Chapter Three
2293 Words
The sound of the footsteps on rusted metal has me opening my eyes to see darkness.
Fuck had I fallen asleep with a bag over my face? What the hell is inside the bag?
I hear a heavy thud and whimpering sounds that has me frowning in confusion.
Where is he taking me?
A big clang comes next and the soldier whips the bag from my head. A dull light comes into my vision from a torch hanging on the wall, and I realize where I am.
A prison cell.
“Shut up”, the soldier snaps and the whimpers quieten almost immediately.
Shit, s**t, s**t. I lick my dry lips as the soldier shuts my cell, sliding the keys into his pockets.
“Wait”, the fear in my body propels me to speak. “I didn’t do anything wrong”, I beg. “I was just distracted by the voices in my head when I hit you”
The soldier smiles cruelly. “You aren’t here because of that”.
What?
I try very hard to think of a response to beg for my cause when the soldier grunts and walks away, his receding footsteps echoing in my head long after he left.
The soldiers were going to find out my secret. I am going to be tortured and killed. I shouldn’t have left the house. Why did I leave the house?
Well I have gotten the adventure i so desperately wanted, i chide myself.
I look around, the dark stained walls a far cry from home. The cell stinks from a mixture of blood, sweat and excrement.
Fortunately I’m the only one in my cell. Unfortunately I’m not going to make it out alive.
I don’t know how long I stay in the cell but the single torch hanging on the wall keeps me company alongside my thoughts.
The whimpering sounds I heard while being brought in were close to non-existent now and I wonder if I had imagined them.
The torch flickers with each breath I take and I feel like I’m caving into myself with worry. What were they going to do to me?
Probably maim and torture me before delivering the final slice of death.
I shiver at the thought. I really didn’t know what had caused the enmity between the wolves and the Fae people.
All I know was that the wolves had a sense of entitlement that the Fae didn’t belong to this world with them.
And I have been living in their world freely, living with one of their own.
Oh s**t. What were they going to do to Beta Griffina and Tara if they found out I’ve been living with him all these years?
No, I shake my head, making up my mind squarely. They won’t find out. I won’t mention no matter how much I’m tortured.
Heavy footsteps wrack along metal creating an ominous sound of soldiers drawing closer from above, meaning the prison cell is somewhere underground.
I pull my cloak tightly around my face, my lungs beating in tune to the footsteps. Noise overtakes the cellar again, but it isn’t the whimpering sounds I had heard before.
These were screaming girls.
My eyebrows upturn in curiosity, my fear overshadowed as a soldier stops in front of my cell with two girls on each side of his shoulder screaming their lungs open out.
What in the ever loving f**k is happening?
The soldier throws open my cell gate and hauls the two girls inside, roughly dropping them on the floor. He pulls up the sacks covering each girl’s face and the screaming stops immediately.
The soldier grunts at them, baring his teeth like some wild animal.
“I’m going to have at you when he’s done choosing his pick”. “And I’ll make sure you scream just as loudly as you have been doing”.
The girls cower, their eyes wide with fear, the stench of it curling up my nose. I could taste it on my tongue and I struggle to keep from wretching.
The smaller of the two tries to protect the other one by placing her body between her friend and the soldier, her face giving off no fear but the trembling of her heart saying otherwise.
The soldier snarls once more, his eyes carrying sinister secrets as he locks us in the cell and leaves.
The sound of his footsteps fades and the girls huddle to each other, whispering to themselves.
They probably didn’t notice someone’s in the cell with them or they were just that naive.
Through the dim light of the torch, I could glimpse their features. The smaller of the two and the protective one has short black hair, although one side seems longer, it gives her this edgy look. I couldn’t glimpse her eyes as she covers her friend with her body.
I hear the friend whimper and I decide to unveil that they weren’t alone.
“Crying for dimwits like that is a waste of the waterfalls in my book”, I say and Edgy is the first one to turn.
Her green eyes finding me where I huddle in the shadows.
“Who are you?”
“Your fellow prisoner”, I answer, making no move to remove my cloak.
Edgy, apparently, is part of the wolf community, the people who maimed and killed my family and would do that to me soon.
“Show yourself”, Edgy grips, her hard eyes frowning even harder.
I move to the spot where the torch casts a dim glow, at least now they could see me. They just couldn’t see what’s underneath.
“Why are you here?” “ Are you for the dance ritual too?”, Edgy’s friend asks and I study her. The soft to Edgy’s hard it seems. Were they sisters, I wonder as I glimpse her long black hair and soft brown eyes.
Then her questions clicks in my head.
“Dance ritual?” I frown.
Edgy keeps mute, probably deciphering me out.
“The selected maidens for the Alpha Mate dance”, Edgy’s friend replies.
I’m being put in a prison cell because of a dance ritual?
“So we’ve been kidnapped?”
Edgy grunts, approving of the way I put it. Her friend on the other hand isn’t so opinionated.
“It’s an honor to serve the Alpha”.
Ew, wolf talk.
“Need I remind you that you were just thrown in a prison cell like a filthy rag, all for what? To serve the Alpha?”
“That’s not the Alpha’s fault”, She protests. “The guards were rough and they’ll be duly reprimanded once we report them”
I shake my head in disbelief at the words. Delusional is an understatement to what I would use to describe the girl’s faith in her Alpha.
Luckily, Edgy didn’t share the same opinion but she’s still watching me like a hawk.
“What house are you from?”, the brown eyed girl asks, the question stemming from mild curiosity.
“Oh nowhere. I’m a tourist”, I say almost immediately, getting a scoff out of Edgy.
“What’s a tourist doing in wolf business?”
“The guards picked me up”, I say in my defense, solidifying my lie. “I was in wrong place wrong time situation”.
“Hmm”, Edgy’s friend frowns, already behaving queen-like. She has the characteristics of a Luna, and I could see she wanted it bad. “Well, we’ll have to fix that”.
How could she be okay with her situation?
“Aren’t you supposed to be angry at the very least?”, I ask suddenly, feeling two pairs of confused eyes scan me.
“One of you is possibly going to be the future Luna and you’re being treated like garbage. Why’s your Alpha treating you like things to be hidden?”
“We do not question the ways of our Alpha”.
“That’s just bullshit”, i scoff.
Edgy’s friend opens her mouth to respond when the heavy door clangs and the guards booted footsteps make its way to us.
This is my chance to escape.
“The Alpha will be here in a minute to speak with you”.
“You have the wrong person”, I speak out in a fake accent.
I couldn’t gauge the guard’s reaction due to the dim light but it seems he believes me.
“How so?”, the guard asks
“She’s a tourist”, The friend speaks before me and I’m beginning to wonder if she had being faking the demure and soft character she showed earlier.
“That’s not possible”.
“Smell me”, i challenge, hoping I hadn’t been too daring to make him question the fact that there’s still a cloak hiding my appearance.
Luckily, he doesn’t and more luckily, the guard realized his mistake and pushes open my cell gate.
“You need to leave before the Alpha gets here or this’ll be on my head”
Yeah, that’ll serve you right for not cross checking your prisoners.
I nod as he hurls me up roughly, his tight hand is
definitely going to leave a bruise.
“Not a word about this to anyone”, the guard snarls and covers my face with the same black sack and my vision goes dim.
****
I feel a tap on my head and my eyes open groggily to a torches being pointed on my face.
I quickly come to and check my head to see if my cloak slipped. I breathe out a sigh of relief before being aware of the torch still searching my face.
“You can’t seem to stay away from me, can you?”, a husky voice like smooth butter comes from the figure towering above me and I freeze.
I know this voice. The voice of my recent wet dreams.
Fire eyes.
I quickly hide my face from him as I try to remember how I had gotten here.
The guard.
Where the f**k am I anyway? I look around finding unfamiliar surroundings, yards and yards of trees and bushes, and not a single house in sight. He dumped me in an unclaimed territory? s**t, all unclaimed territory belongs to the Alpha and I’m not trying to draw attention to myself at the moment.
I need to get out of here.
I hurl myself up, avoiding the torch and trying to skate away from Fire eyes.
Fire eyes chuckles, “You’re not getting away from me this time”.
“I need to go”, I say, my anger already brimming to the surface at the injustice with which the Alpha treats his people and how they’re so blindly devoted to him.
“Which house are you from?”
“It’s none of your business”, I grit out and stalk away, hearing footsteps follow me.
I am half way over the field, already sighting lights up ahead when a shadow passes by me in a flash and a foreboding figure is in front of me.
Fire eyes snarls down at me, the tint in his eyes dark and menacing, “I could do this all day”.
I stare up at him, the combination of fear and lust kicking up in my blood vessels. Why am I panting like some s*x starved hussy?
“You want to know what I am so badly? I thought you loved the chase”, I say huskily, my juices already dripping.
Fire eyes smiles, his gaze dropping to the rapidly beating pulse in my neck. He knows. He knows how turned on I am. Does he know all it will take for me to be his is just his hand around my throat?
“Well I have you cornered and right now there’s no running from me”.
I open my mouth to respond and hear rustling of bushes. We weren’t alone.
I clear my throat, shaking away the s*x haze.
“I am no one”.
“So you say, but I have encountered you three times now, no one”. His diction sounds cultured and it screams rich. He must be the son of someone in the upper class council. He seems to young to be part of the council itself, but what do I know?
A light bulb pops in my head as I examine Fire eyes who is obviously still waiting for a response from me.
No I couldn’t possibly be having that kind of thought.
A flashback from the fire roaring’kill, kill, kill’ comes back to me along with the memories from my people being killed and the way the Alpha treats the people who are obviously very devoted to him.
Everything mixes up as I stare at Fire eyes and realize something. I need to be at the mating ritual.
I need the intending Alpha to pick me, however disgustingly vain that would look to my character.
I need to get to the root of the hate for my people.
And Fire eyes is my ticket.
If he’s possibly one of those upper council class snobs, he will be close to the intending Alpha.
Fire eyes didn’t back down from my intense and I wonder what’s going on in his head, if it’s likewise with mine.
And I lie, he couldn’t see my ears, he wouldn’t know any better. “I’m an ordinary recessive wolf living under the roof of the Beta”.
- Writer
