Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
B ack at our camp at Grunfall, the Siphon prisoner has been transferred to an interrogation room set up in one of the old stone buildings. I wanted to interrogate him at the temple, but Stark insisted that this was protocol—Siphons are too dangerous for in-field interrogations.
We had to bring the bastard here, where he could be safely chained to a metal chair bolted to the stone floor. Where, even if he did get out, he’d be surrounded by soldiers and Bonded with no chance of escape.
I agreed—on one condition: that I get to be the one who leads the interrogation.
Stark gave me a look when I said that, half irritation and half respect. But he didn’t argue.
Now, as I enter the bare interrogation room, shadows twist again at the edges of my vision, and with them, rage burns bright. Somewhere, deep down inside of me, is dread at the idea of torturing another being.
I push the feeling down further.
My sister isn’t here. Saela—if she was with those children in the cells—is gone. And this single Siphon guard is my only lead to finding her.
The Siphon guard sits tall in his chains, beautiful even with a bloodied face. The soldiers that captured him managed to knock him unconscious with a crushing blow to the head. The wound has since healed, but combined with a timely injection of the same poison that coats our blades, they managed to keep the Siphon out long enough to chain him.
This is a rare opportunity. One I can’t afford to waste.
Stark enters the room behind me, hanging back beside the table of interrogation tools. His presence is heavy, dark. Like pregnant clouds on a horizon, threatening a deadly blizzard.
Odd that it’s also sort of comforting.
I approach the prisoner. The Siphon’s gaze touches mine with unnerving weight and inhuman calm. No fear. He’s still and beautiful in the guttering torchlight.
“Tell me about the children,” I say. “Where were they taken?”
His perfect brow furrows with confusion. “You’re looking for children?”
Goddess, even his voice is gorgeous—musical and lilting.
“The children you were keeping in the basement cells,” I grate. “The ones you sent your Nabbers for in Sturmfrost.”
He blinks. “‘Nabbers?’” His gaze flicks to Stark in bewilderment. “What is this idiot talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb,” I growl, impatience thrumming in my veins. “You’ve been abducting children from Nocturna for years. You were keeping at least three of them at the temple. Now tell me where they are .”
The Siphon shakes his head, smirking. “They told me all you northerners were wolf-brained lunatics, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
I pause, arms crossed over my chest, staring the Siphon down in silent calculation.
“He’s trying to distract you,” Stark says behind me. “Don’t fall for it.”
I ignore him.
“One more chance to answer me honestly,” I say softly, “then I start breaking bones.”
“Cute,” the Siphon drawls. “Is this what passes for pillow talk north of the border? If you want to know me carnally, darling, just say the word. Your personality is a little sour, but I bet you taste just fine.”
Jaw clenching, I turn and stride to the table, aware of Stark looking down at me as I select a pair of pliers from the tools there.
The Siphon makes no sound when I break his right index finger, but his perfect lips part around a sharp, shuddering breath.
“Where are the children?” I ask with an icy calm I don’t feel.
“Fuck you,” he replies, eyes ablaze.
Crack! His right middle finger gives easily in the metal clamp of the pliers. At the same moment, I look down and realize the first finger has already healed. As I watch, the second finger heals, too.
So I break it again.
The sensation fills me with horrifying delight, so thick and dark that I almost choke on it, shadows growing longer around the room. For a second the wave of feeling threatens to drown me, and Anassa is in my head, like a low growl, ready to rip this Siphon apart if I don’t do it first.
The connection with Anassa brings me back to a cold calm. My voice is almost gentle when I ask for the fourth time, “Where are the children?”
The Siphon curses, spits at me. “There are no children!”
Crack! Crack! Crack!
Three fingers at once. The Siphon finally cries out, jerking against his chains. But he doesn’t get any more helpful, just stares at me tauntingly, panting as his body heals itself.
I return to the table. Stark leans against the wall just behind it, arms crossed, watching with expressionless focus.
The shadows in the room dance, egging me on.
I pick up a dagger, its poisoned blade polished to a dull sheen.
The Siphon’s eyes light with something new when he sees it. Dread, I think. He knows it’s poisoned, that it will stop him from healing.
“Now, we cut,” I say in that same near-gentle tone.
I don’t ask about the children again—at least, not for quite a while. I just cut. First the buttons on the front of his dark uniform, then the pale skin of his chest beneath it.
The knife sizzles as it parts his flesh, little curls of smoke rising from the wounds. Sweat breaks out on the Siphon’s brow. All the color drains from his skin, leaving him gray and wan, gasping like a fish out of water.
The cuts twitch and tighten, struggling to draw closed.
“You like this, don’t you,” the prisoner gasps as I settle the tip of the dagger above his left nipple. “You northerners are sick.”
A flick of my wrist separates nipple from chest. The Siphon screams.
I take his other nipple, too. Then I draw the edge of the blade in a long, slow caress from his sternum to the hollow of his throat.
“You dirty wolf lover,” the prisoner says, defiant even as he slumps in his chains. “I don’t know anything about the children, but I wouldn’t tell you even if I did!”
Something inside me finally snaps, the shadows at the edges of my vision pulsing into an insistent thrum.
Saela is gone. Lost. The other children… I won’t be able to save them. This creature isn’t going to tell me anything.
I’ve failed.
Killing rage turns into something darker, deeper—something too ugly for words. It’s like the shadows fill me, consume me then. Blackness in my mind, behind my eyes, a deep pit that stretches through me and makes my muscles clench.
No more questions. No more interrogation.
No more thoughts but hurt. Punish.
Kill.
I return to the table and pick up the bone saw—a long, narrow implement with fine serrations sharpened to a razor’s edge.
The Siphon’s final howl of pain and terror is cut short as I saw through his trachea. But he’s still alive, blood spurting from his severed jugular as I work the saw deeper, fighting to decapitate him even as his flesh begins to heal around the blade.
When the saw finally bites through muscle and tendon, striking bone, his eyes are still rolling, mouth agape and pooling with blood.
Some distant part of me is aware that what I’m doing is horrific. There’s no purpose to this torture now, no goal but pain and revenge.
No justice but death.
When his head finally separates from his body, the perfect features remain unmarred, his eyes open and accusatory.
His skull thunks to the ground, rolling a few feet, leaving a thick crimson trail on the dirty stones.
I stand over the corpse, breathing hard, painted head-to-toe with Siphon blood.
Anassa’s approval envelops me. She’s proud of my brutality.
All I feel is hollow.
I barely remember the walk to my tent. I collapse into my bunk and fall instantly into sleep, still wearing my bloodied clothes.
Hours later, I wake to dull morning light and a soft clinking sound. My dreams were full of shadows and blood and I’m sweating, my clothes damp. I blink, trying to shake off the nightmares.
Stark sits a few feet away, arranging his needle and several bottles of ink on the little table where I left my weapons the night before.
There’s a movement in the corner of the tent and I squint at it—are the shadows shifting again? But as I stare, they settle down, back to normal. Great, just another hallucination.
My body protests as I lever myself up from the narrow cot, eyes bleary. It’s early. I’ve only been asleep a few hours.
“Time for new ink again?” I grunt, raspy with sleep.
“These you can be proud of,” he says, gesturing for me to take the chair beside him. “Marks that remind us of what we have to do to defeat our enemy. To keep the bloodsuckers from destroying our world and everything and everyone we love.”
It’s a struggle to rise. My whole body is stiff, aching from battle and exhaustion.
“Shirt off,” he says as I sit. “We start with the upper arms for Siphon kill marks.”
A prickle of unease starts somewhere in my gut, but I don’t protest. I just peel off the filthy garment. The cloth is stiff and reeks of dried blood, and my stomach turns as the smell hits me again, hard. I swallow hard.
Stark’s gaze flicks over my bound chest as he draws his chair closer. At least my undergarments are relatively clean.
He has to sit unnervingly close, big hand warm on my arm as he steadies me for the needle.
I must smell terrible. Like death and battle. But if it bothers him, he shows no sign.
Stark’s familiar scent fills my head as the needle bites into my flesh. The pain is a relief after the past twenty-four hours.
The little tent is unnervingly quiet. Most of the camp is still sleeping. The stillness of the dawn and the weight of last night’s interrogation lie over us like a blanket, creating an air of raw intimacy that sets my heart thumping.
Stark’s touch is clinical as he works, but I know he feels the charge in the air. How could he not?
What I don’t know is why the fuck it’s there, or what to do to dispel it.
As though hearing my thoughts, Stark breaks the silence.
“I’ve never seen anyone interrogate with that kind of intensity before,” he says. “It’s clear this mission was personal for you.”
The observation—and the lack of censure in his voice, after what he saw me do—catch me off guard.
Maybe it’s the vulnerability of the moment, the hypnotic rhythm of the needle in my skin, or simple exhaustion, but I find myself telling him… everything.
The words come with quiet intensity.
I tell more about him why I joined the army in the first place, my mission to find Saela, how I thought I’d be able to find her if I could just get to the front line and across the border.
Then I pause, filled with sickening defeat.
“She’s been gone three months,” I rasp, voice breaking just a little. “ Three months , Stark. She turned eleven two months ago, in captivity. If she’s even still alive.”
The needle pauses on my skin. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Stark’s head lift, his gaze moving to my face. I tell myself not to look—I feel like I’ve just bared my fucking soul to him, and I’m not sure what I’m going to see in his eyes.
But for some reason, I can’t stop my head from turning.
Our gazes lock. His eyes are dark, impenetrable. There’s something there, lurking behind that signature stoicism, but I can’t read it.
“I really thought this would lead to something,” I say. “That we might find her at the temple. Or at least get some hints for where to look next. But instead I tortured that thing last night—behaved like a total monster, almost like I’m one of them—and still, nothing.”
We’re both still staring at each other, and I’m drowning in his eyes, waiting for him to say something, tell me if I’m a villain for what I did. He sighs, his breath hot against my arm.
“Don’t let it get to you,” he says, his voice tight. “We’ve all had to do things we aren’t proud of. Just remember why you did what you did.”
When he finally looks away, I realize my throat is burning. I suck in a breath, feeling like I’ve been released from some kind of spell.
Stark finishes my tattoos without another word exchanged between us. But I’m still raw. The sense of intimacy lingers, setting my nerves on edge.
Making my blood pulse in my ears.
When he finally leans down to lick the wounds on my arms, I get a rush of arousal so intense my breath catches in my throat.
A sound escapes me, low and unmistakably erotic.
Fuck!
Stark’s eyes lock onto mine. The hunger in them steals the breath right out of my lungs—sends adrenaline coursing through my veins.
Holding my gaze, he lowers his head and licks the fresh tattoos again, slow and deliberate.
Without thought, my hand flashes out, fingers fisting in his dark hair. It’s not gentle. I’m angry, I realize. Or maybe frightened, I don’t know.
It must hurt, but he doesn’t resist. He just gazes at me in silent challenge.
For a moment, I’m not sure if I’m going to shove him away or yank him closer. The urge to crash my mouth into his surges through me like wildfire.
I need connection, I realize, reeling internally. Physical contact, closeness, comfort. I’m aching for it after the emotional violence of the last few days—even from him .
Even in the form of… whatever the fuck this is.
Warning bells are going off in my head. This is Stark. He’s a monster, a bully, a brute. I’m very, very publicly in a relationship with Killian, who I love .
Logic is no match for animal need. My fingers tighten in Stark’s hair. He opens his mouth wider, bares his teeth, and bites at my flesh.
The sound—fuck, the moan —escapes me again, my nipples tightening.
Then I hear the crunch of boots right outside an instant before the tent flap opens. I jerk back from him as Egith steps inside.
“Alpha Cooper,” she says, gaze flicking between us. “Alpha Stark.”
“Report,” Stark grunts, showing no hint of what just passed between us.
“No news,” she replies briskly. “I was just checking on Cooper. You two should get on the road if you’re planning to be home by tomorrow evening.”
I nod and rise, hoping I don’t look as shaky as I feel.
Egith says something about the wolves being ready. Stark gets up to go.
I don’t look at him. Whatever that was, I’m not going to touch the feeling again with a ten-foot pole.