The heads on the wall, Axel's glassy-eyed face, frozen in an eternal snarl, the other warriors I had known my whole life weren't just trophies. They were a declaration. This wasn't a battle; it was an extermination. My mind refused to process it, rejecting the horror like a body rejects poison. A high-pitched whine filled my ears, drowning out the sobs of the pack.
All I could do was shake my head, a feeble, childlike denial. No. No. This isn't happening.
The smiling twin cleared his throat, causimg all eyes to turn to him.
"I am Elias and that is my brother Luther." He explained with a gesture towards the rock faced brother. "We are the sons of Caius and Serena Ravryn. Former Alpha and Luna of Stormfang."
Those words sent a wave of unease and whispers through the pack members, causing me to turn and look quizically at them. Those names meant nothing to me but judging from the stricken look on some faces, they were known.
"I see some of you are aware." Elias continued with a satisfied nod. "From today henceforth, we are your Alphas and you are our slaves."
My voice, when it finally came, was like the fearful whine of a cowed child. "What do you want with us, why are you doing this?"
Elias spoke first. His answer was a single, absolute word that seemed to drop into the courtyard like a stone.
"We are judgment unto this pack which has haboured a monster."
The smiling one, all charming cruelty nodded in agreement, his eyes glinting with a crazed light. "What we really want is your father's head on a spike." He lifted a lazy hand, pointing to a prominent, empty space on the wall right beside Axel's. "Right there. The centerpiece."
He looked back at me, his head tilting, an expectant, almost playful smile on his lips as he awaited my reaction. As if we were discussing the weather or flowers.
A chill sank into my bones. I had expected conquest, slavery, maybe even death. But this? This was personal. This was a hatred so strong and festering it had become a beast come to devour anything in its path.
"But since we can't have your father," he continued, his smile not wavering, "we will have to make do with you."
The words landed with the magnitude of an earthquake. I was not a prisoner of war. I was a representative. The vessel for a punishment meant for another. I was at the mercy of two madmen who saw my every breath as a debt owed for my father's sins, whatever they were.
I couldn't understand what sins could justify—in anyone's eyes—the slaughter of an entire pack.
"You are the monsters" I screamed, fear turning me mad. "You are murderers"
I never saw him move.
One second he was several feet away, the next, Elias's hand was around my throat. His grip wasn't just strong; it was possessive, final. He squeezed, cutting off my air, and lifted me until I was balanced on the very tips of my toes, struggling to swallow air. The world narrowed to the burning in my lungs and the pressure of his fingers.
Then, with his other hand, he grabbed the neckline of my torn, dirt-stained wedding dress and ripped.
The sound of tearing fabric was obscenely loud. The cool morning air hit my bare skin, and a wave of pure, animal shame crashed over me. Exposed. Stripped. Paraded before my conquered pack and these savage victors. My legs kicked uselessly against empty air.
He held me there like a pale, trembling doll suspended in his grasp, for the entire world to see.
"Who would have imagined," he mused, his voice a slow, intimate caress that felt worse than a slap, "that something so exquisite could be born from a man as vile as Edmund Valeen."
His eyes weren't on my face. They traveled over my body with a deliberate, shocking leisure. It wasn't desire, not exactly. It was appraisal. An inventory. He was measuring, calculating, enjoying the humiliation his words were causing me.
I felt cheap. Stripped bare under that gaze.
"A rapist," he stated next, his tone light, conversational, as if reciting a boring history lesson.
"No…" I choked out, the protest a desperate gasp against his strangling hold.
"Rapist." The word didn't make sense. My father, cold and distant, but... that? No."
He ignored me, his thumb stroking the jumping pulse in my throat.
"A butcher of children." he continued, delivered with chilling calm.
"A coward who slits the throats of pregnant women…" He leaned closer, his lips almost brushing my ear and sending a jolt of confusion through me at my body's reaction, his next word a hot, venomous whisper, "…and plunges his dagger into the back of his closest friend."
Each accusation was a hammer blow to the fragile story of my life. I knew that my father was not perfect. He had been described by some as hard, my experience of him was not even a good one… But these accusations...
He finally looked into my eyes again, his own gleaming with a dark, terrifying triumph. His enjoyment of my fear made me want to throw up.
"He left you behind," he whispered, the words for me alone yet echoing in the petrified silence. "His exquisite, scentless daughter. A piece of his rotten soul he could not be bothered to take with him."
He gave me a slight, cruel shake, making the chains on my wrists rattle. "You are the payment for his crimes, strange one, our slave. The interest on a twenty-year debt. And we are very, very thorough collectors, we have waited so long after all."
With that, he let go.
I dropped to the ground like a stone, my legs unable to hold me. I hit the hard-packed earth on my hands and knees, the impact shuddering through my bones. I curled inward, arms crossing over my chest in a futile attempt to cover myself, to hide from the hundreds of eyes. The rough ground scraped my skin, but the physical pain was nothing. It was drowned by the tsunami of shame, terror, and a devastating, newfound grief for a father who was worse than I had thought, a monster.
Luther's shadow swallowed me whole. He didn't speak. He didn't need to.
"You will have to kill me first." I cried.
Elias came to a squat in front of me. "That can be arranged, but only after all your use has been squeezed out of you."
"Take her to our room." He ordered as he got to his feet.
Almost immediately I felt hands grab me and drag me away.