Chapter 3
1055 Words
ARINA.
My eyes had stopped producing tears somewhere around the fourth man. My voice had seized. And my willpower to fight and beg had left me.
I was still there in body. But the part of me that could feel shame, fear, and resistance — she had gone somewhere quieter, and I was grateful for it.
All I did was lie down on the cold ground, clothes ripped and torn, every part of my body sore and wounded, as I watched the seventh man stand in front of me with a smug smile.
"Don't cry, traitor. If you get knocked up tonight, the pup belongs to the whole pack. A true bastard of Black Thorn... since nobody will ever claim it." One of the men said, stroking his length and getting ready for his turn.
They all laughed.
"Let's see what kind of monster grows from a traitor's womb when fifteen different wolves plant the seed. Even the Moon Goddess won't know who the father is." Another man said, zipping up his pants. He already had his fill.
"Perhaps, any bastard you drop will be a slave to Hetel's trueborn pups." Another man added.
I ignored all of them and focused on the dark, indifferent sky above. I had learned in the last hours that focusing on those things was how you survived what could not be survived.
The seventh man stroked himself above me with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once been told no and enforced.
"Always wanted you," he said, almost conversationally, shoving my legs apart with his knee and looking down at me like I was something he was unwrapping. "But you kept walking around here like your cunt was made of gold." He smiled. "Now watch who's going to f**k it for free. And after now, no man is ever going to want to put his mark on a used w***e like you."
The others laughed.
I turned my face away, looked at the sky, and waited for what was to come.
But before he could force his way into my already sore and bleeding center, I heard a loud growl that made everyone freeze on the spot.
The seventh man scrambled off me so fast he tripped over himself backward.
I tried to make out the features of the person, but the darkness at the edges of my vision had been patient long enough. It closed in fast, pulling me under until all I could see was pitch-black darkness.
The only and last thing I heard from a distance was the sound of words that sounded like Knox speaking.
"Lock her up in the cell."
---
The first thing that reached me before consciousness fully did was a scent.
It was dark and clean... Something like cedarwood and cold night air, with an edge underneath it that didn't belong to anything I had smelled before — something older and more dangerous than any wolf I had ever encountered. It seeped through the damp stone smell of the cell and sat at the back of my throat.
I opened my eyes.
The white midi dress I had been wearing since yesterday was now torn to shreds, making the cold, hard ground bite into my skin.
I tried to sit up, but my body refused with a totality that frightened me. But I still pushed up. And that was when I saw him.
The strange man from this morning.
He was standing on the other side of the cell bars with absolute stillness, like had been waiting for a long time and had not found it inconvenient.
His back was against the opposite wall, arms loosely crossed, and one ankle over the other.
He looked even more stoic in his all black casual outfit.
He watched me take him in without any self-consciousness whatsoever, while looking intently at me, just like earlier today.
His aura hit me like pressure building in a room. My wolf, battered and exhausted as she was, pressed herself flat instinctively. Not from fear exactly, but from the recognition of something so far above her that resistance wasn't even a conversation worth having.
The sheer dominance radiating off him made Knox’s aura feel like a flickering candle.
I had never felt anything like it.
"You're awake." He spoke, and his voice... It was so low, so deep, and so authoritative, even though he wasn't doing much.
"Unfortunately." My own voice came out wrecked.
He didn't react to that. He uncrossed his ankles and straightened off the wall in a single unhurried movement, coming to stand closer to the bars. He looked down at me on the floor with that same unblinking gray attention and said:
"I'm leaving this pack tomorrow night. We came here for a treaty." A pause. "We witnessed what happened in that square today."
I said nothing. I didn't have the energy to perform a reaction.
"You have two choices," his voice was devoid of emotion. "Stay here and die. Or come with me."
Those words made me look up at him with the little strength I had left.
I looked at him for a long moment.
My throat was raw, but I forced the words out. "Why? Why are you helping me? Who are you?"
His mouth moved like he had almost found something amusing, then decided against wasting the effort.
His gaze swept over my broken form, lingering for a fraction of a second on my ripped clothes and bruised skin.
Something in his face changed.
“I’m Maddox Graves Calderon,” he said. “Prince of the Lycan court. Younger brother to the Lycan King.”
I stared at him.
The words should have meant something, but my mind was too tired to arrange itself around titles. King. Prince. Court. Treaty. None of it changed the stones beneath me or the dried blood on my thighs.
“My brother saw enough.”
He watched my reaction through the bars, his silver eyes unreadable.
“He left Black Thorn before sunset. Officially.”
“Officially?” I narrowed my brows.
“Unofficially, he left me behind with one order.”
My heart skipped. “What order?”
His gaze dropped to the blood drying on my torn dress, then lifted back to my face.
“Bring you out alive.”
- Writer
