Chapter 13 Blood And Broken Iron
The silver tipped whip sang again and again, carving red furrows across Alberto’s chest and arms. Each lash peeled skin and seared muscle, the metal burning deeper than any normal blade. He refused to scream at first, teeth clenched so tight his jaw creaked, but the woman with the red hair knew her craft. She varied the rhythm, struck high then low, paused just long enough for hope to flicker before the next blow landed. After the tenth lash his knees buckled. The chains alone held him upright.
Liana hung beside him, silent and rigid, every muscle locked against the pain. They had stripped her tunic away, leaving only ragged underclothes. Welts already rose across her ribs and back, livid against pale skin. Blood ran in thin rivulets down her legs and dripped from her toes to the stone floor.
Vargus watched from the edge of the dais, arms folded, winter pale eyes unblinking. The hall had filled again; rogues pressed close, drawn by the scent of suffering the way crows gather above a dying animal. Some laughed. Some wagered on how long the northern wolves would last.
The red haired woman stepped back, breathing hard, sweat gleaming on her brow. She coiled the whip with deliberate care and looked to her Alpha.
“Enough for now,” Vargus said. “Bring me the blade.”
A murmur rippled through the crowd. A rogue with a shaved scalp and ritual brands across his cheeks hurried forward carrying a short, heavy cleaver. The edge had been honed until it shone a mirror bright. Vargus took it without looking, testing the weight the way a butcher tests a favorite tool.
He walked to Alberto first.
“Hold his hand,” he ordered.
Two rogues seized Alberto’s right arm and wrenched it straight. The manacles above his wrist creaked but held. Fingers forced his palm flat against the pillar. Alberto tried to curl them, tried to fight, but exhaustion and blood loss had stolen strength from his limbs. Vargus laid the cleaver along the base of Alberto’s middle finger, just above the second knuckle.
“Look at me,” Vargus said softly.
Alberto lifted his head. Blood ran into his left eye from a split brow, but he met the Alpha’s gaze without flinching.
“You have no wolf,” Vargus murmured, almost gently. “No beast to lend you strength, no moon to heal you. Just flesh. Fragile, slow to mend flesh.” He pressed the blade a fraction deeper, parting skin. “I wonder how much of it I can take before you beg.”
Alberto spat blood at his feet. “Do what you want to me,” he rasped. “Leave her alone.”
Vargus smiled. “Begging already? That was fast.”
He brought the cleaver down.
The blade bit clean. Bone parted with a dull crunch. Pain exploded white hot up Alberto’s arm, so sudden and complete that for a heartbeat there was no sound in the world, only roaring silence. Then the scream tore loose from his throat, raw and animal, echoing off the cavern roof.
His middle finger lay on the floor in a spreading pool of red.
Vargus lifted the severed digit and held it to the torchlight, examining it like a jeweler with a flawed stone. Then he turned to Liana.
“No,” Alberto croaked. “No, take mine. Take all of them. Just her, leave her alone.”
Vargus ignored him. He walked to Liana and crouched so their eyes were level.
“Your brother is generous,” he told her. “He offers himself. Shall I accept?”
Liana stared back, green eyes blazing through the mask of blood and bruises. “Touch me,” she whispered, “and I will kill you with my teeth.”
Vargus laughed, delighted. He straightened and gestured to the two rogues holding her. They forced her down, one knee on the stone, leg stretched out. The cleaver rose again.
Alberto thrashed wildly. The manacles cut deep into his wrists, blood slicking the iron. “Vargus! I swear by every god, I will take her place!”
The Alpha paused, head tilted. “Every god? Even the ones who abandoned you the night your village burned?” He shook his head, almost pitying. “No, little stray. Pain shared is pain doubled.”
The cleaver fell.
Liana’s scream tore through the hall, high and shattering. The blade had taken her left leg just below the knee, severing muscle and bone in one brutal stroke. Blood jetted across the stone, bright and impossible. She writhed, chains rattling, face gone white beneath the bruises.
Something inside Alberto broke open, cold and vast and ancient.
He had no wolf. No beast stirred beneath his skin when the moon was full. He had only ever had himself, the boy Fernando had found half dead among ashes, the man who had learned to fight with fists and cunning because claws would never answer his call.
But rage, pure and cleansing, could be enough.
He roared, no words, only sound, and threw his weight forward. The pillar behind him groaned. Old iron, pitted by centuries of damp, had weaknesses no one had tested in decades. The bolt anchoring his right manacle to the stone had rusted through years ago and been replaced carelessly. He felt it give, just a fraction, then more.
The hall had gone still, every eye fixed on Liana’s severed leg and the crimson lake spreading beneath her. No one watched Alberto.
He twisted his wrist, sacrificing skin, and yanked again. The bolt sheared. His right arm came free in a spray of rust and blood.
Shock rippled outward. Someone shouted. Too late.
Alberto lunged, chain still dangling from his left wrist, and seized the cleaver from Vargus’s startled hand. The Alpha’s eyes widened, first time true surprise crossed his face. Alberto drove the blade upward under the rogue’s ribs, felt it grate against bone, twisted with all the strength left in his body.
Vargus staggered back, blood pouring between his fingers.
The hall exploded into chaos.
Alberto moved like something possessed. He swung the dangling chain, iron links whistling through the air, and caught the nearest rogue across the temple. The skull cracked like pottery. He ripped a dagger from the falling body and buried it in another throat. Blood sprayed hot across his face.
They came at him in a wave, twenty, thirty wolves, teeth bared, claws lengthening. He had no time to think, only to kill.
He fought with the cleaver in one hand, the broken chain in the other, the dagger clenched between his teeth when both hands were busy. A rogue lunged; he sidestepped and hamstrung him, severed tendon popping like wet rope. Another grabbed him from behind; Alberto slammed his head backward, felt cartilage crumple, then spun and opened the wolf from belly to sternum.
Bodies piled around him. The floor grew slick. His bare feet slid in blood, some of it his own, most not. Pain was distant now, drowned beneath the red tide. He lost count after the tenth kill, maybe the fifteenth. He only knew they kept coming and he kept cutting.
Someone slashed his back, deep enough to feel air on bone. He turned and drove the cleaver through the attacker’s jaw and out the top of his skull. Another blade found his thigh; he took the arm that held it at the elbow.
Liana’s voice reached him through the storm, weak but fierce. “Alberto!”
He risked a glance. She had dragged herself upright against the pillar, using the chains for support, her remaining foot braced in a widening pool of blood. Her eyes burned into his. Live, they said. Live and make them pay.
A massive rogue barreled into him, shoulder to chest, driving him backward. They crashed into a table, wood splintering. Fists hammered his face, his ribs. He tasted new blood, felt teeth sink into his shoulder. He jammed the dagger upward under the rogue’s chin, through mouth and brain.
He rose staggering, dripping, surrounded by corpses.
Twenty lay dead or dying at his feet. Twenty wolves brought down by a man with no beast inside him.
The rest circled now, wary. Vargus leaned against the dais, one hand pressed to his side, blood seeping between his fingers, but his smile had returned, thin and terrible.
“Magnificent,” he whispered. “I will enjoy breaking you slowly.”
Alberto swayed. His vision tunneled. The silver poisoning, the blood loss, the severed finger throbbing like a second heart, all of it rose at once and dragged him down. The cleaver slipped from numb fingers and rang against the stone.
He fell to his knees in the slaughter he had made, breath sawing in and out, and the darkness rushed up to claim him.
The last thing he saw was Liana reaching for him with blood slick fingers, mouthing his name.
Then nothing.