29. Bastian
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
BASTIAN
B astian leapt to his feet, shoving Isolde behind him with one hand and his still-hard cock back into his pants with the other.
“So not only are you a traitor,” Everett snarled, his eyes flicking over Bastian’s shoulder to Isolde as he prowled further into the room, “but you are fucking that bloodsucking whore, after all.”
Bastian knew all six of the Wolves who fanned out behind Everett by name.
He’d grown up with all of them. They’d spent long days running through the trees or swimming in the lake together.
Bastian had brought cold water and pain salve to all of them during those hours after the change, when their bodies burned and ached.
And now here they were, staring him down with the same hatred Everett carried in his eyes.
“You’re not going to fucking touch her.” Bastian took a step toward Everett, hoping to put some distance between Isolde and the other Wolves.
“You can do whatever the hell you want with me, but Anselm accepted my right to extend clemency. If you lay a finger on her or Selene, he’ll exile you right along with me. ”
“Except my father didn’t exile you, did he?” Everett sneered. “Even though he damn well should for what you did—abandoning the pack and running straight into the arms of a Vampire.”
“You’re right. He probably should have. I would have exiled me, if it was my choice.” Bastian chanced another step toward Everett, not trusting the way his eyes flashed with anger. “But Anselm didn’t, so?—”
“Grab him,” Everett barked at the others.
“Bastian!” Isolde gasped.
The Wolves all dove for Bastian at once.
He didn’t fight it. He’d known what Everett had come for the second he walked through the door, not a weapon in sight and six other Wolves at his back.
One of the others, Levin, slammed his fist into Bastian’s jaw.
His head snapped sideways, and he knew he’d have a nasty bruise there to match the one blooming on Everett’s cheek.
He didn’t try to right himself, or block the fist that Jack drove into his gut.
Even if he wanted to, he wasn’t sure he could.
His head spun, his vision sliding in and out of focus.
Over the ringing in his ears, Bastian could hear Isolde shouting. Someone grunted—one of the Wolves—and Bastian forced himself to focus.
“You can’t hurt her,” he said, searching for Everett amidst the tangle of limbs around him. “You can’t fucking hurt her!”
“Listen to the two of you,” Everett said, his face coming into view before Bastian. “Both shouting like a bunch of lovesick idiots not to hurt the other. You fucking deserve each other, don’t you?”
Bastian realized what Isolde was saying, then.
“Don’t touch him,” she screamed. There was another pained grunt, like someone was holding her and she was fighting back. “Bastian! Don’t touch him, you prick! Bastian!”
“Its okay, Isolde,” Bastian called, ignoring Everett’s sneering as the two Wolves who gripped his arms hauled him toward the door. “I’ll be okay. They’re not going to hurt you.”
Isolde’s screaming only doubled in volume, but someone landed another hit to Bastian’s face and the ringing in his ears drowned out her words.
He had the vague sense of being drug from the room, and then the suite altogether, of Everett walking ahead while the other Wolves carried him roughly along.
Soon, Isolde’s voice faded to nothing in the distance. Bastian kept his eyes closed, fighting the nausea brought on by the blows to his skull. He didn’t have to look to know where Everett was taking him. Down and down they went, through the manor until Bastian could smell damp, musty stone.
The Wolves hauled Bastian into an empty stone room with a drain in the floor and a single stone pillar at its center.
Bastian barely felt the bite of cold iron when they fastened the shackles around his wrists, or the crack of rough stone against his cheek when someone slammed his head into the pillar.
Father forbade you , Bastian wanted to say to Everett, but he knew it was no use. It would only make him look like a coward, anyway, hiding behind Anselm’s edicts to try and escape the Punishment.
Everett seemed to guess the exact direction of Bastian’s thoughts, the same way he always had. “I don’t care if Father exiles me for this,” Everett hissed in his ear. “This is what you deserve.”
Bastian didn’t bother turning over his shoulder to see the claw-tipped knives Everett and the others wielded. He’d seen them before, plenty of times. He’d forged them, welding the shed claws to the curved steel of the blades with his own two hands.
Even without looking, Bastian knew Everett made the first cut. As white hot agony slashed from his scarred shoulder to the opposite hip, Bastian ground his teeth.
He would take his Punishment without a sound. He refused to give Everett the satisfaction of crying out.
But as one slash turned to two, then six, then a dozen, he felt his resolve start to weaken.
Silent tears slid down his face, stinging the split, scraped skin of his cheeks.
The Wolves kept slicing—violent, slashing cuts, like the swipe of a paw.
When Everett landed a deep, precise cut, right along the first one he’d made, Bastian screamed.
The clawed tip of his brother’s knife scraped bone, and darkness took him.