Alpha Orion’s Wolfless Warrior

10| LOCK AND KEY

HAYLEE

“Piper, go eat something,” I begged from the other side of the door. “I’m going to be out of here soon anyway.”

“How do you plan to do that? You haven’t had anything to eat in 48 hours. How do you intend to break out of the room?” Piper cried, speaking through hiccups.

I sighed, hissing a bit at the way my fingers stung. They bled onto the floor, but I still hadn’t made any real progress.

There was no luck picking the lock. Pun intended. I had tried hairpins, hangers, even a heavy piece of metal I’d found somewhere around the room. I’d tried to unscrew the nails attached to my bed frame, but I just ended up injuring myself even more.

My eyes were droopy with lack of sleep, food, and pure exhaustion from everything.

Forty-eight hours was nothing for Mom. Knowing her, the shortest time she’d ever kept me locked up was four days. She’d throw me a bottle of water and tell me that hunger never killed anyone—especially not me. She’d tell me she was teaching me survival skills, and I had to be grateful.

It had been years since she’d done this. The last time, she’d cried for hours afterward, promising she’d never lock me up again.

Well, if there was one thing that having to be the responsible one around here had actually taught me, was that every room in this house had a flaw. We’d always had servants, but I would always have to run around with them to ‘make myself useful’. That paid off.

I took a deep breath, forcing my fogged mind to focus. Brute force wasn't going to work on a solid oak door, and my bleeding hands proved the lock was a dead end. But I didn't need to break the lock, I just needed to bypass it.

My gaze traveled over the door again. So if the lock was useless, and so was the handle…

The frame!

My eyes narrowed. The wood around the top latch looked swollen and cracked. I had seen that before. The rain had been relentless lately. Maybe I didn’t need to break the lock… I just needed to break what held it in place.

"Piper," I called out with urgency, keeping my voice low. "Is anyone down the hall?"

"N-no," Piper sniffled. "Dad is at a meeting with Orion and Alpha Ink. Mom is downstairs in the kitchen."

"Good. Listen to me carefully," I said, leaning against the cold wood. "Look down at the floor outside my door. Do you see the thin crack along the bottom molding?"

"Yeah..."

"Mom locked the deadbolt from the outside, but she forgot about the wooden stop-latch at the top of the frame," I told her, my heart racing with newfound adrenaline. "It’s old wood. The damp air from the past month weakened the frame."

I dragged my body toward the window and grabbed the heavy wooden leg of my study desk. It was loose—I had broken it months ago and never bothered fixing it.

"Piper, I need you to lean your back against the door right near the handle. Hold it still so it doesn't rattle when I apply pressure."

"Haylee, what are you going to do?" she whispered nervously.

"Physics, Pipe. I don't have muscle right now, but I have leverage."

I jammed the flat, heavy edge of the wooden desk leg into the narrow gap between the door edge and the frame, right above the latch. I wedged my feet against the base of the wall, ignored the sharp throbbing in my raw hands, and threw my full body weight onto the lever.

SNAP.

The dry, aging wood of the door stop cracked under the pressure. The latch slipped out of its groove with a loud CLICK.

The door popped open an inch.

I slumped against the frame, gasping for air as my hands trembled, but a wild smile broke across my face. My teeth was out in the air, despite the overwhelming pain I felt.

I did it!

Piper dragged the door fully open and fell on me, hugging the life out of my body.

“Oh you did that! Oh goddess, you opened it up! Oh goddess, you’re bleeding! Haylee! Haylee, please open your eyes!”

Huh?

****

“Why can’t we take her to a hospital? A certified pack doctor needs to check her. She lost blood and hasn’t eaten in days, she needs professional care. Look at her hands!” I faintly heard Piper’s voice sometime later. My eyes stayed screwed shut, no matter how I tried to open it. My head and entire body was throbbing like a motherfucker, like I’d slammed into a train.

I heard mom’s voice next, “Stop saying that. Don’t you believe in yourself? It’s all part of training. You already applied the herbs on her, and she’s quickly healing.”

Piper let out a long sigh, then started sobbing the next second. “I wish I hadn’t lied to Orion and Alpha Ink. I wish… I wish I let him take her to the hospital himself.”

Orion had been here? What did he see? What did he think?

Mom snapped at once, “And what kind of wish is that? Don’t you know he hates our family and tries everything to antagonize us? He might want to marry you, but we can all see that he only likes Haylee for some reason and wants to find any reason to prove that we’re mistreating her. And we’re not!”

“You’re not?”

She started sobbing, “She’s so stubborn, Piper… I just wanted her to learn her lesson.”

“You starved her for forty eight hours! If she hadn’t broken out of there, she’d have been starved longer!” My sister cried. “Why? What has she ever done? All this because she doesn’t have a wolf? There are other wolf-less girls scattered around packs, they don’t get treated like this, I’m sure!”

“I didn’t punish her for being wolfless. I punished her for letting Orion embarrass your father! He didn’t deserve that.”

“She doesn’t deserve this too.”

“I don’t care.” Mom finally conceded. “Just keep your mouth shut about all this, Piper. If you ever open your mouth to tell this to anyone… I’ll make sure you gave the consequences, and they’ll be bigger than whatever she just faced.”

Her footsteps sounded next, and then a door open, closed.

“f**k this. I can’t allow this. I’m telling Orion.” Piper made up her mind.

My eyes snapped open.

“Don’t.”

Piper shrieked, jumping off the edge of my bed where she sat. I smiled sadly.

“Please. I will be fine. Allow me handle this myself. Mom is right. You can’t bring Orion into our family business.” I spoke weakly.

“But he’s going to be family soon.” Piper argued.

“I know. Until then, I guess. But for now…” I weakly held out my bandaged pinky finger, “promise me you’ll not tell Orion anything. Even if he asks you anything. He can’t know what’s going on.”

Piper stared at my hand without doing anything for a long period of time. Then, after what seemed like forever, and with a tear rolling down her cheek, she extended her pinky finger too and slipped it into mine for the pact.

“I promise.”