A Spiritual's Mark

Chapter 3: Trapped

-Phoenix-

Those screams. I had heard a lot of screams. I had screamed a lot myself. Though I didn’t really scream anymore. But when I was younger I did. When I was trapped like this, I did. When I was being tortured and broken … but the queen’s screams were something else. I had heard others’ screams as well, both from people I had tortured and who had been tortured like me. I had heard so many different kinds, but nothing compared to the queen’s. It turned my blood to ice, almost scared me, even though I could no longer feel anything. It was close to penetrating my dead heart. How long had I been listening to it? Days? Weeks? I had lost all sense of time in this place. Whatever this place was, but of course, I wasn’t alone. I had Chris Adler here with me. In a way I wished I hadn’t. I had learned long ago a way to go deep into my mind, into a safe place, where nothing can touch me. It was kind of hard going to that place, when the male chatted away, not wanting to shut up. I could kind of see why he had been beaten so hard and tortured. He simply wouldn’t stop talking.

“Tell me about my sister again,” he said.

I sighed, opening my eyes. I had been so close. Just needed a little more time to find that bliss. It was what mind control could do. I had practiced it for years.

“I told you, I only heard the rumors about her.”

“Yes, but how is she doing?” he asked, leaning his back against the bars.

He was closer to the small light in the hallway now, so I could better see him. He had healed quite a lot, which told me some time had passed. But he was still black and blue all over, because they had come to get him a few times, putting him through more of the torture. I wasn’t sure they did it only because he knew how to piss them off, or because his father had ordered it. Maybe they tried to turn him too, but I couldn’t see exactly what they would gain from it. Trapping the queen in her wolf by using unimaginable pain, turning her into nothing but an animal, would change everything for Connor. It was an old torturing method used back hundreds of years ago, that, of course, wasn’t allowed today. It could just end up killing the queen too, and if she survived it … well, she would no longer be her anymore and there was no coming back from it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Fine, I guess.”

I wasn’t the biggest talker, but Chris knew how to push me into talking to him. I didn’t really blame him. We all coped differently, and since he had been trapped here listening to the queen’s scream for months, I could understand he needed the distraction.

“I was in a coma after she got k*dnapped.”

“K*dnapped?!”

“Don’t worry, the f*cker was taken care of, I heard. He worked with your dad. He was just a way to distract Hunter, I believed.”

“F*ck!” he said. “But she is doing okay now?”

“I believe so. I … I didn’t stick around after I woke up.”

“Why not?” he asked. “Everywhere is better than here.”

A small smile played on his lips, as he turned his head, so he could look at me better. I sighed, not wanting to discuss why I had taken off. I just didn’t want to think about her, even though just the thought of her brought me relief in a way I had not felt before. She was so beautiful with her completely white hair and clear water-blue eyes. She could be the Goddess herself, so beautiful she was, and now I carried her mark. I reached up to my shoulder, rubbing the mark that was hidden beneath my black and bloody t-shirt.

“Like the Goddess,” I whispered.

“Huh? What did you say?” Chris asked.

I shook my head, as I continued to stay cloaked in the dark corner.

“Nothing.”

“What do you know about everyone else?” he asked. “I’m guessing Valerio lost the trail.”

“I heard a rumor he had been brought back home, and, in his anger, he finally punished the council.”

Chris sat up straighter now, looking like he was very interested.

“Did he dissolve it?!” he asked, sounding excited.

“I … I don’t know.”

I was not the type to listen to gossip, but it was hard not to pick up a few things, since it was all the wolves could talk about.

“I hope he did. We should never have formed the council like the old one was formed. We should have made it different,” he said.

I could only agree. The one in England wasn’t that much better. Old males holding onto old ways, because it gave them power, but it was the wrong people who had this kind of power. Now at least the king had gotten some control back, but I also knew he had formed the council in order not to lose his power. So I wondered how he was going to make everyone happy without losing everything too. Goddess I was glad I wasn’t king, I thought.

“They still take care of her, right?” he asked.

“Are we back to your sister?” I asked, but the pained look in his eyes told me that was a yes. “I believe so.”

“She has always been my priority,” he told me. “I had to protect her from our father. There was barely any room to shelter my mother too. I put all my energy into protecting Speedy, shielding her from the damage I knew he could do.”

“Speedy?”

“Old nickname, forget it,” he said, as he looked away. “I just … I knew that he could change her into her. He did it to me. He did it to my mother. I was barely eighteen when I started helping Valerio. He had been fighting to get his home back, since he was fifteen, and when I joined, I was so scared out of my mind. I had never killed before, but I could hear my father’s words in my head, telling me he hadn’t raised a coward, and he would make a soldier of me. A real alpha, but I just got damaged. Like the rest. It took us so many years to get close enough to the old council, until we one day had almost all of them all in the same spot, killing them. I swear there was blood all the way up to the ceiling of that room we had cornered them in. I couldn’t go home after that. I couldn’t even face my sister, and more importantly, I had found another family. A real one. I hated I wasn’t there for her, but I tried protecting her even from me. I knew she could see through the cracks. She wouldn’t recognize me. She has always been my weakness, and now that my father has no use for her, I know he will kill her …”

“She carries the future heirs. Maybe he will spare her,” I said, not really believing it.

“No, those kids he won’t see as anything but betrayal. Just like he will with mine. I wanted to be better. I wanted to be there for my son, but soon he won’t have a father anymore. I shouldn’t have left.”

“Then why did you?” I asked.

“Because I once had the chance to end it all, but I couldn’t. He still held power over me. I thought it was enough just to remove myself from power, but he made sure to know I would regret that, and I sure as hell do. Maybe everything would have been different, had I decided to get mated to Maddy, but I also know that it wouldn’t have changed much. My father would still have found a way to remove the queen, and he would just have found a way to get more power anyway. I had to put a stop to it. I had to fix this sh*t, and I was even close,” he told me.

“How close?”

“Close enough to have my hands wrapped around his throat,” he told me, looking over his shoulder and smiling.

“What happened? Hesitated again?”

He shook his head.

“No, I was going to end him, but he always got a backup plan. He pulled out the one thing that would make me let go of him. He brought out my mother, his beta had a gun to her head, threatening to kill her if I didn’t let go,” he told me.

“F*ck …”

He nodded.

“Yeah. So, I let go. The sight of my mother, she looked so broken. No real bruises on her, but I could see she hadn’t been eating. There was just a shell of a person in front of me. I am still not sure what my father did to her. He liked to keep her submissive, but this was different … I don’t know, maybe he finally gave her to the others, let them have their way with her, as he liked to threaten me with.”

“He threatened with letting the other pack members r*pe your mother?” I asked, thinking I had heard everything and seen everything.

Chris just shrugged.

“He knew where to strike. Knew where to hurt me. Always my sister and my mother. My two weakest spots. After I got off him, he just started to beat me into the ground. My mother closed her eyes, but didn’t make a sound. She didn’t even fight back, she just listened to it all and then I was dragged away half conscious,” he told me.

“You failed,” I said.

He whipped his head around, looking at me shocked.

“He had someone hold a gun to my mother’s head!” he said.

“Yes, and if you had really wished to end it all, you wouldn’t have let it stop you.”

“She is MY mother!” he empathized.

“And?”

“What kind of sick f*ck are you?” he asked.

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t really see me.

“A very sick one,” I said.

“You don’t f*cking say. You would have sacrificed your own mother?” he asked me.

I looked straight at him, but our eyes weren’t locking, because he couldn’t really see me. I knew if he could see me, just the sight of the cold look in my eyes would scare him.

“I killed my mother,” I told him.