CHAPTER 97
1350 Words
The corridor leading to the dungeon was darker than usual that night. Torches flickered low, their flames small and unsteady, casting long shadows that stretched like claws across the stone floor. The air smelled of iron, damp earth, and faint despair.
Kai walked through it anyway.
Every step echoed against the walls — slow, deliberate, heavy. The guards who saw him coming straightened instantly, their eyes flicking between one another. None dared speak. They could see it in his face — the kind of cold silence that meant he didn’t want words.
When he reached the final door, the guard standing watch hesitated before unlocking it. “Alpha,” he began cautiously, “she’s… she’s been asking to see you.”
Kai didn’t answer. He only stared at the rusted bolts until the man hurried to pull them free.
The door creaked open.
The smell hit him first — damp stone, faint blood, stale air. Then he saw her.
Elise sat against the far wall, her knees drawn close, her wrists still bound by light chains that clinked softly as she moved. Her hair hung loose around her face, dull from days without light, but her eyes… her eyes found him instantly.
“Kai.”
Her voice cracked on his name. It wasn’t a plea — not yet — but something smaller, more human. Relief, disbelief, fear, all tangled together.
He didn’t respond. He just stepped inside, the door closing behind him with a dull thud. The sound swallowed everything else.
For a long moment, neither spoke.
Then Elise pushed herself to her feet, unsteady, holding onto the wall. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
Kai’s expression didn’t change. “You asked for an audience.”
“I begged,” she corrected quietly.
He said nothing.
She took a step forward. “Please. Just listen to me, Kai. I need you to hear the truth before—before they do something we can’t undo.”
He watched her. His face was unreadable, but there was something raw in his eyes — exhaustion, maybe, or the shadow of what he was trying to bury. “The truth?” he said finally. “You’ve had weeks to speak it. Every word you said in front of the Council was denial.”
“Because I am innocent!” The words burst out of her, shaking. “I didn’t betray Archview. I didn’t betray you.”
He took a slow breath. “Then explain the reports. The messages. The witnesses who saw you meeting with border scouts.”
“They’re lies,” she said quickly. “Fabricated. I was framed.”
“By who?”
Her throat tightened. “I don’t know yet. But someone wanted me gone — someone who knows how to twist everything. They took what little evidence there was and—”
“Enough.” His tone cut through her words like a blade. “You expect me to believe that? After everything that’s happened? After what you made me do?”
“What I made you do?” Her voice rose, desperate now. “Kai, they’re turning you against me. You know me. You know what I am.”
He stepped closer. “I thought I did.”
She flinched as if he’d hit her.
His eyes flickered briefly — a moment of something like regret — but then the steel returned. “You lied to me before. You hid things. You said it was to protect me. How am I supposed to trust that this isn’t just another lie?”
“Because I never lied about us,” she whispered. “Not once. Everything else, maybe — but not you. Never you.”
Her voice trembled, but her gaze held steady, fierce in its desperation. “They’re using your guilt. They want to make you doubt everything, even yourself. Kion, Becky—”
Kai’s expression darkened. “Don’t say her name.”
“Why not?” Elise demanded. “She’s been whispering in your ear since the day I was arrested. You think I don’t know that?”
He looked away, his jaw tightening. “Becky’s the only one who’s been trying to keep this pack stable.”
Elise’s eyes widened. “Stable? By convincing you to kill me?”
Silence.
He didn’t answer.
Elise took another step forward. The chain around her wrist scraped against the stone floor. “Kai,” she said softly, almost pleading now. “Look at me. Please. If you ever meant anything that you said to me, just look at me.”
Slowly, he did.
The bond between them hummed faintly in the air — weak, strained, but alive. He could feel her pain, her confusion, her fear. He hated that it still reached him. Hated that his heart still reacted when she whispered his name.
“I never betrayed you,” she said again, quieter this time. “You of all people should know that. You used to tell me you could sense when I lied — so tell me, Kai. Do you feel it now?”
The silence stretched. His throat worked, but no sound came.
For one terrible second, he almost believed her. Almost.
But then he remembered the reports, the blood, the chaos that followed her arrest. The way his own people had looked at him with disappointment, as though love had made him blind.
He stepped back.
“I can’t do this,” he said quietly.
“Kai—”
“Stop.” His voice cracked, raw around the edges. “If I stay here, I’ll start doubting everything again. I’ll start… believing you.”
She reached out instinctively, her fingers brushing the air between them. “Then believe me. Just once more.”
He turned away.
Her voice broke. “Don’t you see what they’re doing to you? They’re using your love for me to destroy you.”
Kai’s hands clenched at his sides. “Then maybe that love was the mistake.”
The words hit her like a blow.
She stood frozen, her heart tearing itself apart from the inside. “You don’t mean that.”
He didn’t look back. “It doesn’t matter what I mean anymore.”
The chain clinked as she moved toward him, desperate. “Please, don’t walk away. You said I was yours, that nothing would—”
“Don’t.” His tone dropped to a whisper, but it was final. “Don’t remind me.”
Her breath caught. “Then this is it? You’re going to let them kill me?”
He stopped by the door. “If I believed there was even a chance you were innocent…” He trailed off, eyes closing for a brief, tortured moment. “But I can’t see it anymore.”
Her voice cracked through the silence. “Then you’re not the man I loved.”
He flinched — barely, but enough.
The guard outside shifted, waiting for his cue.
Kai turned slightly, his face hidden in shadow. “May the Moon forgive us both,” he said, and walked out.
The door shut behind him with a heavy clang that seemed to shake the walls.
For a long time, Elise didn’t move. Her knees weakened, her breath shallow and unsteady. The silence pressed down like a weight.
Then she sank slowly to the ground, her chains pooling beside her.
She stared at the spot where he’d stood moments ago, the sound of his retreating footsteps still echoing faintly. Every beat of her heart felt like a wound.
Her voice came out small, trembling. “He’s really gone.”
She tried to hold herself together, but the tears came anyway — slow, shaking sobs that echoed softly through the cell.
Outside, in the corridor above, a faint figure stood in the shadows. Becky.
Her lips curved into a faint, satisfied smile as she turned away, the hem of her cloak brushing against the floor.
Everything was falling exactly into place.
And below, Elise broke silently — the sound of her heart cracking the only thing left alive in the cold stone air.
- Writer
