0130
Raven
The way he spoke to me sounded so familiar. Midnight drops her guard too. It sounded just like the Jenson we know, the brother I loved. Not the mad man everyone is claiming him to be.
I hadn't seen him since the day Jess was killed. When Damien saw him in the street, the idea of seeing him had been more than I could handle and I had fled to the car.
I still didn't understand why he left the pack and I definitely didn't understand why he had chosen her. The very thing he claimed he hated.
"Don't." I whisper, feeling my heart break all over again.
"Don't what?" He speaks to me from the back of the cell. "Call you sister?"
I frown, looking at his tired and gaunt face.
He had been handsome once.
I mean all the ladies seemed to love him and he had no end of women hanging off his every word.
But to me. He looked exhausted and withdrawn, not anything like how I imagined.
A mate bond gave you strength, but from what I could see, it looked like his had been zapped.
I glance back at Mallory. She hadn't said anything, exactly like I asked.
"Why did you bring her? Stupid bitch is the reason I'm here." Jenson growls
Mallory rolls her eyes and I turn back to face my brother. "You know you are alive because of her and Dane. Dane brought you back here."
"And chucked me in the dungeons. Though he looks like he has made some improvements since I was last down here." He laughs.
His thinning shoulders raise up and down with the deep sound.
Surely Dane saw the same as what I did, that Jenson wasn't in the right frame of mind. That something wasn't right.
'Aspen is weak.' Midnight mutters. 'The rapid shifting has made him weak. Jenson isn't allowing enough time for the bones to heal. Almost like he is punishing himself.'
"What has she turned you into?" I ask, overwhelmed by sadness for him.
He stretches his arms out wide. "This is me, sis. I don't know who you are talking about."
"This isn't you. This isn't even a shell of you. You are not the brother I know and love."
He chuckles again. "Maybe my mate just showed me who I'm supposed to be."
"She's not your mate, Jenson. She is just some whore that you attached yourself to and she is using you."
""Jealous?"
"Of you? How can anyone be jealous of you, Jenson. I will always care about you, because you are my twin. But jealousy? You are on another fucking planet if you think I'm jealous! Do you not care about me, Dane, the pack?" "No."
One word. One single word that brings everything crashing around me. He hadn't hesitated. He hadn't paused to think over his answer. It just tumbled out like it was so final.
"She really means that much to you?"
"She's my mate."
"No she isn't. A mate isn't someone we choose. A mate isn't someone who forces us to do things that we don't agree with. A mate is someone who is selected for us because they make us complete." "Why would you think I don't agree with her? I went to her and she agreed to help me."
"With what?" Mallory mutters.
I glare at her and she pretends to zip her lips shut.
"It's mental that you act like she belongs in the pack." Jenson muses. "It's mental that you let them slip into our way of life."
"You have marked a Lycan! Why the hell is it okay for you, but not us?"
He rolls his dark eyes at me. "Oh Raven!"
'He has more than lost it.' Midnight murmurs
"I'm guessing she wants to kill Neah and you want to take out our pack, because you blame us for your idiotic moves! But if you don't believe in pack life, what's the fucking point?"
"What did you hope for, Raven? That you would come down here and find a way to save me? You are the one that needs your eyes opening."
I slink over to the wooden chair and sit on it. Mallory leans against the wall. She's picking at her fingernails, acting like she is no longer interested in Jenson's words.
"Do you have something to say?" I mutter
She frowns as she raises her eyes to meet mine. The look that basically said I had told her to be quiet so that was what she was doing.
I gesture for her to speak.
Mallory straightens her back. She takes a step forward into Jenson's direct line of sight. He growls straight away. But it doesn't stop her.
"I'm confused." She shrugs her shoulders. "I heard you tell Blair that you could use me. That you could gain information from me. Isn't that why you kept me alive. She was all set to kill me and you stopped her. Why?" "Fuck off!" Jenson growls
"Anyone would think you had a soft spot for me. Yet here you are, acting like I'm the world's worst villain."
"Bitch!"
"So you were going to play me? Try to convince me to join your little club, is that it?."
"Fuck off you dirty Lycan."
"Now that is something I don't understand." Mallory coils her hands around the bars and stares in at him. "Because at the end of the day, you were still fucking a Lycan. Jess was a Lycan. You know, your actual mate. Did you call her dirty too? Because if I remember correctly, she was bitten, just like me!"
He doesn't answer.
"Gotcha!" Mallory mutters. "Neah's lookalike convinced you we are dirty because we are not pureblooded."
"Shut up you dirty bitch!" Jenson snarls, his bones start to crack and we watch him shift into his Wolf. He paces the small cell, moving closer and closer to the bars. Mallory removes her hands milliseconds before he takes a swipe at them.
She laughs and paces just like him. Moving back and forth in front of his cell at exactly the same pace.
It was making my brother angry. He hated people mimicking him. Something that hadn't changed.
"You've let her poison you, Jenson." I mutter from the chair. "She wants something and she has made you promises that she can't keep and probably won't keep. Women like that don't care about anything but themselves."
I was running out of ideas. This was not how I thought the conversation was going to go.
'He's killing Aspen.' Midnight mutters, pain etched in her voice. 'He's forcing the shift to break Aspen's spirit.'
'What? Is that even possible?'
'It's the final piece of him that keeps him attached to us. If he breaks Aspen, that's it.'
"Jenson, please tell me why?" I try to hide the sadness in my voice, but you only needed to look at me to know I was feeling like I was losing him all over again.
The Wolf moves back and forth, every few seconds, he would slam his body into the bars, hoping that they would bend.
He shifts back to human form, tying his shirt around his waist to cover himself up.
Every rib was showing, his collarbone jutted out and the skin looked as though it had been pulled tight and there was no room left.
I'm sure if he turned I would see every bit of his spine. He was so fucking skinny and even Mallory takes a step back when she realise how ill he is.
The fitted suit had hidden it well.
"Is she starving you?" I ask in shock. Jenson was like me when it came to food. A bottomless pit.
"Don't be stupid. I love her and you lot will pay for keeping me hostage."
Mallory turns to me. Her brows knitted together and whispers. "I think she had him in some kind of hostage situation."
"Don't be stupid. He wouldn't have marked her."
"Maybe that's when it changed." She gestures for us to go up and out of the dungeon.
"So the first night I went there. He was outside the house. It was him asking me questions about why I was there. Claimed that Blair wasn't home, but her car was there. When I went back the other night. He was watching from a window. She had to call him to help her with me because he wouldn't come out, and even then he seemed a bit surprised by what to do."
She frowns, "For someone that can lead wars, he sure as hell couldn't get a grip on my legs." Her mind was working a lot quicker than mine at putting information together.
""What?"
"Raven, Humans lose their minds for all sorts of reasons. Trust me, I've seen it between my father and anyone he came into contact with and so do Rogues." "He's not a Rogue!" I mutter
"Not him. Her. She called him names, real degrading ones and he jumped to her every demand."
"That's not like him."
"And you have just seen what I have seen, there is no way he has eaten properly in weeks. When she turned up here, Jenson was in the car and to be quite honest, he looked like he was going to shit himself. He didn't want to be here." "That doesn't explain why he is being a dick now." I mutter
"Doesn't it? What if he is aware that she's listening to him?" She shakes her head at me.
"There was a moment before.... Before my mate turned up, where I actually thought Jenson was going to let me go. He pulled knives out of my legs that she had pinned me to the chair with. He sent her away to the shower."
"Slow torture. We've seen Neah do it."
"He didn't hurt me again. Raven, and he has called me a lot of names, but 'dirty' is a new thing."
"He's angry. He can be a prick when he is angry and as his sister, I'm sorry"
She waves my apology away. "I think he might be trapped and in way over his head."