Alphess: An Angel of Death

Jailbird

As it turned out, being a prisoner in Skyfall wasn’t terrible. I thought for sure they would drag me out of my cell and stand me in front of the Wolf’s Council the very next day. Instead, a few days dragged into weeks. I spent my time in my small cell considering what I would say the day Skyfall finally did turn me into the Council. I also thought about what I would do should my mate actually live in this pack. What I would do if I came across him. I still kept my scent hidden, so at least it wouldn’t be instant if we brushed paths. Maybe I could make it out of here without seeing him at all. Sometimes I thought about that too – how I may engineer an escape. But it was fruitless, really. I doubted I’d make it further than the front lawn of the pack house.

There wasn’t much down here to entertain me other than my own thoughts. All I had to pass the time with was a small, rickety-framed bed with a lumpy mattress, a stainless-steel toilet bowl and a small sink. They had given me a pair of soft leggings and a plain blue t-shirt to wear, so at least I didn’t have to remain in wolf form or remain naked. There were no windows down here, so the only light came from the dimly glowing orange lanterns every few feet on the ceiling. The one a few cells down flickered constantly, which had grated on my nerves the first couple days but slowly filtered into the background. I heard much more than I saw down here. I could hear the pipes creaking, water when it trickled through them. I could hear the drizzle of rain from above, and sometimes I could hear when wolves passed by. If I strained, I imagined I could make out cars driving up the gravel of the vast driveway to the pack house. I heard scurries of rodents in the dark crevices of the prison.

Each day, I received one tray of food. It usually consistently of some type of fruit (banana, apple and grapes turned up in the rotation), a granola bar, a sandwich and sometimes an extra portion of some kind of protein. For prison food, it was actually quite generous. I had expected scraps leftover from the pack dinner, but it always seemed freshly prepared. It also came with two water bottles. It took me a couple of days before I realized it, but the water was tainted. It had a slight bitter after taste that I first chalked up to mineral in the water. But one day, it was a little heavy handed and I could smell the flower that had been dried and crushed and added to the water. Wolfsbane. Skyfall was clever, I’d give them that. They were using a microdose of wolfsbane every day to poison me. Not enough to kill me, not enough to even make me really sick. But enough to make me weak. It explained why I felt fatigued all the time. I had chalked it up to boredom. I tested myself after that discovery. I still had fast reflexes, could shift with ease and seemed ready to fight at a moment’s notice. But my head was cloudy, and it seemed harder to focus. I started pouring one water bottle out and refilling it from the sink after that. I still drank one. Not so that I was weak, not so I was playing along with their ruse. But because it seemed a good time as any to try to build an immunity to the poisonous plant every werewolf dreaded. In all honesty, I didn’t know if it was entirely possible to do so, but the small dose every day wasn’t proving enough to do damage thus far, so I figured I’d experiment.

I actually became quite bored with the monotony, and over time, it seemed that my guards did too. I could hear them chattering down the long hallway, on the other side of the iron door. At first, they were hyped up. They hadn’t had a prisoner in ages, I gathered, so this was the most exciting thing that had happened to them in recent time. Most packs had young warriors-in-training as their prison guards, something a senior warrior would rarely deign to do. Skyfall was no exception, based on the childish chatter between them. There were four in total, rotating between two in the daytime and two at nighttime. Always the same four – I came to know their voices quite well and as I listened, I learned more and more about them.

The day duo were pretty good friends, it seemed. One was named Isaac and the other Jace. They ribbed on each other a lot and chattered about the females in the pack (both were unmated). Sometimes they discussed training tactics and sometimes they talked about food or television shows or, rarely, their families. I learned Isaac was fond of a young woman named Eileen but didn’t think he stood a chance. She was Highborn, and he was from a middle-of-the-road family. His parents were the owners of a taproom in town, whereas Eileen was the gamma’s cousin’s child. It was interesting, because I assumed they were of mating age by now. Wouldn’t Isaac already know if Eileen were his mate? Warriors started training around 16 or 17, usually. They had to be at least that old if they were down here with me. Perhaps Eileen was still too young, yet? The answer came around day 6 or 7 (honestly, I’d lost count, what was the use?) when it was revealed that Isaac had only ever spoken to her twice when they were merely pups. Apparently, he had been keen on her since then, but they had gone to separate schools due to their status difference and Isaac didn’t quite have the nerve to stay in the same room as the girl for longer than a couple seconds. It was pure and sweet in its innocence. Jace on the other hand seemed content to live his bachelor life for now, ogling women and focusing on his training. He was a simple spirit with humble pursuits. I felt like in another life, I might have enjoyed their company.

The night crew was different. They didn’t talk nearly as much, and when they did it was within the confines of professionalism. They discussed their earlier training, politely asked how each other’s family was doing, and even stooped low enough to comment on the weather. It took me several days to learn their names, they so seldom called each other by them. In fact, it was only at the changing of the guard did I learn them, when Isaac and Jace called down to them. They were called Tyler and Raj, and they didn’t seem to get along. They had started their shifts disgruntled, complaining about having been partnered up. They never spoke about why they disliked each other, and Jace and Isaac were too unaware of the situation to comment on it either. Tyler and Raj presented a mystery, which I may have wanted to solve had I not fallen asleep most of the time they were around.

Neither pair came near me more than they absolutely had to. In fact, I only saw them a handful of times. They usually weren’t even the ones to deliver my meals. That job fell to the black wolf with the scar on his cheek that had been in the original scuffle. I learned he was the Colonel of the Skyfall Pack Army – in werewolf terms, that was second-in-command of the pack’s warriors. My guards always got nervous and timid when he was around and stuttered out ‘Colonel Jacobs’ and he would gruffly give them a reply. It was also through him that I came to realize my identity wasn’t as inconspicuous as I thought. Sometime around week 2, maybe 3, the colonel stopped after shoving the tray through the little flap at the bottom edge of my cell.

He straightened up and smirked at me instead of turning to go immediately as he usually did. “The Alpha will be home soon,” he stated. “And I am sure he will find it very interesting that you’re here.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, looking up from where I was perched on the bed. I was momentarily surprised at how croaky my voice was. Guess a couple weeks of disuse would do that.

His smirk grew into a smug grin. “Hayden Cromwell, returning to Olympia after all this time? Its sure to pique his interest.”

I felt my blood run cold. He knew who I was. The growing hope I had had that Skyfall would let me off for good behavior down here was diminished with a single sentence. If the Alpha knew who I was, he would know of my crimes. He would know the Council has been waiting for me for almost a decade. Waiting for me to trip up again, to show my face here, so they could eliminate me once and for all.  I turned my head away from him so he couldn’t see my face, so he couldn’t see the fear there. “How do you know who I am?”

“It was obvious. You have the Army mark of an Olympian warrior, but three perfect scars over it. Only one female warrior has been banished from Olympia in the last few decades, and that’s you.”

I ground my teeth together. Of course. When I had shifted in the middle of the fight, I had revealed all of my cards. And my body. The warriors on that patrol all would have seen the Olympian crest branded on my left ribcage, a minimalistic mountain range with a crescent moon above it on the left. The whole thing was encased in a circle, with the moon and three stars forming part of the circle’s line on the top. It was the mark of a warrior that had completed their final training and had been inducted as a full-fledged member of the Army. I had just gotten the brand only months before being exiled from the Olympia pack. The day I was banished, General Keller dipped his claws into silver and ripped them over my skin across the brand. The wound would heal, but the silver would make sure it scarred. Everyone would know where I had come from and that I had been cast out. “Your Alpha,” I said, turning to look at those green eyes. “Does he want me dead then?”

“Only time will tell,” the colonel said ruefully. He didn’t say anything else but stared at me a moment longer before turning and leaving.

I stared after him until his footsteps were long gone and Isaac and Jace started to murmur to one another again. My heartbeat slowed down and I settled back on the mattress, staring up at the dank ceiling. I had hoped that if I didn’t make a disturbance, didn’t try to attack anyone or escape, that maybe Skyfall would let me go. If they thought I was of little consequence to them, they might have. But now they knew I was a high-ticket item in the eyes of the Council. That’d be a trade they couldn’t afford to give up.

-x-

            A few more days passed, and I began to almost grow complacent again. The Alpha had returned the day after Colonel Jacobs had spoken to me. I knew this because my guards were abuzz with the information. It seemed the Alpha had been visiting a pack in northern Oregon for quite some time. None of them had the answer as to why, or at the very least, didn’t say it out loud so I could hear. It was interesting though – I’d been here several weeks, and he had been away this whole time. Not many Alphas left for that long. But that didn’t matter much to me right now. What mattered was that it had been a few days and he had not come to confront me. Did he not care that he had me in a cell? Was he organizing for the Council to come here to retrieve me? Was he simply having a grave dug so he could kill me and then bury me quietly? It grated on my nerves to have nothing to do but sit here and wait. It was agonizing. I listened to the inane chatter of my guards like usual, trying to decipher anything of use to me. Nothing came up. I fell asleep half-irritated and half-worried.

            Waking up the next morning was entirely different. It was the first exciting thing to happen to me since being down here. The iron door at the end of the hallway burst open, slamming into the stone wall with so much force it upset dust along the ceiling. I jolted awake and flung myself off of bed into a defensive crouch, instantly on high alert. My eyes adjusted quickly to the semi-darkness again and I saw three tall figures making their way to me. One was Colonel Jacobs, and the other two I had not met before. Judging by the power radiating off of the one leading the way, I guessed the Alpha finally had come to meet me. I shifted to stand upright and crossed my arms, waiting for them. I took a deep breath in, and that’s when it hit me. The entire corridor had been flooded with the most amazing scent – a mixture of cardamom, pine and the forest just after its rained. Earthy, rich, warm; slightly spicy with a finishing note of sweet. I could breathe it in all day long for the rest of my life and not get tired of it. The scent had my head spinning even more than the wolfsbane, but I embraced it, wanted more of it, craved it. I had to hold back a moan as the source of it drew nearer with every step.

            I looked up to view the man the heavenly aroma came from. I drank him in like I had never seen a man before. He was tall, probably nearing six and a half feet. He had broad shoulders and thick arms, the shirt he was wearing stretching over a taut chest. His steely jaw was lined with stubble and his cheekbones were set high on his handsome face. His hair was a rich, dark chocolate brown – not quite black – and it was cut short on the sides but longer on the top. The texture was slightly curly and my fingers pressed into the skin of my crossed arms to keep myself from wanting to reflexively reach out and run my hands through it. He paused in front of the cell door and stared down his aquiline nose at me. My breath caught as I stared into his eyes. In this light, I could tell they were blue but they appeared dark and as unforgiving as the ocean. This was the moment I was dreading the most.

Not meeting the Alpha.

Meeting my mate.