Chapter 100

Michael POV

"What is this place?" I asked. As I looked around the room, my heart sank. Not because of the horrors the room contained, but because Shawna had been among those hurt here in this dungeon. This could have been her fate had she not been found. It made my skin crawl to think of that. The thought of her not being in my life had me reaching out for her hand and squeezing it.

"It's horrible, isn't it?" she whispered softly. I was so in awe of this woman and her strength. She had been through so much and yet she stood here in this room, looking around and not cowering from it. She had been tortured down in these dungeons, in ways I didn't even know half of. What I did know about it, had me wanting to commit murder. I thought about Alpha Chris, the former Alpha of the Godsend Pack. He sat in a prison in Italy somewhere, stripped of his title. What I saw here made me want to strip him off his life. I wondered how much had gone on here that we hadn't known about. How much of this was Alpha Chris and his pack members that we had executed? How many knew about this dungeon that were still living? They thought they had gotten away with this atrocity. As I looked around the room though, I realized the place was covered in clues and evidence. Journals lined the shelves, fingerprints could be lifted from doors and glass jars. Ashlynn had been right, we needed forensics here.

"I agree with your mate, Dawson, we need forensics. We've got to tell the council, so the first step is locking this place up and getting back to your pack to notify Alpha Gabe," I told him.

"We don't need to go back to the pack," Ashlynn said. "My Uncle is waiting here on the Godsend Pack land." I looked over at Dawson. He nodded, confirming Ashlynn's statement.

"Very well then, let's get out of here and tell your Uncle. This place is filled with secrets and we need someone to come reveal them," I advised.

Ashlynn stepped around and started peering into cabinets. When she reached a shelf on one wall, she stopped and bent and read the spine of a ledger. I watched as she reached over to a blue box and pulled out a pair of blue rubber gloves. I hadn't even noticed they were those types of gloves used in doctors' offices and hospitals. She pulled the gloves on and then lifted the book off the shelf. "I don't want to leave my fingerprints," she stated. She laid the book on the counter, careful to only touch the edges of the cover and then the pages. We watched Ashlynn with acute attention, waiting for her to tell us what was in the book.

"Well, " Natalie spoke up. "What is it?"

"It's a book about experiments on different people. I assume its people anyway, they just use initials. They are all dated and it lists the poisons that they must have injected and how much each time, with the effects that followed. It's like they were tracking how much they could give before it became lethal. Almost like building immunity. This particular test," she points to a diagram that was scribbled on the page, "It's for acetic acid. It's measuring at what levels of exposure certain things happen, first being the soonest they see the skin burn, then peeling off, then dying." Ashlynn shudders and turns the page. "All of this seems very barbaric," she shook her head from side to side. "Terrible things."

Ashlynn snapped the book closed with a thud. With a disgusted look on her face, she turned and put it back on the shelf. "I think we should go," she said as she briskly walked towards the door. Dawson was right on her heel. "I think this needs to be gone through thoroughly. I'm not the one to do it, none of us are."

I turned to Shawna, "Are you ready to be done with this place? I want to get you back to the Alpha's home, where you can decompress from this." I reached up to brush some hair from her face and then laid my palm on her cheek. She closed her eyes and nodded. Taking her hand in mine, I pulled her towards the door.

"I got this," Natalie said, indicating the lights and closing the door. We all exited and Natalie flipped off the lights, plunging us into darkness before we all snapped our flashlights back on. Carl helped Natalie get the door closed, the two of them tugging on it, the hinges creaking in protest. Once the door was finally shut, we all turned to leave the damp dark tunnels behind. I couldn't wait to get out of there and was curious how Shawna had braved this. It was nothing to me to be exposed to the sights, sounds and smells of dungeons. It was part of my job after all, but to think of my mate, the woman I loved, living through these horrors, made me angrier than I had ever been. I pushed my wolf down, his snarl in my head growing louder at the mere mention of Shawn going through something so horrific. But she had, that fact remains. It was, after all, what brought her and I together. As much as I hated it, if she hadn't gone through all of that, I might never have found her. I drew her closer to me as we continued towards the exit.

"I'm very proud of you for facing all of this," I told her in a whisper. "You're the strongest woman I know." Shawna raised her eyes to mine, sadness clearly pooling in them. Her sad smile made my heart clench and I squeezed her hand gently for reassurance. "I love you Shawna."

"I love you too," she smiled and squeezed my hand back. I didn't care if that Full Moon Run didn't reveal us to be mates, I was forever hers regardless.