Gabel’s anger melted, retreated, smoldered. He pulled back, eyes narrowed to contemplative slits, and frowned. “Missing.”
“Castrated. You were castrated.” Without my anger to keep me warm, I trembled violently.
“Go on.”
I told him what I had seen of him and the second wolf, how both of them had been castrated, and instead of a head, he had had the leather death’s skull, like one of the Hounds.
I almost told him the rest of it, but when I went to open my mouth, the words weren’t there.
Gabel’s expression grew increasingly perturbed. He reached down to make sure he was still intact.
“Yes, they’re still there.” I could see that clearly through his clothes. I’d also snuck a curious look when he’d gotten out of bed.
“Buttercup, a man likes to check.”
“A man likes to touch himself,” I muttered.
“That too.” He sounded less cavalier than usual.
I suppose the Moon goddess suggesting an Alpha’s balls were below Her concern (or She had removed them) could humble even Gabel.
“Was there a wound, or were they just...”
He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
“Long healed.” I took perverse pleasure in telling him.
He glared at me. “What were the other wolf and I arguing over?”
“Nothing I could make out.”
He paced, stopped, said, “Interesting.”
Interesting. Well, then. Fine by me if that’s where he wanted to leave it. Further conversation might lead to him wanting to reassure himself his balls were still functional. The Bond would take that as a grand idea.
“What are you thinking?” I was suddenly suspicious of his pensive silence.
He unbuttoned one shift cuff and rolled it over his muscled forearm. He was divine to look at. I shifted on my battered body. He glanced my way, then moved to the other cuff.
I blushed. The Bond squirmed anyway.
Gabel leaned back over me. “I can smell your thoughts, buttercup.”
“I’m not thinking.” I protested.
He pressed his face to my neck and inhaled. “Such thoughts.” He nipped my skin. I gasped, squirmed, dug my fingers into the couch so I wouldn’t grab him. My fingers slid into rips and tears made by his own hands a few moments earlier.
“Do you enjoy what you see when you see my flesh?” he whispered.
I bit the split on my lip. Pain sparked, but it didn’t do much to quell the torrent building between us. Somewhere my body whimpered about how much it would hurt for him to be inside me again. Instinct didn’t care, and neither did the Bond.
“I know you do. You should just admit it,” he purred.
“You like it.” I managed to retort, but it felt as flat and lame as it sounded.
He kissed my lips, capturing the stinging bead of blood on his tongue.
I shuddered but don’t know exactly why.
Somehow I managed to push him back, but just barely.
I told the Bond it was not going to get fed just then.
“I have to go downstairs, you should come with me.”
“The basement?”
“Since your vision held nothing useful about them, I should go deal with them. You should come as well.”
Gabel expected me to refuse. But I couldn’t refuse—we were Bound, and my life as the IronMoon Luna... or Queen... would be awful if I was weak, or Gabel thought I was weak.
I needed to be strong enough to meet him on his terms. I could deal with watching his cruelty in action as he punished wolves who deserved it.
Was this the new game? He’d lost the first one, so now there was the second? Best two out of three?
“Should I... change?” I was in a dress and sandals.
“Buttercup, I’m not going to torture them. Blood thirsty minx.” He clicked his teeth, and a swat of playful mischief reached me.
I pretended to ignore him as best I could.
Gabel held the door for me and circled behind me like a hungry beast.
My skin heated.
One foot in front of the other. Focus on the hallway. Walking down the hallway.
“Do you know the way, buttercup?” his voice rubbed me inside and out.
“Yes.” I licked my lips. If I looked behind me, I knew his control would snap. He’d grab me, and push me against the wall and certainly someone would spot us at the worst possible moment, and I was sure whatever sounds my throat made wouldn’t have been protests and I would—
“Whatever you are thinking, buttercup,” his voice as hot and thick as the Bond, “you should stop.”
I grabbed at a passing sober thought before it burned away entirely. “What are you going to do to them?”
A menacing chuckle. “Frighten them.”
I kept walking. “To what end?”
“On the off chance they have something useful to say.” He sounded bored.
“And then what? Execute them?”
“Probably.”
I expected it to hit me harder than it did, but it all felt very matter-of-fact. Execution was an appropriate punishment for what these wolves had done. For IronMoon wolves.
He opened a small door off the little-used mudroom.
This was not “the basement” I had seen. The basement I had seen was the “cellar” in the house vernacular.
I stopped at the top of the cold, concrete steps. Gabel, a few steps farther down, seeming to glow in the murky darkness, gave me one of his most cruel, smug smiles.
I gathered the remains of my courage.
The basement was a huge, smooth, grey concrete box. Blank floor, walls, even the ceiling was concrete. Air flowed through several circular fans set into the ceiling and walls. The floor angled downwards to a line of circulate drain gates. This was all reasonable construction for a basement.
Except this was a sarcophagus. A well-lit abyss where the Moon’s eye could not or would not see.
I shuddered with the empty cold that felt along my skin, curious at this thing that had entered its otherwise consuming vacuum.
When a wolf was banished to eternal punishment, the Hounds came to take their soul to a place where the Moon’s light did not reach. Not because it could not reach, but because She chose not to look upon them. She sent them to a place beyond Her concern.
Along the right wall were six small cages. The bars were iron rebar driven into raised slabs of cement and pushed into the ceiling, with more rebar in a grid across the top. Rebar wouldn’t normally stop a determined war-form werewolf, except this rebar had thin, flat stripes of silver wound between the rebar threads.
Any wolf that tried to fight their way through the rebar lattice would be so sickened and burned they wouldn’t get far.
On the left wall were two sets of three chains: one chain led to a collar, the remaining two to shackles.
Two of the rebar cages had occupants.
The place smelled of subterranean musk and dampness, but also of strong soap and bleach. It was terrifyingly clean. It would have been the envy of any hospital operating room. Along the wall behind me were freestanding cabinets. Cleaning supplies, perhaps. I didn’t look. I didn’t want to see if there was also an assortment of torture devices.
The two wolves who had survived cowered in wolf-form in the back of their cages.
Nobody needed sophisticated implements of torment when they had this unholy sarcophagus buried in the ground.
All the rumors about Gabel spoke of his cruelty. His physical cruelty. But oh, if it only stopped there! Gabel didn’t merely break bodies; he tortured them. Tormented them. Made them suffer until even their spirits were broken, twisted things. I laughed at anyone who thought Gabel dealt in pulling off fingernails or pouring silver over the skin. If only Gabel stopped at the flesh.
I hugged myself without shame. I dug my fingers into my skin to hold onto it before the emptiness consumed me.
Hix and Flint waited for us. The First B
eta retrieved a folding metal chair. He set it almost dead-center of the room and nodded to me.
Gabel took the first wolf from his cage and proceeded with the questions. Where had they been in Shadowless? How close to the boundary? How many SableFur? Who called the retreat? When he was finished he questioned the next one.
At first I wondered why Gabel asked all the same questions when the wolves had had a chance to get their stories straight, and could hear the answers. Then I realized all the answers varied. Closer to the boundary line than the previous, arguing over who had called the retreat, blaming the others for the retreat call.
Their answers didn’t matter. It was the brightness in their eyes as they gabbled their answers, though. It was hope. They fawned and frothed to answer Gabel’s questions, and he stood there like a wealthy businessman nodding to each answer like he cared. He spoke calmly, deliberately, reasonably. He periodically shifted his fingers, drawing attention to the sleeves rolled up over his forearms like he intended to do something, but their words kept his rage at bay.
These foolish wolves believed they might talk their way out of this. I caught Flint’s gaze, and he nodded once to me with grave agreement. These wolves had fled their mission like cowards, then crawled on their bellies like shamed puppies instead of owning their weakness.
IronMoon had no other virtue in the eyes of the world except its unrelenting ferocity and capacity for violence, and these wolves had undermined it with cowardice.
Gabel’s knuckles needed to crack across those unbruised, unmarred faces! He needed to—
“Buttercup,” his voice echoed in the tomb, his back still to me. “Buttercup, such thoughts. Temper, temper.”
Flint glanced at me, a twitch in one brow that I refused to acknowledge. Gabel would have thrown good fangs out with bad, but he was being gentle with these cowards. It wasn’t just! His scales had tipped out of balance. I seethed. And he forced me to watch this? The sick, demented—
Gabel looked over his shoulder at me. “So angry. Would you like to come do this? I won’t object.”
“Stop playing with your prey, Gabel,” I snapped. If he wanted to toy with them I couldn’t stop him, but I didn’t want to watch. The taste of blood washed over my tongue. A grateful dying wolf’s breath touched my cheek.
Those RedWater wolves had died with more dignity and purpose than these. I was ashamed, ashamed of the IronMoon, and even a little ashamed of Gabel for bothering with this.
Flint, dressed only in a kilt, flexed one wrist. The joint crackled.
Gabel’s focus swirled and shifted, then something like lockpins slammed shut in my chest.
“Beta,” Gabel told Hix, “brand these dogs and take them to the edge of our territory. Leave them.”
I sat up straight.
“Alpha?” Hix’s voice echoed my shock.
“Brand them,” Gabel repeated, “and leave them outside our borders.”
Hix coughed, Flint watched Gabel with a contemplative expression.
“Is there a problem?” Gabel asked his Beta.
“No, Alpha, there is not a problem.”
“You’re going to let them go?” I demanded. “You pulled the fangs on the RedWater wolves for less!”
“Are you accusing me of being gentle?” Gabel asked.
“I’m accusing you of avoiding disciplining your wolves because it’s your fault they’re even in this pack.” Ultimately, the Alpha was responsible for the conduct of every wolf in his pack. When one of them failed so miserably, it was partly the Alpha’s fault for not seeing the wolf’s weakness, or flaws, or putting him to a task beyond him.
“Dangerous accusations.” He smiled. “Hix, do it before midnight. Master of Arms, walk with the Lady and I.”
“Ignoring me changes nothing,” I growled at him once we were in sunlight again.
“You aren’t wrong, buttercup, but I have a different use for them,” he assured me with a gleam in his eye. “So feisty. Oracles are so very strong.”
I shuddered.
Flint folded his arms in front of himself, and asked, “You have an additional task, Alpha?”
“Send a tracker to follow them,” Gabel instructed. “At a far distance. Donovan, if you can find him.”
“To what end?”
“To whatever end they come to. If there is nothing of interest, come home.”
“You’re still certain that one of your vassals is moving against you?” Flint asked.
“Of course,” Gabel replied.
Flint saluted both of us and strode away, kilt swirling around his knees.
“You think they’re stupid enough to try to approach another pack?” I asked. A wolf rejected from IronMoon wasn’t even worth humoring. IronMoon took the rejects nobody else wanted. After IronMoon there was nowhere left to go. “They’re stupid, Gabel, but do you think they’re that stupid?”
“Anders was wearing quite a few collars.” Gabel straightened the strap of my dress, his face thoughtful. “I don’t think anything will come of it. Unless you think they should just be put down?”
“If I told you I think they should die, would you do it?”
“I prefer things to be useful until they are not. I want to know who Anders is talking to, Gianna. Perhaps these wolves can lead us to him, and if they’ve got a little meat left on their bones, it will whet all the right appetites.”
“And perhaps you will get us all killed,” I said.
“But that’s the point, buttercup.”
“Getting us killed?”
“What’s the point of winning when you don’t take the risk of losing?”
I snarled, “Haven’t you learned anything, Gabel?” I lowered my voice and hissed, “I could have your bastard pup in my belly right now, and you’re still flirting with this nonsense.”
“It would not remain a bastard.”
I curled my lip.
He brushed his thumb over my cheek. “You would have enjoyed watching me bloody those wolves. I felt how badly you wanted me to hurt them.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
He pushed his two fingers into my Mark again. “Before you, I would have just killed them. Before me, you would never have hungered for the blood of the weak.”
My heart shriveled. “Then why didn’t you do either?”
“Because this is better. This suits us.”
Accountability
A wolf was waiting for us after breakfast. More specifically, he was waiting for me.
The wolf was not from IronMoon but from one of the innumerable small packs that IronMoon had conquered or annexed. He was thin and more of a mouse than a wolf, in his thirties, and unremarkable in every possible way. Just the sort of easy prey that disgusted Gabel.
Gabel bade me remain in his office while Hix verified the visitor’s request.
“This isn’t how it’s done,” I told Gabel, aggravated. “He’s a petitioner. He’s here to see an Oracle.”
“And he will see you, once I’ve determined that’s all he’s here for,” Gabel said, irate.
“I dislike playing a living sculpture.”
“Violet can run the house, and you should learn how to run your domain.” He gestured to the room around us.
“I am not going to be your Luna or your Queen. I don’t need a domain. Stop treating this like a game, Gabel. It’s not a game!”
Gabel took note of the book I’d been reading. “Field survival? Planning on running away?”
“And where the hell could I run that you wouldn’t find me?” I flung back, although a secret hope that perhaps this Petitioner was here because of Anita and SableFur nibbled my insides. Maybe they were going to get me out of here after all. If I couldn’t be free of him, at least I could be safe from him in SableFur. I suppressed a smirk. That made sense if SableFur actually did move their bulk to retrieve me. If I was mated to Gabel, he’d never be able to Mark another female, and he’d remain unmated, without legitimate offspring, and his true mate having been captur
ed from him, and him powerless to take her back.
I snickered silently to myself, and shoved my bitter glee down the Bond’s gullet.
Gabel eyed me. “I sense you have somewhere in mind.”
“Just entertaining the possibilities.” I cursed the Bond again. Stupid snitching parasite.
Flint eventually appeared to inform Gabel, “He is who he says he is, and he is here for Lady Gianna.”
Gabel scowled. “Send him away. She is otherwise occupied.”
“She isn’t Queen, nor your Luna,” Flint stated. “Her duty as an Oracle still takes precedence over any matter you have for her.”
Gabel paced behind his desk, aggravated. He wasn’t the first Alpha in history to learn that Alphas didn’t get pet Oracles. The room had been properly prepared, the candles, the salt, but he had ignored that he didn’t have a monopoly.
That was why Oracles were trained to resist an Alpha’s grasping authority. Now if only my training had included resisting my mate.
Gabel’s irritation reduced to a simmer. His silent, possessive snarl sent a ripple of dark flattery through me.
I uncrossed my knees and stood up. “I’ll meet him, Flint.”
Gabel snarled a silent no. This time I was prepared with a mental hold on myself, and I gave him a sweet smile instead. Gabel practically gnashed his teeth. I didn’t hide my eagerness.
I’ll be with a strange male. All alone. And I won’t tell you anything he says.
The Bond flopped and struck me like the slap of a wet hand.
“She will be well guarded.” Flint pretended to think Gabel’s reaction was something other than grabby-paws. “We can’t have a guard in with her, but two will be just outside the door.”
Gabel snapped a pencil in half but managed a bare nod. I winked at him as I turned to leave.
He snarled, and his jealous rage slammed into me hard enough I staggered. Flint caught me and steadied me while the Bond seared and punished me for even teasing.
Now you know how it feels to be a toy, Gabel.
“Lady?” Flint held my arm.
“I’m fine,” I heard myself say in a light, laughing tone. “I just tripped over that rug.”
Flint uttered something conciliatory before escorting me downstairs to the drawing room where the Petitioner waited. From here, habit took over. I entered the room alone, closed the doors, and faced him.
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