The door creaked on its rusted hinges as Luther stepped into the basement, the familiar smell hitting him like a fist to the chest, damp earth, old fear, dried blood. The single bulb overhead flickered with a lazy buzz. The air was colder down here, always had been.

He descended slowly, boots heavy on the steps, and stopped at the base, letting his eyes adjust. A piles of cloth roughly thrown around. The little blanket she used to curl under was shredded in one corner, as if she'd clawed it apart. Her drawings were still taped to the stone wall childish, frantic things in dull crayon, barely visible. Stick figures, trees, a wolf. A girl with a sun in her hands.

His chest tightened.

He walked further in, fingers brushing along the edge of the table where she'd eaten in silence, kept her head down, never once meeting his eyes.

He remembered sneaking down here when he was thirteen.

She'd been curled up in the corner of her bed, so still he thought she was asleep. But when the old stairs creaked under his weight, she sat bolt upright. He'd startled her. She scrambled back, wide eyes locked on him like she expected pain.

And he… he’d just stared at her.

She’d had a pretty face, he remembered thinking. Fragile. Small. He hadn’t understood why it made something sharp twist in his chest. Why, even back then, he’d felt the need to punish her for being untouchable. For making him feel something ugly and wild.

He sat on the discarded pile of cloth, elbows on his knees, head hanging low.

He'd been twenty when he returned from Alpha training. Stronger. Sharper. Dangerous in ways the others still feared. He’d stepped into the basement again expecting to see the quiet, voiceless girl. Instead, he'd seen her. Grown, trembling, bruised, and broken but he saw the small bit of hope she tried to hide. And that pulled in his gut, goddess, it had nearly floored him.

He decided right then she was his.

His to keep. His to lock away. Where no one could take her. Where no one else could see her. He would burn out that tiny bit of hope so she would never think to leave him.

He thought it made sense then. He told himself it was better, safer. That she wouldn’t survive out there, not with what she’d become. What they had made her.

And Gabrielle? She was perfect. Proper. Poised. She’d smile at his father, wear white at the ceremony, run the household with grace. Everything a Luna should be.

Trash wasn’t that.

Trash had no name, no place. Just bruises and quiet fire in her eyes.

How could he ever ask the pack to accept her?

How could he ask her to accept him?

Luther stood slowly, walking to the wall where her drawings clung like ghost thoughts. He touched one, a shaky outline of a wolf howling at a crooked moon and swallowed hard.

"I’ll make sure you have a proper bed," he murmured. "I’ll give you everything but your freedom."

“Even if you fight.” He would make her accept him.

Chains and all to keep her and possess her.

But he also wanted her to look at him one day and not flinch.

To speak to him. To want to stay.

He ran a hand down his face, the weight of everything, his father’s retirement, the Luna everyone expected and the girl everyone hated pressing down on him like a mountain.

He turned back toward the stairs, one final glance cast over the small, ruined space she’d lived in like a ghost.

“Wherever you are… just survive.”

“And when I find you….”