🦋ALTHEA
The crone's silence stretched too fucking long, as if she were weighing something far heavier than the scene in front of her. Her one seeing eye lingered on me, unblinking, and I felt it skim the surface of my skin and sink deeper, probing for fracture lines, for weakness, for truth.
I did not give her any. It would ruin the plan.
She is a smart wrench, don't give her enough to read you.
My posture remained slack, my gaze unfocused, my mouth set in a faint, careless curve—as though the weight of the sanctum that I had ruined and the Alpha himself were all equally beneath my notice. Inside, my pulse battered against my ribs, but I kept my breathing shallow and uneven on purpose, a practiced imitation of instability rather than fear.
Ivanka had warned me about this one.
She does not hate easily, she had said. That is why she is dangerous.
