No longer do they even treat me like a human being. During the fourth round of torture they stripped me naked and since then, I’ve stayed that way. They don’t even bother to clean the blood off me anymore. I don’t know who I am anymore, the pain of the torture pushes down any bit of humanity that might remain, and soon, I lose my bonds, no longer able to feel any connection to my Mates. It only makes me more aware of the anger and brutality burrowing itself deep within my heart. My love for them is the only shred of light left in me, that and the drive to protect our Pack endures. It’s hard to keep sight of why I’m doing that some days, which in and of itself is a scary thought. They let Zane and I out twice a day to go to the toilet; it appears in the room like magic, and they feed us a slice of bread and some water once a day. If the punishments don’t kill us soon, the starvation most certainly will. Zane and I have slimmed down to the point we now look gaunt, both of us struggling to just survive each day. Today it seems their latest fascination is to chain me to an operating table in the middle of the room, and I can see tiny little pins all lined up on the table next to me. Fuck, how am I going to survive this one? It’s like direct silver injections into the blood stream.

I don’t know how many days have passes since I last saw the sun, but I do know that Zane has been pulled out of his cage thirty-two times to fight. While he fights, each time I’m beaten and tortured. Each day has a different focus, never enough to make me die in any individual sitting and never any limb amputation, but everything else seems fair game. I can’t find my hope anymore, though I do dream of my Mates. I dream of all four of them and the life we could have had together, away from this god-forsaken war between the Fae, shifters, and the vampires, a war ninety percent of the population remains blissfully unaware of. It didn’t take long to realise that Ellette magically created this room, there’s no way that we would have this many fights in one location. I think that the room operates in between the realms, with Ellette popping it in and out of reality every time they set up camp in a new location. Isn’t that a fun little Fae trick?

They always ask the same four questions; What packs are involved? How many wolves are there? What are their plans? And how involved are the vampires? Jokes on you, fuckers.

Zane and I both promised that regardless of threats levelled against the other, we wouldn’t cave and be the reason hundreds of wolves are slaughtered. We would rather die or watch each other die than kill our entire family. And that’s what would happen; we might not command these lones and rogues, but we would cause of the deaths of countless wolves. To think that all this started because we wanted protection for our Packs. We congregated for no other reason than to be safe. We have no agenda to overthrow the Council, to usurp any power. These Packs just want safey, and likewise for the covens involved. Ellette seems just crazy enough to kill all those wolves and vampires for fun, not for any type of gain.

Unfortunately, my entire time held captive in this room, only four other people have entered: Zane, Ellette, Allister and his lap dog. No-one else in or out, not even the slightest hint of information to pass onto my other Mates if they ever find us. God, without my Mates I really am starting to go insane. I’m talking to myself now.

“Ava, darling!” Ellette’s voice rings out from the top of the stairs, her Tinkerbelle fucking tone like nails on a chalkboard. I don’t hear the door slam behind her but hear her start clomping down the stairs one step at a time, followed by another set of heavy footsteps coming in behind her, and only then does the door slam. I don’t even bother to look up, I just close my eyes unable to look at the freakish cartoon-like face without my stomach revolting. Last time I vomited on Ellette, I barely came out of that session with my feet and hands attached.

“Are you ready to play today? We even have a visitor, darling! But you can’t see him just yet, he’s going to watch for a bit, then we will see how you fare against him!” she says while clapping her hands in excitement as she walks into my view right next to the needles. Such a fucking lunatic, I wonder how many more ways I can think up to kill her today? What number am I up to again? Oh yeah, one hundred and eleven.

“Ellette, you must have some very slim pickings for sexual partners if you’re calling me darling. Is it because you look utterly repulsive or are you that horrific in bed that you’ve run everyone away from your vagina?” I question with no emotion. Needling her has become a highlight of my day since she hasn’t reversed my inability to talk to Zane yet and we’re never left alone to speak audibly, which constitutes a worse form of torture on my psyche than she could ever inflict on my body.

“You impertinent little twat!” She huffs angrily, wincing as she looks over my head towards the unknown guest. The Fae picks up one of the delicate little pins and slides it into my arm slowly like an angiocatheter. I would almost welcome the pain, but I feel nothing, only a slight sting like you would any other needle. One by one, Ellette pierces hundreds of pins all throughout my body, deep enough that I wouldn’t be able to pick them out with my fingers, I’d need tweezers. The silver from the needles starts to eat away at my skin, burning into my blood stream as they slice through arteries and veins. My breathing gets heavier, and my eyes turn blood shot as the silver poisons me from the inside out. I no longer give her the benefit of my screams, I hold it all in. My wolf howls for us inside my head, but neither one of us will waste a single scream on this woman ever again. My body no longer has the strength to fight back, but I will not let her relish in my voiced agony, I would rather tear my own throat out. The skin starts to disintegrate around the pin itself, and every so often a pin falls out of my raw, open skin onto the medical bench. Ellette just grabs it and puts it back in, in the exact same spot only deeper. I watch her face, imagining ways to disfigure it, when her hand comes over the top of my face, and she continues her torture there. She is meticulous, piercing through my eyebrows, ears, and finally my nose and lips. The bitch essentially sutures all my airways. Light headedness clouds my reasoning, the fear of suffocation eating away at my mind. with every second. My diaphragm starts to seize as the silver reaches my lungs, the pain of the contraction forces me to try open my mouth to catch my breath, causing the pins to rip through my lips, destroying the nerve endings around my face. The blood pouring into my mouth from the tears makes it even harder to take a breath without choking on my own blood. The flow of blood only gets worse as loose needles accidentally pierce my gums and teeth with every rush of air in or out of my lungs. Black spots appear across my vision as the panic starts to snowball, and my body thrashes spastically, trying to get free from the chains that have become a constant in my time here.

“Uh, uh, uh, little wolf. No getting away, you know what I want to know,” Ellette tuts before jumping up onto the table to straddle my naked stomach, her eyes glazing over as she plays with the blood dripping over my face.

“Go. Fuck. Yourself,” I try to enunciate through my shredded, useless lips, unable to keep the growl of my wolf out of my tone.

“Oh fine. You’re up. But do be careful, I want to keep her. Look how pretty she is in red,” Ellette purrs before she leans down to rub her nose over my bloodied forehead and jumps off the table. I hear the heavy footsteps amble over to my side, the purposeful but steady gait distracting me for a moment before I notice the face of the man in front of me. A man I recognise.

“Hello, Ava,” his smooth, cultured voice murmurs as his gaze floats over my naked, bloodied, and poisoned body.

Hello Councilman Cedric.

I do nothing but stare at a man whose purpose should be the protection of the wolves but is instead killing us off one Pack at a time. And for what fucking reason, he already has power over the wolf shifter population?! I don’t try to say anything, no matter what I do my lips aren’t going to heal anytime soon with all this silver poisoning me, and I have no words to express what I’m feeling.

"You look like it may hurt to talk right now, so this is what I’ll do. I’ll take out these pins in your face and let you heal a bit, but then you will need to answer a few questions for me, understood?" He cajoles before pulling out the silver pins one at a time, not even waiting to see if I agree to his conditions.

"You know, you weren't even on our radar, you were an insignificant wolf in the grand scheme of things, but at every step, since you overheard Vincent you have been an absolute thorn in our side, even before you met your Mates," Cedric chats casually as he continues to remove the silver pins from my body, his actions almost on autopilot. I stay as still as possible while his sharp nails pinch my skin as he plucks the poisonous barbs from me.

"The wolves will understand one day why we are doing this. We aren’t indifferent, it's just a necessary evil. A small loss for the greater gain, you understand all that, don’t you?" He questions with innocence, like he isn’t asking me to justify the murder of hundreds of wolves just for a war he started without cause. The flow of blood from my lips gradually starts to ebb, but the tissue and nerves remain damaged and useless.

"You just don’t understand how hard it is to possess all this power, power that we hide from every other race, power that we compress," Cedric starts, his voice trailing off in anger as he begins to mutter to himself incoherently. Come on you two faced, crazy motherfucker, please give me something to work with. I plead in my head, hoping that he will give me just a little bit more information.

"Oh good, the bleeding stopped, maybe the tissue will start to heal soon. Anyways, like I was saying, we just have too much potential, and we’re wasting it! Every Council over the last two hundred years allowed us to squander until we were nothing more than a few hundred individual packs!" He says with disgust before returning his focus to my naked body.

The Councilmen grows quiet as he concentrates on pulling out more pins, so I take the silence as a brief respite to digest everything that he's let slip so far. Obviously, he and whoever he is working with want a uniform pack, they don’t want the segregation, possibly one Alpha for all wolves in North America. But then what? That can’t be their ultimate goal here, why bring in the lones, rogues, Fae? Why kill off wolves in an effort to unite us? I let the thoughts run around in my head, unable to connect all the information while trying to heal my body at the same time. As the seconds tick by I focus all my energy on my body, there’s no point in continuing to dissect the slim amount of information he's given me so far. I feel the sensation of my lips knitting back together, my face regaining its normal shape, and the nerve endings repairing themselves until I feel nothing but a slight tingle with every movement.

"See, I knew you'd recover and look completely normal. El thought you might become a little disfigured, but I think that was more wishful thinking than anything else. I’ve been nice so far tonight. I’ve taken the silver out, I’ve given you a little bit of information, now, the least you can do is return the favour," he insists, his hands moving to unbutton his suit jacket before pulling it off and draping it over the table.

"Why kill all the wolves, why would you do it? We’re under your safe guard, why would you break your oath? Because it seems to me that it was for nothing," I reply with a dry mouth, just needing to get some idea what in the ever loving fuck his motives are.

"What do you think makes a Pack strong, Ava? Numbers, leaders or just someone to make the sacrifices? You may not understand or like what we want to do, but our race will come out on top," he contests before squaring himself to face me, a hard mask covering his otherwise neutral features. I feel his Alpha pull long before his wolf comes to the surface, before he pushes his will onto me. The compulsion to do everything and anything his says becomes so great that even the thought of resistance causes such intense pressure to build behind my eyes that they feel close to exploding. And he hasn’t even asked a question yet, fuck!

"How many packs do you have involved in your coup?" He asks with a slight tremor in his voice, like he must expend just as much effort to hold the compulsion as I feel to resist it.

"None," I whisper, biting my tongue to keep the rest of the answer inside. His choice of wording my only saving grace.

"How many wolves do you have living on your property?" He probes, the press of his will on mine ramming against my mental shields, the power and pressure exploding in a barrage of pain across my skull.

"A fair amount," I growl barely able to think past the need to answer his question. I will not give up my family. I repeat to myself, praying to find some solace in the fact that I did provide an answer to his questions.

With every question Cedric asks, I answer with truth, but never the whole truth. The pain in my head transforms into an excruciating agony, and I feel my ears pop with pressure while my eyes cloud over slightly as the blood vessels in my eyes follow. The Councilman repeats his questions, several times, never relenting with the pressure of his will, but always with varied wording, trying to trick me into giving him more information. Soon his shirt begins to stick to his skin, the sweat pouring off his body as he pushes himself further into my mind, prying for details I refuse to give.

"Why do you protect them? I don’t want to kill them! I want the wolves to become powerful race, I just need to know what they are planning so I can make amendments to my own plans," he tries to placate with heavy pants after the latest failed attempt at getting me to reply with more than a single word. I can feel it with every breath I take, this man might be a wolf shifter, but there is not a single bone in his body that cares for any wolf beyond what they can do to further his own quest for power.

"Because they are my family, and they do not deserve to be slaughtered by a self-involved man on a mission of power," I say, the first response in what feels like hours that was completely honest and uncensored. I get a brief reprieve, the pain and pressure evacuating my cranial space long enough for me to take my first deep breath since before Ellette walked down the stairs.

"Vampires are vermin that deserved to be staked, their existence no more than an affront to life. Humans are simply cattle, there for us to grow our numbers and that is about their own useful role in our society, and finally, the Fae are inconsequential. The realms won’t ever open to the extent that Ellette and her people desire, they will be forced back into their own. We should reign on top, we should not be forced to behave as animals any longer. We deserve the power we are owed!" He yells before slamming every single ounce of his will power into me, waves of Alpha compulsion hit my already crumbling mind. I swear I can hear it cracking and splintering under the assault as the pieces hit the floor. I feel the compulsion to share all my secrets, to blurt it all out, but I can’t bring myself to give in. I can't let my Mates down. I can’t put our family, our Pack in danger. Instead, it starts to attack my vitality, peeling pieces away from my body one organ at a time. You don’t have to breath as much, it’s better to save oxygen. What good is your liver and kidneys, they don’t need blood right now. Aren't you tired, why don’t you go to sleep? I push back, not knowing my own thoughts from the Alphas. I resist for as long as I can before that awful feeling creeps in again. That feeling of my heart slowing, my consciousness fading, I start to feel it all let go. I whisper one last goodbye to my loves as a woman screams in the background, and I embrace darkness, my constant companion, once more.