Chapter 2 - Malachi

“Tell me what you know,” I said in a calm voice to the man handcuffed to the chair in front of me. I have already hit him in the face more times than I can count. His head hung down, but his eyes were still open. I allowed him to heal in between beatings. He was a werewolf, like me. But he was a trespasser. And I needed to know why he was here.

         I pulled his hair up and forced him to face me. The cut on his face from my ancestor’s ring was healing before my eyes. I backhanded him again. Causing his head to jerk back with force. “Don’t make me repeat myself.”

         I walked over to the table full of tools that I had neglected up until this point. I looked over the knives, hammers, and screw drivers. My eyes rested on the pliers. I held them up and looked at them in the light. More so for the intruder’s benefit than mine. “Why are you here?”

         I turned and walked toward him. He looked up at me and spat blood and saliva at me. “I guess we are going to have to do this the hard way.”

         I took one of his fingers and placed it between the pliers’ teeth. I paused for effect, but the wolf only glared at me. “Suite yourself.” I clamped down on his finger, and his finger gave a pleasant crunching sound. He screamed. I released his finger and looked down at it. His finger was already turning a purple-reddish color. In about two minutes, the finger would be as good as new, then I could continue.

         I sat in the chair across from him and watched as his finger turned back to its normal color. “Why did you cross over into our lands? You and I both know that you are from the Night Bane Pack. Your brand behind your ear says it all.” I pointed to his right ear with the pliers. “And we have had a…tense relationship the last few years.” I stared at him.

         The wolf looked back down at the ground.

         “No?” I stood. “Okay, I think I need to switch up my tactics.” I set the pliers down and looked at the other items on the table. “Ahhh, I think these will do nicely.” I pulled a rubber glove on and grabbed a cluster of two-inch needles dipped in wolf’s bane. “You and I both know that you won’t recover from this for a while.” I smiled at him. He stared up at me, eyes bloodshot from the beating. “Do us both a favor and just let me know what the plan is.”

         “Fuck you!” He yelled at me.

         I took one needle and grabbed the same finger that I crunched between the pliers. “Last chance,” I said as I looked at him with the needle ready to enter his finger under the nail. He growled at me. I shoved the needle beneath his nail. He screamed in pain as the needle touched his skin and entered. There was smoke rising from his finger as if he were being burned.

         I shoved the needle until the first knuckle. He struggled against it. I grabbed a second needle and his index finger on the opposite hand. I shoved it in, he screamed, and struggled against me. “This would all go away if you just let me know why you were on my land.”

         I grabbed a third needle. His eyes grew wide. “I’ll tell you!” He screamed at me. The fingers with the needles were still smoking. His fangs elongated against the poison in his veins. That poison forced the wolf out of a werewolf. Eventually, with enough of the stuff, it would make them change and keep them that way for a long time.

         I set the needle down and sat in the chair across from him.

         He whimpered. “I’m a scout,” he hissed.

         “A scout for what?”

         He sucked in a breath, “Alpha Roan is preparing for war.” He sucked in another breath.

         “Roan Whitmore wants to go to war. Why?”

         He shuddered, “he wants to rule the northwest region.”

         I stared at him.

         “He wants more power. You have the largest pack in this region.” He hissed against the pain. “If he takes over your pack, he could absorb the others easily after.”

         “What else can you tell me?”

         He shook his head. “That’s it. That’s all I know. I swear.” He pleaded with me. “I was just to scout and see what numbers he would be up against and then report back.”

         “You must know what his next move would be.” I stood and grabbed the third needle.

         “I don’t! Please! I’m just a scout, I only had my orders to cross over and watch.” He started to cry, and a faint smell of urine wafted from him. “Please!” He yelled between sobs.

         I dropped the needle; he watched it bounce across the floor. “You are safe for now. But don’t press your luck.” I turned and walked to the door.

         “Please, take them out of me.” He looked down at his hands.

         “I think they are fine where they are.” I closed the door behind me. I could hear him sobbing through the door.

         I leaned against the door. I hated this. I hated everything about it, torturing people for information. I didn’t care that this wolf was from a different pack, but as soon as I showed any sort of weakness, the other Alphas in the area would attack. Exactly what Roan wanted to do. There were a few packs on the West Coast that had regular meetings and got along. I wish my region were like that. I’m tired of looking over my shoulder every two seconds, hoping that there wasn’t a knife against my back.

         “How are you doing?” My Beta, Alec, said as he looked at me. He didn’t have the heart to torture, and I wouldn’t put that on him. It was my job to get it done, and that weight was on me alone.

         “I’ve had better days,” I said as I ran my hands through my hair.

         “Did you at least get the information you needed?”

         “Yeah. It's Roan. He wants our land.”

         “Fuck.” Alec hissed, “that fuck-face needs to take a chill pill or something.”

         “Yeah…or something.”

         “How did you do it?”

         Even though he wasn’t watching, he always wanted to know how far those being tortured had gone. He wanted to know what I had to do to extract information from them. “Wolf’s bane needles.”

         “Fuck, I hate those. He got far.”

         “Yeah.” I looked down at myself. There was blood spattered all over my clothes and in the crevice of my ring. “I’m going to go get cleaned up.”

         “What do you want done with him?” Alec said as he pointed a finger to the room with our prisoner.

         “Let him stew for a bit, then we can throw him in one of the cells in the basement.”

         “Did you want me to remove the needles?”

         I nodded at him, exhaustion hitting me hard. “Yes, after an hour or two, remove the needles.”

         “You got it, Mal.”

         “Let me know if anything happens. But I’m bushed.”

         “Get some rest. I can handle anything that comes up.”

         “Thanks.” I clapped a hand on his shoulder and walked past him up into the main house. The main pack house was nestled in the valley next to Pyramid Peak. Only pack members knew how to get here; if you didn’t know where the road was, you wouldn’t be able to access our pack lands. I loved the serenity of it; the hustle and bustle of the big city never called to me. I liked the quiet of the mountains and the creak that babbled through my lands. I could breathe out here.

         I made it to my room and quickly pulled off my shoes and clothes and set them in the laundry basket that was in my closet. I wanted to wash the filth of the day off of me. I always felt dirty after having to torture anyone. Like a dirt spot that would remain no matter how many times I scrubbed. By the time I was feeling clean again, I needed to torture someone else. It was an endless cycle that slowly stripped me of who I was, of who I wanted to be.

         I leaned against the dresser that sat opposite my bed. The mirror was strategically placed when I brought a female back to my room. It wasn’t often, only when I was desperate to get out of my head for the night. When the dark thoughts consumed me to the point of no return. I felt that if I fucked someone, I could fuck those thoughts away. And it worked most of the time.

         I looked at my reflection, into my dark eyes. I could see the dark circles forming under my eyes from weeks of sleepless nights. The images of the wolves that I have tortured drifted through my mind. The blood that I pounded out of them, the needles inserted, the pliers used. The thoughts that I would have to live with over and over again.

         My dark hair was short; I liked it out of the way, but the few longer strands would curl down over my forehead. My eyes drifted to my shoulders and abdomen. I had some scars from past fights, ones that would remind me of the lives lost. I was over it. I was over this life of constantly being at battle with the packs around me. There had to be a way to create an alliance, like the packs on the West Coast. They lived in harmony, they even fucking partied once a year all together. This party was to help the wolves in the packs find their mates.

          I didn’t have a mate. That was the least of my worries. Even though I wanted one, I didn’t want one right now. I am thirty-five. It was unheard of to be so old without a mate. But no one in my pack cared. They had more important things to care about, like surviving and being on the lookout for potential threats that seemed to happen every day.

I couldn’t bring a mate into this mess. It would be one more person that I would need to protect, and I could barely protect my pack. And I didn’t want to have the liability of a mate on my hands as well. That sounded bad, but it was true. The thought of a mate would be nice, though. She would have to be in another pack because I took great care of getting to know each and every pack member. And the mate bond hasn’t kicked in with any of them.

         I looked down at the only item that was on top of the dresser. It was my journal. Not your typical journal, but the one where I listed out everything I have ever had to do to another person.

Today’s list was going to be gruesome. I took the pen that lay in the crease and added the description of the wolf. I didn’t get his name. Then I added what I did to him. I hoped that writing these things down would help get them out of my head. It didn’t. It just listed out my sins. It was a long list of sins.

         I closed the book and walked to my bathroom. I didn’t feel like a shower, I felt like soaking in the tub, stewing in my thoughts for a while. Maybe they would melt away, as the heat would melt away my tension. I could at least hope.

         I filled the tub and got in. I let my mind drift when a knock came at my door.

         “Come in,” I yelled as I remained in the tub.

         “Hey, Alpha.” Alec’s voice came from the door to my room. “Joe’s here to see you.”

         Joe was my recently appointed Delta. He was a part of this pack before he left to do his own thing and then a few years ago came back. He was tired of living outside of the pack and asked to return. I welcomed him with open arms. He was older than me by at least a decade. But he was strong, and his eyes told me he had lived through some things that he would never talk about. I would never ask him.

         “Let him in.”

         “Hey, Mal.” Joe walked in and stared down at me in the bath. “Relaxing?” He leaned against the door; he crossed his tattooed arms over his chest. His hair was starting to salt and pepper. I think women would refer to him as a silver fox. To me, he just looked like a retired biker. He favored jeans, a t-shirt, and a leather vest. The only difference I could distinguish between him and a biker was that Joe didn’t smoke and didn’t have leather skin. He was tanned but not to the point of damage.

         “Trying to.” I responded, I closed my eyes again rested my head against the back of the tub.

         “I wanted to let you know that I have upgraded the security system in each of the pack's houses. I also updated it in the gym and pretty much any other pack building. If anyone tries anything, we will see it.”

         “That was fast.”

         “This is important. I didn’t want to waste time.”

         “Good man.”

         “I did want to let you know.” He paused and I peeked an eye open at him. “With the trespasser that came through the other day, some pack members are concerned.”

         I let out a sigh.

         “Just maybe you want to address it, so people don’t panic.”

         “Thanks, Joe.”

         He turned and started to walk out, but put his hand against the door frame. “Let me know if you need anything.”

         “I will,” I said instinctively.

         “I know you don’t know what I did after leaving the pack. But…it can come in handy with situations like today.” He gave me a knowing nod.

         People placed bets on what Joe did while he was gone. Some thought he joined a gang. Others thought he became an FBI agent. Some thought he was a spy. Whenever anyone asked him, he would just chuckle and agree with whatever they asked him about.

         “Noted.” I wouldn’t ask him to relive that part of his life. He came back for a reason. He used to live closer to the pack grounds, but he would scream so much at night it would cause alarm with the other pack members. So, he decided to move further away, just so people wouldn’t worry. That’s part of the reason why he’s my Delta. He cares about the people.

         Joe left me to marinate in my bath. The relaxing experience I was hoping for completely vanished as I sat in the tepid bath. “Fuck.” I got out of the bath and drained it. I quickly threw on some shorts and lay in bed. I hoped that I would get some sort of sleep, but the images from the torture session sped through my brain. “Tomorrow is a new day, with new nightmares.”