The Vicious Vixen: Mother To The Panther Lord’s Pups Chapter 04
The Silent Scream
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Wind hit the windows. Old pipes knocked behind the walls.
At two a.m., I got up for water. Barefoot, I walked down the hall.
Cassian’s room was at the end of the hall. I almost walked past it.
Then I heard the crying.
Muffled and choked. The kind of crying a pup keeps quiet because loud crying gets punished.
I stopped.
A second voice. Older. A boy’s voice. Cruel and low.
“Shut up. Shut UP. You want me to tell my mom? She’ll lock you in the basement again.”
My hand found the doorknob.
The door swung open and I saw it all at once.
Lucien, Isolde’s nine-year-old son, was sitting on Cassian’s chest.
One hand pinned Cassian’s wrist to the mattress.
The other pressed a heated lighter against Cassian’s forearm. The skin under it was already red and blistered.
A metal lighter. Held against a pup’s bare skin until it burned.
The smell hit me. Burned skin and hot metal. Sickening and unmistakable.
Cassian wasn’t fighting back. He lay there stiff, tears running into his hair, jaw clenched tight.
He wasn’t fighting because he’d been taught that fighting back made things worse.
Lucien looked at me. He was annoyed, not scared.
“Get out,” he said. “This isn’t your business.”
I crossed the room in three steps.
Grabbed Lucien by the back of his shirt.
I lifted him off Cassian’s body.
He kicked and squirmed. “Let go of me! My mom’s gonna kill you!”
I dragged him to the balcony door, shoved it open, and dumped him onto the second-floor terrace.
He landed on the outdoor couch. Not injured. Just terrified.
I locked the balcony door.
He pounded on the glass. “LET ME IN! I’M TELLING MY MOM!”
“Go ahead,” I said through the glass. “Tell her I said hi.”
I turned back to Cassian.
He was sitting up now, shaking. He pulled his sleeve down fast over the burn.
I sat on the edge of his bed.
“How long?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Cassian. How long has he been doing this?”
His voice came out cracked. “Since I was seven.”
Three years. Three years of burns on a pup, and nobody had stopped it.
“Why didn’t you fight back?”
He looked down. “Aunt Isolde said if I ever hurt Lucien, she’d tell my dad I was dangerous. She said he’d send me away. That I’d never see Liora again.”
That woman had used Liora to control him.
I leaned forward. “Cassian. Look at me.”
He looked.
“A Nightfall pup does not lie down and take it. You understand me?”
He blinked.
“Lucien touches you again, you break his hand. I don’t care if Isolde screams. I don’t care if Octavia faints. You break it, and then you come find me. I’ll handle the rest.”
“But—”
“No. No buts. You are not a punching bag. You are Lord Darian’s son. The only one in this house who gets to decide what happens to you is you. Not Isolde. Not her brat. You.”
He looked at me for a long time.
Then, slowly, he nodded.
I pulled his blanket up. “Go to sleep. I’ll be right outside.”
I stood in the hallway for the next hour, arms crossed, back against the wall.
At some point, Lucien stopped banging on the balcony door. He curled up on the outdoor couch and fell asleep.
Good. Let him be scared for one night.
But I was not thinking about Lucien anymore. I was thinking about the lighter.
A nine-year-old boy did not find a metal lighter by accident.
Someone gave it to him.
By morning, Isolde was pounding on my bedroom door.
“WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY SON!? “
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