All Chapters of Bound To The Ruthless Alpha: Chapter 21 - Chapter 24

Roen gave a short nod, his expression never changing, as if I'd asked him to deliver breakfast rather than prepare a woman for systematic humiliation.He understood what the red collar meant, what it symbolized in the twisted hierarchy of power that governed these darker moments. It was the mark of the condemned, the sign that mercy had been weighed and found wanting."She is to be taken to the black cell. Restrained. The floor bolts this time."Roen's only movement was a single, controlled blink—the only sign that he understood the full implications of what I was asking.He knew what the floor bolts meant, what position they would force her into, what they were designed to accomplish.He understood the difference between mere imprisonment and deliberate degradation.I leaned back in my chair, fingers steepled beneath my chin in a gesture that was almost meditative, almost peaceful."Bind her wrists above her head. Ankles wide. She is not to speak until spoken to. No food. No water. N

The door was reinforced with a frame of thick, blackened iron etched with sharp runes that pulsed faintly like a heartbeat, like veins carrying some dark life force through the metal. The symbols were more complex here, more intricate, speaking of bindings that went beyond the physical, of chains that could hold more than just flesh and bone.This wasn't part of the pack's usual infrastructure, wasn't connected to any legitimate function of governance or justice.It felt older than the mountain itself, older than civilization, older than the careful rules that governed how civilized people treated their prisoners.Built by ancestors who believed in pain as penance, in submission as natural law, in the breaking of spirits as a sacred duty.One of the guards stepped forward and pulled a key from his belt—not the simple iron keys used elsewhere in the fortress, but something more complex, more ceremonial. I watched his hand shake slightly as he inserted it into the lock, the only sign th