Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Ren tossed the ball up into the air for the hundredth time. His hands reached out to catch it on instinct. Sometimes, he wanted to let the ball come back and hit him in the face, yet his hands always moved without his permission to save him from the black eye.
He was laying on his mattress, sprawled out in his awful little nest, trying to keep the boredom from creeping into his brain. Falk was no help and still refused to do much besides watch Ren.
“Can’t we play catch?” Ren asked.
Falk didn’t answer, so Ren sighed and continued throwing the ball up and catching it.
It was a new ball – one Falk had brought down a few days before.
His previous one was a yellow ball that he had conveniently “lost” and had cried to Falk about it.
He knew exactly where it was though; he had thrown it down further into the room to the Alpha who always gave him his extra food.
He heard the man throwing it at the wall most nights when the guards weren’t around in between shifts.
This new one was bright red. He wondered where Falk got them – wondered if he had a collection of toys for himself or if he had stolen it from a child.
Ren snorted a laugh at the thought of Falk taking the ball from a pup.
When Ren counted all the way up to two hundred, he groaned and turned onto his side to face Falk. The Alpha was sitting where he always was, wearing the same face he always did.
“You’re boring,” Ren announced, like he usually did at least once a day.
“Prison is not meant to be fun,” Falk repeated the words he usually says. The conversation was a routine at this point.
“How long have I been down here?” Ren asked.
Falk blinked slowly, not expecting the words to differ from their normal exchange. “I think… about eight weeks?”
Ren groaned loudly, “Only a million more to go.”
“When you’re eighteen you could ask for a retrial and ask for death,” Falk hummed.
“I already am eighteen,” Ren said immediately before he could catch the words. He scrambled to cover himself, “If it’s been eight weeks then my birthday has passed.”
“You’re a Spring pup?” Falk asked, eyebrows raising in surprise. “You seem like someone who would be born in the Autumn.”
Falk was far too perceptive.
Ren was usually good at keeping his lies straight, but his age was the hardest he’d told by far.
It made him frown every time he realized he wouldn’t be able to celebrate his twentieth birthday – an important one for all Wolves, where one was allowed to begin courting and begin sharing their cycles alongside others.
It was the age they were allowed to take a mate, and Ren would miss his true celebration this Autumn.
Not that he was going to be able to take a mate down here, but all of that still hadn’t fully hit him yet.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ren laughed.
“Autumn and winter pups are more resilient and stronger because they are born in the harsher months,” Falk said in a rough voice. Ren wondered if that’s what he truly sounded like, or if his vocal cords didn’t get enough use and were slowly whittling away.
“You think I’m strong?” Ren asked.
“Of course I do.” Falk said with a nod.
“Because I fought five Alphas?”
“I suppose that does make you strong,” Falk said. “But you are resilient in other ways – I can see that already. You’re very strong mentally.”
Ren truly laughed at that, “Me? Falk, even you have called me crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Falk said slowly. “I think you’re just dealing with a lot.”
Ren opened his mouth to answer but paused when one of the now-familiar waves of nausea swept over him. He sat bolt upright, dropping the ball that rolled away from him, disappearing into the far corner of his cell. He ran over to the toilet in the corner of the room.
The thing he hated the most about puking wasn’t the burning sensation in his throat, it wasn’t how his stomach heaved up everything he ate an hour before, leaving him empty and starving all over again; it was the noise.
The disgusting retching sounds exploding out from his chest, the gagging of his throat around what it was trying to expel were what made his head spin.
He wished he could cover his ears with his palms so he wouldn’t have to hear them, but his fingers were busy gripping the sides of the toilet instead.
Tears streamed down his face once he was done, trembling as he sat down heavily, fingers white with how tightly they still gripped the porcelain.
He lifted one shaky hand to shove his too-long hair back out of his face.
He sniffled as he tried to get his heartbeat to slow down with a hand held over his chest.
“You’ve been throwing up a lot.”
Ren glanced over at Falk and tried to smile at him, “I guess.”
“Should I get a doctor?”
“No.” Ren shook his head. “I’ve always had a sensitive stomach.”
“Are you going into pre-heat?”
The question was so startling Ren physically flinched away from it. His voice shook when he answered, “I don’t think so, no.”
“You haven’t had one since you came here,” Falk said, concern etching into his features. “How long has it been? Maybe you need a doctor to-”
“I had one a little while ago,” Ren hummed, barely even registering his words before they were out in the air between them. “You weren’t down here. It was one of those times you were gone for a while. You came back smelling strongly—I had assumed you were in rut.”
Falk’s head tilted to one side. “Really? How strange. What are the chances of our cycles lining up?”
Ren shrugged, hauling himself to his feet even as his legs shook.
He made himself go over to the bars, willing his feet to walk straight.
He pressed his forehead against the cold poles, staring out at Falk who leaned back in his seat, chin tipped up to look at Ren.
“I don’t know what to tell you. I had my heat a few weeks ago while you were gone.
” His hand tightened around the bars, so tightly he could feel the metal digging into the skin of his palms. “So, no need to call the doctor or worry about me.”
He wondered what Falk would have said if they didn’t hear light footsteps coming down the stairs.
The Omega who appeared froze on the last step of the stairs when he caught sight of Ren and Falk.
Ren almost felt bad for the Omega who had been forced to take over for the Alpha guards.
The poor, timid thing always had dark circles under his eyes and stared at Ren in terror every time he tried to speak to him.
“Goodbye, Warrior Falk,” Ren said, grinning brightly and waving at Falk as he stood up. “See you in the morning.”
Ren had thought the days of frigid cold were over.
Even he had stripped off the sweaters in favor of short sleeved tunics Falk brought him when the heat finally made its way down the steps.
The sun was probably high overhead, warming the black stones of the castle – Ren wondered how it looked in the bright, summer sunshine.
So, the sudden cold one night was a shock to his system.
He wrapped himself up in his sweaters and blankets, piling them on himself to try to keep in any semblance of warmth. Even Falk sat with his arms crossed over his chest, a sweater pulled on over his Warrior leathers.
“Why is it so cold?” Ren groaned when he saw Falk’s leg start jumping up and down, moving constantly to try to keep his blood circulation up. “Isn’t it summer?”
“It’s been raining the past few days,” Falk muttered. “So, the temperature has dropped pretty drastically up above too. Not this badly, but…” he trailed off, not needing to explain anymore.
“I’m gonna die,” Ren said loudly. “I’m going to freeze to death.”
“You will be fine.”
But the chill stayed around for much longer than Ren would have liked.
His misery wasn’t helped by the deep-seated ache seeming to press on all of his muscles, especially his back and legs.
He didn’t know where it came from, how it could have creeped into his bones when he had no way to exercise in here.
But it somehow felt the same as when he used to take long walks up on the cliffs.
Ren tried to massage the ache away, pressing his fingers into the muscles over and over, trying to will away the pain. All it did was make the spots tender to the touch.
“Come on, Ren, you need to eat.”
Ren had been digging his knuckles into the bottoms of his feet repeatedly—they were annoyingly painful to the point where he didn’t even want to stand up, which had become an increasing problem—when Falk’s voice called out to him.
The breakfast Falk had brought him was still steaming, but had his nose scrunched up involuntarily. “I’m okay,” he said, turning back to his traitorous muscles.
“You’re ‘okay’?” Falk echoed, mouth dropping open. “You’re not hungry?”
Of course he was hungry, starving even. But just the smell of the potatoes and eggs loaded onto the plate Falk held was making his stomach heave. “Yeah, I’m good,” Ren said again.
“Are you feeling sick?” Falk asked, his voice stern. “Should I get the doctor?”
“Falk, I complain to you about everything, do you truly not think I would beg you for a doctor if I needed one?” Ren asked.
Falk frowned. “Then get up. Come get your food—even if you do not eat it right away.”
Ren pursed his lips, but complied. He shakily got to his feet, which almost made him yelp at the stabbing pain in his heels, held back only by him biting his lip hard enough to bleed, and limped over to snatch the plate out of Falk’s hands.
He glared at the Alpha as he put the plate on the ground on his side of the bars and went right back to where he was seated before.
Falk didn’t say anything else for the rest of the night, didn’t do anything else besides watch Ren with his cat-like eyes like he always did.
Ren vaguely heard when Falk left later, but he was already wrapped up in his blankets, trying to ignore the chill and the ache in his limbs.
Ren woke up differently than when he went to sleep—rather than shivering from the cold, he awoke feeling like he was on fire.