Chapter 14 no running again
The walls shook with muffled sounds , the thuds, the cries, the low, guttural pleasure of the girls working in the house. I pressed the pillow over my ears, my knuckles turning white against the fabric, but it barely helped. Every sound seemed amplified, each echo hammering against my skull. The music from downstairs pounded through the floorboards, bass rattling like a warning drum. I could already hear some of the girls whose rooms were near mine, voices cutting through the din in panicked or forced laughter.
I hugged my knees to my chest, trying to suppress the images forming in my mind. Every scream, every moan, painted a picture I didn’t want to see. But no matter how tightly I squeezed my eyes shut or buried my face in the pillow, the reality seeped in, unrelenting.
Sleep was impossible. My body refused to rest, muscles tensed and ready for flight, my heart hammering as if it knew what was coming.
Death.
It was only dark and quiet for a couple of minutes in my head before I heard the door creaking and a slithering feeling over my face as fingers brushed against my cheek. I didn't think twice before opening my eyes. A small gasp tore from my lips as I moved back while placing my elbows beneath me.
Pitch-black eyes consumed me, so dark I couldn't even see my reflection in them. The shadows in the room fell over his jawline perfectly. He didn't flinch back as I gained consciousness.
It was the Alpha himself.
A tightness appeared in my chest, "What are you doing here?" I whispered, the words trembling out of me before I could stop them. I didn't count the minutes I had zoned out, but I knew it wasn't long.
I should've heard him coming in.
"I can be anywhere I want to be," He responded, the void in his eyes only growing as he narrowed them to see the rest of my face. For a moment, something flashed within them before it went away. "Get up. It's time to go."
I clasped onto the sheets beneath and gave my head a shake, "No. I don't want to go. I'll stay here. It's better than going anywhere with you." I snapped, my tone didn’t sound like mine, it carried a fire I didn’t know I still had.
He stilled.
The silence that followed was worse than his anger. His gaze locked on me, unblinking, and I felt every trace of defiance in me start to crumble beneath the weight of it.
“You think you have a choice,” he said quietly. It wasn’t a question and he leaned forward, invading the personal space I had managed to keep. The scent of his strong, domineering wolf reached up to my nose and formed a warning in my head.
"You'd rather stay in a whorehouse than come with me?" He asked. When I didn't answer, he continued, "It would only take minutes for my lady to put a price tag on you and pass you around this house the moment I'd tell her you're no use for me."
"Better than being dead," I mumbled under my breath, the words barely leaving my mouth, but somehow he heard it.
His fingers reached underneath my chin and holding my face, he forced me to look back into his eyes. The air thickened and spun. His stare turned from cold to warm in a matter of seconds. My lips parted as the silence grew between us. It was an odd, stretching silence that let the sounds of the activities happening outside rush into the room.
Just right across the wall, there was someone getting hammered and whoever was it, was loud. Louder than usual. All her voices echoed into the room I was in with the Alpha.
"Yes! Fuck it like it's yours." The girl said in the other room forcing me to look away.
The Alpha's hand came around my wrist before he pulled me up from the bed and out of the sheets. I barely caught any time to slip on my shoes while he opened the door and forced me out.
"You'll do as I say," He said, his voice now like gravel and rough. Leaving the door open, he dropped my hand and turned around to me. "If I say you to sit, you'll sit and if I don't want you to sit, you won't."
I pursued my lips and swallowed hard before following him outside of the room. What was the matter with him? Couldn't he just let me go? Why was it so hard? And why did he find me so threatening when I was merely a scentless wolf with no real strength? What could I possibly do?
The third girl was on the way upstairs when she watched me head down. She stopped in her tracks and her eyes trailed me all the way till I reached the ground floor of the house. It was a good few hours that I had spent here without any trouble. Not everyone was the same as their violent Alpha or his men.
The women were entirely different.
A couple of minutes later, I was outside and then seated inside the car that rolled out of the whorehouse and onto the roads. Several people gazed at me on my way out and I wondered what was that.
Cold gripped me from either side and caressed my bare arms. Since I had taken the girl's clothes, it was a long strappy night dress, the only one that reached lower than my knees and didn't seem so vulgar. But it was still too thin to protect me from the chilling weather.
"Where to?" The man in front asked.
"You know where to." The Alpha responded before rolling up the partition.
I turned my head around, watching as the car rushed through the town aggressively before coming to a complete halt near an empty place where I could only find long, solid black gates sticking up from the ground. I tried to look at what was inside, but before I could, the Alpha had already stepped out and forced me to come along with him.
My heart raced in panic. Where was he taking me? It couldn't be the same location where I had been before.
There was no house here.
Walking in through the gates, I dashed my head back and forth before my eyes widened at the headstones placed on the ground, beside every grave which lined up perfectly straight with grass growing on them.
I stepped back, stopping in my tracks but he caught hold of my hand and pulled me forward.
"No need to run." He forced me along with him and walked till the end of the line.
The hair over my skin rose before my eyes fell upon the ground that had been dug up-for me.
An empty grave.
"No." I shook my head while trying to pull myself away from him.
He yanked on my arm and bought me closer till I was standing at the edge of the grave with my heart beating nearly out of my chest.
"I'll not kill you-" The Alpha said behind me. "Not if you pass my test."