Rite of Submission - Rite 1

50: Dmitri

                I never should have let myself believe that any of this was going to work out the way I wanted. It felt like the ground had opened up beneath me and swallowed me up so that I couldn't see anymore, or even breathe enough to catch my breath and scream. Nothing that happened the last few weeks meant a damn thing now.

I read through the file, again just to be sure. I knew I was right to despise them. I'd always thought they were opportunistic bottom feeders, but this... this was beyond anything I could have imagined anyone capable of. Not only could they have killed her, but I'd almost died twice, and so had an innocent wolf. She could've been a walking death sentence to everyone around her when she first got here.

Worse than that was the lie that started all of this and ripped everything good in my life away from me now. They couldn't be brought back into custody fast enough for me or my wolf. We were going to kill them. It was just a matter of when and how much information we could get out of them before I lost control.

I couldn't remember a time I'd moved faster through the halls and tunnels, but I wasn't the only one anxious to reach our destination. My wolf was clawing just under my skin and the pain from my bones and muscles rearranging themselves for the partial shift barely registered through the rage and despair I felt swirling through me. He knew more about her than I did. Things he swore he couldn't tell me no matter how much he wanted too, but this was beyond his scope of knowledge as well and he wanted blood for it as much as I did.

The woman was pathetic, begging and pleading for me to understand. Her mate didn't look the least bit sorry. They'd both plotted; lied and schemed to make the arrangement with my parents that would let them live out a nice comfortable and safe life within my territory in exchange for the life of a child that wasn't even theirs to offer. I didn't know what Nathan was trying to do. It didn't matter how many enforcers he pulled down here. I was going to kill these two for everything they'd done to her.

My wolf tried to warn me as we saw her kneeling there on the other side of the glass, but there was nothing either of us could do as that strange golden ring flared in her eyes and the word slipped from her lips. Everything went black, like it did when my wolf was able to shove me deep enough in my own mind to shield me from the world. He'd done it when we killed my father, and once while talking to her, this time he was here in the void with me.

"What the fuck just happened?"

He padded around the dark space, 'She knocked us out, again. There's nothing we can do but wait it out.'

"You're telling me that she can just cage you up with a single word?" my own voice echoed off the invisible force holding us here.

'I imagine there's a lot more that she can do, she just hasn't learned how to do it yet. Try not to run away from her like a scared little bitch this time,' he chortled, mocking me.

"I did not run from her like a scared little bitch," I growled at him.

'You did,' he smiled at me, 'and by some miracle, she still chose to claim us. Try not to fuck it up by being you.'

"You are mine, and I am yours... come back to me," her voice was like a lifeline, dragging us back out of the dark cage, but he was faster than I was to take control. He was telling her to leave, but also clutching her hand like we'd never see her again once she left.

"Why are my parents here?" Her question snapped something in us, but it was him that laughed like a lunatic.

She tried to get him to focus, but the more she insisted that these degenerates were her parents the crazier he sounded. It wasn't until the laughter stopped and he flatly tried to tell her that they were not her parents that she moved away. I tried to wrestle control back from him, not because I thought he'd do anything to hurt her, he'd already proven that he'd never harm her. It was the bitch she was headed towards I didn't trust.