Dravina POV

The slap landed without warning a sharp, violent crack that snapped my head to the side. Pain exploded across my cheek, hot and immediate, disorienting me in an instant.

My breath caught, tangled somewhere between fear and disbelief. I staggered backward, only to crash into the cold, unyielding wall behind me.

There was nowhere to run not that escape had ever been an option.

“Cassian, please,” I whispered, voice trembling, barely rising above the frantic pounding of my heart.

My hands lifted in reflex, palms open, a useless attempt to shield myself. The fury radiating off him was suffocating, thickening the air like smoke from a wildfire.

His chest rose and fell in harsh, shallow bursts. His jaw was locked tight, and his eyes dark, relentless held mine with a promise I didn’t dare challenge.

“Are you unhappy here, Dravina?” he asked, his voice soft too soft. Each syllable was slow, precise, laced with a deceptive calm that cut sharper than any blade. But I wasn’t fooled.

That voice was a mask. Behind it churned the tempest I had come to know too well. The flicker of fire in his eyes betrayed everything.

I tried to shake my head, to speak, to calm him, but my voice stuck in my throat. He didn’t wait.

“All I asked of you tonight,” he said, his tone tightening like a noose, “was to be gracious. Just a good hostess. That’s it. That’s all.”

His voice turned brittle, laced with venom.

“But you couldn’t even manage that, could you?”

Each word struck harder than the slap had, a verbal assault that sliced through me. My heart twisted, shame curling around the fear like thorns on a vine.

“And then you blush at Arixen’s compliments,” he hissed, stepping closer. “Dancing with him like... like you’ve forgotten yourself. Like you’re not a mated woman. Like you’re not my Luna.”

The way he said my sharp, possessive cut deeper than anything else.

He loomed over me, casting a shadow I couldn’t escape. His rage devoured the room, choking the very air I breathed.

Every instinct screamed at me to flee, to run but I knew better. There was no way out of the gilded prison Cassian had so carefully built around me.

“I was just being polite,” I said softly, voice cracking as fear wrapped tight around my chest. “It meant nothing, Cassian. Nothing.”

He laughed a harsh, humorless bark that made my blood run cold.

“Nothing?” he echoed, mocking. “You think I’m blind? Stupid? I saw the way he looked at you. And worse you let him.”

I shook my head, desperate, but the words wouldn’t come. Not that they would matter.

“You belong to me,” he growled, voice low and brimming with threat. “You’d do well to remember that.”

The weight of his words pressed down on me like iron chains.

I tried again to speak, but he cut me off before I could even breathe.

“Do you know what you looked like tonight?” he snarled. “What they must have thought of me? The whispers, the glances Alpha Drethos even asked if something was wrong between us.”

“I was trying to be a good hostess,” I said, barely more than a breath. It sounded pathetic, even to me.

“A good hostess?” he thundered, stepping in so close the heat of his rage blistered against my skin. I flinched.

“A good hostess doesn’t humiliate her mate. She doesn’t forget who she belongs to. Did you think it was polite when you danced with him? When you walked with him like you weren’t mine?”

My throat tightened painfully. I had no words.

What could I possibly say? The truth that I was cornered into my role, that refusing Arixen would’ve been seen as disrespect, a diplomatic misstep would only fuel the fire.

He didn’t want honesty. He wanted submission.

“Don’t I treat you well?” he asked, quieter now, though no less cruel. “Don’t I praise you? Compliment you?”

He stepped in again, and I found myself pinned between his fury and the wall. I nodded frantic, fearful hoping that agreeing might somehow calm him.

“Then why you?” he spat. “Why not delegate? Why was it you entertaining him, smiling at him, laughing with him?”

I opened my mouth to answer. Nothing came out.

Because I hadn’t been allowed a choice.

Because no matter what I did, I would still end up here beneath the weight of his wrath.

The silence between us stretched taut and heavy, and I knew I’d already been condemned. I was guilty in his eyes. Always had been.

My heart pounded like a war drum.

Then his hand fisted in my hair.

The pain was instant and brutal, and I cried out as he yanked my head back.

Tears spilled freely, sobs catching in my throat. I couldn’t understand how could someone who claimed to love me do this? How could he look into my tear-streaked face and still hurt me?

How could he destroy me and still call it devotion?

“When I chose you, it was because I believed you were different,” he sneered, every word dripping with disgust. “Not like the rest of those whores. Not like my mother.”

The mention of her turned my stomach. I trembled, shaking my head, silently begging him to stop but he wasn’t done.

His hatred of her was a rotting wound, festering beneath every moment, poisoning everything he touched.

“But I was wrong,” he said, voice scathing. “You’re just like her.”

“No, Cassian, please...” I whispered, my voice nearly gone, swallowed by my sobs.

But my pleading only stoked the fire in him. His grip tightened, sharp enough to make me gasp in pain.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Dravina,” he growled, the words thick with menace. “And you know what I do to bad girls.”

That was the moment I shattered.

My body convulsed, wracked with sobs as the last of my resistance dissolved.

“Please,” I whimpered, the word a broken thread in the dark. But it meant nothing. It always meant nothing.

That night, Cassian unleashed a cruelty so consuming it hollowed me out. My screams must have echoed through the entire pack house.

They had to have heard me. But no one came. No one ever did.

Maybe they thought I deserved it.

Maybe they believed it was my fault.

That I’d invited the storm that tore me apart.