15. Cas
CAS
Another four walls. Another prison.
My freedom was awfully short-lived.
And I hardly remember what I’ve done with it.
Flashes come to me, negatives on film, more sensation than anything else.
That awful, gaping-sucking need, the desperation to be bred and filled.
The raw and aching soreness that remains between my legs, the oozing claw marks along my ribs.
The dual marks on either side of my throat, boasting that I have been twice-claimed. Somehow.
My first time ever and I don’t even recall it, drunk on something worse than alcohol.
That’s all secondary to my turbulent thoughts.
What could happen and what’s going to happen, whatever atrocities have been wrought in this synthetic womb that doesn’t even fucking belong there, and I’d told them—I’d begged them—not to.
That I couldn’t. That it would kill me. Relying so heavily on the kindness of the strangers whose mercy I’d fallen upon after my escape.
But I guess they didn’t care about that.
Why would they? This pack is a disaster and the wolves in it are all as maladapted as the twisted pheromones my body is pumping out.
Maybe they should just kill me. I would take a snapped neck over whatever fate lies before me, something quick and relatively painless, at least. I think I deserve that much.
Maybe I don’t?
Well, at least this time my cage is somewhat gilded.
I’ve been detained in the pack alpha’s own house, confined to a spare bedroom with a convenient lock on the outside of the door.
There’s a little en suite that I haven’t explored yet, not wanting to be caught in a vulnerable moment should Declan show up on a whim.
The room smells of bleach, overwhelmingly lemon and artificial. I don’t think too hard about what scent the bleach—so strong it burns my nostrils—is covering. Not knowing is probably safer.
This time, my jailer is orders of magnitude more kind than Bash ever was, though he still sucks a considerable amount.
I’m not afraid of Declan, not the way he would like me to be, not intimidated by his vice-like grip on his pack.
Fucking idiot has no idea that there are far more frightening shifters in the world than him.
Declan doesn’t even rank among them, not by a long shot.
He won’t ever get the satisfaction of smelling my fear. It takes a lot more to scare me now.
And I’ve got windows, which is a considerable upgrade from the last time I was in captivity.
Perhaps I’ll even feel the sun on my skin, even if it’s filtered through the heavy glass panes.
Right now, I can see the distant stars that puncture the sky and the heavy moon hanging low over the horizon, something overripe and ready to be plucked.
There’s a paddock just beyond the garden, housing colourful cobs that crop at the lush grass.
Bred for, I think, driving and hacking across the highlands, hardy little things with feathered feet and shaggy manes.
Dams and their foals—big enough they’re nearly ready to wean—gambol across the meadow together in play.
Thinking of when I got to meet them, briefly, when Kato introduced me. Him preening at my quiet delight, though I never got to tell him why that was, exactly. How horses had been my life before this.
No. No. I don’t want to think about him. Even though there’s an invisible leash tethering him to me and Nathan, and I can feel them under my skin, a hyper sort of awareness, an omnipresence, an all-consuming desire to be reeled right in and—
A knock at the door. Hilarious, considering I’m locked in here. I turn away from the window, waiting for whoever it is to speak.
“Casper?” It’s Declan’s mate, Eden, who’s apparently acting as my personal warden. He’s a soft-spoken thing, and probably a coward. I think to be Declan’s mate one would have to be, cowed and browbeaten and maybe even crushed inside. But perfect as a picture on the outside.
I give no response, but the lock clicks and the door opens anyway. And there Eden is, tanned and freckled, face cherubic and ashen curls halo-like. Interestingly, he has no children, as far as I can tell. That’s another oddity in this ragtag bunch. What pack leader hasn’t bred their own omega?
“Here.” A bundle of clothes dropped on the end of the bed, his gaze averted like I’m something profane. “Adrian got them from Nathan’s house.”
“Am I allowed to bathe?” The question comes out bitter and wry.
Eden’s head snaps up, eyes a little wide. “O-of course you are. No one’s…” he trails off, perhaps recognising that it is, in fact, something Declan might do, and offers no further reassurance. He tries to give me a smile. “I’ve asked Niall to come in the morning to check you over.”
Maybe he really is trying to be kind. “That’s not necessary,” I say.
“Well.” He’s looking at my body—my stomach, and the ugly scar that bifurcates it. My insides twist and the nausea returns in a rush, flooding my mouth with the taste of bile that I hastily swallow. Apple-green eyes meet mine, searching. He hesitates. “Casper, are you—”
I don’t know what he’s going to say or ask but I don’t want to talk anymore. Abruptly I turn and enter the bathroom, shutting the door behind me. I plug the tub and turn on the tap. After a few moments, I hear Eden slip out.
When I ease into the steaming water, it turns pink.
I clap my hands over my face and the sound I make is some unholy noise between a squeal and a growl. And then I do it again, louder, despairing, screaming into my palms with my eyes screwed shut, the tears leaking out anyway.
Oh, fuck, I’m dead. I’m fucking dead, dead-dead, dead meat, dead bitch walking. Was the minute Bash got me and now I’m just prolonging it, or maybe this is slightly better when compared to Bash’s plan. To make me an omega and mate me himself.
Suppose this is sort of better. I got to see the sky again, even if it was only temporary. Got to see other wolves, even if they weren’t my own, even if they did me in, in the end.
I stay in the tub for a long, long time, until it goes lukewarm and too dirty to justify staying in any longer.
When I get out, all my aches and pains aren’t nearly as acute and my brief meltdown has passed.
There’s something darkly poetic in all of this that I’m just too tired to parse.
More than anything, I want to nest in the bed and sleep.
But first, drying myself off. At least. My curly hair will be a mess in the morning if I don’t tend to it now, but I can’t make myself do it or care, so after a cursory once-over with a towel I leave it alone.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror above the sink and my own appearance is startling.
There are so many new bruises everywhere.
My throat looks like I was mauled by a pair of pit bulls.
I touch the marks, tracing a fingertip along them, ignoring the pain that flares to life. Can identify ownership by the orientation of them: Kato’s on the left, Nathan’s on the right. Even when the bruises fade, these marks will remain, the perfect outlines of their teeth.
And through those marks I can feel them.
Gauge their distance, roughly, which isn’t all that far away, and everything they’re feeling, too.
Fear tempered with a restless rage, and beneath all that some churning undercurrent of desire.
Still. In spite of everything. And because there’s two of them it’s all the more overwhelming.
My throat tightens. I tear myself away from the mirror and leave the bathroom.
Try the door, experimentally, in case Eden forgot to lock it.
No such luck. Maybe I could get out with more concentrated effort, or break one of the windows, and…
go where, exactly? To the two alphas who have staked their impossible claim on me?
Or maybe I’d just keep running. I could get much further this time.
It’s just that it doesn’t matter anymore.
Bundled amongst the borrowed clothes, alongside some balled-up pink ribbons, is a familiar blanket of soft fleece. I reach for it. Before I can help myself, I bury my face in the pastel pink fabric, inhaling deeply the twinned scent of both alphas that envelops me like a homecoming.
This time when I begin to weep, I can’t stop.
I want to be furious at them. I do. I am.
Mostly, though, I miss them. Not in any way that is rational, but in a bone-deep, sick-sad way—an intense yearning for which I have no name.
They have planted these barbed roots in me and now they can’t be torn out, not easily.
Not without doing a whole lot of damage along the way.
Not without killing me. The joke is, the opposite will happen.
I will take them down with me, and that’s all their fault, too.
Oh, it’s so fucked, all of this. Utter madness.
I don’t bother with the clothes. I wrap the fleece around me and take myself to bed, digging beneath the rest of the blankets. I curl up with the scent of my alphas flooding my senses, comforting me. And as I drift off, I can thank them for this much, at least. This small and precious kindness.
In the morning, I awake to the noisy intrusion of three wolves.
Eden, as before, but this time he’s brought Adrian and Niall along with him. Another small kindness, since these might be the only other two wolves in the pack who don’t despise me, or at least didn’t before my heat—who even knows now. I seem to have made enemies out of everyone.
I peer at them from beneath the mound of blankets as they bustle into the bedroom. Eden’s carrying a covered basket, the smell of fresh pastries almost enough to lure me out from my nest. Almost.
“Wakey-wakey, princess,” Adrian calls out cheerfully. With a forefinger he lifts the uppermost blanket, and I scrunch my face in a silent snarl. “Hey, don’t be like that. I’m a friend.”
“A friend visiting me in jail,” I mutter.