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“Kitchen is around the back,” the alpha guard says.
“She’s not meat. Well, not that kind of meat.”
The alpha guard looks me up and down. “Leonidas does not want that thing.”
“Have you asked him? The commander told me to bring her here.”
“Throw her out of the city. She’s some kind of abomination,” the alpha guard replies.
Fuck me. I am so close to achieving my goal. I wonder if I am close enough yet. I feel like I would know if I was. If the machines in the bag had activated, surely alarms would be going off and guards would be mobilizing.
“She’s a human. She’s fuckable. Let Leonidas decide.”
“I’ll run it up the chain, but don’t leave her here. I’m not dealing with gate trash.”
My guard bristles but doesn’t reply.
The alpha guard rips the bag out of my hands and tears it open. I brace myself for death, knowing that once he sees what I have in there, he is going to know that I am no mere human cookie seller. He is going to see the machinery and know that I am part of a plot to bring down the great and evil Leonidas.
“EERGGH!”
The only thing that emerges from the bag is a Growler, who screams and runs, dashing through the bars and into nearby undergrowth before it can be caught.
I can’t believe a Growler stowed away, but that’s not my main problem. My main problem right now is that there’s absolutely nothing in the bag besides some crumbs.
I’ve been betrayed.
Kain fucked me.
The alpha guard drops the bag and grabs me. I find myself half-carried, half-dragged through the halls. This is all happening so fast. I don’t have time to process what the hell is going on. Was the Growler intentional? Probably not. Judging by the crumbs, there were cookies in the bag at one point, enough cookies to make me think everything was on the up and up if I checked. But Kain didn’t know that Growlers will literally die for baked goods, and I didn’t know that any had stowed away with us.
“Please don’t hurt me!” I beg, knowing that begging has very little effect on the Leonid psyche.
The guard ignores me as he pulls me up several sets of stairs, past increasingly ornate and detailed murals that must be many hundreds of years old. Much of the art depicts battles and grotesque scenes of enemies being vanquished. In one scene that passes before my frightened eyes, two dimensional Leonids pull hearts from fallen foes and consume them with apparent enjoyment and approval from others.
I can tell we are heading toward the part of the stronghold where Leonidas himself must hold court. I can only imagine what will happen to me once the alpha I have heard so many terrible things about, who drove his own son to try to dilute the bloodline in order to stop the vicious slaughters of the weak, sets eyes on me.
Dragged through a final set of large carved doors, I am brought into a great hall and shoved roughly onto a stone floor. It is a very large space and mostly empty, but for a figure I barely dare even glancing at, sitting on a great leonine carved throne set up on several sets of dais.
“The female you wanted, my alpha,” the guard grinds out between what sound like clenched teeth.
“Bring her to the steps and leave us.”
I feel as though I recognize that voice, though the echo of the walls makes it boom and distorts it to the extent I cannot be sure.
I raise my eyes, expecting to see some great old patriarch, a no-doubt scarred and majestic creature of cruelty. But the Leonid I see on the great stone throne is no stranger. He is cruel and he is triumphant, and I know him.
“Kain?”
Kain is sitting on the throne, clad in fine gold raiment, an armor set that would make any grand evil beast jealous. He shines, radiant with dark energy. Amid my confusion and fear, I feel a tiny glimmering of respect. He is really pulling this look off. His moment of triumph has been perfectly orchestrated.
Kain laughs, a great roar of triumph that echoes around the cavernous space in which I was already so small, and now I become absolutely miniscule. I’ve been suffering an increasingly bad feeling since I came into the city, and now I find myself entirely enveloped in darkness.
“If you could see the look on your silly human face,” he says. “It’s priceless. It’s worth every bit of bother it has been watching you bumble your way here with transparent lies and the laughable imagining that you are somehow capable of making any difference to this world. Save cubs? You are weaker than any cub.”
I wish I had something smart to say, but I can’t think of a single thing. It is obvious that I am being toyed with, the same way Buttface toys with field mice. Kain is enjoying this moment tremendously, but I know how things go once he becomes bored with gloating. That is when I will be battered and broken, wounded and killed by slow degrees.
It is in my best interests to draw this moment out and to hope that somehow, something happens that saves me.
