SALVADOR’S POV

“Ahhhhh!” Graham’s scream rent the air. “I swear I would tell you everything I know.”

“Then you’d better start talking already,” I muttered, dangling his ring finger in front of him. “Or you’ll lose the pinkie next.”

Graham sobbed and banged his head back against the wall hard enough to crack his skull.

“Don’t even dare,” I warned him. “Would be a shame if I didn’t get to kill you myself.”

I didn’t feel an atom of pity for the old man sitting on the floor of the dungeon. He was Graham, my father’s chief guard and I had found out a few months after my father’s death that he had planned everything from the negotiation down to the dinner party with Alpha Demontes. It came as a shock to me then because I didn’t expect that a person like Graham would want to harm my father. Father was always good to him.

Ever since I found out about his involvement in the massacre of my family, I made it a duty to celebrate him for his evil deeds. Once every year, I visited him in the dungeons to make a bargain with him - his much valued freedom in exchange for the details of the location of the Black Fur pack and every year, he turned me down, telling me that he would rather die than betray Alpha Demontes. It was painful to see my father’s former servant show such an extreme level of loyalty towards an enemy but I managed to get by over the years, torturing him by cutting off a finger or toe from his hands or legs. I had been doing this ritual since I was eight and eighteen years later, I figured I couldn’t hold on for long. It wasn’t much fun anymore. I had to make the bastard talk.

“Tell me where the Alpha is,” I said, my voice as calm as the winds.

“I’ve already told you I would never!” Graham cried. “Just kill me already.”

I stared at the old man and shook my head pitifully. He didn’t know that I had made my research and found out about his family living undercover in a neighboring pack.

“Bring in the prisoners!” I said to no one in particular.

The doors opened and Graham’s eyes went wide in shock as he came face to face with his wife and two daughters. They were bound with ropes and blindfolded and from the way their clothes were dirty, he could tell that they had been in a dungeon for a long time.

“They’re innocent!” Graham gnarled at me. “Why don’t you face me like a man and leave my children out of it?”

“Smart one,” I smiled at him. “But it’s not going to work today. If you don’t tell me where I can find Demontes, I’ll kill them all.”

“Pfft, you can never,” Graham laughed. “You’re nothing but a weakling.”

I smiled at his description of me as a weakling and beckoned on the guard that was standing nearby.

“Torture them until they start to talk,” I commanded him. “And I want his eyelids pegged together so he can watch the show.”

That morning, I was not in the mood for such a gruesome show so I excused myself quickly and went to my study for a few minutes.

A guard came barging into my room about five minutes later and from the look of excitement on his face and the fact that he had forgotten that the offense he had just committed by barging into my room unannounced was punishable by death, I could tell that he had good news or very bad news to tell.

“He has spilled, Alpha,” he announced smiling. “He has told us all we need to know about Demontes’s location. The Black Fur Pack has been hidden away from the rest of the world because of their alliance with the evil witch, Freya. Her spell covers the kingdom and makes it invisible to the eyes of their enemies.”

“Took him eighteen years to finally talk,” I muttered, staring into space. I turned to face the guard. “Release his wife and daughter. Treat them to a banquet and let them have the finest robes. No woman or child deserves to suffer with a man like Graham.”

The guard scratched his head and frowned and I figured that something was wrong.

“There’s a little problem with that, Alpha Salvador ,” he grunted.

“I’m listening.”

“His wife and one of his daughter are dead already,” the guard replied. “They died in the process of the torture. We had to make it intense because he was not ready to spill.

I nodded my head in understanding. My father used to tell me of times like this when he was alive. One life sacrificed to save millions was for the greater good, he would say. Never regret making a decision like that.

I wasn’t about to start sulking over a decision I made for the good of my pack and so I dismissed him after giving my last instructions.

“Bury them in the ancient tombs of the Alphas,” I said to the guard. “They would be remembered because they died to save the lives of thousands.”

He nodded at my command and turned to leave.