If I were lucky, maybe they’d finally end it here? It would suck, of course. I hadn’t even started living, unable to escape my father’s tyranny without hurting the pack. I’d planned it out perfectly, only to have the last person I’d ever expected to see again fuck it all up. Now, I’d probably die without ever experiencing anything other than pain and agony.
We moved past the trees, emerging into the open meadow where people had gathered. My heart stopped, only to restart with a deafening speed that echoed in my ears. I could smell the animosity in the air; hear their hearts thundering with anger as it smothered the oxygen within the meadow.
Eryx walked me closer, snorting as he forced his way through the gathering crowd, dragging me with him. I searched the faces for Saint, sniffing the air to catch his scent, to soothe the fear rushing through me. We stood behind yet another line of people, some turning to look at me with accusing eyes, while others looked like they wanted to dissect me violently.
Shifters and hunters stood around something that was being opened, and the stench that was unleashed caused me to lift my arm over my nose. Soft cries escaped from the ground, making my steps falter.
“Move your ass, Princess. Don’t make me snap your fucking neck. Right now, I’d gladly do it,” Eryx growled. His hand shot out for my wrist, wrapping his fingers around it bitingly.
We reached where the others stood, and my heart plummeted. Bile burned the back of my throat as a small child was pulled out of the ground. He was filthy, covered in bruises and bloodied clothes. His eyes were darkened with deep bruises and swollen closed. My heart thundered with the reality of what I was seeing.
Fear slithered through me, and guilt washed over me. My entire body shook with horror as more were lifted out of the hole by rope, with someone pulling them up while someone else helped from below. The temperature was already dropping into the low twenties since the sun had set, which meant they’d been out here, underground, freezing and starving.
The alphas stood away from the others, watching me as I noticed them. Lucas was whispering to them, which sent unease rushing through me. I fought back the tears, needing to tell them that this wasn’t me, but I’d already been judged and found guilty without a trial. It was in their eyes, the condemnation that burned through each one of them.
“I didn’t do this,” I whispered, only to hear Eryx snort and turn to face me.
“No? Then why do I smell guilt wafting from you in waves? We can all smell it, Braelyn. You told us where they were hidden. You knew they were here,” he accused, his tone damning me to hell.
“I didn’t know,” I argued through the swelling in my throat.
They pulled child after child from multiple metal storage containers. Eyes watched me, judging me as helicopters began landing at a safe distance from the children. My stomach swirled with bile as the last container was opened, and the stench of death filled the meadow while groups of people whispered angrily, turning to glare at me.
Saint lifted himself out of the last container, heading straight for me as tears swam in my eyes. There was nothing but rage and hatred to be found in him. He grabbed my arm, yanking me with him as he walked me toward the pit. He didn’t miss a step as he jumped, pulling me down with him.
My arm rose, covering my mouth as I took in the dead women that were in varying stages of decay. A sob exploded from my throat as I shook my head. Saint watched me, his eyes condemning me until I wanted the ground to swallow me whole, never to see that look burning in his pretty gaze again.
“You fucking murderous bitch. You did this.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t do this,” I argued. I gagged on the air inside the storage container, shaking my head. “No, Saint. I didn’t do this to them.”
“You knew they were here. You knew these women and children were out here, suffering. You may not have put them here, but doing nothing to save them is the same thing as being the one to leave them here to fucking die. They’re human, Braelyn.”
“I didn’t know they were here!” I shouted.
“Stop lying!” he snarled, pushing me back until I slipped and landed on a body that squished. “You are a fucking monster. You allowed your father to do this to them. How could you allow him to murder these women and children, trading your own people to be tortured? How the fuck could you do this to them? To me, Braelyn? You allowed your father to sell me, your fucking soul mate, to be tortured!”
“No,” I argued as horror filled my expression. “No, you’re lying! You left. You were safe from my father hurting you! I sacrificed everything to protect you!”
“You didn’t sacrifice shit, Braelyn. I didn’t leave this mountain on my own. I was sold into slavery, to be eviscerated daily for some sick bitch’s entertainment,” he snorted, shaking his head while I gagged from the putrid air. “You can stay in here with them and apologize for playing a part in their death.”
“No, Saint. Please don’t leave me here,” I whispered through trembling lips. “Don’t do this,” I pleaded, grabbing his arm only for him to shake me off.
“What’s the matter, Princess? Can’t stand to see what you and your daddy did to them? Imagine how they felt down here, slowly starving to death with no hope of escaping. Do you know how long it takes to starve to death? Or for hope to slowly fade to nothing but despair? I do. You and your father made damn certain that I knew I wasn’t worthy of touching you. I was starved until I ate the poor bastard they’d put into my cell with me, just for fun. Unfortunately, it didn’t get enough people willing to pay to watch it unfold, so they got creative with Eryx and me. They learned that people would pay more when alphas are tortured and made to feel powerless as their guts are removed from their bellies. I can tell you how long it takes to die when they removed each organ inside of me, you heartless bitch.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks, and I shuddered at the horrors Saint described. I couldn’t make myself tell him that I knew that fact as well as he did. I didn’t tell him that my father had tried to artificially impregnate me by fucking my uterus after he’d taken it from my body. Saint snorted, shaking his head as he leaped for the open doors of the container. Hefting himself on the ledge, he glared down at me, leaving me alone with the dead.
“Lucas, I want you to return here tomorrow at nightfall and get Braelyn out of here. I am going with the children to ensure each is cataloged and removed from the list of missing and exploited children. When you bring her out, she’s to be locked alone in her room until I return. No one is to go in or out of her room, other than guards. Understood?” Saint asked as the container doors were closed, locking me in the darkness with the dead.
“She can fucking rot in there for all I care,” Lucas stated, and the others grunted their agreement.
I retched at the smell as I moved toward the light that shone in from small holes, allowing fresh air into the container. The sound of chains scraping on the door echoed, and then something solid slammed against the top of it, blocking the light of the moon from getting to me. I listened as the crowd began moving away, and the blades of the helicopters cutting through the air filled the night.
Panic set in as my foot connected with something cold and soft. I backed up, touching something else as a sob exploded from my chest. My entire body shook with cold and fear as my breathing became labored, and the stench of death filled the enclosed space.
How could Saint think I’d do something like this? I wasn’t a monster. Had I ever suspected my father of this? No, but I wouldn’t put it past him to be involved with something so horrendous. Harold had always been a monster. He was the monster I’d feared from childhood, the one that tormented and got off on murdering my mother and then took pleasure in torturing his child.
Tears dripped from my cheeks, and pain gripped my chest with the fact that I’d been played. They’d known Cora would turn feral, or Lucas had known. I was the only one who could end her suffering since no other alpha had been present from our pack. They’d a
ll been missing from dinner until Lucas appeared, but only after I had dispatched his sister to the afterlife. Would he have pushed his hand through my chest if Cora had failed? Considering they couldn’t have known how it would unfold, I was willing to bet they’d planned on me fighting Lucas after I’d killed his sister.
They’d needed me weakened to use the herbs in the bourbon because mugwort only worked on Fenrir wolves if they were unable to fight off the concoction’s effects. It was what made us harder to kill than shifters with potions procured from witches. Saint and Eryx weren’t worried about taking away my pain. They just wanted me weakened, asking me shit that hadn’t made sense at the time, and now that my mind wasn’t addled with pain, or drugs, I could think clearly.
Too little, too late for it to matter. I’m sure Saint had recorded me, us, as they toyed with me and asked their questions about this place. I’d admitted to knowing about the killing fields, but it wasn’t because I’d known about the children or women held here. It was because I’d been held and tortured here by my father. I’d listened to the wind howling, and as a child, praying it was the ghost of my mother keeping me safe. I’d called it the killing field because this is where our pack battles had occurred. I’d always known I’d be buried here, and I guess I was right, but I’d gotten my murderer wrong. I’d never expected it to be Saint.
Sitting in the middle of the container, careful of the dead surrounding me, I hugged my knees to my chest. It wasn’t the first time I’d been locked inside a container, but if I’m lucky, it would probably be the last time. I listened to the wind howling and wondered once again if it was my mother’s ghost, keening with welcome that I’d soon be back in her arms, finally.
Chapter Fourteen
Days went by, and still, no one came to get me out of the dark hole in which they had left me alone. By the seventh day, I’d given up hope of anyone coming to retrieve me. Did the pack not realize that I was gone? Or had Saint made them see what a monster I was? On the eighth day, I was lying on the floor between the bodies when a blinding light disturbed the container.
Lifting my arm, I tried to block out the light as someone jumped down, and then pain ripped through me. I gasped, rolling into a tight ball as a booted foot connected with my stomach. Something metal slammed into my head, and then consciousness faded away.
When I awoke, it was to being propped up on something small. Opening my eyes, I stared at the shadowy figure in front of me. Blood coated my head, and I tasted it inside my mouth. I inhaled, trying to scent who was in the cart with me, but only the stench of blood and death filled my nose.
Turning my head, I screamed as something sliced through my shoulder and throat. Blood ran down my neck, coating my thin silk nightgown. I couldn’t see what held me tied, but I knew if I moved, I was dead. I could feel the cold metal embedded in my arms and throat. They’d wrapped more of the same material around my torso and chest.
“It is razor wire,” a feminine voice announced. “You move, and you die. Let’s see how you enjoy being strung up like a pig at the market. This is what you did to my sister and my daughter. I watched them, you know. When the buyer decided he wasn’t interested in raping them anymore, he did this to them. Eventually, your muscles will cramp, and you will fall. I made a promise to myself that if I ever found the bastards who stole them and sold them into torture, I’d make them pay with the same death my family had been forced to face alone.”
“I didn’t do this,” I whispered, blinking as her voice registered.
Carleigh snorted, backing up until the light bathed her golden hair. She peered up, smiling as someone else jumped down into the container, staring at me. I met Lucas’s stare as he took in the way she’d strung me up in razor wire, positioned to slice through me when my legs gave out.
“Saint called. He’ll be back in a week. He won’t be happy that she’s dead,” he disclosed, staring down at the tattered gown I wore. “I should have seen it earlier. I didn’t want to believe them, but you are sick as fuck, Braelyn. You made us all think you were one of us, and this is what you did to our orphans? Did you plan to do this to Cora’s son? Sell him off to feed the pack? They’ll never trust you again after they watched the new alpha loading children you and your father brought here into those helicopters. You might as well step off that barrel now and do yourself a favor. Saint plans to murder you when he returns, and I’m guessing the razor wire will be an easier death than what he intends to do to you.”
“I didn’t do this,” I repeated, unable to get anything else out. “You know me, Lucas. I didn’t do this.”
He snorted as Carleigh produced a blade and crept toward me. My breathing hitched as she swung wide, cutting through my thigh. I screamed, crying as pain burned the severed flesh. Lucas swallowed, watching as she continued cutting my thighs, arms, and then my calves open. Sobs ripped from my lungs while blood coated my feet, adding to the cold as the wind entered the shipping container.
“Enough, unless you intend to kill her, Carleigh. That’s too easy of a death for the likes of her. Come on, before we miss Saint’s call and someone else tells him she isn’t inside her bedroom. You want this to work? Then we can’t be here when he calls to check in on her.”
I sagged against the wires, forcing myself to stand back up as they exited the container, leaving my body riddled with cuts. I slipped in the blood draining to pool at my feet, gasping as the wires sliced deeper into my arms. The sound of the container’s doors slamming closed echoed, and I forced my gaze to remain on the front of it. These women and children had been buried with the doors facing the sky, leaving the bottom of it several feet into the earth. Judging by the bone-chilling cold, the container was already frozen in permafrost.
My mind whirled with everything I’d left unfinished. I’d sacrificed my happiness for the packs. I had given up Saint because the idea of my father dissecting and causing him pain had been more than I could stomach, but I’d failed because he’d been tortured, anyway. I hadn’t said goodbye to Chaos, and he wouldn’t understand any of this. Toralei had to be out there, going crazy without being able to sense my location, or maybe like the others, she was glad I was gone.
Did she believe Saint and his crew? Had she bought their story and hated me as Lucas did now? How had he chosen to do this to me? He had been my friend, and he’d so easily turned on me in his grief. Maybe even before it.
I wouldn’t get to be a mother of my own child. I’d given up on it because Saint hadn’t been around, but I’d always wanted to have a child of my own. I wanted to feel that blind love that a child bestowed on his mother, knowing she would always do everything to protect them. I wouldn’t get that now.
I’d die here in this dark hole of death, and no one would even care. They thought I was a monster, but I’d been the first one to taste my father’s madness. I’d been the first to see the sadistic look burning in his eyes as he’d called me into his apartment after the conclusion of my mother’s funeral.
And now I was being accused of being like him? This shit fucking sucked, and it was Saint’s fault. He wasn’t faultless in this. He hadn’t noticed the endless pain that I carried. He’d never questioned me going missing for weeks or noticed the dark circles I hid beneath makeup. He’d never seen the bruises that were still present, even after a week of hiding to give them time to heal.
He wanted to say it was all my fault, but I’d protected him and the pack. I’d done what I was supposed to do. My mother raised me always to put the pack before my needs. She had ingrained it into me since birth. She’d told me how to create my mask and hide my fear and pain at all costs because it was a useless emotion that helped no one.
“Look at me, sweet daughter.”
“I’m scared, Mommy,” I’d whispered, tears rolling down my cheeks onto the paper that had sat in front of me.
“What good does that do? Fear is an emotion. Who controls our emotions?” she’d asked, wiping away my tears.
“We do,”
I’d muttered, staring into her bright Nordic blue eyes.
“Exactly. It’s an emotion that we control. It doesn’t get to control us, Braelyn. You cannot show people you’re afraid of anything. It gives them power over you. You’re the daughter and the granddaughter of the greatest warriors the Fenrir wolves have ever known. You’re the granddaughter of queens and kings. Their blood runs in your veins, and without you, our pack will have no heir.”
“You carry another heir,” I’d informed, dropping my gaze to her swollen belly. “Is she not ours?”
“She will never breathe her first breath. Your father will never allow it to happen. Now focus, Braelyn. Turn off your emotions. Show them who you are and that fear holds nothing for you. Show them that you’re stronger than that worthless emotion.”
“I don’t understand, Mommy.”
“I know you don’t, and I can’t explain it either. I only know that Harold is a monster, and I won’t always be here to protect you. I feel it even now. I feel the gods coming for me, and I hate you will be left unprotected. I have pleaded to the gods to give you a strong, invincible alpha as your true soul mate. I have promised them my life and that of your sister so that you may carry on our line, Braelyn. Fenrir protects you, but the other gods protect you as well. You must never fear them. They lead us into the otherworld and welcome us to the afterlife. Promise to remember me. Promise me you always lead the pack and protect them, no matter what the cost. This is your pack now. You lead them, no matter what. Harold is weak, but he is conniving and sinister in his grab for power. You must be weary of him. He craves a son and doesn’t understand that women lead our pack. We are of the wolf, and the blood of the Valkyrie runs through our veins. Stand up, Daughter. You are not weak.”
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