhere in the house, a bell rang five times.

Ruth didn't hesitate. She pulled the dress back so it hung neatly behind the screen, the way it would if I were standing behind it, and opened a narrow side door I'd taken for a cupboard. The inventory door. It was how she brought the linens in to count.

The corridor beyond was dark and cold. We went through it, then out past the laundry where the steam smelled like soap, and then the delivery gate was open and the night air hit my face.

Across the east yard, under a single floodlight, a white medical truck sat with its back doors open. Light spilled out of it onto the gravel.

Forty yards. Maybe fifty.

My legs folded.

I caught myself against the stone wall, the cuff clanking on the rock. The world tilted sideways. The draught and the silver were working together now, pulling me down from both ends.

"Ceci," I said. "Ceci?"

Nothing. Just a faint warmth under my ribs, like an ember someone had forgotten to put out.

Ruth grabbed my elbow. Behind us, back toward the kitchen, I heard boots on stone. The morning guard, early for once in his life.

"The door is open," Ruth said. "We have to move."

---

I could have ordered her. *Get up. Be strong. Run.* It was what everyone had always told this body to do.

I closed my eyes instead and turned inward, toward the ember.

"Ceci. I need to ask you something, and I want the real answer." I swallowed. "Do you still want to see him? Is there anything you need to say to him before we go? Because if there is, I won't drag you away from it."

Silence.

The boots came closer. Ruth's grip on my arm tightened until it hurt.

Still silence. It stretched so long that the cold crept up from the stones into my knees, and I started to understand that maybe the cuff had already taken her. Maybe I'd waited one minute too long, and the warmth under my ribs was just my own body, alone.

Then she spoke.

Her voice was thin, barely there, but every word was whole.

*I think I loved the little boy who gave me candy.*

A pause, and I felt her gather herself.

*But I don't know this man anymore.*

The wrapper was folded in my shirt pocket, pressed flat against my chest where my heart was pounding. The key sat cold in my fist.

For the first time since I'd opened my eyes on that stone floor, there was no tug in two directions. She wasn't pulling back toward the house, and I wasn't dragging her away from it.

We both wanted the open door.

I closed my hand around the key and pushed off the wall.

Behind us, the kitchen door banged open.