Shouts fill the castle and torchlight flickers as I'm carried through a labyrinth of stone corridors.

I struggle against my captor, but his thick arm only tightens around my waist.

I do not know where I'd run to even if I did escape him. Sebastian? My father? Would that be any better? Would it be worse?

Trapped as I am, something wild seems to have knocked loose inside me. It rattles around in my chest and I do not feel the hopelessness I should be feeling. The anger I have caged since my mother died surges hot and free through my veins.

I am not stone. I am not a statue.

I am fire.

And somehow it has taken this man, this beast, to make me see it.

I pound against the alpha's back. "Get off me, you bloody horrible brute." My hair catches in my mouth. I kick my bare feet and hit nothing but air. "Get off me. You'll die for this, you horrible—" I cut myself off as we turn a corner.

There are two guards lying in a pool of blood. The alpha steps over the bodies, and I'm forced to stare down at their lifeless faces as he continues onward.

The reality of my situation slams fully into me.

These men are dangerous. They're killers. They're Wolves.

Of course being taken away from my homeland by the enemies of my people is worse than staying. Of course it is. And yet. . .

The alpha cuts through one of the servants' passageways, almost as if he knows where he is going, even if I am lost, and a scream from a lady-in-waiting pierces my ears. She catches my eye as we pass, then runs in the opposite direction, her dark hair falling free from her cap.

The alpha won't make it out of here.

They'll imprison him until the full moon, then skin him alive.

The thing that's knocked loose in my chest becomes frantic. My heart pounds wildly in my chest.

"She's gone to get help, you horrible brute," I hiss at him. "There are guards stationed only a couple of minutes away."

"Aye?" he says, his voice low. He quickens his pace, half running down the servants' staircase. "Thank you."

I cling onto his shoulders, my fingers digging into his muscles, my body jolting against his back. "I wasn't. . . I wasn't trying to help you!" I say, shrilly.

Although I wonder, as I say it, if that is entirely true.

The alpha goes left, then right, bursting into a wider corridor. I recognize the mural of warriors slaughtering Wolves on the wall. It shows our victory in the Battle of the Beasts a century ago, and it is close to the western entrance hall.

He is almost free of this place. I am almost—

"Halt." A male voice cuts through the quiet.

The alpha stills. Two guards block the corridor ahead. They have the sigil of the Southlands, a sun, painted onto their shields. My father's men.

"Is that the princess?" one says incredulously.

The other chuckles. "Oh, I don't envy you, dog. Do you know what they do to your kind up here?"

The rattle of swords signals three more guards stepping into the corridor behind us. I breathe in sharply.

"Don't kill it," says one of them—a burly looking man with the silver star of the Borderlands on his breastplate. "Lord Sebastian will want to spend some time with this one."

The alpha's body stiffens. "I'm going to need to put you down for this, Princess," he says softly.

My breath hitches as he slides me down his front, and places me on the flagstones. The guards are charging, but everything feels still. His eyes bore into mine and they are as green and alive as the forest.

Don't run, he seems to be telling me. Don't run.

He pushes me aside. I flatten myself against a mural as he dodges the swing of a sword. He grabs his attacker's head and twists. A sickly crack fills the hall before he hurls the body into the next soldier, who skids into the wall. He roars, and charges.

Blood and muscle and steel blur in front of me as he takes on three men at once.

He is a force of nature. He swings, and blocks, and dodges each lethal blow that comes his way. He impales one soldier on his own sword, then rams another into the far wall—smashing his head against the stone with such force that the chandelier above trembles.

My body trembles as though the decision that's rattling inside my body is a tangible, living thing.

I should run.

But I don't want to stay in this castle.

There are two paths ahead of me and I am lost. I do not know which one to take.

The alpha picks up a sword from the floor. He thrusts it through the chin of another guard, causing blood to spill from his mouth.

The horror of it forces me to face what the alpha is. A killer.

I flee down the corridor to my right, my bare feet slapping against the cold ground. My hair flies loose behind me, and my long nightdress bunches at my ankles. I'm breathing fast, and my heart is pounding.

I run wildly, frantically. This place is new to me and, though it is supposed to be my home, it is cold and unfamiliar. I am lost in a labyrinth of stone and there is a beast in here and I do not know the way out.

"Princess, wait."

I turn.

The alpha stands in the corridor behind me. His shirt is slick with sweat, and his biceps strain against his sleeves. He walks slowly, carefully, toward me. He's like a predator, trying not to scare his prey.

"Princess, do you really—"

He tenses when he reaches me, as if he hears something I cannot, then hooks an arm around my waist. My breathing sharpens as he draws me into a shadowy alcove. He pulls my back flush against his chest.

I am aware of every ridge of his torso, and the quick pounding of his heartbeat. His breaths are hot and uneven by my ear. His scent floods my nostrils—heat and sweat and the mountains. It overwhelms me. I still, even as my blood pounds through my body and my heartbeat hammers in my ears.

A scream builds in my chest, and he clamps his hand over my mouth.

"Find her!" Lord Sebastian snaps. "Find her now! She is my betrothed and I will not have her taken from me. If they touch her, if they defile her, she is of no value to me! Do you understand?"

I feel the slight growl building in the alpha's chest.

For a moment, we are both breathing fast as Sebastian rants, just a few feet away, about the importance of my purity. Slowly, the alpha drops his hand from my mouth. It's as if he's daring me to scream.

"I need her with her virtue intact. Do you understand?" says Sebastian. "Find her. Find her!"

"Yes, my lord."

The voices fade away.

I breathe out slowly. For a moment, neither of us move.

The alpha drops his arm and I step away. His face is as dark as thunder as he stares down the corridor.

"Do you really want to stay?" he asks.

"What difference does it make? I am a prisoner either way."

"Aye." He runs a hand over the back of his neck. "And I can't promise you it won't be dangerous up in the Northlands. My people don't much care for humans. But I promise you that I'll protect you." He swallows. "And I'll give you the choice. Run now, and I won't follow. Come with me, and no one will touch you. I swear it on the Moon Goddess."

He holds out his hand for me to take. I am trembling as the decision builds in my chest. My soul is rattling against its prison, wild and screaming.

The alpha's gaze is unwavering. It's as though there is no doubt in his mind what I will do.

"What do you want with me?" I ask.

He drags his teeth over his bottom lip, as if deciding whether to tell me. "Sebastian has something of ours. We want it back."

I let out a bitter laugh. "You want to hold me ransom. You think he will make a trade."

"Aye," he says.

And there it is. My "choice". The two paths that lie before me.

A choice between two men. Two killers. Two monsters.

Only it is not much of a choice at all, is it? Again, I am nothing more than a prize—an object—to be passed between men. A burst of hysteria builds up inside me and spills out of my mouth in a manic giggle.

"There it is," I say. "That's what this is all about! Well, you heard what the lord said. If I am defiled then I am of no value to anyone."

"That's not why I'll keep you safe."

I stare at his open palm, then I look down the corridor in the direction that Lord Sebastian went in.

"I heard what he said to you," says the alpha, his voice quiet. "At the dog fight." When I meet his eyes, there is a surprising amount of anger contained within them. "I will keep you safe. Then I will set you free. I swear it."

I do not know if it is that word—free—that makes my heart beat faster, or whether it is the look on his face. Even though I am a statue, and statues don't move, my fingers twitch at my sides.

"I swear it, Princess," he says.

And somewhere beyond the adrenaline that's pumping through me, a thought begins to form.

If I can gather intelligence on the Wolves, perhaps I can finally prove to my father that I am more than just a prize to be won.

And, if I help my father win his war, he will have no use for Sebastian.

Perhaps I can escape my fate on my own terms.

"What does Sebastian have that belongs to you?" I ask.

There's a click behind me and the alpha looks over my shoulder.

"Step back, my lady." A guard grabs my arm and pushes me behind him, his musket trained on the alpha. "They're silver bullets, so don't do anything stupid. Hands behind your head."

Slowly, the alpha raises his hands and clasps them behind his neck.

"On your knees, dog."

"Wait—" I start.

"It's okay, my lady. He'll be punished. I can take it from here—"

The decision, the choice, that has been rattling around in my chest since I laid eyes on the alpha, erupts out of me.

I grab a torch from the wall, and smack the guard in the head with it.

I expect him to fall down to the ground, unconscious, like the guards did in stories my mother would tell me as a child.

Instead he grunts, then turns to me. The mild confusion on his face quickly turns to anger.

I stagger back, dropping the torch.

"What's going on?" he says, his face reddening. "Have you. . . lain with him? She who lies with a beast—"

The alpha darts forward and breaks the man's neck, then shoves him aside.

He holds out his hand.

I suck in a deep breath.

I'm doing this to help my kingdom, I tell myself. Not because—even with blood on his shirt cuffs, and dirt on his face, and one of my guards, dead, at his feet—he is looking at me with kindness.

No one looks at me with kindness.

I place my hand in his.

His palm is warm and rough as his fingers curl around mine—sealing my fate. It is only then that a flicker of confusion crosses his face. Perhaps I imagined it, because a moment later, he gives me a small smile.

"Come," he says. "More will be on their way."

Together, we bolt down the corridor, into the western entrance hall. The door is already open, and the night spills onto the checkered floor tiles.

I smell the pine trees of the forest, and the rain-drenched grass. The cold breeze tickles my skin, so fresh I can taste it.

The wind howls, or perhaps it is the Wolves that await.

Alongside the beast, I break out of the labyrinth.