Kidnapped by the Werewolf Mafioso

Chapter Four

AKIKO

The Moon Mother's light falls wrong through glass too clean to be real.

I count my heartbeats—one hundred forty-three, one hundred forty-four—before opening my eyes fully. Sister Evangeline taught me to always assess before moving. The dead can't learn from their mistakes, child.

Except Sister Evangeline is dead. Bullets through her skull while Liu soldiers dragged me from my cell. The memory tastes like copper pennies and betrayal.

My body feels like someone took it apart and reassembled it using the wrong instructions. Everything aches in ways the convent's disciplines never achieved. Not the clean pain of penance but something deeper—marrow-deep changes that make my bones sing unfamiliar frequencies.

A man sleeps in a chair beside the bed. White-blond hair catches moonlight like snow on pine branches. His position speaks of exhaustion—head tilted at an angle that will leave his neck screaming, one hand stretched toward me like he fell asleep reaching. Dark circles bruise the skin beneath his eyes.

Giancarlo Morelli. The name surfaces with a rush of sense-memory. His teeth in my throat. Blood shared between us like unholy communion. The auction platform slick with Liu soldiers he carved apart for the right to claim me.

I should kill him while he sleeps. Sister Evangeline's voice whispers tactics through my mind—the carotid artery lies two inches below the jaw, just behind the sternocleidomastoid muscle. My hand won't obey. Something pulls tight in my chest when I try, like fishing line threaded through my ribs.

The bond. That's what he called it before I burned alive from the inside out.

"You're awake." A woman's voice, soft with relief. She emerges from shadows I hadn't noticed, carrying the scent of herbs and old magic. Not quite human—something Other bleeding through the edges. "I'm Isabella. Gianni's cousin. I've been caring for you."

Gianni. Familiar nickname for a stranger who owns me now.

I try to speak but my throat clicks dry as August prayers. She pours water from a pitcher that looks expensive. Crystal so pure it makes the Moon Mother's light fracture into rainbows.

"Small sips," Isabella instructs. "Your system is still adjusting."

The water was revitalizing. Clean in ways that make me realize I've been drinking filtered poison for seventeen years. My body craves more but she pulls the glass away, doctor's authority in the gesture.

"I need..." My voice sounds like I've been gargling gravel. "Bathroom."

"Of course." She moves to help me stand.

My legs have forgotten their purpose. The first attempt sends me crashing back onto silk sheets that feel like clouds made solid. The second attempt, Isabella catches me, surprisingly strong for someone built like a porcelain saint.

"Three days of fever," she explains, supporting most of my weight. "Your muscles need to remember how to work."

Three days. Seventy-two hours of lost time while my body rebuilt itself around his bite. I catalog the changes as we shuffle toward a door that belongs in museums, not bedrooms. Enhanced hearing picks up his heartbeat, steady and slow in sleep. My vision cuts sharper through darkness, reading details that should be invisible. And underneath it all, that pull toward him—magnetic north realigned to point at a stranger.

The bathroom defeats me.

Not physically—though my legs shake like newborn colts. It's the excess that breaks my brain. Marble floors heated from below. A tub carved from single stone that could hold six bodies. Gilt fixtures that belong on altars, not sinks. Mirror walls that reflect my confusion back in infinite iterations.

"Too much?" Isabella reads my paralysis.

"The convent had a communal shower. Thirty girls. Cold water except on feast days." I touch the golden faucet, half-expecting it to burn like false idols should. "This is..."

"Obscene?" She smiles, tired but genuine. "Welcome to the Morelli standard of living. Everything the best, everything excessive, everything designed to remind visitors exactly who holds power."

She helps me manage basic functions with clinical efficiency. No judgment for weakness, no pity for my fumbling with fixtures that might as well be alien technology. The toilet has more buttons than our entire weapons cache.

"He hasn't left that chair in three days," Isabella says as she helps me back to bed. "Marco tried to convince him to sleep properly. Nearly lost fingers for the suggestion."

I study his sleeping form with new data. Three days of vigil while I burned through transformation. The bond pulses with awareness of his proximity, his exhaustion, his... concern? The emotion feels foreign, translated through connection I don't understand.

"Why?" The question encompasses everything. Why take me. Why claim me. Why guard me like something precious instead of just another omega to break and breed.

Isabella settles me back in bed with practiced movements. "That's a question for him. Though knowing my cousin, you might not like the answer." She checks my temperature with hands that glow faintly green. "98.6. Finally human standard."

"I'm not human."

"None of us are, dear. But we pretend for tax purposes." She pulls a blanket over me—cashmere soft as sin. "Are you hungry?"

My stomach clenches at the thought. "Yes."

"Good. Appetite means healing. I'll have food sent up." She pauses at the door. "He can be... intense. But he's not cruel without purpose. Remember that when you want to kill him."

She leaves me alone with my sleeping captor. The Moon Mother's light tracks across floors that cost more than lives in the world I knew. I count his breaths—steady, deep, occasionally catching on dreams I can almost taste through the bond. Violence and worry mixed into something I lack words for.

My legs still work enough to stand if I hold the headboard. Everything in reach becomes potential weapon through habit. Letter opener on the nightstand—silver, sharp, balanced for throwing. Lamp base heavy enough to crush skulls. Even the sheets, twisted right, could serve as garrote.

But the bond won't let me arm myself against him. Each thought of violence makes my chest constrict, phantom pain that tastes like betrayal. My body has turned traitor, aligned with his despite my mind's protests.

I make it three steps before my knees buckle. He moves before I hit marble, wolf-fast despite exhaustion. His arms catch me, pull me against chest that smells like winter pine and expensive cologne masking blood.

"Stubborn," he murmurs, voice rough with sleep. "Good."

"Let go." But my body melts into his hold, recognizing safety my mind rejects.

"No." Simple as that. He carries me back to bed like I weigh nothing, sets me down gentle as handling spun glass. "Isabella said you'd wake today. How do you feel?"

"Like someone replaced my bones with molten silver." Truth spills easier than it should. "Everything hurts. Everything's wrong. I can hear your heartbeat from across the room."

"The bond changes us both." He settles back in his chair, maintaining distance now that I'm conscious. "Your senses will stabilize. The pain will fade. But the connection..." He touches his chest where I bit him. "That's permanent."

"I didn't agree to permanent."

"No," he acknowledges. "You didn't."

Honesty where I expected lies. The convent taught me to navigate deception, to recognize the honeyed words of devils pretending salvation. This blunt admission leaves me wrong-footed.

"You bought me." Not accusation—fact requiring clarification.

"I claimed you. Different transaction." His eyes track my movements with predator focus. "The auction was theater. I would have taken you regardless of bidding outcomes."

"Why?"

He considers the question longer than it deserves. "Because my wolf recognized you. Because Chicago needs what you'll become. Because..." He shrugs, elegant despite exhaustion. "Because I was empty before I saw you fight through sedatives on that platform. You bit handlers trying to sell you. Magnificent."

Magnificent. The word sits strange on my tongue. The convent found me willful, dangerous, requiring constant correction. He finds the same traits magnificent.

"I'll try to escape."

"I know."

"I'll probably try to kill you."

"You're welcome to attempt it." He smiles, sharp as his knives. "Though the bond will make that... complicated."

As if summoned by mention, the bond pulses. Not pain this time but awareness—his exhaustion bleeding through, the ache in his neck from sleeping upright, the gnawing worry that I'd burn out instead of stabilizing. Emotions that aren't mine coloring my perception.

"I hate this," I tell him.

"I know that too." He stands, stretches like the predator he is. "Food will arrive soon. Eat. Rest. Tomorrow Marco wants to test your combat skills."

"Why?"

"Because you're not prisoner or property, whatever you think. You're Pack now. We protect our own, but we also expect contribution." He heads for the door, pauses. "The bathroom connects to a closet. Isabella stocked it with clothes that should fit. The locks on the door only work from inside—you control who enters."

Control. The word feels false as prayer promises. But having a door I can lock... that's something.

He leaves without goodbye. I listen to his footsteps fade, count them to learn the layout. Twenty-three steps to what sounds like another door. His heartbeat grows distant but never disappears entirely—the bond maintaining awareness across distance.

Food arrives on carts pushed by silent staff who smell human-adjacent. They don't meet my eyes, don't speak beyond necessary. Fear-scent clings to them but not the terror I expected. Cautious respect, like approaching shrine maidens who might curse or bless depending on mood.

The spread defeats me more than the bathroom. Foods I lack names for, arrangements too beautiful to disturb. Fruit cut into flowers. Meat so tender it falls apart at touch. Bread still warm from ovens that must exist somewhere in this tower of excess.

I eat carefully, testing each flavor. The convent fed us twice daily—nutrition bars in the morning, protein mash at night. This symphony of taste and texture makes my enhanced senses spiral. Everything too much, too rich, too far from the aesthetic suffering that shaped me.

But I'm hungry. Starving in ways that go beyond food. My body craves fuel to finish whatever transformation his bite started. I eat until my stomach hurts, drink water that tastes like nothing and everything.

My legs work better with food in me. I make it to the closet Isabella mentioned, find another impossibility. Clothes that cost more than the convent's buildings. Silk and cashmere and fabrics I can't identify. All black or gray or white—someone understood I'd never wear colors. Everything in my size, which means they measured me while I burned.

I choose the simplest options. Soft pants that move like water. Shirt that doesn't restrict motion. The underwear confuses me—too many options, all seeming decorative rather than functional. I settle for what covers most.

A knock interrupts my catalog of escape routes disguised as closet exploration.

"It's open," I call, testing the theory about locks.

Isabella enters carrying medical supplies. "Good, you ate. How are your pain levels?"

"Manageable." Lying seems pointless when she can probably smell deception.

"On a scale where zero is no pain and ten is being skinned alive?"

Specific scale. "Six."

"That's actually excellent for day three." She gestures for me to sit, begins checking vitals with tools that look borrowed from science fiction. "Your healing rate is remarkable. Most wolves take a week to stabilize after mate bonding."

"I'm not most wolves."

"No," she agrees. "You're something altogether different. Your bloodwork shows markers I've never seen. Kitsune genetics are rare enough, but yours..." She trails off.

"But mine?"

"Show signs of active evolution. Like your DNA is rewriting itself to accommodate power that shouldn't fit in one body." She meets my eyes. "Whatever your mother hid in you, it's waking up."

The ninth tail. Memory surfaces through fever dreams—my mother's last words before Harrison handed her to torturers. "When you're ready, my heart. When you're strong enough to survive what we are."

I'm not ready. Not strong enough. But ready or not, it's coming.

Isabella finishes her examination, packs tools with efficient movements. "Rest tonight. Tomorrow will bring its own challenges."

She leaves me with the Moon Mother's light and too many thoughts. I should pray—seventeen years of habit demand it. But the words stick in my throat like lies. The Moon Mother didn't save Sister Evangeline. Didn't stop the auction. Didn't prevent the white wolf's teeth from rewriting my existence.

I curl into silk sheets that smell like him, hate how my body relaxes into the scent. The bond hums constant awareness—he's in his office two floors up, signing death warrants with the same hands that caught me falling.

My eyes close without permission. My body demands rest to finish becoming whatever his bite started. In dreams, my mother teaches me to burn, and somewhere between heartbeats, a ninth tail waits patient as eternity for its moment to emerge.