I thought they would take me to the dungeon, but they didn’t. What they did was, in some ways, worse. They locked me in a closet I had never noticed before. I could hear something being sprayed on the door outside, and then a powerful scent slipped under the door. It was wolfsbane. The door and walls outside this tiny dark closet were being saturated with it.
The wolfsbane wouldn’t hurt me; I had no wolf. But it would keep Tristan or anyone else from letting me out of the closet for fear of being burned and poisoned. It might even prevent us from mind-linking through it, but I wasn’t sure.
I considered everything I knew about Tristan. We were born a few months apart and grew up mainly in the same house after my father mated Jessica.
He was much kinder than his parents after he outgrew his childhood bully phase in elementary school.
Tristan also worked hard at his warrior training and was physically capable in a fight. The fact that he proved a challenge for four full-fledged warriors to restrain was proof.
I also knew him to be strong in his convictions. When he believed something was right, he would not waiver. I’d never seen him go up against the Alpha as he’d done this day, but no one else had ever won against him in a fair fight, of body or mind, since he’d reached puberty and gotten his wolf.
I knew Tristan was intelligent and competent, and I wanted to believe he would find a way, but it felt like we were at the mercy of the Alpha.
Feeling my way around the walls, I sucked in a sudden breath as my palm landed flat across a hot pipe. The painful burn on my flesh caused tears to pour down my cheeks. I took several deep breaths to calm my racing heart and cradled my hand against my stomach. Without any water or way to bandage it, the heat was going to continue to pulse painfully across my skin. I focused on my breathing. Slowly, over and over, in and out.
Ok, this wasn’t going to work. I needed light.
I moved back to the door and gingerly started feeling around the wall nearby. There was a light switch, but when I flipped it, nothing happened.
My hand throbbed and burned from contact with the pipe, but I knew if I waited a bit, I might be able to see a little better when my eyes adjusted to the dark.
In times like these, I lamented being only human.
Because I had no wolf, I healed at human speed, and couldn’t see well in the dark, like a wolf could.
I crouched down and leaned against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest. My bare feet felt cold against the polished concrete floors. The realization had me lowering my burned palm to the floor, allowing it to cool the stinging flesh just a little.
I wondered what time it was. I imagined it could be nearing lunch time at this point. I had no idea how long I’d been here or would be here. My stomach grumbled painfully. I’d eaten nothing since my bread and cheese the previous night.
I considered Selene. The Moon Goddess was said to deliberately mate those together who would complete each other. Two halves of a soul, they said. Up until now, I didn’t have a lot of faith in that. After all, Selene had mated my dad to an awful she-wolf like Jessica and I had lost him to her completely, even before he died. I hated the stray thought that came to me, that Dad couldn’t have been a very good wolf if she was the other half of his soul.
What did that say about me? Being a true mate to an Alpha heir in a pack like this...well, did that make me a bad person? I couldn’t deny that Tristan was different from his parents, in a good way, so I had that going for me, at least.
But what could Selene have been thinking? Didn’t she realize the position this would put us in?
I swallowed against my thirst. My dry throat began to feel scratchy.
I tilted my head back to rest against the wall I was leaning on and closed my eyes against the darkness.
Moon Goddess, please help us. If you really mean for us to be together, you’ve got to help us. There is nothing I can do to help myself.
A gentle breeze blew across my face, like a caress.
I thought I heard a faint whisper saying, “Don’t give up.”
I don’t know if it was a dream or not, because I dozed off for a while out of pure exhaustion. When I opened my eyes, there was no longer any light coming from under the door. It had to be evening.
My body ached, especially my butt, from bearing my weight as I slept sitting up while leaning against the wall and door.
I groaned as I turned my ear to the door and pressed against it. I was met with only silence.
I wondered where Tristan was and if he was unable to mind-link me for some reason. He said I was his, and I believed he wouldn’t let me go. Was I wrong?
For several more hours I shifted and attempted to rest, trying to find a comfortable position on the hard floor. There was none to be found, and I continued to drift in and out of sleep. The hunger was getting more urgent, and I was starting to feel dehydrated.
I lay with my cheek against the cold floor as I watched a slight glow began to re-illuminate the crack at the bottom of the door. It could be someone turning lights on in the hallway or it could be morning. There was no way for me to know. I’d lost my sense of time.
Soon after the light appeared, I heard sounds of activity on the other side of the door. I might have been locked in the closet for nearly twenty-four hours.
My hand still throbbed, and I was both thirsty and hungry.
I tried to mind-link Tristan.
“Tristan?” I pressed out, “Are you ok?”
Still nothing.
I knew that I’d been able to mind-link people when they spoke to me in the past, but I had never tried initiating such a link on my own. I wasn’t even sure it could work.
After a few more miserable hours, the door finally opened. The sudden light caused me to clamp my eyes shut for a moment.
Squinting against the sudden assault of brightness, I tried to see who was opening the door. When my eyes finally adjusted, I was being roughly dragged down the hall toward the dungeon stairs. I tried to dig my feet in, but it was no use. I wasn’t strong enough to resist anyone, especially after more than a day without nourishment of any kind.
The two pack warriors carried me between them as we descended into the cold, darkened basement with stone walls. After a short hallway, they turned left into a large room with four cells.
Immediately upon entering, I knew Tristan was here. I could smell him and sense his closeness.
My eyes darted around, taking in the stone floor and walls and the silver bars that lined the outside of the cells. The stale aromas of mold and mildew were strong, but it wasn’t enough to overpower the delicious scent of my mate.
Past the cells was a large open area with a number of frightening apparatuses on display. A brief glance at them revealed they were most certainly instruments of torture, but all I could focus on was Tristan lying on the floor, facing the wall.
I was tossed into the last cell on the right, directly across from Tristan’s cell, and the door clanged shut behind me before the guard locked it.
My mate was now wearing only his boxers, and his back and legs were covered in dried blood. At the sight of his injuries, I felt as if I would either explode in rage or collapse in despair.
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“Tristan!” I whispered in a hoarse and heartbroken voice.
He stirred and turned his head to me.
“Jane, I’m so sorry. Are you ok?” He spoke in a hoarse voice laden with exhaustion.
“Oh, my goddess, Tristan, what have they done to you? How could they!” I nearly wailed.
He rolled onto his hands and knees and then pulled himself to his feet. Stumbling over to the bars closest to me with great difficulty, he stopped himself short of touching them.
“Have you been hurt, my love?” He asked with concern on his face. His eyes took all of me in, searching for any sign of injury.
“Have I been hurt?! Look at yourself!” I cried.
Tristan gave me a flippant grin, “I’m already healing, don’t worry. It’s just a bit slow with the silver and wolfsbane. Since they started bringing you down the steps and closer to me, the wounds are closing more quickly.”
Tears began to stream down my face as I shook under the weight of my emotions.
“You should reject me, Tristan. Please don’t suffer like this. I’m not worth it,” I begged him.
Through the mate bond, I felt his anger spike for a moment before he declared, “I will never reject you!”
I whimpered miserably as I felt his need to protect me and defend me to myself.
“Look at me, Jane,” he said in a gentler tone.
I obeyed.
“I will do everything in my power to complete the mating bond with you. I will not reject you. You. Are. Mine. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I whispered submissively.
“Do you want to reject me, little one?” He asked after a slight pause.
“Of course not!” I nearly shouted at him with a raspy voice.
His face broke into his charming, handsome smile as he comforted me, saying, “Good girl.”
After a moment in which the sounds of us breathing heavily into the dank space were the only noises in the dungeon, I began to pace around the small cell in frustration and anxiety.
“What are we going to do, Tristan? What will they do to us?”
He grinned, “I love when you say my name, Jane Marie Brown.”
“Tristan!” I hissed in frustration, even as my insides erupted in butterflies.
His chest rumbled, and then his expression suddenly turned serious as he stared into my eyes, “It’s going to get a lot worse, but we have to hold on and trust each other, ok?”
“Ok,” I agreed wholeheartedly.
If he could hold on, then so could I.
No sooner had we finished our conversation than the door to the top of the stairs opened, and footsteps echoed down the steps.
I pressed my face against the bars to see who was coming. It was the Alpha, Luna, Beta, and four warriors I recognized from the dining hall.
They all walked past the cells to the torture chamber area, save one warrior, who unlocked my cell door and roughly dragged me into the room.
I was terrified. I didn’t have a wolf to help me heal quickly. And whatever they were going to do to me would hurt Tristan a lot, too. He was nearby, and we were strongly linked again.
The Alpha motioned to the area above my head, and the warrior dragging me along clamped a pair of silver cuffs on my wrists then lifted my arms into the air. He attached them to some sort of hook and chain contraption then I heard the chains rattle and clink as someone pulled them. My body stretched straight up until I was barely standing on my toes.
“Father, no!” Tristan roared angrily, gripping the silver bars roughly even as they burned his skin.
“She has no wolf! You’ll kill her!”
The Alpha turned to look his son in the eye, “Reject her, and we have no need to do this. It is up to you, son.”
“I won’t reject her, Father,” he said quietly. “If you kill her, you will be dead by sunset.”
The Luna gasped. I glanced over at her and saw fear and regret in her eyes. It was clear that she had no idea her mate would take things this far when she made a big to-do about our mate bond.
Tristan’s quiet threat to his father and alpha was said so calmly and coldly that a shiver ran down my spine.
I was terrified but I also felt pity for the Luna and intense anger for our alpha.
I made up my mind in that moment that if Tristan wasn’t going to give up on me, I wouldn’t give up on him either. I looked up, searching for his eyes. I found them.
Our gazes locked, and he mind-linked me, “Can you hear me, Jane?”
I held his gaze and tipped my chin down slightly.
“Keep your eyes on me, love. This is going to hurt a lot, but I’m right here. Just focus on me, ok?” He said into my mind.
Ok, I answered back via mind-link.
I heard rustling behind me then my shirt was torn open at the back. I flinched at both the sound of the rip and the way it yanked my body back, swinging me from the hook as I lost my precarious footing. Even so, I kept my eyes fixed on Tristan’s.
I’m sure my terror was evident, but Tristan didn’t look away. We stared into each other’s eyes, our gazes communicating all the love, encouragement, sorrow, and pain we were experiencing in that moment.
The air stirred behind me a split second before the crack of the whip lashed the bare skin of my back.
I grunted in pain, biting my lip. The leather must have been laced with some kind of metal. It was probably silver, which was toxic to wolves. It felt like I’d been sliced open with a blade. I could feel the blood running down my body, but I kept my eyes on Tristan’s.
The whip cracked again, creating another stream of blood from a second wound as I bit down harder on my lip. I refused to scream out even as my breathing became heavy and unsteady. There was a third lash and a fourth and a fifth. Still, I kept my eyes fixed on my mate’s.
They were full of rage and sorrow, but also held his love for me. That was worth enduring anything to see. Ten lashes later, blood streamed down and off my toes like a fountain, pooling on the floor. Nevertheless, I kept my eyes locked on Tristan’s until my humanity overcame me, and I passed out from the pain, exhaustion, and blood loss.
My last thought as the darkness took me was that I wasn’t sure if I would ever wake up again. But I did.
I was lying on the floor of my dungeon cell in a fetal position. Pain and discomfort permeated my senses. The floor was cold and hard.
My eyes focused on my wrist where there was an IV line taped down there. The IV definitely did not have any pain medication. I carefully pushed myself up into a seated position with a groan of pain, then peered up at the bag’s label and saw it was only saline. They were hydrating me to keep me alive.
Everyone was gone, Tristan no longer in his cell. I was alone.
My body shivered from the pain or the cold, but probably both.
Taking inventory, I could see that someone had toweled off my legs and feet, and most probably in a hurry since my skin was still streaked with smears of dried blood.
Oddly enough, my feet were now encased in my gym shoes. However, my shirt, barely hanging from my shoulders, was stained a rusty brown.
I didn’t move from my seated position for a while after checking the IV. My back was on fire from the wounds that still gaped open but somehow were no longer bleeding. It was excruciating, but even so, I was desperate to see Tristan.
What happened after I passed out? Where did they take him? How much time had passed?
I didn’t have long to wait.
Two burly wolf warriors came barreling down the stairs and opened my cell.
They each grabbed an arm, ripping the IV from the back of my hand, and carried me up the stairs, through the large pack house, and outside onto the front lawn.
It was nighttime again, and the moon was bright.
I blinked a few times at the sight that awaited me. It couldn’t be real, could it? My brain was confused, and I shook my head to clear the mental fog.
The shimmer of the moonlight on the tops of the trees beyond the pack house front lawn distracted me only momentarily as my eyes adjusted to the dark and my ears registered the panicked whispers surrounding me.
Most of the pack stood on the manicured grass, and the crowd parted as the guards carried me forward. They stopped about five feet in front of a wooden platform, hastily erected with fresh lumber.
The smell of fresh-cut wood mixed with the smoked meat and forest smells of my mate. The pleasant aroma was a deep contrast to the horrifying sight before me.
I looked up onto the platform in absolute shock as I saw, standing on a stool with a noose around his neck, my beloved Tristan. His hands were shackled behind his back, and his feet were shackled together in silver.
It presented like a scene straight from an old west TV show: the criminal strung up on some gallows, the Alpha on one side of him like the sheriff, and the Beta on the other, like the executioner.
Tristan was visibly weak with the combination of exhaustion and the silver shackles that were burning his skin and preventing it from healing. He raised his head and looked me in the eyes. In spite of the circumstances, his gaze held his relief that I was alive and standing.
The crowd of pack members murmured, but silenced when the Alpha raised his hand.
He spoke fiercely, “No one defies me. I am your Alpha! When I give an order, you obey. If you do not obey, there will be consequences. Even my own son will not escape them.”
Tristan locked eyes with me and mind-linked, “Jane, don’t worry. He won’t do it.”
My mind couldn’t process what I was seeing and hearing as reality. I was beaten, exhausted, malnourished, and dehydrated. My mind reeled from what my senses were showing me. Nothing was keeping my mate alive save that small wooden stool beneath his feet.
The Alpha turned his focus to me, “I will give you a chance to save his life. Reject him, or I will kick the stool out from under him myself.”
I swallowed and opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
The Alpha stared at me briefly as I tried to find my voice. A strangled sound left my lips, but I couldn’t form the words.
When I didn’t utter the words he demanded, he did the unthinkable. He kicked the stool out from under his own son’s feet, and Tristan dropped abruptly down and forward, swinging from his neck. His face began to turn red while he made choking sounds, his lungs trying desperately to access air.
“NO!” I screamed as I tried to yank my arms away from the guards that held me fast.
Tristan wouldn’t last much longer in this position. His face began to turn a horrifying shade of purple.
I forced my voice into submission, and, through a sudden rush of sobs, I cried out, “I, Jane Marie Brown, reject you, Tristan Bellamy Martin, as my mate!”
The pain in my chest forced me to my knees as the Alpha’s face twisted into an evil and satisfied smile. He had won.
“Cut him down,” he ordered his Beta before walking down off the sinister stage and into the pack house without looking back.