Chapter 146
Kara
We went through the doorway and down a narrow concrete staircase that descended into deeper cold and darkness. Each step was treacherous, my bound hands making it impossible to catch myself when I stumbled. The smell grew worse as we descended—mildew and rust and old blood, the kind of stench that spoke of terrible things done in dark places.
At the bottom, Viktor shoved open a metal door that shrieked on corroded hinges. The room beyond was barely large enough to be called a cell. A metal bed frame with no mattress, just a single threadbare blanket that looked like it might disintegrate if touched.
A corner with a squat toilet and a dripping faucet, no privacy screen or curtain. Concrete walls marked with brown stains that might have been rust or might have been something far worse. And in one corner, small dark pellets that I recognized with a shudder as rodent droppings.
Viktor cut the zip ties on my wrists with the same casual efficiency, deliberately letting the blade nick my skin just enough to draw blood. I hissed through my teeth but didn't give him the satisfaction of crying out.
"If you try to escape," he said conversationally, wiping my blood off his knife on his pants, "I'll break both your legs. Boss said keep you alive, didn't say keep you walking." His cold eyes met mine. "Understood?"
I wanted to spit in his face. I wanted to fight, to rage, to do something other than stand there and take his threats. But I was one barely-trained eighteen-year-old girl against a professional killer who outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds. So instead, I lifted my chin and met his stare with every ounce of dignity I could muster.
"My name is Kara," I said clearly. "Not 'triplets' mate.' Not 'spoiled Alphas' toy.' Not 'merchandise.' I'm Kara Sterling."
Something flickered in Viktor's expression—surprise, maybe, or the ghost of respect. But it was gone so quickly I might have imagined it. "Kara Sterling," he repeated, testing the name. "The future Luna who thinks she's people." He stepped closer, using his size to intimidate, and I forced myself not to back away. "You knew my parents, didn't you? Connor and Celeste. When was the last time you saw them? Are they... are they still alive?"
The question burst out of me before I could stop it, desperation overriding caution. Viktor's face went absolutely blank for a heartbeat, then contorted with sudden rage. He was in my space in an instant, one hand slamming into the wall beside my head hard enough to crack the concrete, his eyes flashing gold as his wolf surged forward.
"Shut your mouth!" The words came out half-growl, his pheromones flooding the small space with the scent of violence and threat. "Boss will deal with you about your parents when he's ready. Until then, you keep quiet and pray you don't make me angry enough to forget my orders."
His breath was hot on my face, his massive frame blocking out the light. Without my wolf able to respond, I couldn't even give the instinctive submission that might have calmed him. I could only stand there, human and fragile and terrified, as a predator showed me exactly how small I was.
Then he was gone, stepping back so fast I nearly fell. He stalked out of the cell and slammed the door behind him with enough force to make my ears ring. I heard the heavy slide of multiple bolts, the rattle of chains, the click of what sounded like a padlock.
Then silence, broken only by the steady drip of the faucet and my own ragged breathing.
I stood frozen for a long moment, my legs shaking so badly I thought they might give out. The adrenaline that had kept me upright began to fade, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion and the delayed shock of everything that had happened. My knees buckled and I sank to the cold concrete floor, wrapping my arms around myself as tremors wracked my body.
This is real, I thought numbly. This is actually happening. I've been kidnapped by the same people who killed Scarlett. Who probably killed my parents. And no one knows where I am.
I tried the bond again, reaching desperately for Asher's steady strength, Blake's fierce protectiveness, Cole's gentle warmth. But the collar around my throat seemed to swallow my efforts, leaving only emptiness where they should have been. I couldn't feel them. Couldn't sense their emotions or send them mine. It was like being cut off from part of my own soul.
Please, I begged silently, not even sure who I was praying to. The Moon Goddess who'd supposedly chosen me for this fate? My mates who I'd pushed away so many times? Please don't give up on me. Please keep looking. I didn't run away. I didn't leave you. Please...
But only silence answered, and the cold, and the dark.
After what felt like hours but might have been minutes, I forced myself to move. Lying on the floor wouldn't help. Giving in to despair wouldn't help. I needed to think, to assess, to find some way out of this nightmare.
I started with the door, running my hands over the metal surface, testing the hinges, the lock, looking for any weakness. It was solid, professionally installed, designed to hold someone much stronger than me. The walls were the same—thick concrete, seamlessly joined, impossible to break through with bare hands.
The bed frame was welded to the floor. The toilet and sink were built into the wall, no removable parts that could be weaponized. The ceiling was too high to reach, and even if I could, the old water pipe running across it looked ready to collapse at the slightest touch.
I was trapped. Completely, utterly trapped in a concrete box with no windows, no escape route, nothing but my own wits and the slim hope that my mates would find me before Konstantin decided I'd outlived my usefulness.
Think, Kara, I ordered myself, sinking down onto the edge of the metal bed frame. You're good at math. Treat this like a problem to solve. What are the variables? What do you know?
I knew I was still in Alaska—the cold, the language, the terrain we'd driven through all suggested it. I knew Konstantin wanted me alive for now, which meant I had value beyond just killing me for revenge. I knew Viktor and Alexei were following orders, which meant there was a hierarchy, a structure I might be able to exploit.
And I knew something else, something Viktor's reaction had confirmed: they knew about my parents. Which meant my parents had been involved with Konstantin somehow, deep enough that their daughter was worth kidnapping eighteen years later.
What did you do? I thought, pressing my fingers to my temples. What were you involved in that's still haunting me now?
But I had no answers, only questions that multiplied with every passing second. My fingers found the metal collar around my throat, tracing its smooth surface, feeling the slight vibration that suggested active electronics. Some kind of suppression technology, advanced enough to block both my shift and the mate bond. Konstantin had resources, connections, the kind of power that could make people disappear without a trace.
And I was alone in his grasp.
A wave of exhaustion crashed over me, so intense it felt physical. The drugs, the cold, the terror—it was all catching up with me at once. I curled up on the metal frame, pulling the threadbare blanket over myself even though it did almost nothing against the chill radiating up from the concrete floor.
My hand found the spot on the bed frame where the metal had a slightly sharp edge. Using my thumbnail, I scratched a single line into the paint. Day one of captivity. Just like I used to mark the days until graduation on my storage room wall. A way to hold onto my sanity, to track time when everything else was uncertain.
I survived ten years, I reminded myself, closing my eyes. I can survive this too.
But as the hours stretched on and the cold seeped deeper into my bones, that certainty began to crack. Because this wasn't the Midnight Estate where I'd at least had the illusion of safety, where I'd known the rules even if they were cruel. This was something else entirely.
This was the kind of dark place where girls went missing and were never found again.
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Sometime in the night—I had no way to tell time in the windowless cell, could only guess by the ache in my body and the way the sounds from upstairs had quieted—a violent wave of nausea hit me out of nowhere.
I barely made it to the toilet before my stomach convulsed, trying to expel what little remained in it. But there was nothing left, just bitter yellow-green bile that burned my throat and left me gasping. The spasms came again and again, each one more painful than the last, until I was collapsed on the filthy floor with my arms wrapped around my middle.
What's wrong with me? I thought through the haze of pain. Is it the chloroform? Something they put in the air?
Footsteps thundered overhead, followed by raised voices in Russian. I caught fragments through the ringing in my ears:
"What's wrong with her?!"
"Is it some kind of wolf disease?"
"Is it contagious?!"