The Wayward Mate

Chapter Nineteen.

I swallowed a growl as Rieker roughly pushed me down the steep steps to the basement. The stiches holding the skin around my wound tightened painfully. A sense of dread washed over me as I stumbled into the deepest parts of the dungeon. I knew what was coming. Rieker was going to torture me for failing.

Closing my eyes I let them strap me to the thick cement wall with silver shackles, the skin on my wrists burning. If I fought they would kill Dan, hurt Lauren and maim my parents; my family were counting on me. It wasn’t worth the fight, their pain was worse than anything Rieker could ever do to me.

“Open your eyes.” Rieker snapped, roughly grabbing my chin and jerking my face front and centre. Clenching my teeth my eyes snapped open and I openly glared at Rieker. Bastard. Every day I thought of another thing I would do to him once I was free. He would pay for what he had done to me and my family, that was the only thing that kept me slightly sane, the only thing that kept my humanity intact. “You know why you are down here?”

I nodded my head slightly, biting out the words that tasted like poison. “I failed my mission, Alpha Alexandros Knight lives.”

“And why is that?” Rieker asked, slowly walking to the far wall were a lethal looking whip sat on hooks drilled into the wall. As Rieker took it off the wall my heart skipped a beat. There were at least a dozen chains of varying thickness dangling from the end, silver chains. At the end of each chain was a hook, sharp piece of silver or a ball lined with spikes that looked like the end of a mace. “Well?” He demanded, walking towards me.

Ripping my gaze away from the fearsome whip I looked Rieker in the eyes. “Because he was better than me! Because I wasn’t prepared!” I was angry at myself, Rieker and the alpha. I had trained for years, yet I was easily bested by a lone alpha They sent me to my death and I’d been lucky. It was stupid of Rieker to send me after him in the first place. The Knight alpha was centuries older than me and had centuries more experience than me. I was angry that he had laughed in my face as he slid my own knife across my midsection before stabbing me near my heart, barely missing it. I was angry that I’d just barely gotten away with my life. My family were counting on me and if I’d died, they would’ve too.

I swallowed a scream as Rieker raised his hand and bought the whip down on my exposed body. The chains seared my flesh while the hooks and spikes on the end dug into my body and the sharp pieces of silver oozed the toxic metal into my system. It was like a thousand hot pokers in my gut. “Consider this motivation to be better.” He hissed. I groaned as he ripped the whip away, taking pieces of my skin with it and I sagged against the silver restraints, freely bleeding out of my stomach.

“Bring him in!” I was scared to look up at who ‘he’ was as more hunters entered the room. Deep in my heart I knew who ‘he’ was. “Rory, don’t you want to see your brother? And your mother?” Rieker’s snide voice pierced my defences and a tear escaped the corner of my eye, creeping down my cheek and falling on the dirty, bloodied stone floor.

A broken sob escaped my lips as Rieker forced my chin up. I was greeted by bright blue eyes, identical to mine, those these were filled with love and total forgiveness. “Please! Please don’t hurt him, whip me I don’t care! Just please don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt either of them!”

Rieker laughed cruelly and instead punched Dan in the gut, making him groan in pain and double over.  My mother screamed from the opposite side of the room, held down by a hunter. Rieker kicked his knees out from underneath him and grabbed a fistful of hair all in one fluid motion. My world froze as Rieker held a long blade to Dan’s neck. I could see the fear in my little brother’s eyes as the silver met his skin but he pushed it down and smiled with tears falling down his cheeks. “I love you.”