Chapter 548

Nathan

My vision swam in and out of focus as the guards dragged me down a dimly lit corridor. Blood gushed from my broken nose, dribbling down my chin and splattering on the concrete floor. Each ragged breath sent white-hot lances of pain through my battered ribs.

But all the while, even through the pain and the betrayal, I only thought about one thing.

Olivia.

Was she in danger? What had Montgomery and Dan done with her? And most importantly, how could I protect her from these monsters?

Finally, we reached a heavy steel door at the end of the hall and I recognized it immediately as my impending prison. One of the brutes pulled it open with a grunt, revealing a dank, windowless room—some kind of basement cellar by the looks of it.

Before I could open my mouth to protest, not that it would have even mattered, they hurled me inside like a rag doll.

I crashed against the unyielding floor, crying out as fresh agony blossomed across my body. The door slammed shut behind me with a booming clang, leaving me alone in the pitch blackness.

Time became a blur after that. I drifted in and out of consciousness, waking only to new waves of torment as my captors returned again and again to work me over. Fists, boots, batons—it didn’t matter what sort of torture device they went for, the result was the same.

Blinding pain, followed by blessed oblivion.

Finally, after what could have been hours or even days, the relentless assault seemed to cease. My entire existence had devolved into a cycle of desperate gulps of air and coughing up mouthfuls of blood. I could feel bones grating in unnatural places, taste the copper tang of shattered teeth.

Why hadn’t they just killed me already, I wondered? I almost hoped they would, if only to make the agony stop.

But no. I knew that they were keeping me alive for a purpose, even if the purpose was only to teach me a lesson for disobeying Montgomery’s orders.

Suddenly, a weak groan slipped past my cracked lips as a thin beam of light pierced the gloom—the door creaking open once more. Too drained to even lift my head, I could only make out the shadowy silhouettes of two figures framed in the doorway.

They were coming back to beat me into a pulp again. Or at least, that was what I thought at first.

But then, one of the figures paused and crouched down beside my broken form.

“Well, well,” a familiar voice cooed as fingers roughly gripped my chin, turning my face toward the light. “Aren’t you a sorry sight, old friend?”

Dan’s cruel smirk swam into view, his face haloed by the light filtering in from the hall. I tried to respond, to demand answers, but my lips only worked soundlessly as fresh blood dribbled from the corners of my mouth.

“Easy now, Danny,” another voice called out—impossibly calm and even.”Let’s not overexert ourselves, hm?”

The looming shadow of Alpha Montgomery materialized out of seemingly nowhere as he entered the room. Brushing past Dan, he calmly jerked what he was holding in his hand and unfolded a metal chair, which he slammed down in the middle of the room with a grating clang.

I cringed against the sudden sound and watched as he sat, crossing his legs as he settled in.

“So,” Montgomery began, steepling his fingers as his pale eyes bored into me. “I trust you’ve had time to reconsider your rash course of action here tonight. Perhaps you’ll be willing to give me a different answer than before.”

I managed little more than a gurgling cough before Dan crouched at my side, seizing a fistful of my hair to yank my face toward the other Alpha’s.

“He wants to know if you’re done sticking that pretty little nose where it doesn’t belong,” Dan sneered.

To punctuate his words, he drove his free hand into the pit of my stomach—what few functional nerves remained in my abdomen lit up like a live wire. I retched, spraying Dan’s immaculate shirt with fresh, hot bile.

Dan snarled, rearing back his fist. My eyes slipped shut in anticipation of the next brutal blow. But it never came.

“That’s quite enough, Daniel.”

Montgomery’s words cut through the room, and I watched through swollen eyelids as Dan’s fist froze midair before he lowered it again. For a moment, the only sound was my own ragged, labored breathing.

Then I heard Alpha Montgomery rise from his chair with a weary sigh, as though this whole ordeal was nothing more than an inconvenience to him.

“Listen closely, Nathan.” His pristine, freshly shined dress shoes appeared in my wavering field of view as he stepped closer. They were so clean I could see my reflection in them, and the battered and bruised heap on the floor that was supposed to be ‘me’ nearly made me retch again. “Because what I’m about to tell you, you're going to want to remember.”

I licked my parched, swollen lips, the taste of blood and bile lingering in my mouth as I strained to focus on the man’s words.

“Your little friend, Mira? Sweet girl, but she was never truly free. The poor thing was forced to be our eyes and ears this whole time. Same with your supposed allies—Alpha Maurice? His ‘envoy’?” He laughed then, a hollow, mirthless chuckle. “That old fool has never even heard of you. No, your ‘carefully-laid plans’ were being monitored from the beginning.”

My eyes slipped open then, meeting the icy stare of the northern Alpha. He crouched over me, his face uncomfortably close to mine. He smelled like expensive cologne, not at all like the scent of whiskey and cigars that I had grown so accustomed to with Dan.

“And now,” he hissed, “you’re going to stay right here. Out of the way while we take care of business.”

Dan grunted in amusement from the shadows at that. Montgomery straightened up, adjusting the cuffs of his suit as he turned to leave. But then he paused, not even deigning to look at me as he spoke.

“Unless, of course, you promise what I asked: to go home, mind your own business. Let’s not forget about your dear wife—”

“Don’t you dare touch Olivia.” My words came out hoarse and cracked, but I didn’t care how the very effort of using my voice felt like my throat was being rent in two.

Montgomery and Dan exchanged looks and chuckled at the same time. “Ah, Olivia,” Dan said. “I hate that bitch, truly. She won’t be missed in the middle of the ocean.”

“Now, now, Danny,” Montgomery cooed, wagging a stern finger at his cohort before he turned to me once more. “It’s truly simple, Nathan. Pledge your loyalty now, and you can both go home.”

For a moment, a flicker of a moment really, I considered my options. Pledge ‘loyalty’ to these bastards and save myself and my wife. It seemed simple.

But I knew they were bluffing. I could sense it. My wolf, even in his own battered state, could sense it. And as I glared down at Montgomery’s feet, all I could see was a dead man staring back at me. A dead man who wouldn’t stoop even lower moments before his death.

Without a word, I pursed my lips and spat on Montgomery’s pristine shoe.

“Shame.” That was all that he said. With a snap of his fingers, he silently directed Dan to take his own pocket square. I watched as Dan scrambled over, dropping to his knees, and wiped the spit from his boss’s shoe.

I knew, then, that death was better than servitude.

“Get a good night’s sleep, Nathan,” Montgomery said over his shoulder as he turned to leave. The guards opened the door, framing their boss in a blinding halo of light like some sort of twisted, deformed bastardization of an angel.

He paused then, his calm look searing into my mind one last time before darkness would inevitably take over. But it was his words that truly struck me to my core.

“You’re going to need your rest to dig your own grave come morning.”