The Hunters Alpha's Mate

Sliver Cell

Chapter 5

Lyra's POV

I woke up on the floor of the cell without remembering falling asleep, which scared me more than anything else that had happened so far that night.

My whole body felt wrong. Not sore the way it usually was after a job, but hollowed out, like something had been drawing energy out of me while I slept and hadn't finished the job yet.

I tried to push myself up onto my elbow, and my arm shook so hard I had to give up and just lie there for a second, breathing through it.

Torchlight from the hallway slipped through the silver bars on the door. I used the dim light to look at my arm again.

The mark had grown. It wasn't just a paw print anymore. Thin black lines covered more of my arm, stretching from the mark toward my shoulder. They looked like veins. It didn't hurt, but I could feel something under my skin.

I sat with my back against the wall and tried to think clearly, which was hard when my head felt like it was full of static.

My uncle's face kept replaying in my mind, the way he'd gone still when he saw the mark, the way his voice had cracked just slightly talking about my mother's old scars.

He knew something. He'd known something for years and never told me, and now I was locked in a silver cell because of a secret that apparently ran in my own blood.

The guards were talking quietly outside my cell. They must have thought I was asleep.

"Do you believe any of it?" one of them said, a young voice. I didn't recognize it.

"Believe what, the mark? I saw it myself." The second voice was older. "Black as pitch, spreading up her arm like ink in water, I've never seen anything like it."

"My grandfather told stories about wolves like that when I was a kid. They looked human. They could fool even the best hunters. He said our people hunted every last one down because they were too dangerous and wiped them out."

"That's an old story, though. It's just a story."

"Commander doesn't lock a niece of his own blood in a silver cell over a story." He paused. Then he spoke again, barely above a whisper. "The last Shadow wolf died a hundred years ago. Everyone knows that. So either that story's wrong, or she's something that isn't supposed to exist anymore."

I sat very still, listening, my heart pounding against my ribs. Shadow wolf? I'd never heard those exact words before, not once in fifteen years of training, not in any lesson or briefing or late night warning from my uncle.

Even so, I couldn't shake the feeling that he was right. It was as if I'd finally found a name for something I'd never been able to explain.

"Whatever she is," the older guard said, "It is not our problem. Commander wants her watched till morning, that's the job."

Their footsteps faded down the hall, and the cell fell quiet again. All I could hear was my own breathing.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and stared at my arm, at the black lines still slowly spreading, and I let myself think, for the first time since this whole night started, that maybe I was actually going to die here.

Not from an execution order, but from whatever was happening to me. The black lines kept spreading, and no one in my clan knew how to stop them. As far as they knew, people like me had gone extinct for a hundred years.

I thought about my mother again, about the scars my uncle said she never explained, about the way she used to hold her sleeves down over her wrists even in summer, something I'd noticed as a kid and never thought twice about because kids don't ask questions about things that feel normal to them. It hadn't been normal at all. It had been exactly this.

She'd hidden it her whole life. And then she died, officially killed by wolves, and nobody ever asked why a trained hunter with fifteen years of experience had let something like that happen to her.

Unless she hadn't been killed by wolves at all.

My mind was a mess. I couldn't think about it anymore. I rested my forehead on my knees and focused on my breathing, hoping whatever was happening to me wouldn't get worse.

That's when I heard the lock turn.

The door opened quietly, and I slowly lifted my head, expecting one of the guards. Maybe they had brought water, or maybe they were back with more questions.

But it wasn't a guard standing there at all.

It was Kade.

For a second, I genuinely thought I was hallucinating, that whatever this mark was doing to me had finally started messing with my head along with my body.

But he was still wearing the same clothes he'd had on hours ago, with a dark cloak pulled over them. Dirt clung to his boots. It looked like he'd walked all the way here. When he looked at me, relief flashed across his face.

"You're an i***t," I whispered because it was the only thing my brain could produce. "You walked into a hunter compound alone."

"I walked into a hunter compound alone," he agreed, stepping inside and pulling the door shut behind him, "because apparently that was easier than sitting in my own castle waiting to find out if my council was going to execute me before I got the chance to see if you were still breathing."

"How did you even get in here?"

"Same way you got into my room quietly and faster than anyone expected." He crouched down in front of me, and up close, I could see how tired he looked, dark circles under his eyes that weren't there hours ago.

His gaze dropped to my arm, to the black lines spreading past my elbow now, and whatever tiredness had been on his face disappeared completely, and it was replaced by something different. "This has gotten worse."

"You know what it is."

"I have a guess." He reached out, slow, like he expected me to pull away, and rested two fingers lightly against the mark.

This time, it didn't burn under his touch the way it had earlier. The pressure in my arm eased a little, and I found myself relaxing to his touch without meaning to. "And if I'm right, we don't have a lot of time before it gets a lot worse than this."

"Worse how."

Before he could answer, we heard several sets of footsteps outside. They were moving quickly in our direction.

Kade's head snapped toward the door. His jaw tightened as he listened to the footsteps. The guards were coming. There was nowhere to run, and I was too weak to fight.

"Lyra," he said quietly, "I need you to trust me right now more than you've ever trusted anyone in your life."

The footsteps were almost at the door, and he looked straight into my eyes, waiting for my response.