3.

The Interrogation

Ronnie’s POV

The morning light crept through velvet curtains, golden against the silver gown I had crumpled in during the night. My eyes ached from the hours of staring at the ceiling, replaying his words over and over until they bruised my thoughts. Temporary queen. Prisoner. Shadow.

When the door opened, I expected another maid. Instead, it was him.

Alpha Damon stepped into the chamber with the same suffocating presence as before, his mask gleaming in the pale light. My heart stuttered, but I forced myself upright.

“Sit,” he ordered, motioning to the chair before the hearth. His voice was low, threaded with power that brooked no disobedience.

My legs wobbled as I obeyed, perched stiffly on the edge. He took the seat across from me, every movement precise, controlled. His mismatched eyes burned, and suddenly the room felt too small to contain him.

“You are Ronnie Hart,” he began, though it sounded less like a question and more like an accusation.

“Yes,” I murmured.

His gaze sharpened. “Omega-born. No notable bloodline. Daughter of a failed merchant and a witch woman.”

The word witch stung. I lowered my eyes, hands clasping tight in my lap. “My parents are dead.”

“Yet you survived,” he said, the words clipped, as though my existence was something suspicious. “Raised by your stepmother.”

“Yes.”

He leaned forward slightly. “Do you know why you were chosen?”

My head snapped up. His eyes pinned me in place. The mask did nothing to soften the harshness of his features.

“No,” I said truthfully.

A long silence followed, heavy and deliberate. He was studying me, I realized, like I was a puzzle he wasn’t certain was worth solving.

I found my voice, small but trembling with defiance. “Why me? You could have chosen anyone, any noblewoman, anyone better. I am no queen.”

Something flickered in his eyes, but his tone was ice. “You are not here to question me.”

My throat tightened. Still, anger clawed its way up. “I won’t be mocked into silence just because you wear a crown. I never wanted this. I never,”

“Enough.”

The single word cracked through the room like thunder. My lips froze, my chest seizing as if invisible hands had gripped it. His command wasn’t just sound, it was dominance, raw and absolute.

I gasped softly, realizing too late I had crossed a line. His gaze lingered on me, hard and unyielding.

“You will speak when spoken to,” he said, each word deliberate. “You will answer what I ask. Nothing more.”

Humiliation burned my skin. My fists curled in my lap, nails biting into flesh. I wanted to argue, to spit defiance in his face. But the weight of his presence pressed me down, locking the words in my throat.

He leaned back, satisfied. “Good. Learn your place quickly, and this will be easier for you.”

My chest rose and fell, ragged and furious.

Easier. As though being trapped in silks and shadows, living at the mercy of a masked Alpha, could ever be easy.

When he stood, his cloak shifting like dark wings, I wanted to scream after him. But all I could do was sit, trembling, while his footsteps echoed out of the chamber and left me drowning in silence again.

For the first time since I had been dragged here, I understood just how powerless I was.

The door shut behind him with a final, echoing thud. His absence should have lifted the suffocating weight from the room, but instead it lingered like smoke in my lungs.

I sat frozen long after his footsteps faded, my hands still balled into fists in my lap. My cheek throbbed where my nails had broken the skin, but I welcomed the sting. It grounded me in a way his voice had not.

He had silenced me with a single word. Just one. And I had obeyed as though shackled.

I hated him for that power. I hated myself more for yielding to it.

When I finally stumbled back to the bed, my legs ached with tension. I lay stiffly on the silken sheets, staring at the canopy overhead. The carved moons gleamed faintly in the candlelight, mocking me with their cold perfection.

Why me?

The question spun circles in my mind, over and over, until it scraped raw. Damon had said nothing, no reason, no explanation. Just that I was to serve as his queen until he found his mate. A stand-in. A shadow.

I thought of Clarissa, of her golden hair and perfect smile. Of how McKenzie adored her, and how easily the nobles would have accepted her at Damon’s side. Clarissa would have been radiant in these halls, her laughter echoing down marble corridors.

So why had he taken me instead? An omega maid, plain and unwanted, with dirt still clinging to her soul?

Perhaps it was a punishment. Perhaps the Goddess herself had decided my suffering at McKenzie’s hands had not been enough. That the bruises, the hunger, the whispered taunts were too small a price, and so she had placed me here, draped in silver but chained tighter than ever.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes until stars burst behind them. Sleep would not come. Every time I shut my eyes, I saw his mask, the glint of his mismatched eyes, the crushing weight of his presence.

I imagined him finding his true mate, bringing her into these very chambers. I would be cast aside like soiled linen, my name erased from history.

Maybe that was better.

But another thought gnawed at me, colder still: what if I did not survive until then?

The whispers I had overheard from the maids returned to me now, sharp as knives. Omega filth. She won’t last long. The Alpha will devour her.

My chest tightened.

What if they were right?

What if McKenzie had sent me here not to elevate me, but to be rid of me at last?

The fire in the hearth crackled low, shadows stretching long fingers across the chamber walls. I pulled the covers to my chin, shivering despite the heat.

Back home, misery had been familiar, like a chain I had grown used to carrying. But here, in this palace of wolves and shadows, my misery felt different. Heavier. Hungrier.

At least in McKenzie’s house, I had known the rules. Here, the rules shifted with the Alpha’s voice, with the tilt of his gaze, with the curve of his cruel silence.

And if one word from him could silence me… what else could he do?

I turned onto my side, curling tightly, as if making myself small enough might make me invisible.

The mask. The eyes. The voice.

They haunted me long into the night.

And as exhaustion finally dragged me under, one last thought seared through my mind:

Perhaps I had only traded one prison for another. And this one… might just be worse.