SUN #2
"Where to begin… I’ll take that one on the chin if you admit it’s even worse to kidnap people, rape them, beat them, use them, and torture them. Okay?"
Anzo laughs loudly.
"Oh, I’m only just getting started, dear Ragnar. Your pretty True Mate will help me. Or he’ll die. Right now."
Ragnar’s face goes pale. Mine probably turns red. I blurt out in a voice I don’t even recognize:
"Just tell me what you want from me already! I don’t even know what the hell you expect!"
Anzo looks at me, frowning.
"You don't know because no one among the living knows. My father, Tito, and Paolo took this knowledge to their graves. I’ve kept it secret for a reason. But now I don’t give a damn anymore. The whole world can know. The time is here, the moment when what I lost… I take it back."
The next moment, Matteo and two other guys enter the room and start pushing my cage, then Eliano’s… and finally Mauro’s. They align them in a straight line, mine at the front, Ragnar’s at the back. Then, without a word, they leave the room.
How strange.
Only after, Anzo starts undressing.
Everyone stares at him in shock, none of us understanding what the hell is happening. It’s… surreal.
He pulls off his shirt and undershirt, and we see his lean, wiry chest, covered in scars, crisscrossed in every direction. Thin lines, thick welts, burn marks… some patches look like someone took a cheese grater to them. Others look like skin has been torn off entirely.
His mechanical arm is seamlessly integrated into his shoulder, with artificial skin covering the joint and bicep. The forearm is fully metallic, but his hand is once again wrapped in a glove of synthetic skin.
But Anzo’s not done yet.
He keeps undressing: unbuckling his belt, unzipping his pants, letting them fall to the floor until he’s standing in nothing but boxer briefs.
His body is slender, with a rather delicate frame, his skin is light olive, and he has no hair on his chest.
Then he bends down and buckles the belt back on. This time with two holsters attached, guns tucked inside. It looks absurd, almost like a sick parody.
And then comes the final moment. Anzo presses his lips together, and in one quick move, yanks down his boxers and tosses them aside.
He stands before us completely naked, except for the gun belt slung across his hips.
My eyes don’t want to look—but they do.
I’ve never seen anything like it.
I can’t wrap my head around the horror, the sheer horror of what’s been done to him.
Anzo has been brutalized.
Where his penis should be, there’s only a terrifying, scarred-over wound.
I gag.
Whatever’s left in my stomach comes flying up my throat and splatters on the ground.
Everyone else is still staring at his body, and I see the same horror mirrored in their eyes.
Anzo’s face twists in bitterness.
He speaks in a loud, guttural voice that almost sounds like a roar:
"I am exactly the kind of beast they made me into!"
The villainous declaration hits like a shockwave, making every hair on my body stand on end. I know the others feel it too. We’re all locked into the same current, the same shock.
And Anzo even smiles, with a madman type of grin.
Then he lowers his head and goes quiet for a moment.
When he speaks again, his voice is calmer. Quiet, nearly gentle.
"I’ve heard it so many times, you can choose to stop it with yourself, stop the cycle, end the abuse. But fuck that. I don’t want to stop anything. I just want back what they stole from me. And I know, Sun. I know you can make that happen."
My breath catches in my lungs.
"You’re insane," I whisper, tears spilling down my face. "You’ve completely lost it. Even Blue couldn't fix you, didn't he have a similar situation? He lost his womb in some kind of shooting range accident, it's public knowledge! So how the fuck am I supposed to help you?!"
My voice cracks, every word a desperate plea.
Anzo raises a gun and aims it at me. His face looks carved from ice.
Ragnar makes a low growl.
"But Moon says you can. So now I’m telling you, make it happen. Or I’ll force it out of you one way or another."
I break.
"You’re completely fucking crazy! Stop—please—whatever you’re about to do—I can’t help you!"
A shot rings out.
This feeling is strange.
Something hits me in the stomach. It doesn’t even hurt. I look down and see a growing stain on my filthy T-shirt, and I realize he has shot me in the gut.
That’s when Ragnar lets out a monstrous roar, inhuman, animalistic. His body starts thrashing and jerking in its restraints, but Anzo ignores him completely, like he trusts them to hold.
"Heal yourself, Sun! If you don’t, in a minute a fucking energy coil’s gonna open up in this room, and it’s gonna link your cages! Eliano and Mauro’s cages are in the way! Soon it’ll be just Summer and me left alive in this fucking place!"
I stare at my stomach, where dark blood is pouring out, not a trickle, a goddamn stream.
I feel dizzy. My whole body tightens like something’s ripping me apart from the inside. I want to scream too, to join Ragnar’s wild, demonic howling that now drowns everything else out.
So I do scream. I throw my head back, and that terrifying sound tears its way out of my throat. My whole body shakes. It feels like waves of ice and fire are crashing against my skin, over and over.
I’m slipping into some kind of shock.
For a moment, I’m not even here. For a moment, I’m somewhere else entirely, like I’m riding a motorcycle, the open road flashing by, and at the end of that long stretch… is that where healing waits?
Is it salvation?
Is this really the end?
What’s happening?
This has to be the end…
My end…
I’m about to leave my body for good.
Some part of me, still trapped inside my head, looks down at my stomach. And then I see something, like a thin beam of golden sunlight, rising from the wound, lighting everything around me.
Is that the energy coil breaking loose?
Will I kill the innocent around me while I die?
A soothing darkness spreads over me. I close my eyes and fall back, landing on my back. I see the metal ceiling of the cage above me. Everything feels unreal, like I’m in a movie.
Then I hear the sound of a door slamming open. The cage door.
Anzo opens it, glancing nervously over his shoulder.
He leans down, grabs me by the hair, and forces me to sit back up.
"Look, Sun. Look, you fucking little liar. You better watch this with your own eyes!"
Then he jerks my head down, making me look at my stomach, something I really don’t want to see. There’s still a bloody hole in the shirt.
With a shaky hand, I brush over the fabric and then lift the shirt to see the skin underneath.
"Where’s the hole?" I blurt out, stunned.
"Exactly."
A sharp, awful crack echoes through the room.
Anzo and I both turn toward Ragnar, but Ragnar’s no longer sitting, and he doesn’t look like himself anymore.
Where my True Mate was seated just moments ago, there's now a metallic creature, its body covered in thick, plate-like armor. But it’s not the usual bone-like kind purple alphas can summon. This one gleams like silver.
Anzo immediately brings a hand to the metal plate at his temple and rushes out of my cage. We hear footsteps pounding just beyond the door.
Not the guards. It’s Luca and Rocco!
Ragnar grabs the cage door and rips it off with a single motion, flinging it aside.
But Anzo is already moving. He leaps toward Summer’s cage, bursts inside, and grabs Summer in his arms, pressing a gun to his temple.
"I swear to Fate, I’ll kill him if you don’t stop right fucking now!" Anzo growls, but his voice is different, tenser, less cocky. He’s staring at Ragnar with intense, almost desperate focus.
That’s when I realize: by grabbing Summer, he also disconnected the IV line from his arm. And I think the venflon dislocated too.
I see the moment Anzo notices it, but he knows he can’t fix it right now, not without giving Ragnar an opening.
Ragnar lunges toward the door, hard enough to make the ground shake, but stops just three feet away from the cage. His eyes are barely visible. The plates every purple alpha has hidden in their brow ridges have slid down, turning his eyes into narrow slits.
Spikes have sprouted from his shoulders, back, and limbs. Metallic scales have erupted across his entire body, covering every soft spot, even his neck and groin.
He looks like any purple alpha well into his transition into the imago, except the spikes aren’t bone-white. They shine metallic silver.
"Luca!" Anzo screams, lifting his other hand. He’s holding another gun, and he aims it at… Eliano’s cage!
What the fuck is he doing?
"Stop him! Stop him or Eliano dies! I swear I’ll pull the fucking trigger! You’re the only one who can stop this thing!"
Luca hesitates, trying to stay calm. "Anzo, Ragnar won’t risk Summer’s life. I think we still have control of the situation."
But Anzo shakes his head. "Summer’s gonna wake up any second, and when he does, we won’t have any control. Stopping Ragnar is the priority now. Having him restrained will give us leverage over Summer!"
"Anzo—"
"I will kill Eliano, I swear! Protect him or he'll die!"
Luca's jaw muscles twitch.
"Ragnar, let’s not fight. Please… go back to your cage," Luca says, stepping closer, voice almost soft. But I also see his shirt tightening, bone spikes starting to push through the fabric underneath.
"I’m asking you to listen to me. We can still de-escalate this…"
Ragnar responds, and his voice is completely alien, like someone speaking from deep inside a metallic well, echoing.
"That fucker shot Sun in the stomach! He tortured Summer. He let Moon rot on drugs all these years, and even gave him more just to trigger visions. And then… he made him disappear. That bastard doesn’t deserve to live.
If I go back in that cage, he’s just gonna kill all of us anyway! Including your younger brothers!"
Luca clenches his jaw. "You’re not giving me a choice, Ragnar. I don’t want to fight you—"