Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AVA
The basement stairs stretched downward into darkness, each step carrying me closer to something I didn't want to face.
Caleb carried me despite my struggles, his massive arms unyielding, his chest warm against my side.
I could feel his heartbeat, steady and slow, so different from the panicked racing of my own.
Through the bond, I felt his reluctance, his pain at what was about to happen, but also his resolve. He wasn't going to stop this.
None of them were.
Ethan led the way, his footsteps measured and precise on the concrete steps, his posture straight and controlled. Mason and Leo followed behind us, their presence a wall at my back, cutting off any hope of escape.
We passed storage areas, a generator room, spaces I'd never known existed beneath the cabin.
The air grew cooler, drier, stripped of the warmth and comfort of the rooms above.
Finally, we stopped before a steel door at the end of a long hallway, reinforced and heavy, with a digital lock that glowed faintly green.
Ethan pressed his thumb to the scanner. The lock beeped, and the door swung open.
"What is this?" I demanded, my voice sharp with fear I couldn't quite hide. My heart was hammering against my ribs, and I could feel panic clawing at the edges of my control.
"This is where you'll be staying for the next twelve hours," Ethan replied calmly, stepping inside and flicking on a light. A single bulb blazed to life overhead, harsh and white, illuminating the space beyond.
The room was small. So small. Concrete walls painted a flat, featureless gray pressed in from all sides. No windows. No furniture except for a thin mattress on the floor and a bucket in the corner. A drain in the center of the floor. Vents in the ceiling that hummed faintly with circulated air.
A cell. They'd built a cell beneath the cabin.
For me.
"No," I breathed, the word escaping before I could stop it. My eyes darted around the space, searching for something, anything—an escape, a weapon, a way out. There was nothing. Just gray walls and cold concrete and that single harsh light. "No, you can't put me in here, you can't—"
"We can," Mason said, his voice flat and hard as he stepped into the room behind us.
His honey-brown eyes swept the space with grim satisfaction, no trace of the gentle man who'd asked about my mother, who'd carried me to the bath.
"And we will. You wanted consequences, Avalon. This is what consequences look like."
"Put me down!" I screamed, thrashing in Caleb's arms with renewed desperation. I clawed at his skin, my nails leaving red tracks on his forearms, but he didn't flinch. Didn't react. Just held me with that terrible, patient strength.
"Caleb," Ethan said, nodding toward the mattress.
"Set her down." Caleb crossed to the thin mattress and lowered me onto it as gently as if I were made of glass.
The moment his arms released me, I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the cold concrete wall, my chest heaving with panicked breaths.
"You can't leave me here," I said, and I hated how my voice cracked, how my bravado crumbled like wet paper. "Please. I'll—I'll clean up the mess. I'll apologize. Just don't—"
"You'll do all of those things," Ethan agreed, crouching down to my eye level, his green eyes studying me with clinical detachment behind his glasses. "After. This isn't about apologies, Ava. This is about teaching you that actions have consequences you cannot escape."
"This is torture," I spat, but my voice wavered, tears gathering in my eyes despite my best efforts to hold them back.
"This is correction," Ethan replied calmly, his voice as measured as if he were explaining a mathematical formula.
"Torture would be causing you permanent harm.
This room is designed to be uncomfortable, not damaging.
You'll have air, water, a place to sleep, a place to relieve yourself. Your basic needs will be met."
"My basic needs?" I laughed, the sound high and hysterical, scraping against my throat. "What about human contact? What about light? What about—"
"Those aren't basic needs," Ethan interrupted gently, holding my gaze with those cold green eyes.
"They're comforts. Comforts you destroyed when you tore apart the cabin this morning.
You rejected the soft approach, Ava. You made it very clear that kindness wasn't working. So now we try something else."
I heard Caleb's voice, rough and strained, saying something about twelve hours being a long time.
Heard Ethan's clinical response about severity and consequences.
But the words blurred together, lost beneath the roaring panic in my ears.
They were going to leave me here. In this concrete box. Alone.
"Please," I whispered, and the word came out small, broken, nothing like the defiant woman who had stood in the wreckage of the kitchen and dared them to punish her.
"Please don't leave me alone in the dark.
" Something flickered across Ethan's face, just for a moment, just a flash, but then it was gone, replaced by that calm, clinical mask.
"The light will stay on for the first hour," he said, straightening up, adjusting his glasses with precise fingers.
"After that, it will turn off. The temperature will drop to fifty-five degrees.
Not cold enough to cause hypothermia, but cold enough to be uncomfortable.
You will have water." He gestured to a bottle by the door that I hadn't noticed before.
"You will not have food. Twelve hours without eating won't harm you. "
"Please," I said again, and tears were streaming down my face now, hot and shameful, cutting tracks through the dust and debris that still clung to my skin. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I broke the bird. I'm sorry I destroyed the books. Just please, please don't—"
"Save your apologies," Mason said from the doorway, his voice hard as stone, his honey-brown eyes cold and distant. "We'll hear them when you mean them. Right now, you're just scared."
"Of course I'm scared!" I screamed, my voice cracking, my whole body shaking. "You're locking me in a concrete box!"
"Yes," Ethan agreed calmly, moving toward the door with measured steps.
"We are. Because you need to understand, Ava, that there is nowhere to run.
No tantrum you can throw, no destruction you can cause, that will make us give up on you.
You are ours. And we will do whatever it takes to help you accept that. "
Leo stepped aside to let Ethan pass, his gray eyes dark and unreadable, his usual playful smirk nowhere in evidence. Caleb lingered a moment longer, his ice-blue eyes fixed on my huddled form, something like anguish written across his scarred face. Then he turned and followed the others.
"Twelve hours," Ethan repeated, pausing at the threshold to look back at me.
"Use them wisely. Think about what you did.
Think about why you did it. And think about whether you want to spend more time in this room, or whether you're ready to start participating in your own life instead of destroying it. "
"I hate you," I whispered, my voice raw with tears and fury, my whole body trembling against the cold concrete. "I hate all of you."
"I know," Ethan replied, his voice soft and almost sad. Then he closed the door. The lock engaged with a solid, final click that echoed through the small space like a death knell. I lunged for the door, pounding my fists against the cold steel, screaming until my throat burned.
"Let me out! Let me out, you bastards! You can't do this! Let me out!" Nothing. No response. No footsteps returning. Just silence, thick and absolute, swallowing my screams like they meant nothing.
Because to them, they meant nothing. I pounded until my hands ached, until my knuckles split and bled, leaving red smears on the gray steel. I kicked the door, threw my shoulder against it, tried the handle again and again even though I knew it was useless.
Useless. I was useless. Trapped in a box like an animal, screaming into the void while they watched on cameras I was sure existed somewhere.
Eventually, I stopped. I slid down the door, my back against the cold steel, my knees drawn to my chest. The harsh light buzzed overhead, too bright, making my eyes ache. The concrete floor was hard beneath me, seeping cold through my thin clothes.
One hour, Ethan had said. Then the light would go out.
I tried to prepare myself. Tried to steel my nerves, to find some reserve of strength that would carry me through. But my hands wouldn't stop shaking, and my breath kept catching in my throat, and through the bond I could feel them up there—warm, together, connected—while I sat alone in the cold.
The light went out.
Darkness crashed over me like a physical weight, so complete and absolute that I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face. I screamed, scrambling toward where the light switch should be, finding only smooth wall. I pounded on the door again, my bloody knuckles shrieking in protest.
"Please!" I sobbed, my voice echoing off the concrete. "Please, I'm sorry, please let me out!" Nothing. Nothing but darkness and silence and the growing cold.
I retreated to the mattress, curling into a ball, making myself as small as possible. The thin fabric offered almost no cushion against the hard floor, and the cold was seeping in now, creeping through my clothes, raising goosebumps on my skin.
Fifty-five degrees, Ethan had said. Not cold enough to cause hypothermia.
It felt cold enough to kill me. I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself, trying to conserve warmth.
The darkness pressed in from all sides, thick and suffocating, and I squeezed my eyes shut even though it made no difference.
At least with my eyes closed, I was choosing not to see.
Time lost all meaning in the dark.
Minutes felt like hours. Hours might have been minutes.
I had no way to tell, nothing to mark the passage except the steady deepening of the cold and the ache in my empty stomach.
I tried to sleep, but every time I started to drift off, the shivering woke me.
My body wouldn't let me rest, too busy fighting the chill, too alert to the danger of the darkness.
Through the bond, I could feel them. Mason's warmth, distant but present.
Ethan's cool focus. Leo's restless energy.
Caleb felt like an ache, like something reaching for me through the void, unable to cross the distance.
I hated that I could feel them. Hated that even now, even locked in this concrete hell, I couldn't escape their presence in my head.
The bonds tied me to them whether I wanted them or not, constant reminders that I belonged to them in ways I couldn't control.
As the hours crawled by, the hatred started to fade, replaced by something worse. Longing.
My body began to betray me in new ways. The cold should have been numbing, should have slowed everything down, but instead I felt hot beneath my skin, feverish despite the chill.
My clothes felt too tight, too rough against sensitized skin.
Every shift on the thin mattress sent sparks of sensation through me that had nothing to do with comfort.
I knew what was happening. Had felt it before, in the days leading up to my heat. The restlessness. The hypersensitivity. The growing ache low in my belly that demanded something I refused to name.
Not now. Please, not now.
My body didn't care about my pleas. Didn't care that I was locked in a box, alone and cold and terrified. The stress was doing something to me, accelerating something that should have been weeks away, and I could feel my control slipping with each passing hour.
I needed them.
A low whine left me at the horrifying thought. I needed Mason's warmth, Ethan's steadiness, Leo's chaos, Caleb's strength. I needed their hands on my skin, their scents surrounding me, their presence filling the void that was growing larger with every breath.
I needed my pack.
No. No, no, no. They weren't my pack. They were my captors. My tormentors. The men who had stolen me, claimed me, locked me in a concrete box to teach me a lesson.
My body didn't care about distinctions. Didn't understand the difference between chosen and forced.
All it knew was that I was alone, that I was cold, that I was going into heat with no one to help me through it.
I curled tighter into myself, pressing my thighs together against the growing ache, biting my lip to keep from crying out.
The darkness was total. The cold was relentless.
And somewhere deep inside me, something was building that I couldn't stop.
I didn't know how many hours had passed. Five? Eight? Ten? The darkness had swallowed time along with everything else. All I knew was that I was shaking, and it wasn't just from the cold anymore.
I was shaking because I wanted them. Because my body was screaming for them. Because every cell in my being was crying out for the men who had put me here, demanding their touch, their presence, their claim. I was shaking because I was starting to break.
The worst part, the absolute worst part, was that some small, treacherous piece of me was relieved. Because breaking meant they would come for me. And God help me, I wanted them to come.