The Cage (Book 2) ✔️

One Month

After years of toiling, the final chapter of The Cage is finally here! Thanks for sticking around for so long. Hope you enjoy the chapter! 

One Month

Julian's P.O.V.

The world smelled of stone and damp air. The floor beneath me was cold, the kind of cold that crawled into bone and made itself at home. An electric lantern flickered weakly in the far corner, its light a trembling thing, fighting shadows that sprawled long and restless along the walls.

Sighing, I tried my wrists for the hundredth time. They were bound by thick rope, the fibers cutting deep into my wrists.

But at least there were no lash marks across my back, no boots crushing my ribs. Not yet. Our captors had only dumped us in a dank room that passed for a cell -one that almost made me miss prison- and then left us to the dark.

That almost frightened me more. Violence I could understand. Violence had rules; demands it wanted to be obliged. This silence had none.

Aiden lay near me, head turned, hair matted against his temple with sweat, his wrists also restrained. His chest rose and fell in a shallow, uneven rhythm, but it was rhythm nonetheless. The relief of it ached sharper than any wound could have.

I gingerly touched his bruised temple where our assailants had struck him to subdue him, rendering him unconscious still, but Aiden didn't even stir. I prayed he hadn't suffered a concussion.

For hours I waited in silence, head buried in my knees.

Schneider and Schneizel no doubt by now knew we'd been taken. If I had to guess, then the enemy had lured them away, only to sneak behind their backs and kidnap us. For what purpose?

Stupid question. To hold us as leverage, of course.

And then the air shifted as the door opened and a figure stepped into the semi-dark room.

My breathing hiked and my pulse quickled as I looked up from my knees.

He emerged from the shadows like he had been carved from them, tall and deliberate. Dread plummeted my stomach.

This had to be Nathan Drakos. I had never seen him nor did Schneider ever describe him to me, but I knew. In my bone marrow, I knew it was him.

His kidnapper, now my own kidnapper.

His movements were too smooth, too precise. He didn't scowl or sneer. He didn't even look cruel. His handsome face was quiet, almost serene, as though he stood in a chapel.

But his eyes gave away the true depth of his emotions. They burned with something I couldn't name. It was neither rage nor triumph, but something stranger and far more dangerous: an obsessive devotion sharpened into a blade.

"You're quieter than I thought you'd be," he said, voice even, carrying easily through the room. "Most of them shout. Curse me. Beg." His head tilted, studying me like an object, a puzzle to be put together.

I tried to steady my voice, though it scraped raw out of my throat. "What do you want with us?"

Nathan crouched before me, folding down with the elegance of a man who never lost balance. He studied my face, then Aiden's unconscious one, and something flickered across his expression -a gentleness that terrified me more than cruelty would have.

"He thought of you every day I held him captive." His gaze met mine. "You're lucky," he said, a woeful smile tilting the corners of his mouth. "The man you love... he loves you back."

An unsettled frown drew my eyebrows together, and I demanded, "Why have you taken us?!"

"Because he won't come for me," Nathan said, voice quiet, almost matter-of-fact. His gaze flicked past me, resting somewhere I couldn't see. "I've been looking for him a long time. He's only ever shown his face for his brother, though it took him long enough."