Chapter 27
Kiara
Hours in the refrigerator had left me approaching hypothermia. My teeth were chattering, and my muscles shivered nonstop. Pain from exposure to all the meat in the room radiated through me. All I could think about was how to get warm, but with the way my body was strung up, I couldn’t move my hands or feet to generate heat or even cover my bare skin. A few times, I thought David had made a mistake in leaving me here to freeze to death, and I found some small satisfaction in the idea of him coming to retrieve me only to find a corpse. But as the hours dragged on, I continued to live. Through sheer force of will or simple misfortune, I didn’t know.
When my body became numb to the cold and I stopped shivering, I knew my condition was deteriorating to the point of no return. Once hypothermia set in, your body stopped feeling cold—in fact, your blood vessels dilated, and you felt warm instead. As my thoughts deviated away from my situation and toward fanciful reveries, I realized that I didn’t have much time left. I had to focus. With a sharp inhale, I peeled open my eyes and looked around the room. What could I do?
Jerking my body only resulted in me swaying helplessly where I hung. They had left my legs unbound, though, which meant maybe I could reach something. With my bare feet, I stretched toward the nearest carcass, swinging my body until I made contact. The ice-cold meat stung my toes, and I lost my grip the first time. The second time, I endured the pain, angling my body laterally until miraculously, the hooks around my bound wrists came loose and clattered away. Without the chains suspending me, I instantly dropped to the ground, landing hard on my shoulder with an “oof.”
The excitement of freedom brought me back to life. I shivered again, rolling onto my knees and taking stock of my physical situation. While most of my skin had darkened from the cold, the bottoms of my feet were red, almost as if they’d been burned by the meat. Next, I had to find a way to undo the rope around my arms and neck.
Several fans were fitted against the wall, blowing cold air into the room. Their spinning blades were the only objects sharp enough that I could see. My stomach curdled with uncertainty at the likelihood of slicing myself open, but I had no other option. I staggered toward a fan at chest height in the wall but realized I wouldn’t be able to kick off the protective grate, not with my bare feet. Instead, I contorted myself to try to slip the rope between my wrists and neck into the metal bars of the grate, careful not to let my hair fall in with it. There was a hard jerk as the fan blades caught the rope, severing it halfway. I strained, pressing my skin against the grate, trying to cut the rest of the rope until, finally, my efforts paid off. The nylon broke apart, and I stumbled forward, tipping my head down with relief. Carefully, I brought my bound wrists under my feet until my hands were in front of me. The rope was too tight for me to free them, but at least I could use my hands now. I turned my eyes to the pig carcass where my mother’s horn was hidden.
“Fuck you, David,” I mumbled between my teeth. Taking a deep breath, I braced myself for the pain and plunged my hands into the carcass, biting back a groan as I searched the viscera for the horn. It wasn’t hard to find, but the process was agonizing, searing my skin with poisonous flesh and blood. I clasped the horn between my palms and wrenched it out, bright red blood smeared up my arms. The pain was so intense it made me tremble.
But I was almost free. Lurching toward the door, I clutched the horn in one hand and pulled the handle with the other. The door unsealed and swung open, and I was greeted with a cloud of slightly warmer air. My blue lips gaped at the warmth as I stumbled into the bright lights of the basement hallway, only to realize this entire time, I hadn’t been alone.
Kipling was standing there, his back to the door.
The huge dragon guard turned to face me, clearly shocked that I had gotten myself down from the chains. My instinct was to attack. As he lunged for my arms, I shoved the razor-sharp point of my mother’s horn into his abdomen, sinking it deep between his ribs. Kipling’s eyes widened as we both looked down at the gory wound I’d created.
“Shit,” he muttered.
Without the disadvantage of having been frozen for hours, Kipling was faster than me. He supported himself against the wall with one arm and, with the other, grabbed my wrist, pulled the horn out of himself, and threw me to the side. The horn fell to the ground between us as I slammed into the other wall. I fought through the pain to stay upright, but the collective exposure to meat and blood and freezing temperatures was gradually destroying me. I breathed hard but couldn’t muster the strength to move when all I needed to do was just run past him.
Kipling’s bloodied hands went for my arms again. “Somebody get David!” he shouted to the dragons guarding the basement stairs.
I fought with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough.
By the time David came storming down to the basement, Kipling had his knee on my back while I sprawled helplessly on the ground. The Dalesbloom Alpha rumbled with amusement, retrieving the blood-slicked horn from the floor before crouching in front of me and grabbing my chin. “I was hoping you’d give me a taste of your feisty little temper before everything was said and done. It’s that much sweeter to crush hope when it’s been so painstakingly built up.”
I spat at him.
David sneered and stood up. “May as well bring her to the atrium now. We have seven hours yet before the ritual can begin, but I’d like to get an early start on her suffering.”
As David turned away, Kipling hesitated, his hand over the deep wound I’d made in his abdomen. I tilted my head to leer up at the dragon guard. He caught my eye, mouth taut with displeasure, and I wondered if he was second-guessing pledging himself to David, who didn’t seem to care that Kipling had been so heavily wounded. He finally yanked me to my feet, and we trudged after David. I continued to shiver, the cold having sunk right down to my bones, while Kipling bled profusely the whole way up the stairs.
He dragged me through the Manor to a corridor that went in the opposite direction from the office and the staircase leading to the second floor. We ventured into the eastern wing of the Manor, which, based on the layer of dust accumulated in the corners and on the walls of the corridor, I gleaned was rarely visited. We ended up in a large, circular room with glass walls; it was like a greenhouse, filled with a variety of vibrant plants and glowing, golden sunlight. The cobbled stone floor was littered with dirt, and the stench of a stagnant pond made the air reek like muck.
“The atrium,” David began, “was my wife’s favorite room in the Manor. After she died, it pained me too much to visit it. My children never had any interest in it. I kept the room locked at all times, but now, I’ve finally found a purpose for it again.”
In the center of the room sat a wooden table, and beside it, standing amid the dirt on the floor, there was a metal tap. Once more, my wrists were maneuvered behind my back, and a new rope was tied to the one around my neck. Kipling forced me to my knees and secured me to the metal tap. After that, he wavered, his blood loss intensifying.
“Get that wound bandaged and tell the others to feed. It will give you the strength to undergo the Lycan ritual,” instructed David.
Kipling nodded, retreating from the room without a second glance my way. Two wolves arrived in his place, standing over me so I wouldn’t make another attempt to escape.
I’d really believed I’d had a chance to get out of there when I’d broken out of the ice room. I’d thought I could take my mother’s horn and flee back into the woods, reunite with Colt before it was too late, and prevent the Lycan ritual from happening. But I’d been wrong. I had done exactly what David had wanted. He’d wanted to see me fail, to see the hope drain from me as he chained me up and forced me to participate in the ritual. I didn’t want to let defeat affect me, but after all I’d gone through already, battling hypothermia and the effects of the poisoning, I was struggling to bring myself to fight back anymore.
For the next seven hours, I watched David prepare for the Lycan ritual.
My heart sank as he smashed my mother’s horn on the table. He placed the fractured pieces in a stone bowl and crushed them with a pestle. An arrangement of plants and flowers was laid out on the table, all collected in appeasement of the Moon Goddess. David’s followers washed the grime off the windows so the light could clearly make its way into the room.
Every now and then, David paused his preparations to torment me. First, he held in front of me a silver-bladed knife that I knew, even without being told, he had used to carve the horn out of my mother’s brow and kill her; with that knife, he pried two fingernails off my fingers. With each one, I clenched my jaw and swallowed back the pain, but it was blinding. Then, he broke all the toes on my left foot, one by one. Finally, he cut my hair and took several notches out of my right ear. I knew that, over time and with enough transformations, these injuries would heal. But at that moment, with every desecration of my body, I lost a little more of myself.
I was certain David was enjoying this, knowing that it wasn’t just me suffering, but his son, too.
Later, after the sun had descended beyond the horizon and the skies had darkened, Kipling led a live pig into the atrium. He was shirtless, with a bandage wrapped around his waist. David had shed all his clothes and stood naked by the table with a bowl of my blood, which he’d collected over the last few hours torturing me, as well as a glass bottle of water and the stone bowl full of powdered unicorn horn. The bright, full moon hung overhead, illuminating the atrium in ethereal silver.
David, Kipling, and three other dragons stood around me: all the intended recipients of the Lycan ritual. Several other Inkscale dragons and Dalesbloom wolves, including David’s Beta, Garrett, stood nearby and watched in their human forms.
“We will now begin the ritual,” declared David. Armed with the silver blade, he knelt before the pig and stared skyward at the moon. “Moon Goddess Luna, hear me now. I ask for your blessing on this night with an offering of a fresh kill. I ask you to grant us the powers of Lycanthropy, to proffer upon us the highest potential our bodies are capable of, the union of the power of man and beast combined. We have gathered your favored herbs and have hunted in your name so that you may feed alongside us tonight and nourish yourself with the magic that we offer back to you. Bless us, Moon Goddess Luna, so that we may bring power to your name.”
In a swift swipe of his arm, David cut the pig’s throat, spilling blood onto the stone floor. The pig squealed, thrashed, and tipped over, gurgling as it choked to death on its own blood.
David closed his eyes and inhaled, smiling wickedly. Then he stood and approached the table. “Now, I will conjure the potion that will induce our Lycan state. Water, blessed by the Moon Goddess. Unicorn horn, the purest conduit of magic. And fresh unicorn blood, the healing magic of which will fortify our bodies through the transformation.” One by one, the ingredients were mixed into the bowl of powdered unicorn horn until it produced a thick, glittering, red substance.
I couldn’t stop shaking as I watched David administer sips of the concoction to his followers. To each of the three dragons, then to Kipling, and finally to himself. My mother’s and my sacred products had been taken and used by these horrible men. Now, the irreversible process would begin.
All five of them doubled over, groaning and growling as the Moon Goddess blessed their bodies, bequeathing upon them the Lycan transformation. David’s head twisted sideways, and his eyes caught mine, wide with horror, as his body contorted.
The glass walls of the atrium suddenly shattered.
Startled, I looked into the trees beyond the atrium and saw a horde of bodies materialize out of the darkness.
“Kiara!” cried a familiar voice, strained with the very same agony I felt.
My heart skipped a beat. He was finally here, my fated mate. But…it was too late.
The Lycan ritual was already complete.