Page 39 of Bonded

“Fine,” Orion snarls, a low growl echoing around us. “Five minutes before I take my woman and make sure she never betrays me for you again. She is mine.”

“There is no doubt about that, Orion.” Elizabeth lifts her chin. “Thank you.” She blows out a long, shaky breath before she begins. “It wasn’t until I was about fifteen that I decided I wanted to know more about my mother. I was told she was a prostitute that the alpha hired, and I knew she died in childbirth, but I didn’t know anything else. I asked around the other prostitutes, and they never heard of her, and if she was one, she didn’t work at any of the whorehouses in the city. I began to suspect I was lied to. Who was she? I didn’t even know her last name or what hair colour she had. I knew the chances were I wasn’t going to find out something happy or good, but I needed to know. So I asked father.” Her voice shakes. “He got so angry with me for asking that he struck me across the face and told me never to ask him again. That in his eyes, she was paid for sex, got lucky with a child, and that’s all I needed to know. That I was selfish for asking when I had a mother that brought me up, and it was a betrayal. But we both know Gaia was never that to me. I never had a mother, and Gaia hated me as much as our father liked to pretend she didn’t.” She huffs out a laugh with no humour in it.

“Frank found me crying on the floor, and he is a kind man. He picked me up, took me to the kitchen, made cookies for me, and asked what had happened. I told him everything. He said that he knew my mother—that she had worked right alongside him there in the kitchens. He told me all about her. How she was funny and brave, how she was an orphan, how she was actually from the mountain range but had a skill in cooking and was brought in by word of mouth. I learnt she looked like me too.”

Elizabeth’s hand is still reaching for Orion. “She was eighteen when she caught father’s attention, being as beautiful as she was, and yes, she was paid to sleep with him for a time. She was using the money to save up and leave. Then she disappeared. Frank said he never saw her again, and then he whispered, low, that many disappear. And still are disappearing. I was confused, wondering what he meant. He didn’t speak to me again for a while after that, but it stayed in the back of my mind. What did he mean, people were going missing? Right here in the court.”

Her hand drops back to the bar she was clenching.

“He wasn’t wrong. I spoke to so many people over the years—guards, nobles, everyone. Women were going missing. Always beautiful, young, always ones without family to look for them. I don’t know what made me follow father that day, but I did. I followed him into the throne room, into secret rooms buried beneath it. Rooms that smelled like death and everything rotten in the world. I stayed quiet, hidden in the walls until he left, knowing that if he found me there, he’d likely kill me.”

She takes a deep breath and her voice steadies, just barely. “Orion, there were forty women there. Each one of them was wired up to machines and being experimented on by him. They didn’t speak; they were dirty and broken things. Some were pregnant. Some were not. There were children there too—five, by my count. Our siblings. There was one woman who could speak, and she told me many had died before. She said I was the first one experimented on who survived being different, and they all prayed their children would be taken above ground like me. He was keeping those women there, raping them and torturing them with experiments, trying to make some royal powerful heir that he desperately wanted. Not a single woman there was over the age of twenty. My mother died there. I should have too.” She meets Orion’s eyes. “Do you understand what I walked in on?”

He says nothing.

“Of course, I did the only thing I could. I set them free. I led them out of the throne room and made sure they got out of the lands. I couldn’t get the images out of my mind, when I walked to my father’s study, without a real plan. He could tell straight away where I’d been because I smelt like them, and he was furious. He said I was ungrateful for my birth, that I wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for those experiments, and that the other children down there were never going to be brought up in the court—that he decided with me, because I was the first, that I would have a normal life. The others were to stay underground because Gaia didn’t want any more troubled children. She wanted a girl, always did, but she said I was too much like my wild mother.”

Elizabeth pulls her hand back and crosses her arms. “Our father said he would hunt the proof down and kill them. The three boys and two girls that I met—terrified, small children. Our siblings. He was going to kill them and make sure no one believed me. I couldn’t…I just couldn’t let him do that.”

Orion is shaking as he watches Elizabeth and listens. I want to hold him, knowing how much this must be crushing him to hear. He loved his father.

“So I did what I did. I shifted. My wolf was furious. Just as furious as me. I made a vow not to tell the truth to anyone but you, and I ripped him to pieces because my wolf is stronger. Whatever he did to me and my mother, he made my wolf too strong to be stopped when I shift. My power—maybe not as great. But my wolf is different. I always hid her from everyone, even you. I thought I was just a mess, and it turns out he made me like this with the blood of my mother’s suffering.” She lifts her face up, tears soaking her cheeks. “I do not regret a single part of what I did except for the pain that it caused you. I wish you hadn’t had to see it.”

The vines fall off me, but Orion doesn’t look my way. His eyes are locked on Elizabeth, and I don’t want to interrupt. I can feel Orion’s heart shattering into pieces, and only his sister can fix him now. “I vow by the Mother—this is the truth. I will show you the rooms if you wish. Show you everything that’s left, if your mother hasn’t destroyed it.” Her voice drops. “She knew. She always knew what he was doing. When she locked me up after his death, she came to see me once and told me I should’ve just let it carry on. His silly experiments. She called my mother a lab rat and said she was nothing. There’s something broken about Gaia too.”

Orion walks forward, and Elizabeth sobs. He wraps his hands around the bars and yanks them clean off, then walks straight up to his sister. My throat is tight as I watch, wondering what he is going to do. “I’m sorry.” Words I never thought I’d hear Orion say leave his mouth, and he pulls his sister into his arms. They both cry, clinging to each other for a long time, and I hold my hand over my mouth. “I should have listened, and I should have come to you. From now on, it is us and this is our court, Lizzy. We will fix it. I’m so fucking sorry.” He holds her as she mumbles agreements. “Are our siblings safe?”

“You’ll find those bastards are not. It’s a shame you didn’t let the last one just die…now I have to punish you, son.” I swivel my head around just as Gaia appears out of the dirt. She’s right next to me in the blink of an eye, and she wraps a vine around my throat and yanks me to her side. A sharp dagger presses against my neck as I reach for my shadows, but I pause as she pushes it harder. Orion turns, fear flashing in his eyes just as the earth rises up around us, pulling me under with her.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Gaia throws me straight onto the dirt floor and brushes her hands off on her gown, like touching me was disgusting. I cough up all the soil she pulled me through until my throat burns and I can finally breathe. When I’ve finished, I look up at her from my knees and glare.

“You’re better on your knees, like a human should be, bowing to your master. Honestly, how Vargoth let you out of his sight without killing you is a disappointment. We often take it in turns, drawing straws for whoever will get the human Champion first for the test. Vargoth is usually more heavy-handed and takes the Champion’s life before it gets this far.” She sounds more than annoyed. Like my life is an inconvenience to her. She is everything I suspected her to be, a heartless alpha who does not care about life. Vargoth is the same as she is.

“You do kill them. I wasn’t sure, but of course you do,” I mutter, coughing out more dirt.

She paces up and down as I reach for my shadows and realise I can’t feel them. I try a few more times before I’m left with just tiny whispers in my ear, and I can’t even make out what oblivion is trying to warn me of. My magic doesn’t come to me. When I turn my eyes up, Gaia is smiling. “What have you done?”

“Not what I’ve done. It’s what this place is. Did you think you’d walk out of the Folkland being a Champion and there were no further tests for you? In every court, there is a place like this, left as a test for the Champion. Of course, as you might know, none of them survived. I wasn’t sure it could block your shadow powers, creature of oblivion, but it clearly does. I’m pleased.” She tilts her head. “The goddess left one instruction, passed to every alpha—to bring the Champion here and test them. Of course, there were other parts we decided to ignore.”

“Like what?” I demand.

“That we are meant to work with you, and you are to become the leader, the queen of all packs, and us your servants. They claimed it was how the power stays balanced. The Champion and the three who will defend.” She paces still. “It was said that the next heir to the throne is meant to work with the Champion and build an alliance of sorts, an understanding or even a relationship.” I climb to my feet, still glaring at her. “Of course, telling Orion all of this is not what I want, nor am I interested in him being my heir at all. But I do need him under control, and you have become an issue in that department.”

“What did you do to the siblings? The children your husband created?” I demand, not forgetting what she said.

“I hunted them, of course. Elizabeth is a publicly acknowledged bastard to the throne—already an embarrassment to me, a slight. I’m sure there are other bastards out there that managed to slip through my grasp, but they don’t matter. My husband never really liked keeping his cock in control. Like most men, he only thought with it, and, oh, how he liked them young.” She waves a hand. “But those experiments? No. The very rumour of that could ruin our family. There’d be another alpha family by the end of it, when they’ve destroyed me and killed Orion. You should thank me if you care about Orion at all.”

Those children. The mothers. Elizabeth thought she got them free, at the very least, and she didn’t. They are free in a sense. Gaia is only telling me all of this because she is going to end my life soon, or somehow make sure I won’t be telling a soul. I push down the fear as far as it will go, just like I did so many times in the Folkland. Tannith would tell me to try to reason with the madwoman. It’s my only chance now.

“I felt sorry for you,” I whisper. “When you told me about the alpha choosing you as a young teenager, I felt sorry for you because you were a victim, and we both know it. But instead of helping others in awful positions like yourself, you turned a blind eye to it and, furthermore, hunted down innocents. How could you?” I hold her gaze. “I do care about Orion, and it is because somehow a good man lives in his soul. He is fucked up and somewhat crazy and possessive, but he is good. The moment he learnt from Elizabeth of what you had done, he immediately turned against you. He knows you knew everything.”

Gaia looks at me, and for a moment, I wonder how different things could have been in the Mother court if she had just told the world what a monster her mate was, and if she had loved her youngest son. “Orion was always blind to his father. You only have to show an abused animal a tiny bit of love and they often will adore you forever, despite your sins. My husband had many sins, but he liked Orion. I never understood what he saw in him.”

“You always planned to kill Elizabeth.” I don’t ask, it’s just a statement. All the bullshit about the Mother and loyalty of her court was lies.

“Yes.” There isn’t an inch of hesitation. “I would have made it more legal with the trial—she never would have won—but yes.” Gaia studies me. “And if it helps, I had no interest in killing you. Not until you learnt the truth. I hoped we would have some kind of alliance with the fourth pack, and perhaps I could dig my claws into their world. But it seems this is your fate after all.”