Filed to story: Owned by the Alphas Novel
None of them moved, all still passed out in their cages.
I winced as my head throbbed again and my shoulder stung. I looked down at the bloody burn on the outer arm where I had been hit with the potion.
It was angry, black veins stretching out from it. That wasn’t good.
I let out a shuddering breath, my skin prickling with goosebumps. It was freezing.
I pressed against the cage, holding my magic out so I could see more. We were in some kind of cavern. A deep one.
It opened all the way down into a dark pit so I had no idea what was at the bottom. But I didn’t want to know.
Not when my main focus was on the fact that there were black cages like the one I was in lining the cavern walls, embedded in the rock up and down. And each one had another pack member.
And some of them had slight figures, half naked, sleeping or passed out. Possibly even dead. The ones I didn’t recognize looked even worse than the pack did, and we were the ones who had been in battle.
It clicked then. “The whispers,” I realized, holding a bar of the cage as I begged my magic to burn brighter. It tried but sputtered, almost burning out.
And when it did, it took my energy with it. My body ached, weakness throbbing all over it.
But I didn’t let it win. I had been weak before. I was getting pretty used to it.
A boy in a cage across the cavern caught my attention. His wide white eyes were on me.
“Are you the one that whispers to me?” I asked.
It nodded, then held its finger to its lips. It had slightly pointed ears, with his ragged hair tucked behind it.
‘We must be quiet. They hear well,’ he said in my head.
‘Can’t they hear you talking to me?’
He shook his head, ‘No. Not since you connected your magic to a separate entity. You have the border magic. They have pure realm magic. They are not the same. When your twins took the magic from the witches in the spell, we were able to connect to you through them without being monitored. But it is not without great effort,’ he said.
‘I thought the witches all had to follow the realm’s lead. Keep the balance,’ I asked.
He shook his head, ‘They are meant to. But they have gone rogue, claiming the realm’s magic for their own vendetta.’
‘What does that mean for us?’
‘We shall see,’ he said a second before he shrunk back into the shadows of his cage and light spilled in from the top ledge.
The seven came in, their footsteps brushing against the dirt of the stone walkway they appeared on. It arched between each side of the cavern with chains dangling from the underside of it.
It looked like where they hung prisoners. I wanted to ask but I was scared of the answer so I snuffed out my magic and shrunk back too.
I wasn’t sure what their plan is but I didn’t want to risk getting their wrath before I was ready to fight them.
My shadows stayed inside me, but they were ready, hovering, waiting for instruction. I stared up at the witches. How had they turned so bad? We had done nothing to them. The realm had given me the power I had. The border magic had trusted me. But the witches clearly didn’t know how to share because it had pissed them right off.
So maybe Heather was mad for the Brax situation but the witches’ anger was directed at me and the power I had. The power I had birthed.
‘Wakey, wakey, prisoners,’ the front witch echoed through the cavern a second before they pierced our brains with that awful screech again.
I sucked in a breath, one hand clutching the bar of the cage, the other holding my head, begging the shrill sound to stop.
Just when I was sure my ears were going to start bleeding, the witches stopped.
“Little Luna,” Kai grunted.
“I’m here,” I whispered.
“Are you okay?” Brax panted, grabbing the sides of his cage and looking up at me. I nodded.
“Yeah, are you?”
He nodded so I glanced over at Derik. He was slumped against the back of the cage, his face still pale, his brow damp.
I frowned and moved closer to him.
“Derik?” I asked, my heart racing. Our links didn’t work so I couldn’t feel what was wrong with him.
He looked over at me, his chest rising and falling with shallow breaths.
“Beautiful,” he said, his voice raspy with barely any conviction to it.
“Derik, what’s wrong?” I demanded.
He slowly moved so we could see his arm that had been slashed. Shit.
It was bad. Infected with wolfsbane. It wasn’t healing and it had more poison coming out in a huge spiderweb, reaching up his neck and getting scarily close to his heart.
“Just a scratch,” he coughed, wheezing and wincing. Tears stung in my eyes and I glared up at the witches.
They were looking back at me with eyes that said everything their mouths didn’t. They found my mate’s impending death amusing.
Anger boiled in me and I clutched the cage tighter.
The witches’ voice was in our heads before I could say anything to them, ‘We are going to find those things you call children. We are having the realm torn apart as we speak looking for them and we will find them.’
That had my heart clenching tighter and I tried to stop the panic setting in but it was there and ready to bloom.
I looked down at Brax. His shadows were filling the bottom of his cage and I ached to bring out mine too. But I was sure the witches could sense them. And I wanted them to think my shadows were as weak as my magic was.
Just in case I needed the element of surprise later.
I looked down at Brax and shook my head. He gave me a quizzical look then shook, trying to contain his rage as he pulled them back in.
‘Until we find them, every single one of you will be questioned and I promise, it will be as painful as we can make. The realm demands this knowledge from you. Give us a location and you will be spared. Withhold it, and you will be tortured within an inch of your life,’ the witches promised.
And that was where I couldn’t hold my tongue.
“The pack doesn’t know where they are. We made sure of it so they couldn’t be harmed for the knowledge. I am the only one knows where they are and I’ll die before giving you the answers you look for,” I snarled.
If the witch could’ve smirked, I knew that’s what she’d be doing. All of them would be.
‘If you know then so do your Alphas. We shall start there. But we will get the answers out of you.’
I grinned, “I’ve been tortured before. Physical pain is nothing when it comes to them,” I called back, my voice and conviction traveling through the cavern.
‘Who said it would be physical?’
That shouldn’t terrify me but it did. They knew what they were doing. They had magic, knowledge of how to get to us.
It was going to be brutal. I knew that. But I was determined to withstand them.
‘Stay strong, Luna. If you can keep them from finding out, keep them from getting to the twins, then we have a chance,’ the whispers came back.
I looked at the boy, then the rest of the cages with the other witches in it. They were all staring at me, pleading.
I nodded. I eyed Brax and he was determined too.
Kai’s rage was permeating the air. But it was Derik that had my heart in a bind. He was so weak.
I spotted Beenie up in the cage over from Kai’s. She was scowling, sitting at the bottom of her cage, her eyes darker than I was used to. She had the same blue eyes as Kai but underneath them were shadows like she hadn’t slept in a year.
I looked over the cages for Cain but he wasn’t in any of them.
‘The witches can’t capture him. It is a burned in oath that they made when Tabitha left the mountain. He is immune from their harm. He is where you think he is. So the shadows under my eyes are the mate sickness because he is not close,’ she said in my head.
I wanted to ask how the hell she had linked but I doubted I would get an answer. I was lucky she had even told me what she had.
It meant the twins had more of a chance. Especially if the witches really did have the rogues tearing through the realm for them.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want her in there when the witches attacked.
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?