"No!" Austin jumped from his chair and slammed his hand over Ryleigh's mouth, cutting the phrase short just before she could conclude it. Her eyes widened and she uttered a muffled protest. The next moment he yelped and jerked his hand back. "Did you just bite me?"

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and looked up at him spitefully. Austin waved his hand in the air, Ryleigh's dental structure engraved into his palm.

"You're crazy," he said. He sat back down, rubbing his palm. "Don't reject me."

"Why?" she said, and he looked up in surprise. He hadn't expected her to continue talking.

"If you do, I have no reason not to send you back to Alder."

She blinked and pulled her lips into a pout. Strangely enough, she almost seemed to approve of that answer. "Fair enough." She drew her legs under her, wincing at the movement.

"Now that you have found your tongue, will you tell me your name?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She shrugged one shoulder. Austin watched her a moment in silence. Her voice was slightly hoarse due to her illness, but gentle and pleasant. Or it would have been pleasant if she'd use it to say less disturbing things.

"Carry said you are aware of the, uh, circumstances that brought you here. Is that why you're so upset with me?"

She snorted a laugh, her body instantly convulsing as a result. "I don't care."

"You don't?"

Her hand fluttered through the air, making light of the very idea. "Please. I imagine I'm not quite what you expected, but you're not exactly my dream come true either."

"So it's fine by you that I have a chosen mate?"

"I did try to reject you just now, didn't I? You're the one that stopped me, so perhaps you should be asking yourself that question. The only reason I'm here is because I quite literally have no choice." She raised her hands, her chains clinking against one another and fabricating a metallic sound. "Why did you, anyway?"

"Why did I what?"

"Stop me. You love Julie. Fine by me. You don't want me. Fine too. I'm not what you expected and definitely not what you need. Great, right back at you. But when I tried rejecting you just now, you didn't know how fast to silence me. Why not let me?"

He opened his mouth, but no explanation found its way outside. He didn't have one. "Instinct, I guess."

"Instinct? Fine. And you holding my hand all night? Was that instinct too?"

"Ridge linked me. You were in pain. I might not like the mate bond but it exists and it helps you. What would you have had me do? Let you suffer? I know you don't think much of me, but I'm not that cruel."

She regarded him intensely. "Maybe."

"I'm not the reason you're in chains, you know. You did that yourself."

"It's not that simple."

"Isn't it? Because it sounds to me like you don't even care who you put at fault for this, as long as it's not yourself. But you trespassed onto Royal Wolf territory, you attacked those guards, you refused to talk, you were violent towards the king and queen, and you escaped your cell here and fought with everyone on your path. You did all that."

A chuckle escaped her. "If you say it like that I do sound like a handful, don't I?"

He really didn't get her. She laughed when he was harsh, got quiet when he was friendly. Everything was a joke to her, and yet she was dead serious. "What other way to say it is there?"

"It didn't happen the way Alder told you."

"No? You didn't trespass, and when you were approached, you didn't attack the border patrol?"

"Well," she said, "strictly seen I guess I did."

"Strictly seen? You put three guards in the infirmary, and you've been violent from the start. Five guards were needed to take you out of your cell. That doesn't scream 'innocent' to me."

She breathed a laugh. "It's all so black and white, isn't it?"

"Then colour it in for me," he said. "Tell me your side."

She looked at him a moment, as if to consider whether or not he was worthy of her version of events. "Did I trespass? Yes, I did. I was lost. I'm not familiar with that part of Andior and I didn't know I was in their territory. It was an accident. Then, out of nowhere, four wolves appeared and surrounded me. So I ran, and they attacked me. They attacked me. I didn't know who they were, how could I? If I'd known they were Royal Guards, I would have stopped. I would have talked to them. But I didn't know. They attacked me first, and yes, I fought back. What would you have done?"

She paused there, as if to give him a chance to respond to that rhetorical question, while in fact she just needed a second to breathe. Then she went on: "They would have killed me without question. And then, after I was arrested, what was I supposed to do? Shift back nice and easy and explain that it was all a misunderstanding? I don't think so. I was angry and scared. Tell me, when Alder told you how violent I was, did he also mention how his guards beat me? Or how they kicked me, and stabbed me with their Goddess-awful spears? I was pissed they treated me that way, so that's right, I was violent. But so were they – and no one adds that detail, do they? No, it's all me. They silver me four times, but I'm the evil one. Sure." She stopped, panting. 

Austin had sat silently all throughout her ramblings, watching her without a word but with a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Look," Ryleigh went on, the passion seeping from her voice. "I'm not saying I've been a model prisoner and I'm not saying I've handled my incarceration well. But what's the endgame here? Your lover has given you a month, and then what? You're going to send me back to Alder?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know?" Ryleigh uttered a sound that seemed stuck between a laugh and a sigh. "Well, maybe you should figure it out. Because it's easy for you. You'll just wait out this month, reject me and start a life with your chosen mate. But me, I don't have a say in any of this. My life is in your hands. If you're going to send me back there, you might as well kill me right now. I don't want to suffer another three weeks if nothing is going to change."

Much as he hated it, she had a point. It wasn't fair to her. But then none of it was fair to him, either. "Well, what do you suggest I do? I can't release you."

"Why not?"

He blinked at the simplicity of that statement. "Because you're volatile and violent. I'm responsible for you. If I let you go and through some capital offense you find yourself back at the Royal Prison, it'll be on my head."

"I won't commit a capital offense, or any other offense. I'll live on the straight and narrow."

"You must think me really stupid if you think I'm going to believe that."

"Your words, not mine." She sucked her upper teeth, the challenge dissipating from her gaze. "I just want to know what my prospects are."

That made two of them. Did she think he knew where this was going to end? He didn't. "Well, I can't tell you. I don't enjoy this, you know. I'm not trying to be cruel, but I don't know you, and what I've seen from you doesn't exactly paint a pretty picture. I don't feel comfortable asking King Alder to rescind your sentence, because I'm not quite sure you don't deserve what's been given to you."

"If everyone would always get what they deserve, we'd all be in jail." There was something infinitely bitter to her look when she spoke that utterance and for a moment, Austin didn't know how to respond. "Go," she said then. "I'm tired, leave me alone." She tried to turn to her side but the chains yanked her right arm back and with a sigh she rolled onto her back again. Austin got up, hesitantly.

"I could stay, you know. Help with the pain."

"I'll take the pain if that'll remove you from my sight."

"Very well, then." He waited a few seconds, curious to see if she would say anything else, but she turned her head away from him and stubbornly stared at the far wall. He shrugged and made his way to the door.

"Austin," she said, right as he pushed down the handle. His name from her lips sounded like nothing he had ever heard, and he stopped dead in his tracks, looking back at her. She met his gaze, her dark eyes immeasurable. "My name's Ryleigh."

________

A/N: They're talking at last! Well, arguing, but progress is progress. 

As always, thank you for reading!