3/3
I scanned the crowded hall, searching for Kaius. The pack members sudden silence told me he was here, but I couldn’t see him through the press of bodies.
Then the crowd parted like water before a blade, revealing him at last.
My breath caught in my throat. This was not the Kaius I knew–the man who had held me gently as I slept, who had apologized for hurting me during our lovemaking. This was something else entirely
He was drenched in blood–not just spattered, but completely saturated, as if he’d been submerged in a crimson bath. His torn shirt lay discarded, leaving his torso exposed, muscles tigid and slick with dark red. His face was tight with a rage that seemed to consume him from within, his amber eyes hard and unblinking.
Each step leaked a savage intent, his body coiled with the pure, murderous rage of a wolf driven by blood and vengeance. The floor seemed to tremble beneath his weight, each movement promising nothing but annihilation.
The silence in the hall was absolute. No one dared breathe too loudly as Kaius stopped before the first kneeling man.
“Let it be known to everyone that disobeys me,” his voice rang out, cold and clear. “Let it be known to the few rebellious amongst you, that if anyone goes against my Luna, then be ready to face death.”
With a swift, brutal motion, he pulled a blade from his belt–not steel, but something darker, with an eerie gleam.
“That’s silver steel,” Frost whispered beside me, his tone almost reverent.
Silver steel–a rare alloy, deadly to our kind. A wound from such a weapon wouldn’t heal, wouldn’t close. It meant certain death.
The first attacker began to plead, his voice high with terror. “Please, it had been a mistake, Alpha. Please, have mercy on us, Alpha; throw us in the dungeons…”
Kaius didn’t hesitate. The blade flashed once, and the man’s head toppled from his shoulders, rolling across the floor as his body collapsed in a spray of blood. Hushed whispers and sharp intakes of breath swept through the assembly.
I staggered back, bile rising in my throat. Frost’s hand steadied me, though his eyes never left the grim spectacle.
The second man received an equally swift death–a blade through the heart, twisted for maximum pain before death took him.
The third lasted longer. Kaius took his time, carving into the man’s chest with precise, almost surgical movements. The screams echoed off the stone walls, but no one moved to intervene. Some in the crowd were smiling, I realized with dawning horror. They were enjoying this.
By the fourth execution, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I turned to leave, only to find Frost’s grip on my arm tightening.
“Let me go; I can’t… I can’t see any of these; I don’t want to see them anymore. Make him stop.” I hated the pleading note in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. This was too much.
“They would have done the same, maybe much worse to you,” Frost replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “They don’t deserve mercy.”
I looked at him, shocked by his cold detachment. He watched the executions like it was nothing but a movie, not real people dying in agony before us.
“I can’t watch this. I tried again to pull away.
His grip remained firm. “He wants you to.”
1/3
The fifth man died with his entrails spilling onto the floor, his screams abruptly cut short when Kaius severed his vocal cords with a flick of his wrist. I almost threw up. This was what my mother had warned me about–the cruelty, the bloodlust, the sheer savagery of this pack.
Only one attacker remained. He was younger than the others, his face pale with terror, body trembling so violently he could barely stay upright on his knees. Something about him seemed different–less hardened, perhaps more coerced than committed to the
attack.
“Stand,” Kaius commanded, his voice utterly devoid of emotion.
The young man struggled to his feet, legs shaking beneath him. Tears streamed down his face, mixing with the blood from his earlier wounds.
“Stop him,” I whispered, twisting in Frost’s grip. I’d seen enough death for a lifetime. This last man–whatever his role–didn’t deserve to die like the others, torn apart for spectacle.
Frost’s hold tightened, unyielding. “It’s pack justice, Elowen.”
Kaius circled the trembling man, like a predator playing with its prey before the killing strike. The rage in him was a living thing, a hunger that couldn’t be satisfied no matter how many he killed.
“Kaius, please no,” I whispered, too quietly for anyone but Frost to hear.
As if he’d heard me anyway, Kaius’s eyes found mine across the room I saw no me so gently nights before. This was someone–something–else entirely.
“Please,” I breathed, a final, futile plea.
recognition there, no hint of the man who had held
Maintaining eye contact with me, Kaius plunged his hand into the man’s chest. Not using the blade, but his bare hand, ripping through flesh and bone with terrifying strength. The young man’s scream was cut short as Kaius’s hand emerged holding his still- beating heart.
I broke then. Twisting violently in Frost’s grip, I managed to free myself and stumbled toward the exit. I needed air, needed to escape this blood–soaked nightmare.
I barely made it three steps before Frost caught me, his arm around my waist lifting me off my feet.
“Elowen, it’s over,” he said, carrying me bodily back toward our place near the front.
I struggled against him, panic overwhelming any sense of dignity or propriety. “Let me go!”
People were staring now, watching the Luna’s unseemly display of weakness, I didn’t care. I couldn’t spend another second in this
charnel house.
“Elowen don’t make me do this,” Frost warned, his voice low and regretful.
Before I could question his meaning, he pressed a cloth to my face. The sickly sweet smell overwhelmed my senses, and darkness crept in from the edges of my vision.
My last conscious thought was the realization that I’d always known they were dangerous–Kaius, Frost, this entire pack. But for the first time, I saw what danger meant.
As unconsciousness claimed me, Kaius’s blood–drenched figure filled my vision, the heart still pulsing in his hand, his eyes flat and bottomless, locked onto mine. Not the eyes of a lover or even a captor, but of a monster straight from nightmare.
2/3
I woke to darkness and disorientation, my head pounding with the gering effects of whatever drug Frost had used to subdue me. When I tried to move my arms, cold metal bit into my wrists. The realization hit me like ice water–I was chained to a bed.
“Who’s there?” I called out, my voice raspy and uncertain, I could sense someone in the shadows, watching me.
The silence that answered only heightened my fear.
I strained against the restraints, the metal cuffs digging deeper into my skin. The memories came flooding back–the judgement hall, the blood, the screams… I felt nausea rise in my throat.
“Where am I?” I demanded, fighting to keep my voice.
“Where do you think?” Kaius’s voice came from the darkness.
A dim light flicked on, and I gasped as I realized two things simultaneously: I was completely naked, and both Kaius and Frost were in this unfamiliar room. Kaius stood by the foot of the bed, his expression unreadable, while Frost lingered near the wall, watching with those penetrating ice–blue eyes.
“Let me go,” I demanded, yanking against the chains.
Kaius’s response was simple: “No.”
I flinched away as he moved closer, memories of his blood–soaked form still vivid in my mind. “How could you do that to them? They were still your people!”
“They were traitors,” he replied, his voice devoid of emotion.
“And that made it worse?” I asked incredulously.
Something dark flickered across his features. “The fact that they were traitors from my pack makes it all worse, Elowen.”
“Why am I chained to the bed?” I pulled at the restraints again, uncomfortably aware of my nakedness under their scrutiny.
“Why else?” Kaius’s voice dropped lower, a dangerous edge creeping in.
“Are you angry at me? Is this some kind of punishment?” The questions tumbled out as fear tightened around my throat like a
noose.
“Yes.” The simple admission sent a chill down my spine.
“Why?” I whispered.
Kaius moved to sit in a chair facing the bed, his posture relaxed despite the tension filling the room. “There are many reasons, Elowen, but one is that you are not to have mercy on someone who almost killed you.”
My eyes darted to Frost, who had remained silent throughout this exchange. “You wouldn’t stop struggling,” he said, answering my unspoken question about how I’d ended up here. “That was an easy way out.”
“Where are my clothes?” I asked, heat rushing to my face as I became increasingly aware of my vulnerability. “Why am I naked?”
Frost smiled faintly. “I helped you out of your clothes.”
The casual way he said it made my skin burn with embarrassment.
1/3
40
And what are you going to do to me?” I turned back to Kalus, trying to read his intentions in those amber eyes.
“You’ll see, he replied enigmatically,
“Will you hurt me? My voice had dropped to a whisper.
“Yes, Elowen.” The honesty in his answer was somehow more frightening than any threat.
I watched as Frost moved closer to the bed, his eyes never leaving mine.
“You are always so shy,” Frost observed as he sat on the edge of the ed.
I tried to shift away from him, but the chains allowed little
“You wouldn’t have come willingly,” he replied simply.
ment. “You drugged me.”
His hand engulfed my breast, his palm hot against my skin. My breath hitched, a shiver jolting through me.
“This isn’t right,” I gasped, the words barely audible.
His thumb grazed my nipple, a rough caress that sent a searing shock through me, clenching my muscles.
“Give in,” he growled, his voice thick with desire.
Shame burned through me as my nipple peaked against his touch. I squeezed my eyes shut, a whimper escaping my lips as his fingers pinched and rolled, teasing me mercilessly.
“You might as well imagine Kaius in my place,” Frost suggested, his voice a low murmur as his lips brushed against my ear.
I opened my eyes to find Kaius watching us intently, his posture still relaxed but his eyes burning with something primal. This was part of my punishment–to be touched by his Beta while he watched,
Frost’s touch grew bolder, his fingers finding their way to my soaked pussy. I bit my lip hard, stifling the moans that threatened to spill out, refusing to give them the satisfaction of knowing how completely my body was betraying my mind.
“Stay still,” Frost commanded softly when I instinctively tried to move away from his fingers from my silky entrance.
I felt suspended between fear and something darker, something I didn’t want
to
acknowledge.
This was wrong on so many levels–I was restrained, still traumatized from witnessing brutal executions, being touched by a man I’d
as if this were the most considered almost a friend–while the man I was contractually bound to watched. Yet my body responded enjoyable thing in the world.
Was this what Barbara had described in her fantasies? The thought came unbidden, memories of those explicit passages about being shared between Alpha and Beta suddenly taking on new meaning. I’d read those words with shocked fascination, never imagining I might find myself living them.
As Frost’s fingers worked their way inside me, stretching and filling me in ways I’d never known, I found myself surrendering not just physically but mentally. The restraints that had initially terrified me now created a perverse kind of freedom–with my body bound, my mind was somehow liberated, adrift in a sea of sensation without choice or responsibility.
I caught Kaius’s gaze across the room, and in that moment, something unspoken passed between us. This wasn’t just punishment. It was an initiation into a deeper level of his world, one where boundaries blurred and conventional morality held no sway.
When Frost finally released me from my restraints, I remained on the bed, my body humming with unfamiliar energy.
2/3
There is a glass of water on the table,” he instructed.
get it.
I moved carefully across the room, feeling both of their eyes on me I walked naked to the small table. My legs trembled, partly from being bound for so long, partly from the lingering effects of Frost’s touch.
“Good,” Frost said when I returned with the water. “Now lie down and spread your legs.”
I hesitated, glancing at Kaius. His expression had changed, hunger new evident in the way he leaned forward slightly in his chair. I realized with startling clarity that this was no longer just about puntment–this had become something else entirely.
I complied with Frost’s instruction.
“Look at me,” Frost commanded.
His ice–blue eyes held none of the cold detachment I’d hand hovered above me, not touching.
seen
العربية
“Can I?” he asked.
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