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46
Several fans were fitted against the wall blowing cold air into the room. Their spinning blades were the only sharp enough objects I could see. My stomach curdled with uncertainty at the likelihood of slicing myself open, but it was the only option I really had. I staggered toward a fan at chest height in the wall but wouldn’t be able to kick the protective grate off, not with my bare feet. Instead, I contorted myself to try to slip the rope between my wrists and neck into the metal bars of the grate, careful not to let my hair fall in with it. Then, there was a hard jerk as the fan blades caught the rope, severing it halfway. I strained, pressing my skin against the grate, trying to cut the rest of the rope until, finally, my efforts paid off. The rope broke apart, and I stumbled forward, tipping my head down with relief. Carefully, I brought my bound wrists under my feet until they were in front of me. The rope was too tight for me to get my wrists free, but at least I could use my hands now. I turned my eyes to the pig carcass where my mother’s horn was hidden.

“Fuck you, David,” I mumbled between my teeth. With a deep breath in, I braced myself for the pain and plunged my hands into the carcass, biting back a groan between my teeth as I searched the viscera for the horn. It wasn’t hard to find, but the process was agonizing, searing my skin with poisonous flesh and blood. I clasped the horn between my palms and wrenched it out; bright red blood smeared up my arms. The pain was so intense it made me tremble.

But I was almost free. Lurching toward the door, I clutched the horn in one hand and pulled the handle with the other. The door unsealed and swung open, greeting me with a cloud of slightly warmer air. My blue lips gaped at the warmth as I stumbled into the bright lights of the basement hallway, only to realize this entire time, I hadn’t been alone.

Kipling was standing outside of the ice room.

The huge dragon guard turned to face me, surprised that I had gotten myself down from the chains. My first reaction was to attack. As he lunged for my arms, I shoved the razor-sharp point of my mother’s horn into his abdomen, sinking it deep between his ribs. Kipling’s eyes widened as we both looked down at the gory wound I’d created. “Shit,” he muttered.

Without the disadvantage of being frozen for hours, he was faster than me. Kipling supported himself against the wall with one arm and, with the other, grabbed my wrist, yanked the horn out of himself, and threw me to the side. The horn fell to the ground between us. I slammed against the other wall and fought through the pain to stay upright, but the collective exposure to meat and blood and freezing temperatures was gradually destroying me. I breathed hard and couldn’t muster the strength to move when I should have just run past him.

Kipling’s bloodied hands went for my arms again. “Somebody get David!” he growled at the dragons guarding the basement stairs. I fought with everything I had, but it wasn’t enough.

By the time David came storming down the stairs, Kipling had his knee on my back while I sprawled helplessly on the ground. The Dalesbloom Alpha rumbled with amusement, retrieving the blood-slicked horn from the floor, then crouching in front of me and grabbing my chin. “I was hoping you’d give me a taste of your feisty little temper before everything was said and done. It’s that much sweeter to crush hope when it’s been so painstakingly built up.”

I spat at him.

David sneered and stood back. “May as well bring her to the atrium now. We have seven hours yet before the ritual can begin, but I’d like to get an early start on her suffering.”

As David turned away, Kipling hesitated, his hand over the deep wound I’d made in his abdomen. I tilted my head to leer up at the dragon guard. He caught my eye, mouth taut with displeasure, and I wondered if he was second-guessing pledging himself to David, who didn’t seem to care that Kipling had been so heavily wounded. Kipling yanked me to my feet, and we trudged after David. I continued to shiver, the cold sinking right down to my bones, while Kipling bled profusely up the stairs.

We went through the manor to a corridor off the parlor opposite the hallway with the office and staircase leading to the second floor. This corridor ventured into the eastern wing of the manor, which, based on the layer of dust accumulated in the corners and on the walls, I gleaned was rarely visited. At the end of the corridor was a large circular room with glass walls, like a greenhouse filled with a variety of vibrant plants and glowing golden sunlight. The cobbled stone floor was littered with dirt, and the stench of a stagnant pond made the air reek like muck. “The atrium,” David began, “was my wife’s favorite room in the manor. After she died, it pained me too much to visit. My children never had any interest in it. I kept the room locked at all times, but now I’ve finally found a purpose for it again.”

In the center of the room sat a wooden table, and beside it standing among the dirt on the floor, a metal tap. Once more, my wrists were maneuvered behind my back, and the rope was retied to the one around my neck. Kipling forced me to my knees and secured me to the metal tap. After that, he wavered, his blood loss intensifying.

“Get that wound bandaged and tell the others to feed. It will give you the strength to undergo the Lycan ritual,” instructed David.

Kipling nodded, retreating from the room without a second glance my way. Two wolves arrived in his place, standing over me so that I didn’t make another attempt to escape.

I really thought I had a chance to get out of here when I’d broken out of the ice room. I thought I could take my mother’s horn and flee back into the woods, reunite with Colt before it was too late, and prevent the Lycan ritual from happening, but I was wrong. I had done exactly what David wanted. He wanted to see me fail—wanted to see the hope drain from me as he chained me up and forced me to participate in the ritual. I didn’t want to let defeat affect me, but after all I’d gone through already, battling hypothermia and the effects of the poisoning, I struggled to bring myself to fight back anymore.

For the next seven hours, I watched David prepare for the ritual.

My heart sank as he smashed my mother’s horn on the table, placing the fractured pieces in a stone bowl and crushing them down with a pestle. An arrangement of plants and flowers was laid out on the table, all collected in appeasement of the Moon Goddess. David’s followers washed the grime off the windows so the light could clearly make its way into the room. Every now and then, David paused from his preparations to torment me. He held a silver-bladed knife that, even without explanation, I knew was the knife used to carve the horn out of my mother’s brow and kill her, and with that knife, he pried two fingernails off my fingers. Each time I clenched my jaw and swallowed back my pain, but it was blinding. He broke all the toes on my left foot one by one. He cut my hair and took notches out of my right ear. I knew that over time and with enough transformations, these injuries would heal. But at the moment, with every desecration of my body, I lost a little more of myself.

I was certain he enjoyed it, knowing that it wasn’t just me suffering but his son too.

Finally, as the skies darkened and the sun descended into the horizon, Kipling led a live pig into the atrium. He was shirtless, a bandage wrapped around his waist. David had shed all of his clothes and stood naked by the table with a bowl of my blood he’d collected over the last few hours torturing me, as well as a glass bottle of water and the bowl of powdered unicorn horn. The bright, full moon hung overhead, illuminating the atrium in ethereal silver.

David, Kipling, and three more dragons stood around me: all the intended recipients of the Lycan ritual. David’s Beta, Garrett, stood nearby and watched.

“We will now begin the ritual,” declared David. Armed with the silver blade, he knelt before the pig and stared skyward at the moon. “Moon Goddess Luna, hear me now. I ask for your blessing on this night with an offering of a fresh kill. I ask of your blessing to grant us the powers of Lycanthropy, to proffer upon us the highest potential our bodies are capable of, the union of the power of man and beast combined. We have gathered your favored herbs and hunt in your name so that you may feed alongside us tonight and nourish yourself on the magic that we offer back to you. Bless us, Moon Goddess Luna, so that we may bring power to your name.”