Chapter 103: The White Room

Astrid Vale

I was running through the brothel again, the hallway darker than it should have been, my mother’s voice calling out somewhere ahead of me that I couldn’t quite reach no matter how fast I moved. Then the floor dropped away entirely and I jolted awake so hard my whole body seized.

I tried to sit up. I couldn’t. My wrists were pinned against something hard beneath me, and when I yanked at them nothing gave at all. I tried my legs next. Restrained too, tight enough that I could feel the strain in my ankles the second I pulled.

For one disorienting second I didn’t understand what was happening to my own body. Then it came back all at once. The east wing. Ivy’s messages. The hallway stretching into something endless. And then nothing, a complete blank where the rest of that night should have been.

I looked around, and none of it made sense.

Everything in the room was white. The walls, the ceiling, the bed frame beneath me, even the plain gown I was wearing. It should have felt peaceful, the kind of white that hospitals used to look calm and harmless. It didn’t. It felt clinical, sterile in a way that made my skin crawl, and there were shapes along one wall that looked unmistakably like medical equipment.

That was what finally broke something loose in me. I started fighting the restraints in earnest, twisting my wrists, pulling until my shoulders ached, kicking against whatever held my ankles down. Nothing moved.

"Hello?" I shouted. "Someone, please, I need to get out of here!"

Silence answered me.

"I want to leave!" My voice cracked halfway through, and still nothing came back except the hum of whatever equipment sat along that wall. I kept going anyway, shaking the restraints as hard as I could, the metal biting into my skin until I felt something warm slide down toward my palm. I looked down. Blood, thin lines of it tracking along my wrist where the metal had cut through.

I didn’t stop. If anything I pulled harder, because someone needed to hear this, someone needed to know I was in here.

Footsteps finally came, quick ones, and I heard a soft beep as someone entered a code outside the door. It swung open, and a woman dressed entirely in white stepped in, her eyes going straight to my wrists.

"Oh," she breathed, already crossing the room. "You’re bleeding."

"Where am I?" I demanded, twisting to look at her even as she reached for my arm.

She didn’t answer, just pressed something soft against the cuts, her expression tight with something that looked almost like guilt. It struck me as absurd, the amount of care she was putting into a couple of shallow scratches when I had no idea where I was or what had happened to me.

"I need to go back to Moonshade," I said. "What happened to me? Where’s Ivy?"

"You’re in safe hands," she said, still focused on my wrist.

"That’s not an answer."

She didn’t look up.

I stared at her, my patience gone completely. "If I’m safe," I said, "why am I chained to a bed?"

That landed. Her hands stilled for half a second before she resumed wrapping the cloth around my wrist. "It’s just a precaution," she said, but it came out unconvincing, like she didn’t fully believe it herself.

"Who do you work for?" I asked. "Where is Ivy? Does anyone at Moonshade even know I’m gone?"

She still didn’t answer, and before I could push further, more footsteps sounded outside, heavier this time, and her whole posture changed. She straightened immediately, her eyes flicking toward the door, and I felt my own body go tense in response.

The door opened again, and a man walked in.

The woman lowered her head instantly. "Alpha," she said.

I studied him carefully. I didn’t recognize him at all, but something about the way the room shifted around his presence told me he mattered here, that whatever was happening to me answered to him in some way. His gaze moved over me, then down to the restraints, and his expression shifted into something I hadn’t expected at all.

"Why is she chained to the bed?" he asked, his voice sharp.

The woman flinched. "I—we thought it was necessary, given her state when she arrived—"

"Is this how we treat guests now?" he said.

Guests. The word landed strangely, completely wrong for what I’d just been through. I didn’t know what to make of it.

"I’m sorry, Alpha," the woman said quickly, and he waved a hand toward the guards standing just outside the door. They moved immediately, unlocking the restraints at my wrists first, then my ankles, and I groaned as feeling rushed back into limbs that had been pinned too long in one position. I rubbed at my wrists carefully, wincing at the raw skin beneath the woman’s makeshift bandage.

I looked up at the man they called Alpha, unsure what to think of him at all. He’d just ordered my restraints removed, but he was clearly the one in charge of whoever had brought me here in the first place. Helping me, or simply changing the terms of how I was being held.

"Where am I?" I asked directly. "How did I get here?"

He didn’t answer right away.

"The last thing I remember is walking into the east wing," I said, watching his face closely. "Then nothing. I don’t remember anything after that."

Something flickered behind his eyes, gone before I could name it. Instead of answering, he smiled, and clapped his hands twice.

I looked toward the door, confused, as several servants entered carrying a foldable wardrobe between them. I stared at it, then at him.

"You should get dressed first," he said. "You must be starving."

I didn’t know whether to believe a word out of his mouth. He and the woman left the room a moment later, the door clicking shut behind them, and finally I was alone.

I approached the wardrobe cautiously and opened it. Dresses hung inside, expensive ones, fabric I’d only ever seen on the wealthiest students at Moonshade, the kind of thing I used to stare at through shop windows and never dare to touch. For one strange second I just looked at them, some small foolish part of me caught by how beautiful they were despite everything. Then I made myself move, picking something plain enough to move freely in, nothing that would slow me down if I needed to run.

As I dressed, my mind kept circling everything that had happened. The east wing. Ivy. The blackout. This white room. Maximus who spoke of guests and chains in the same breath. None of it fit together into anything I could trust.

Before I left, I noticed a piece of jewelry sitting among the accessories, a hairpin with an edge sharp enough to catch my attention. I picked it up without hesitation and tucked it somewhere I could reach quickly if I needed to. I didn’t know if this man was truly helping me or not, and I refused to walk anywhere in this place completely unarmed.

When I opened the door, he was waiting.

"You look lovely," he said.

I didn’t answer that. "It’s time for lunch," he added, and I followed him only because hunger was gnawing at me harder than my caution could argue against, though I kept my guard up with every step.

The corridor outside was as white as the room I’d left, and as we walked I noticed the doors. One, then another, then several more, all identical to the one I’d just come through.

I slowed slightly, my eyes moving from door to door. My mind went straight back to the restraints, the medical room, the woman’s guilty hands on my wrist.

Were there other people here?

Maximus kept walking ahead of me, unaware, or unbothered, by the question already forming in my mind.

How many people were behind those doors?