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I hadn’t been able to send word to another Alpha—I had orders I couldn’t break—but my grandfather—my Alpha—hadn’t said anything about letting another supernatural know. I’d tracked down a pixie and made an impossible bargain with him. I would give him one favor—one IOU—and he would bring someone powerful enough to kill my entire pack. But would the fey come in time to save the innocents in town?
I didn’t know. God, please. Let the favor be worth it. Someone had to come…
Stupid. This was so stupid. I slammed my arm into the wall beside me. It didn’t hurt anymore, but it’d healed crooked. If the pack ever let me out of here, they’d have to break it again. Which was probably the point. They enjoyed breaking me.
I’d been sitting here for two days, but there was nothing else for me to do but wait. I leaned my head back against the dirt wall, wish
ing I’d left. I mean, I really should’ve left, but my mother was weak. Leaving her with the pack would’ve broken something in me, but staying here, sitting in my own shit for days, and having only my mother’s betrayal for company? That had broken me more than the beating did. More than the boiling black oil they’d poured down my throat for telling their secrets.
Even though she hated my father as much as I did, she ran straight to him and told him exactly what I’d done. Fucking mates. They were dysfunctional. It was completely and totally insane to let yourself be tied with a mate bond.
My wolf growled his agreement.
Two days ago, when I felt myself falling, falling, falling seventy-five feet into the pit, all I wanted was to finally have some peace. I was ready to die.
But I didn’t die. I was in the ground, but not dead. My wolf was pacing inside me, itching to get out, but changing with my arm like this would be painful and only make the injury harder to fix. Not that I could shift when I didn’t even have the strength to stand.
Sometimes sunlight filtered through the grating above me. Sometimes it was moonlight. But I couldn’t see the sky. Never the sky. Couldn’t see through the grate. Couldn’t reach it. And there was no way for me to get out of here.
This wasn’t my first trip to the pit, and yet I’d still tried to get out. I tried every time. I had to make sure because maybe this time would be different, but it wasn’t ever different.
The faraway ceiling was a ten-by-ten slab of concrete with a grated trapdoor dead center. It was too far for me to reach and too hard for me to punch through if I did reach it. The walls were made of packed dirt. The bottom was a mess of mud and other things I didn’t want to think about.
The sour and musty smell of decay was starting to grow, and I was pretty sure it was coming from inside my throat. From the oil they’d poured down it. My bones had healed, yet my throat still felt raw. I tried to swallow, but the little bit of saliva I had felt like shards of glass going down.
So, tonight, right now, I realized that I was finally getting close to my wish coming true. I was going to die. Soon. In this pit.
The only thing that was keeping my sanity was knowing I’d done my best to get help, and that this would all be over soon.
But for now, I was alive. More than hunger or the pain in my throat, it was the thirst that was getting to me. I’d given up on yelling for someone to come help me. My voice didn’t even sound like my own. Not anymore. It was so raspy and hoarse and so impossibly foreign that sometimes, when I talked through my fears in the dark, I could almost convince myself that this wasn’t me. That I wasn’t here. That this was a nightmare that I was seeing through someone else’s eyes.
But tonight that was done. This was me. And I was thirsty. So fucking thirsty. All I wanted was some ice-cold water. Or some ice. My throat… My mouth was drier than the desert after a century-long drought, and if there were a devil here, I would sell my soul for a thimbleful of water. But I was alone. Alone with only the scent of blood and sweat and shit filling the tiny room. I wished that my sense of smell was gone, but it hadn’t dulled. I wanted—
My thoughts quieted as the earth throbbed. Then again. And again.
Footsteps vibrating down to me.
Someone was coming.
And then someone opened the trapdoor. Pure, unfiltered moonlight hit me and I blinked quickly before protecting my face.
I waited for grandfather or one of his bitten, broken, reject wolves to yell at me. Taunt me. Throw something sharp down to me so that I could hurry up and end it.
“Are you alive down there?” The voice was soft and melodic and filled me with the first sliver of hope I’d had in years.
Air. Clean air breezed through the open trap door. I breathed in deep, not even caring about the smell around me. When I pushed past all those scents I could smell moonlight on the grass, jasmine, dew, and something sweet and fair. Like sugary moonlight.
Sugary moonlight?
The fey. It was a fey that opened the door. They were here.
I was too scared to say anything. I didn’t know what kind of fey had come, but I had hope… Hope of salvation. They’d either help me or kill me, and either was fine. As long as something changed.
I tried to speak but nothing came out. I tried to stand, to get even a little closer to the top to see who it was, but my legs were shaking and I fell back to the ground.
I couldn’t make out the face. Just the shape of a head blocking out the moonlight. My vision must’ve been blurry because I could’ve sworn the moonlight almost wrapped around whoever was up there.
“Can you speak?” Female. A female fey had come to hunt my pack? We were almost all bitten Weres. A few had mates, like my father, or were born Were like me, but the rest… Men. Insane, feral, deadly werewolves who loved the taste of warm blood.
