The Scream In The Photo
1680 Words
The walls breathe.
Not wind. Not stone settling.
Breathing.
I sit on the cot and listen to it. The camera in the corner blinks red. Once. Twice. Counting my heartbeats. The war room cell is cold enough that I can see my breath. But the sound is not coming from me.
It is coming from behind the wall.
Low. Measured. Like something massive is asleep and dreaming of blood.
The photograph is burned into my eyes. The girl with the collar. Silver. Spelled. Screaming.
Screaming his name.
Damon.
My throat hurts just thinking it. I do not know why. I have never said it before. I have never seen him before the auction.
Have I?
The door unlocks. No knock. No warning.
Damon steps in. He fills the cell without trying. His suit is gone. Black shirt. Black pants. No jacket. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows. His forearms are marked. Scars. Old. Tactical.
He holds a file. Not the one from the war room. New. Thicker.
He does not look at the cot. He looks at the wall where the breathing came from. His jaw tightens.
“You heard it,” he says.
It is not a question.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Not your problem.” He tosses the file onto the cot. It lands beside me. “Open it.”
I do not move. “Why am I in a cell?”
“Because you are safer here than anywhere else in my Throne.”
“Safe from what?”
His eyes cut to mine. “From the people who paid Marcus to keep you alive.”
The words hit like ice water.
“Marcus wanted me dead,” I say.
“Marcus wants money,” Damon says. “He was paid to sell you. Not kill you. Not yet.”
He nods to the file. “Look.”
I open it.
Inside are transfer records. Bank codes. Numbers. Dates.
One line is circled in red.
Payment from: Obsidian Throne Royal Account.
Payment to: Frostbane Pack, Alpha Marcus.
Amount: 10,000,000.
Note: For custody of Asset L47. Keep alive. Keep silent.
My blood goes cold.
“Obsidian Throne,” I whisper. “Your account.”
“Not mine,” Damon says. His voice is steel. “My father’s. From ten years ago.”
The day my parents died.
“The day of the war,” I say.
Damon nods once. “The day someone in this fortress paid to make you disappear. And paid to make sure you were not killed.”
“Why?”
“That,” he says, “is why you are breathing.”
He steps closer. Too close. The rain on mountain rock scent is stronger here. It crawls under my skin and wakes the empty place in my chest. It throbs. Once. Hard.
He sees it. His eyes drop to my sternum. Then back to my face.
“Your wolf,” he says. “When did it start doing that?”
“In the car,” I say. “When you said my name.”
Something dark moves behind his eyes. Not surprise. Confirmation.
A siren cuts through the stone. One note. Long. Low.
Damon’s head snaps up. He is at the door in two strides. He hits the panel. A screen slides down from the ceiling.
Camera feed. The outer gate.
A body lies in the snow. Guard uniform. Black. Throat cut.
Pinned to his chest is a note. Paper. Old. The words are written in red.
Damon reads it. His face does not change. But the air does. The temperature drops. The scent of rain on mountain rock turns to ice.
He hits the panel again. “Kira.”
The speaker crackles. “Your Majesty.”
“Lock the fortress. No one in. No one out. Full sweep. Level Black.”
“Level Black,” Kira repeats. Her voice is tight. “Sir, that is war protocol.”
“I know what it is,” Damon says.
The screen goes dark.
He turns to me. “Stay here.”
“Not a chance,” I say.
His eyes narrow. “That was not a request.”
“I am not a soldier,” I say. “You do not command me.”
“I bought you,” he says. Flat. Final.
“For one dollar,” I say. “I am worthless. Remember?”
“You are not worthless,” he says. “You are evidence.”
Of what, he does not say.
He opens the cell door. He walks out. He expects me to stay.
I follow.
He stops in the hall. He does not look back. “Go back inside, Elira.”
“No.”
He turns. Slowly. The look in his eyes should have killed me. “You do not understand what is happening.”
“Then explain it.”
“I do not owe you.”
“Answers,” I finish. “I know. You keep saying that. But you brought me here. You showed me the photograph. You told me someone paid to keep me alive. Now there is a dead guard at your gate. So either you start talking, or I start walking.”
We stare at each other. The cell, the fortress, the dead guard. None of it matters for three seconds. Only this.
He moves first. Not to me. To the wall. He hits another panel. A drawer opens. He pulls out a blade. Black. Curved. Old.
He holds it out to me. Hilt first.
“Take it,” he says.
I do. It is heavier than it looks. The metal is cold. There are runes carved into the steel. I cannot read them.
“My father’s,” Damon says. “He carried it the day he died.”
“Why are you giving it to me?”
“Because the note on the guard said this.” Damon’s voice is dead. “You cannot keep what was never yours, King.”
He steps closer. “They are coming for you. And I do not know if it is to kill you or to take you back.”
“Back where?”
He does not answer. He looks at the blade in my hand. Then at my throat. At the burn the collar left.
“The girl in the photograph,” he says. Quiet. “She was not screaming for help.”
I know.
“She was screaming a warning.”
My hand tightens on the blade.
“Say my name again,” he says.
It is not a command. It is not heat. It is something else. Something raw.
I do not say it.
But the empty place in my chest does.
A throb. Low. Deep. Like a wolf with no voice trying to howl.
Damon.
His eyes flare. Not gold. Not wolf. Something older. Something that matches the breathing in the walls.
The lights go out.
Emergency blue floods the halls. One second we are staring at each other. The next we are in shadow.
The speaker crackles. Kira’s voice. Urgent. “Sir. East wing. Breach.”
Damon moves. He grabs my arm. Not hard. Not gentle. Tactical. He pulls me with him. Down the hall. Away from the cell. Toward the sound.
“You said stay,” I say.
“I changed my mind,” he says. “If they want you, they go through me first.”
“Why?”
He does not answer. We turn a corner.
A guard lies on the floor. Not dead. Unconscious. His neck is bruised. Not cut.
Damon crouches. He checks the pulse. “Alive.”
He stands. He looks at me. At the blade in my hand. At the way I am holding it. Not scared. Ready.
“Who taught you to hold a knife like that?” he asks.
“No one,” I say. “Fourteen years in a cage teaches you things.”
He nods once. Like he believes me. Like he also does not.
Another crash echoes. Farther down the hall.
Damon steps in front of me. His back is to the sound. His body is between me and whatever is coming.
“Kira,” he says into his comm. “Position.”
“Two halls east,” she says. “Three targets. Not pack. No scent. Tech masks.”
“Human?” Damon asks.
“Or worse,” Kira says.
Damon looks at me. “Stay behind me. If I tell you to run, you run. Do not look back. Do not stop. There is a tunnel under the war room. It leads to the mountains. Kira will find you.”
“I am not leaving,” I say.
“You are if I say you are,” he says. “You are an asset, Elira. Not a soldier.”
“Then stop treating me like one,” I snap. “You gave me a blade. You showed me the photo. You told me someone paid to keep me alive. Stop half-truthing me to death.”
He stares at me. For a second, I think he will shut me down. Throw me back in the cell.
Instead, he says, “The girl in the photo was five. You were collared that day. My wolf died that day.”
“I know.”
“What you do not know,” he says, “is that I was there.”
The world stops.
“You were there,” I repeat.
“In the room,” he says. “When they put the collar on you.”
“And?”
“And you were not screaming for me,” he says. “You were screaming at me.”
The empty place in my chest splits open.
“What did I say?” I whisper.
Damon opens his mouth.
The breathing inside the walls stops.
For the first time since I arrived, the fortress is completely silent.
Damon goes white.
“No,” he says.
Somewhere inside the Throne, something wakes up.
And it knows my name.
- Writer
