Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
He was an idiot because when he earned her fire, he had no idea how close he was to being burned, but I knew. I knew she would get her own back, and that the fire kept her alive. It kept her from giving up.
“No, I don’t think I will. I will gut every last human, suck them dry, and then I will descend on the wolves with a calculated attack that leaves them all begging for my mercy. And only then will I give them the offer of a lifetime.”
“They will never take your offer,” I growled, but Silas grinned and turned to the table, picking up a curved blade with a patterned handle.
“Maybe not. But they might if I told them it would save you two. Or maybe it would only take one. I would bargain life and freedom for their dear brother or mate, and I bet they would cave.” He smirked, but I shook my head.
“They won’t.”
“You sure?” he asked, grinning as he ran the blade down my body–light enough not to draw blood but hard enough to irritate my skin. I clenched my jaw, waiting for the pierce of the tip in my skin, but instead, he went over to Lorelai.
He drew blood there, adding another cut to her arm. She refused to scream, clenching her jaw, meeting his eyes like a feral wolf, and daring him to cut her again. She was fucking perfect.
“Who would they choose, I wonder? Brother? Or mate? I think it would only take one of you,” he said with a smirk, and I finally caught on to the game he was playing–the mind fuck he was giving us.
He was insinuating that only one of us needed to live, which meant by the time he was finished playing, one of us would be dead.
But I had been here before; I had played these games before with him, and he was a fucking liar. He wouldn’t kill us; he wanted us as his broken toys that he could put together however he wanted us. Like a pet or a slave.
He didn’t want us dead; he wanted to use us. But it didn’t mean the mind games wouldn’t work on her. Lorelai went stiff, her eyes darting to mine as she figured out that he was planning on killing one of us.
“Me, take me,” she said quickly, her eyes wild. But Silas laughed again, stepping back.
“Oh, it will not be that easy, winter born. I don’t want a volunteer; I want the strongest one to break, and only then will I choose my victor,” he said before spinning the blade and throwing it. I didn’t flinch as it sailed past my head and dug into the wall behind us.
“There will be no victor, only a loser, and I will make sure it is you, Silas,” I promised. But he just smirked, walking over to me and running his talon down my cheek so it did draw blood this time.
“No, you won’t, pet. Because we’ve played before, and we both know how that ended, don’t we?” he said, grinning. I lashed out at his hand, trying to reach it with my gnashing teeth, but he moved too fast.
“We do. I escaped. I killed some vamps, but I survived. And if I survive this time, I won’t be escaping, and I sure as hell won’t be running. I’ll be hunting, Silas. And every last minute you have been in here, I have been committing your scent and face to memory so the second I turn, my wolf will find you. And it will remind you of your place in the realm pecking order. At the fucking bottom.” I snarled, my lip curling as I used every bit of strength in my throat and chest to make the words as menacing as I meant them.
“Looking forward to it, Savage,” he patronized. I growled, straining against my cuffs, but they were bolted and locked in with some magic bullshit that stopped me from letting my wolf take care of this asshole.
“Oh, and just so you know, even if you get out of here, even if you manage to break out of this castle, my vampires will hunt you down. And if by the slim chance you make it to the werewolves, it’ll be too late. Because my plan doesn’t just involve you two or the leverage you give me. I have other wheels turning to make sure you all go down. So try it. You’ll still be mine before this is over,” he said before leaving the room. He turned in the doorway.
“No dinner tonight, sorry wolves. We’re in phase two, so we’re going to be busy hunting humans,” he said, grinning before slamming the door shut. I let out a roar so loud, the concrete cell shook, rubble falling as I fought the chains.
Fury was so tight in my body, so high in my veins, I needed an outlet. I needed fresh air, a run, to turn, to fuck, to fight. I was sick of this shit; I was sick of him. I was a fucking alpha, and Silas was acting like that didn’t matter. But it fucking did.
I was strong, and I was not going to break. But the needs and desires that ate away at my resolve were desperate.
The idea that the wolves and humans were about to get slaughtered and tricked by that fucking vampire sent my head into a spin I could barely breathe through. I roared and screamed, yanking and cursing at the chains, trying to get free.
Blood and sweat mixed over my body as I pulled, yanked, and fought. But the damn chains stayed in the wall, not letting me free. It made me panic. A manic desperation took over, and I tried harder.
“Kai!” Lorelai snapped, and her voice cut through my panic.
I swung my head to her. I knew I looked wild; I knew the savage inside me was trying to break through. It wanted to lash out, kill everything it saw, and I would let it the second I got out of those damn chains.
“Kai,” Lorelai said more softly, and I relaxed a little more.
“Mate,” I breathed, trying to pull on some semblance of sanity.
“The wolves are strong; they can handle Silas. Trust them,” she said.
I shook my head. “We have to warn them, help them.”
“We can’t. Not right now. All we can do is survive. But the more you struggle, the more you feed the need. And waste your strength.” She was the voice of reason and probably the only one I would ever listen to.
“You’re not worried? He wants the humans too.”
“I know, and I will cut his fangs from his mouth for whatever he does to them. But we can’t afford to lose our shit right now. He said that to rattle us; don’t let him win.”
“He won’t win,” I snapped.
She smirked. “No, he won’t. We know that, and we’re going to teach him that lesson the hard way. But we can only do that if you keep your shit together,” she said, and I nodded.
It made sense, and I knew that. But the bite of the cuffs seemed so much worse, the desperation eating at my sanity bit by bit.
I wanted revenge, the feel of his body crunching beneath mine a second before I had my mate screaming beneath me. I groaned and hung my head back.
“I need you,” I whispered hoarsely, and she laughed.
“I fucking love you, Kai,” she said, grinning.
I smirked at her. “That word is a human word. You, my Little Luna, have me–mind, body, and soul. I’m yours, and I will burn our world down to prove it to you,” I vowed, her words carving into my heart.
They branded there so I could repeat them over and over in my head until it was all I could feel and hear, bringing me back from the brink whenever my manic tried to take over. But I wouldn’t let it because she was right; we had to be patient.
We would get free, we would escape, and I knew that when my eyes fell on the knife in the wall and the tools Silas had left on the table across the room.
He was so confident we were stuck in our chains, but he was too confident. Because he should never underestimate how far a wolf would go for his mate.
Especially a mate like me, because there isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do.
15. The Game
LORELAI
I tried my shadows again, but they got to the edges of my skin, filling it out, pushing until it felt like I was going to break. I tried my magic, but it was the same thing.
They filled me to the point of bursting, then had to stop because the damn cuffs wouldn’t let it out.
It was infuriating. I hated being helpless. I hated being stuck. But I had been stuck, helpless, and in pain for days.
I knew without my magic, the pack was going to be a mess to go back to. I knew the humans and wolves could very well be at war just as easily as the vamps now because one kill was all it would take. The wrong turn at the wrong moment, and everything I had pushed for, worked for, was going to crumble. I just had to hope that the foundation and alliance I had built could withstand it better than I expected.
And I craved my family. Like some demon inside me, clawing at the wall in my heart. I could feel them on the edge of my mind. Brax and Derik were begging to feel me, to get in, but I couldn’t let them. There was nothing they could do without sacrificing themselves and, in turn, the pack.
Even Zale and Enzi’s shadows kept digging into me, trying to pierce the other side of my consciousness. Mine were on one side, recoiling so they didn’t get hurt while they pushed, begging to help, but I couldn’t let them. Not when I was in so much pain. And I was.
Silas was an expert at inflicting it, and he made sure every carve, cut, bruise, and ache came with as much pain as possible. But I didn’t care about the hurt in myself; it was when he went for Kai. That’s when it took the most to resist biting back.
It took everything inside me not to give him the reaction he was baiting me into. I wanted to cry, to scream, to curse him out, but it all made the smirk on his face grow wider.
Sometimes I had to give in, beg him to stop, terrified that one more cut would have Kai bleed out. But Kai kept his jaw clenched, his eyes hooded, going numb and still until Silas stopped, and eventually, he did. Before he moved onto me.
Every day was another test, to see if we could survive, if we could play the game as well as him, and every day I wondered whether it was the day we failed. Because the day we failed was the day we accepted his offer. The one where the pack became his and I became his.
I wasn’t going to let that happen, but it was hard not to think I was making the right choice when he said he would let us live. He wanted subjects to kneel, not kill them, or he had no one to rule over.
It was disgusting and twisted, but it had given me hope that he would let us live.
Until he came in the day before, spouting his bullshit about only one of us surviving and that being the only thing it would take to get to us. I think he was right.
Derik and Brax would be going crazy by now, and I didn’t envy their position. I would have lost my shit after the first night without them, knowing what was happening. I would rather be the one having it happen to me, but it didn’t mean Silas wasn’t going to use that because he would.
I had to get us out before he did.
Silas had just left the room after he’d delivered another afternoon of torture and pain with demands we didn’t concede to, but he left early, and I was grateful because Kai looked like he was hanging on by a thread.
He was bleeding, hanging, his hair falling over his closed eyes. He had passed out earlier than yesterday, and I knew it was because we were getting weaker. We barely slept, barely got fed.
Sometimes they cut us for blood, drank it to taunt us. The guards were just as twisted as Silas, but Kai had said that was the hive mind at work. Silas’s feelings and will would pollute the hive mind until another took over and refreshed it.
I would work toward that as soon as the damn cuffs were off me. But I had no idea how to make that happen.
I pushed my shadows up my arms, pushing against the cuffs until my arms burned so bad I cried out and sagged against the wall. They couldn’t get out, and they were restless within me. So was the magic. It was getting angry, turning inside me, begging me to let it out as if I were the one holding it in, but I wasn’t, and I had no idea how to tell it that.
“We have to get out of here,” I whispered, looking through a swollen eye as I peered around the room. Silas had taken to leaving his tools, but we had tried and failed to reach them. The blade he had thrown in the wall was still there, and since it was the closest, I looked for a way to get it.
I had no leeway in my chains, my shackles tight to the wall, my ankle was cuffed, but there was a lot of chain excess there, leading to the other side of the room. The same ring that Kai was attached to by his ankles.
I tugged on it, trying to gather some strength to pull, but it was no use. I was weaker than I was at the start, and I hadn’t been able to break out then, so I knew I wasn’t going to have a chance in hell now.
New Book: Veiled Desires of the Alpha King Novel
Dayson was the alpha of the largest pack in North America. Powerful figures from other packs sought to offer gorgeous girls as potential mates for Dayson. He steadfastly rejected these advances, he was not a pawn to be manipulated. But eventually there came a mysterious girl he could hardly say No. Who was she?