Chapter 38
CHAPTER 38
S erafina
Hey! Wake up. Wake up , my wolf calls from somewhere deep inside of me.
“What? Where am I?” I groggily ask when I open my eyes into complete darkness. My body aches everywhere and it’s hard to sit up from the cold, concrete floor.
The moment I press my hand against the floor to sit up, I start shivering violently.
“Shshsh, don’t be too loud,” a female voice tells me.
“Who are you?” I ask, not taking her advice to lower my voice. “Where the hell am I?”
My heart starts racing as I search my brain to try to recall how or why I ended up here.
“What is this place?” I ask, my voice growing even louder and more agitated. I blink and fight to clear my vision. Typically, it’s much sharper than this. I’ve never had a problem seeing even in the darkest of rooms.
“You have to …” The voice trails off.
“Have to what?”
“Calm down,” another, weaker voice says. This one is male and comes from the opposite side.
I close my eyes, inhale as deep as I can—which isn’t much—and try to make myself calm down. My heart’s still racing by the time I open my eyes again, but at least my vision is a little clearer.
I’m in some sort of cell. The cold, relentless concrete floor and hard stone walls tells me a prison building of some sort, maybe?
I blink again. Yes, it’s a prison because there are bars for doors. I reach out for one of the bars, wrapping my fingers around it. As soon as I do, a cold unlike anything I’ve experienced before overtakes me.
It’s so cold that it burns within the depths of my body. My wolf, who was listless before, sparks to life, yelping and screaming in pain.
When I withdraw my hand, the painful coldness withdraws and my wolf calms to a heaving trying to catch her breath.
“Wh-Wha-What is that?” My voice trembles.
“The coldest metal on earth,” the male voice answers. “Grenoliuem.”
“Gre-Gre … I’ve never heard of it.” I’m not a science expert or anything but I’ve heard of most common metals.
“Most haven’t …” He pushes out a heavy breath. It sounds like he’s struggling just to breathe.
“Are you okay?” I don’t know why but I need to know that he’s alright. Probably because it helps to know I’m not alone in this. Wherever this is.
“No,” he responds. “Haven’t been okay for a long time.”
My heart squeezes.
“Hey,” I call out, facing the far wall where the woman’s voice had come from. “Miss? Miss? I don’t … what’s your name?”
There’s no response.
I ask again.
“L-Leave me a-alone,” she throws back, harshly.
“That’s Ashley,” the voice tells me. “She’s struggling, too. H-Her mate … Christophe …”
Ashley? Christophe?
I know a Christophe. And why does the name Ashley sound familiar? My brain is too fuzzy to process or think too deeply.
A scream ricochets around the prison, pushing away my musings. A male voice so loud and thunderous that the scream of pain can’t be ignored.
“Nooo!” Ashley cries out.
“Wha-What’s happening? Who is that?”
“That’s Christophe,” the male on the other side calls out.
I blink as I try to decode what’s happening. Christophe, wherever in this building he is, he’s being tortured and the female beside me, she’s his mate.
Mates, my wolf calls out weakly.
Oh, Mother Moon! Ronan, Montgomery, and Noah! I remember the last time I saw them. That horrible scene of those men attacking our pack, Noah calling out my name but never responding to me again. The ring of fire my wolf used to try to protect our pack.
Did we?
Did we save them?
Or had they ended up in this horrible place, too? Are my mates being tortured?
Another loud scream rattles the walls, and the woman beside me cries out in pain.
“Wh-Who is doing this?” I ask the man.
“Them.”
I wait for further explanation but he’s quiet.
“Who are they?”
“Don’t know.” Another ragged breath is pushed out, and I wonder if he experienced the same kind of torture.
“What’s your name?”
“F-Felix.”
My wolf yelps inside of my chest.
“Felix, what?” I don’t know what to do with it all, but the idea to gather as much information as possible comes to me.
“F-Felix …” he draws out before saying, “Crimson. From the Crimson Pride pack.”
I bite my bottom lip as what feels like a cold shower washes over me. “The Crimson Pride pack?” I ask this question to no one in particular but he responds.
“That’s right.”
“You’re real.”
“We were,” he replies, sadness palpable in his tone.
“Were?”
“They … they killed us.”
“Who? Humans? Witches? Shifters? Who were they? Who is doing this?”
Again, he doesn’t answer immediately. I start to drive myself crazy with the unanswered questions.
“W—”
“I can’t know for sure. I’ve been locked in this cell for a long, long time. Ever since they killed my mate.”
Pain lances through me, once again. The death of a mate is a death sentence for most shifters. The fact that a shifter has lived for years without his fated mate, screams of years of pain on top of likely untold tortures.
The need to see my mates pulses through me.
Where are they?
The mate bond.
I attempt to use the mate bond to gauge whether they’re nearby. Though, I know I would feel it if they were. I always know when they’re near, but I’m feeling so strange already and who knows what drugs these torturers have filled me with. It’s throwing off my senses.
There’s no response when I call out to my mates through our bond. Either they’re not here or they can’t respond because they’re inhibited in some way. I refuse to believe they’re dead. The thought alone would kill me in an instant.
“I need to get out of here,” I say.
“No!” the male voice insists. “The torture will be worse if they find out you tried to escape. There’s no escaping this hell.”
I want to tell him that may be true for him, but it isn’t for me. However, the pain and horror in his voice stops me. It’s evident he’s been through a tremendous amount of whatever they’ve put him through.
His spirit is broken.
But mine isn’t. I try a different tactic.
“Felix, where is your pack from? Were you really a part of the Crimson pack?”
A grumble before he replies, “Yes.”
My father. The realization hits me like a ton of bricks. Maybe he knows who my father is.
“Fire,” I say. “Y-Your pack can catch fire as well?”
“Yes, it’s how we got our name. We’re?—”
“Did you know Wilma Nightwolf?” The question bursts from my mouth. “I-I think she knew someone from your pack, but I-I don’t know many details. I only recently found out part of the story, and I …” I ramble for a bit before realizing he’s gone completely silent.
I also go quiet, sensing that something’s wrong. I mean, more wrong than our already extremely precarious situation.
“Sh-She raised me. She’s my aunt. No, not my aunt,” I correct. “But …” I trail off because it feels like the more I speak, the quieter he gets even though that doesn’t make much sense.
“She might’ve known someone in your pack that?—”
“Mate.”
The word comes out so faint and strangled that I barely make it out. When I do, my lips begin to tremble, making it difficult to speak.
“D-Did you s-say?”
“Mate,” he says stronger this time.
“Wilma Nightwolf,” I say her name again to verify. “Sh-She was my mother.” It’s the first time I’ve said the words out loud to anyone. The woman who raised me and led me to believe she was my aunt is actually my mother.
“Noo,” he cries out.
My wolf strains against the sound of the voice. Everything inside of me becomes a jumbled mess and my mind can’t fully process what I’m learning right now.
“Wilma Nightwolf.”
“Maaate,” he repeats. “Y-You … Sera-fina.”
“Do you know me?”
He starts and stops a couple of times. My ears burn to hear him get his next words out. My heart pounds against my ribcage.
“I-I’m … your … father.”
I gasp and cover my mouth with my hands. This can’t be. The man I’ve searched for and wondered about for years is right beside me inside of this hellhole? How can that be?
“W-We separated to save you,” he replies when I ask him as much.
“It wasn’t safe for your mom to be with me. I lived on the run because our pack was being hunted. Sh-She said her sister would raise you since she couldn’t have a baby of her own.”
The story he tells me puts all of the long-lost pieces together. They gave me up to keep me safe. Even though my mother could never truly part from me, she pretended to be my aunt to stay close.
That is until her sister threw me out and I went to live with her.
“But they found her,” I tell him. “They hunted her down and killed her. They tried to make it look like an accident.”
I hear his whimpering. He’s crying. “I felt it when she died. All mates have this sense.”
I rub my chest. While his truth pains me to hear, it also brings me a sliver of hope. I’d know it if my mates were gone. They’re still alive. I can only hope they’re not here in this prison, about to be tortured.
“But why–” My question is cut off when the sound of metal clashing against metal erupts, signaling the opening of a door.
“Rise and shine, dogs!” a viciously ugly voice yells throughout the area.
I can’t see him, but I immediately want to rip his head off. Even my wolf, who appears to be coming out of her stupor, snarls as the pounding footsteps approach.
“Everyone up?” The man snickers when a series of snarls sound around the larger room. “Oh, we’re up in arms today, huh? Guess you heard the little experiments going on downstairs.”
The bastard actually laughs.
The female next to my cell, who’d been quiet outside of whimpers and cries for a long time, suddenly animates, threatening the man’s life. “I’ll kill you!”
“You think so?” the voice scoffs before I hear a loud electric buzzing.
She screams, which only makes the man laugh harder.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I yell. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“What do we have here?” He saunters over, stopping in front of my cell. Through the bars of my cell, I can see him clearly now that my vision has cleared, allowing me to see even in the darkness.
“Should’ve known you’d be a feisty one.” He snorts, and I get a look at his hideous face underneath the bill of his hat. It’s a mask of ragged scars.
He knocks the baton in his hands against the bars of my door, rattling it.
I surge forward, my incisors immediately descending. The hideous motherfucker isn’t without fear since he noticeably jumps back from the bars.
He quickly recovers, seeing that as soon as I touch the bars, I pull back from the burning freeze that again scours through me.
A horrific chuckle bursts from his lips. “How’re you liking that grenoliuem?” He smiles, making him even uglier. “It doesn’t work for the regular dogs, but for your kind, it’s enough to put out that little fire trick you think is so cute. It’s what we shot you up with to get you here.”
He bangs the baton against the door again, making me jump.
“Fucker!” a voice snarls. It’s the male next to me—my father.
The guard appears surprised. “What the hell is this?” He walks over to the cell beside mine. “You suddenly decided to grow a pair?”
I hear snarling and growling coming from him.
“Oh, that’s right,” the guard suddenly says, moving back in front of my cell. His lips twist into an even darker smile. “This bitch is your daughter.” He belly laughs.
“If you touch her …”
My wolf howls in response to my father’s words.
My father.
He’d sounded so weak and withdrawn before, but now? Now, there’s fight in him. And it’s for me.
The guard moves back over to my father’s cell.
“How about I make you watch when we bring her down to the experiment room?”
My father snarls, and I hear a scuffle before a loud bellow. I flinch in pain from the sound.
“Keep your fucking hands off of me,” the guard orders.
My father whimpers but continues to snarl. I can’t figure out why he doesn’t shift, but maybe it’s because his wolf is just as powerless against the special metal as mine.
“Just for that, I’m taking her next.” The guard reappears in front of my cell, the baton of his in one hand and a set of keys in the other.
I back away from the door until my back hits the wall. I do my best to summon my wolf forward, but she’s weak. Whatever they shot me up with still runs through my body. I can’t shift.
“Come on, little bitch, don’t make trouble for me. We’ve already discarded those sons of bitches from the Blackclaw pack last night. I don’t want to have to do the same to you. We’ve got special plans for you.”
Discarded? Blackclaw pack?
He can’t …
My knees go weak. Did I not save them? Did they kill them all?
Boundless anger rages through me. It’s enough to awaken my wolf. My teeth finally descend to their full extent and the hairs along my arm pop out.
The guard presses the electrical shock thingy against the metal bars, causing another jolting sound. An obvious threat.
“You want to play tough?” he asks, spit flying out of his mouth. “Let’s go, bitch.”
He charges toward me with the baton extended toward me. I inhale deeply, my heart racing, and summon my wolf forward as much as I can, ready to aim for this bastard’s throat.
Except I don’t ever get the chance.
The coward’s eyes go wide as a loud booming noise rattles the entire building. It’s so forceful that it throws me off of my feet.
Before I stand again, voices sound throughout the hallways. I don’t understand the screams and shouts coming from every direction. The guard is suddenly snatched out of my cell. There’s a shriek from him followed by a gurgling noise.
I know the sound of death when I hear it.
I blink my eyes open, not even realizing I’d closed them, and the most beautiful sight fills my eyes.
“Ronan?” I call out at the same time his long, outstretched arms pull me to my feet and then into his arms.
He buries his face into the crook of my neck.
“I told you there isn’t anywhere you go that I won’t hunt you down, didn’t I?” His body trembles, or maybe it’s mine.
I hug him tighter.
“Noah? Montgomery?” I ask a few seconds later. “Were they? Are they …”
“Right here, Little Hellraiser.” Noah’s voice ties with Ronan’s for the best sound I’ve ever heard. Though Ronan still holds me firmly, not even allowing my feet to touch the ground, Noah cups my face, kissing me.
“My turn.” Montgomery pushes Noah away, kissing me as well.
“Let’s go,” Ronan insists. “We’re getting you out of here.”
I don’t even know where to begin with the questions. But then, I remember …
“Wait,” I call out as we start out of the cell door. “M-My father. We have to get him.”
“Your what?” all three ask in unison.