The Alpha King’s Stolen Daughter Chapter 05

The Alpha King’s Stolen Daughter Chapter 05 – Ember

I have replayed that moment a thousand times since.

Seven years old. He didn’t blink.

My father stared at him for five full seconds – the kind of stare that makes grown wolves wet themselves – and Milo stared right back with his hands in his pockets.

Then my father crouched down to his level.

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Milo De Vonn.”

“Milo.” A pause. “You’re not what you look like.”

“Neither are you,” Milo said. “You look like a man who’ll fix things. You’re actually a man who’s late.”

I nearly threw up.

But my father just laughed – one short, shocked bark of a laugh with no humor in it – and stood up.

“One week,” he said to the officer. “You will place him in emergency medical care, not a group home. Ashborne Regional. Private wing. I’ll cover it. Nobody touches him, nobody moves him, and I want a call every twelve hours.” He turned to me. “Seven days, principessa. I’ll bring you back myself and we’ll do this legally. I don’t lose. Do you understand? I don’t lose.””

It wasn’t enough. Nothing was going to be enough.

But Milo hugged me, and whispered “go” into my stomach, and I went, because I was seventeen and out of options and so, so tired.

I looked back once at the doors.

He waved.

I sat pressed into the far corner of the car, as far from my father as the seat allowed.

He noticed, I saw his hand twitch on his knee, saw him decide not to reach for me.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. “We can stop. Anything you want.”

“No, thank you, Mr. Draven.”

The temperature in that car dropped through the floor.

Cassian turned around in the front seat so fast his seatbelt locked.

My father was looking out the window. In the reflection, under the streetlights, I could see his eyes were

wet.

“Don’t call me that,” he said quietly.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Ember.” His jaw flexed. “Your mother called me Mr. Draven when she wanted to put a wall between us. It worked then. It’s working now.”

I dropped my head. “Sorry.”

—

“No no, don’t do that.” He turned around, and he looked wrecked. “Don’t apologize to me. God. Don’t

flinch and don’t apologize.”

“That’s what I do,” I said. “That’s the whole job.”

Silence.

“What job,” Cassian said, very softly.

I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. I’m so tired. My ribs hurt so much.

“Being alive in that house,” I said, and I looked out the window, and I started crying without permission from any part of me.

I felt him move. I felt an arm come around my shoulders, careful and slow, giving me every chance to pull

away.

I didn’t pull away.

I put my face against my father’s coat and I sobbed like a child, seventeen years late, and he held the back of my head and said “I know, I know, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, principessa” over and over until my breathing

evened out

I fell asleep on him somewhere on the highway.

I woke because someone was saying my name in a voice like a knife.

“-her pulse, Dad, feel it, that’s not sleep, that’s a shutdown-”

“Ember. Baby. Open your eyes for me.”

I opened them. The car had stopped. The interior light was on. Cassian had two fingers on my wrist and

my sleeve pushed up, and he was looking at my forearm, and his face had gone gray.

I looked down.

The sleeve had ridden up past the elbow.

Eight years of Garrick’s “discipline” doesn’t stay hidden when you’re unconscious. Silver burns don’t fade like normal scars. They stay pink and shiny and raised, in the exact shape of the buckle that made them, in

rows, all the way up.

Nobody said anything.

My father made a sound I have never heard a human being make.

“Dad,” Cassian said. “Dad. Look at me. Look at me. Not now.”

“Who.” My father’s voice wasn’t a voice anymore. His eyes had gone gold at the edges and the whole car was vibrating. “Who did that to my daughter.”

“Cassian,” I whispered. “Please don’t tell him about my back.”

That was the wrong thing to say.

Cassian closed his eyes for a second. Then he took my chin very gently and turned my face toward the light and looked into my eyes, and his doctor voice came out flat and hard.

“Dad. She’s not wolfless.”

I blinked. “What?”

“Silver poisoning. Chronic, cumulative, deliberate.” He was talking to my father but he hadn’t let go of me. Someone has been dosing her since she was a child. Not enough to kill. Exactly enough to keep her wolf from ever waking up.”

“That’s not possible,” I said “I don’t have a wolf. I’ve never had a wolf-

“You have a wolf, Ember,” Cassian said. Somebody’s been strangling her for eleven years.”

I stared at him.

Then my father asked the question that changed everything.

“Who taught a backwater trash Alpha like Garrick Vale to bind a royal wolf?” he said. “Because he didn’t figure that out on his own.”