"I'll tell you anything, I swear! Just don't kill me!" he cries, snot and blood spilling out of his nose. I take a seat in thelazy-chair and cross one foot over the opposite knee and glance around his shitty apartment. The walls are bare except for some faded movie posters. Lara Croft with exaggeratedly giant tits hangs next to a nudie calendar from three years back. Someone X-ed out half the dates and scribbled 165/81 and other blood pressure stats on different squares—likely a doctor, at some point, tried to help his sorry ass.
"Where is she?" I ask calmly, pulling a knife from the holster at my ankle, sliding my thumb along the sharpened blade. The gray steel gleams under the kitchen light, still swaying from when I smashed his face into it. Four years of captivity, and I've lost patience for most things, but torturing someone who reminds me of the old me—the type of man who cared little for others—gives me a sick kind of glee.
"I told you, I-I-I don't know! She's—" he sniffs, wiping his palm across his nose, smearing bodily fluids. Disgusting. And desperate or not, his crying does nothing but piss me off. This man does not understand the meaning of suffering. He's pathetic, and I want to slit his throat for that offense alone.
Paulie has that look about him. A man who lives hard. Aging faster than he should be, with deep wrinkles, red, dry, patchy skin from too much drinking. My wolf hates him. I hate him too. He smells like bad decisions and moldy carpet. Stale food and some type of musk I can't place. He's foul, and his crying makes him look less sympathetic, not more.
"She's usually home, but it's New Year's Eve. Maybe she's, I don't know, out with friends. I'll find her. I'll call her."
"You'd give up your only daughter so easily?"
"She's not, I mean, that is, she's, she's—"
I'm angry on the girl's behalf. Not that it matters. I'll deliver her because I was instructed to do so, and I have no room in my black heart to care what happens to her—but she deserves a better fate than Paulie and Deidre.
Until now, Deidre's captives have all been wolves, not humans. Eventually, the shifters will realize what she's been doing and come for her, and I don't want to be under her control when that happens. Hopefully, this girl, Mona—this break in collecting humans—means she's moving onto other prey.
Wishful thinking, probably.
I grind my teeth, my wolf pushing against my skin. He's so close to breaking free. Wolves need to shift. Alphas, especially. They lose their minds if they can't. It's wrong, unnatural.
I haven't shifted in four years.
But it's close, I can feel it. Months, if I'm lucky. Even now—that prickling sensation races across my flesh as my wolf strains against his human prison. The geas—blood magic—repels the shift, but what once felt like slamming into a boulder now feels like wading in mud. Too thick to push through, but there's give where there wasn't before.
Alphas weren't meant to be caged.
Four years bound by Deidre's blood spell, forcing my subservience. Four years as her executioner. Her puppet. Her plaything.
All the while, the rage has been mounting. Like a pressure cooker ready to blow, I'm filled to the brim with hate.
I know this cage intimately. Every jagged edge.
And every potential weakness.
A few months ago, Deidre ordered me to kill one of her coven. He'd been stealing money—so fucking mundane, even I wanted to kill the guy—still, she'd told me to snap his neck, and for a few seconds, I didn'tfeelher command. I didn't feel that phantom tug that's become as familiar as my own mind.
I hesitated—all on my own—then I snapped the man's neck before she noticed.
Her magic still yanks on me like a leash, but that delay felt fucking euphoric.
Since then, I've been testing the boundaries, finding loopholes while feigning subservience. The priestess can still command me directly, but she must be precise. Meanwhile, each day, I plot my next move. My wolf prowls beneath my skin, more insistent now, clawing at the thinning barrier between us.
I'm biding my time, and when I finally break free of her, it won't be because my brother or Kendrick made it so. I'll be the one to tear the old witch to pieces. I'll make her pay for what she's done to me.
I hop up and tower over Paulie. He shrinks even further, letting out a choked sob, but I snatch his chin, tracing my thirsty blade along the frame of his jowls.
"Where. Is. She?"I growl, losing my patience.
I smell piss in the air. Paulie's voice shakes. "She doesn't have a lot of friends. She doesn't really go out, she's sick. All the time. But I'll call her. She always answers when I call."
"Give me your phone."
He scrambles across the floor to grab the phone sitting on the kitchen table. He begins typing, but I snatch it out of his hands.
"You'll let me live? Right? You can have her. The girl, she's been nothing but trouble. Take her, and we're done. Right? You'll tell Deidre? That I made good on my promise?"
I pull up their text chain and type. He's right. She texts back right away.
