Chapter 15 Confined
Two months crawled past like years. Lila's world shrank to the west wing, to rooms that grew smaller every day despite their generous size. She woke to gray light filtering through windows she wasn't allowed to leave through. She ate meals Maya brought on trays. She read books that all blurred together into meaningless words. She existed without living.
The palace prepared for the heir with increasing excitement. Servants rushed through corridors carrying supplies for the nursery. Nobles arrived to offer gifts and well-wishes. Celeste bloomed in her sixth month of pregnancy, her belly round and prominent, her face glowing with maternal purpose.
Lila watched it all from her window. The west wing overlooked the main courtyard, giving her a perfect view of palace life she was no longer part of. She saw Adrian sometimes, crossing between buildings with Marcus at his side. She saw Celeste taking careful walks in the gardens, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting who fussed over her comfort. She saw the whole court moving forward while she remained frozen in place.
Maya was her only visitor. The servant brought food Lila barely touched, opened curtains Lila immediately closed, tried to coax conversation from someone who had nothing left to say.
"You need to eat." Maya set down a tray of bread and soup. "You're disappearing, my lady. I can see your bones through your skin."
Lila stared at the wall. Food tasted like ash. Everything tasted like ash.
"The King asks about you." Maya tried a different approach. "Every day, he finds me and asks if you're eating, if you're sleeping, if you need anything."
"Tell him I'm fine."
"You're not fine. And lying about it won't help." Maya sat on the bed. "This confinement is killing you. Anyone can see it."
"Then I'll die quietly in my room and stop being a problem for everyone."
"Don't say that." Maya's voice sharpened. "Don't even think it. You're stronger than this."
But Lila wasn't strong. She'd never been strong. She was the spare daughter, the ordinary sister, the weak wolf who couldn't even shift properly. She'd spent her whole life being inadequate, and now she was trapped in a tower proving it to herself every single day.
Through the bond, she felt Adrian's constant presence. His frustration with council meetings. His exhaustion from playing the devoted husband. His desperate longing for something he couldn't have. The bond showed her everything while giving her nothing.
Sometimes she felt him trying to reach out through their connection, trying to send comfort or reassurance. But she'd learned to block him, to build walls in her mind that kept his emotions at bay. It was the only way to survive. Feeling his pain on top of her own would destroy what little remained of her sanity.
The seventh week of confinement, a pebble hit her window at midnight. Lila ignored it. She knew who it was. She couldn't face him.
More pebbles followed. Then small rocks. Then finally a sound like claws scraping stone. Adrian was climbing the tower wall. She should close the curtains, pretend to sleep, refuse to let him in. But her traitorous hands opened the window instead.
He pulled himself through, landing in her room with wolf-like grace. He looked terrible. Hair disheveled. Dark circles under his eyes. His formal clothes wrinkled like he'd been wearing them for days. The carefully controlled king had cracked, revealing the desperate man underneath.
"You blocked me." His voice came out rough. "For three weeks, I've felt nothing from you through the bond. Like you're dead."
"Maybe I am." Lila turned away. "Dead in every way that matters."
"Don't say that." He crossed to her, stopped himself before touching. "I feel you fading. Every day a little more. It's destroying me."
"Everything destroys you. The bond. The confinement. Your marriage. Your duty." She laughed without humor. "We're both being destroyed, Adrian. This was always how it would end."
"It doesn't have to end." Desperation colored his words. "I'm working on a solution. A real one this time. Just hold on a little longer."
"I don't want to hold on anymore." The admission came out flat. "I'm tired. So tired of fighting and pretending and suffering. I just want it to stop."
"Lila, look at me." He moved into her line of sight. "Please."
She looked. Saw the devastation in his face, the way months of pretending had carved lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked older than thirty-two. Looked like a man being slowly crushed under impossible weight.
"I can't keep living like this." His voice cracked. "Playing husband to a woman I don't love while my mate wastes away three floors away. Smiling through pregnancy preparations when all I want is to tear down these walls and claim what's mine. Pretending to the council that confining you was acceptable when it's killing us both."
"Then let me go." Lila's voice was hollow. "Stop holding on. Stop fighting. Just let me disappear and end this torture for both of us."
"I can't."
"You have to." She finally met his eyes. "Because I'm dying here, Adrian. Not dramatically. Not quickly. But slowly, day by day, piece by piece. And if I stay much longer, there won't be anything left of me to save."
He reached for her then, pulled her against his chest despite all the rules they'd established. The bond roared to life at the contact, flooding them both with desperate need and rightness. Lila should push him away. Should maintain the distance that kept them both barely functional. But she was so tired of being strong.
"I'm sorry." Adrian's voice broke. "I'm so sorry for all of it. For the bond. For the confinement. For not being able to fix this."
They stood holding each other while moonlight painted shadows across the floor. Two people bound by fate but separated by duty, stealing moments that only made the separation harder to bear.
Finally, Adrian released her. "I should go before someone notices I'm gone."
Lila nodded. Words felt impossible.
He climbed back through the window without looking back, disappeared down the tower wall into darkness. The bond stretched between them, thinner than before, fraying at the edges.
Lila stood at the window long after he'd gone. Below, the palace slept. Guards patrolled the grounds. Servants finished late-night duties. Life continued while she remained frozen, trapped, dying by inches.
She made her decision in that moment. She would leave. Not with Adrian's permission or blessing. Not with careful plans or half-measures. She would simply disappear one night and never look back. Let him rage. Let him hunt. Let him tear the kingdom apart searching. She'd be long gone, far enough south that even the bond couldn't pull her back.
The next three weeks, Lila planned meticulously. She hoarded food from meals, storing dried bread and fruit in her travel bag. She studied guard rotations from her window. She obtained wolfsbane from Maya under the pretense of needing it for sleep, then carefully measured doses that would suppress her wolf and dull the bond.
Maya suspected something. She watched Lila with worried eyes, asked careful questions. But Lila was practiced at lying now, at hiding her intentions behind hollow smiles and vague reassurances.
The night she chose was moonless, dark and perfect for escape. Lila dressed in plain traveling clothes, braided her copper hair tight against her skull. She drank the wolfsbane mixture, gagging on its bitter taste. Within minutes, her wolf went quiet. The bond muffled to a distant whisper.
She tied her bedsheets together, secured them to the bed frame. It wouldn't reach the ground, but it would get her close enough to drop the remaining distance. Her bag was already packed with essentials. Nothing that would be missed immediately.
Lila climbed onto the windowsill, tested the makeshift rope. It held. Below, the courtyard was empty, the guards on the far side of their rotation. Perfect timing.
She began her descent, moving carefully in the darkness. The sheets held her weight. Halfway down, she felt a distant tug through the bond, Adrian noticing something wrong even through the wolfsbane. She moved faster.
Her feet hit solid ground. Lila released the sheets and turned toward the garden exit.
Adrian stood five feet away.
He leaned against the garden wall dressed in dark clothes, arms crossed, face carved from stone. His ice-blue eyes caught starlight, glowing faint silver. He didn't look surprised. He looked furious and exhausted and resigned.
"Going somewhere?" His voice was quiet, dangerous.
Lila's heart stopped. "How did you know?"
"I felt you planning this for days." Adrian pushed off the wall, moved toward her with predatory grace. "The bond might be dulled by whatever poison you drank, but I still feel you. Still know when my mate is plotting to abandon me."
"I'm not abandoning you. I'm saving us both."
"By running away in the middle of the night like a criminal?" He stopped just out of reach. "By drugging yourself and climbing down bedsheets? By disappearing without a word?"
"You wouldn't have let me go otherwise."
"You're right. I wouldn't have." His voice dropped dangerously low. "And I'm not letting you go now."