Pearl POV
The air was still, thick with the kind of silence that pressed into your bones. I knelt, motionless, my knees numb on the stone floor, eyes fixed to the marbled patterns beneath me. The transparent curtain swayed gently ahead, and behind it sat the figure cloaked in shadows — the masked Alpha. I could feel the weight of his gaze from where I knelt. Yet he hadn’t spoken a word since the young boy had offered his testimony.
I didn’t dare look up.
Not because I feared him… but because some small, fragile part of me was afraid I might recognize him.
And if I did… what would I do?
My hands trembled in my lap, still chained, the cold metal biting into the bruises on my wrists. Every breath I took was laced with pain and humiliation. I had come here to learn to grow, to serve the e
