CHAPTER SIX: A PET SLAVE

Niall Alcott

A throbbing pain jolted me up from the table.

It hurt like crazy. Tears nearly slid down my cheeks as I carefully opened my mouth and softly massaged my jawline. Only then did I register the pain in my wrist, as though I had been dragged through the seven steps of hell.

I looked around, taking in my surroundings. Nothing registered at first, then my sight adjusted and I managed to find the window latch. It made a soft rattling sound before the moon spilled into the room. My shadow stretched across to the opposite wall where the door stood.

Then my memories pooled in. The attack… the Caldwell brothers… Alpha Steele's death… my entire pack, gone.

And now these same monsters had taken me. I had to escape. I could not defeat them, but I could preserve my life. Find a new pack. Carry what Alpha Steele taught me forward so none of it died with Moonblade.

I did not realise my eyes had blurred until an uncomfortable sting shot out from the side of my neck. I rubbed it and felt a small puncture there, and the memory surfaced; the silver haired Alpha. He was close to biting into my neck. I had heard that Alphas killed by ripping out a heart, but this was something else entirely.

The crackling of fire pulled my attention. I was locked in a barn. I studied the lock and worked it free, then pressed myself flat against the outer wall and listened before moving.

When I stepped outside, I exhaled slowly. The night breeze set my teeth clattering and my fingertips aching. I pressed on.

Then a familiar sound caught me mid-step. I froze, forgetting the frost entirely. I know that voice. 

Cole.

I did not think twice. I followed the sound and found myself at the edge of what remained of the arena, burnt wood and fragmented glass scattered across ground reduced to dark brown and charcoal, the near full moon laying it all bare.

"Cole!" I screeched. "Cole!"

The sight made my stomach churn. Cole was tied with rope alongside other faces I recognised from the inn, gamblers, traders, meddlers from the lower town. I did not know them well but it did not matter. They did not deserve this.

Cole least of all.

A strong arm caught me from behind when I stepped closer. The huge soldier from earlier.

"Let them go!" I hit his hands but he would not budge. His skin yielded like unrefined metal. "You're bastards. All of you!"

"Let him go, Commander Aldric." The dark blonde-haired alpha spoke, and the huge man released me at once.

The moment my feet found the ground, my mind made the decision before my brain had time to consider it. Xander was approaching me, saying words I did not let myself register. I grabbed a piece of wood from the wreckage. It cut my palm and drew blood, and I drove it toward the side of his head, aiming for his socket.

It barely entered, leaving a dent, nothing more. Impossible.

"How…?" My eyes flared.

He shoved me in the throat. I coughed and staggered back. Before I could reach for my neck, he had already done it for me, lifting me into the air by my throat. His eyes burned the same shade as blood, the veins beneath his skin rising to the surface.

Then his eyes dropped to my bleeding palm.

Without any will of my own, my hand moved toward him. He began to breathe hard, each exhale strained and visible. Behind him, the two other alphas watched with a fascination that told me they had never seen him lose control before.

I couldn't move like I was under his compulsion.

"I have been gentle with you." He said it through his teeth. "I deserve better than this."

He licked my wound, his lips trembling against my blood. I watched in disbelief as the cut on his head sealed itself clean, nothing left but the dark stain as evidence.

"What did you—" The words died on my tongue.

He dropped me and turned. "Commander Aldric, Commander Serena—end these men. I have no further use for them."

My knees hit the ground. "Please. Please, they have done nothing." I ramble to his feet. “I’m the one who offended you. Please."

"Lucious, you can kill him now." He said it without turning back.

My heart split open. White noise flooded my ears. I could not think. I could not move. I could only feel the fear moving through me. It was alive and it settled with a chill in my spine.

"Please…" My cheeks were wet under the moonlight. My nose ran. Screams filled my ears as Cole and the others were seized.

"Anything! I swear it. I will do anything. XANDER, PLEASE!"

The night went completely still and frozen.

"Ooh, you just don't know when to stop, do you?" The short black-haired alpha muttered, a giggle under his tone.

Xander turned slowly, eyes narrowed. "You know my name."

"Please. Don't kill them. I am sorry. I will be your pet. I will be anything you need."

I would rather have died than become a slave again but not tonight. Not at the cost of these lives.

The air shifted around me and Xander was suddenly in front of me, his strange bright hazel eyes cutting straight into mine.

I felt his breathe before he spoke. "Tell me, have you ever been on a ship before?"

"What?"

"More like locked below the deck in a cold cage." Cyrus offered from behind.

That was when I registered it. All three alphas had closed in around me, and I understood then that if Xander was like this, I could only imagine what the others were capable of, especially the most silent of them all. Lucious.

Xander's voice carried over everything. "We are done here. Ready the ship. We are going to the Kingdom of Vael."

Two hands hauled me up from behind. The bastard, Commander Aldric, again.

"What about my friends?"

"I will not kill them. What happens when the hollows return is left to them to solve."

The commander threw me over his shoulder and walked until Cole and the others disappeared from my sight, and my chest tightened around the weight of what was coming. A new life, a new cage, and the one thing I had always prayed I would never become again.

A pet slave.