Unclaimed

Chapter Fifty-Seven- Have Mercy

Cassie

I walk towards the newly established prison with the stack of letters crudely stuffed in a manila envelope. I feel my heart thumping in my chest as I dig my nails into my arms through the sleeves.

I just want this to work out.

Please let it work out.

I nod my head to one of the prison guards, a Lycan whose name I didn't know. He lets me in, surely knowing what I was there for. The darkness of the night bled through the clear glass windows as I walk through the prison.

Finding Nico's cell pretty easily as he was our first official prisoner. He's sitting on the twin sized bed, hunched over with his elbows on his knees. Looking up through the silver bars with a bitter expression that softens when he sees me.

"Hey." I mutter softly, the whisper sounding loud in the quiet prison.

"As far as prisons go, this isn't half bad." He says looking around at the four walls that contained him. He was right. This cell was more for rehabilitation than punishment. I guess I should thank Judas for taking that into account later.

The bed seemed warm, the floor decorated with a soft rug and a small TV mounted up on the corner of the wall facing the bed. The sink and shower separated by a single curtain.

"It's most comfortable looking than most prisons I've been in." He said.

"You've been imprisoned before?" I pressed.

"It was before I proved myself to Harald." He shakes his head, his eyes falling to the floor. There's a beat of silence.

"What is your Alpha going to do with me?" He finally asks.

"I don't know." I shake my head. "The way she put it, if you can't understand the damage Harald did, you can't live."

"Do you agree?" He steps towards the bars.

"I don't know." I state again. "I really want you to live." I whisper. Feeling my wolf baying for him from within me. Calling out to him in anyway it could. "I really want you to see, to know what he did, that you're supporting a monster."

"Harald has cared more about the rogues than any king that has come into power. He...he really listens, he validates us, he makes us strong." He sounds so sure of himself. I stare at him as the yearning within me ceases and I feel remorse hit me.

He really doesn't know.

"He took me in, when I was starving, when I had nothing. On the verge of death just begging for nature to take me out. My family turned me away. My father disowned me, while my mother watched and did nothing. When I begged for her help, she told me it was my fault that I was being banished."

"Why were you banished?" I ask.

"For defending my father." His burnished eyes find mine, rage and hatred churning in them like butter. "My Alpha's dick ass Beta started a fight with my father over some patrol job, he almost killed him. But when I stepped in, and nailed the motherfucker to the ground, suddenly I'm the villain and everyone turned their backs on me. Without ever hearing what I had to say, or trying to see it from my side."

"I'm sorry." I say but he continues.

"I left that same day, and I was lost and alone. For weeks. Starving and getting more and more wild. Until I couldn't take it anymore. I tried to find other packs, but they branded me." He lifts up his shirt to reveal the brand of a rogue. A cross burned into his skin right over where the pack mark would be. The skin around his ribs, scarred.