Chapter 154 A call Man In Chain
Chapter 144
Ryder's POV
The prison cell was completely dark. It was not just the kind of dark you see when someone switches off the light. This darkness felt different. It felt heavy and thick, like something real. It was the kind of darkness that made you feel like it was alive. It felt like it was touching your skin and wrapping around you.
The air inside the cell felt wet and hard to breathe. Each breath felt slow, like something was pressing against your chest. The darkness felt like a damp cloth placed over your face, making it hard to feel free. It was quiet, but the quiet was not peaceful. It was loud in its own way.
The darkness made you feel small. It made you feel like you did not matter. It reminded you that outside this room, people were living their lives. Cars were moving. People were talking. The sun was shining somewhere. But in this place, none of that mattered.
Inside the cell, it felt like time had stopped. It felt like the world had forgotten you. And the darkness stayed there, heavy and strong, not caring about how you felt.
When I was younger, I heard about places like this. My father used to describe them like they were old tales. He said they were deep under the ground, dark and cold, where light was not free and silence felt like a threat. He spoke like those places would never come near him. I listened without care. I felt safe. I felt proud.
Now I was inside that darkness.
I moved my shoulders and felt a hard pull. Rope was tied tightly around my wrists, holding them behind the chair. My fingers were slowly losing feeling. I tried to move them and felt pain as blood pushed through. I told myself to breathe slowly. In. Out. In. Out. I could not lose control. Panic would make me weak. Panic would show on my face.
And I was not going to look guilty.
I had been walking in and out of Alpha Dominion's pack for years. My father before me had walked these same roads, sat at these same tables, laughed with these same people. We were known here. We were respected here. The kind of reputation that does not get dismantled because a few hired hands got careless with a disposal job.
That was what this had to be.
I turned the thought over in my mind carefully, the way you press on a bruise to test how deep the damage goes. Those idiots I had instructed to take care of Caramel's body , they had been caught. Sloppy. Careless. The kind of men who perform a job and then linger somewhere nearby as though they deserve a reward for the doing of it. I had picked the wrong ones. That was the only error that existed here, and it was correctable.
Caramel herself was nobody. I hated that the word felt harsh, but it was simply accurate. She held no connection to the royal bloodline. She carried no title that would make her disappearance a matter of state. She was not the kind of girl whose absence created earthquakes. Whatever those men had said when they were caught, whatever version of events they had fumbled through to explain themselves , it would unravel under scrutiny. Everything unravels under scrutiny when the people telling the story are frightened and low-ranked.
I was neither.
My father would already know something had gone wrong. He would have felt it through the channels men like him keep open, the quiet networks built across decades of handshakes and favours and carefully worded agreements over dinner tables. By morning, he would have made three calls that would ripple through this situation and flatten it.
I needed only to wait.
I pressed my back against the chair and stared into the darkness and told myself this, steadily, until it began to feel less like a reassurance and more like a fact.
Then the light in the hallway flickered on.
It was distant, a single bulb somewhere far down the corridor, trembling as though it too was uncertain about what was happening, but its pale reflection crept through the cell bars and landed against the far wall in a thin, broken stripe. My eyes, which had been working in pure darkness for what felt like hours, contracted sharply. I turned my face away on instinct, blinking against even that modest intrusion of light, and when I turned back, I could see shapes. The bars. The stone floor. My own knees.
Then I heard footsteps.
Not one set. Not two. Many.
They walked in step with each other. It was heavy and strong. Not the walk of men wandering around. It was the walk of men with purpose. Every step sounded clear and sharp. The sound travelled down the corridor and hit the stone walls, growing louder as it came. It no longer sounded like simple footsteps. It sounded like something large and unstoppable moving toward me.
I pressed my teeth together.
I lifted my back straight against the chair, using what little space the ropes gave me. I fixed my eyes on the hallway beyond the bars. I would not be caught bent over. I would not let my head fall. I would not let my eyes show fear. Whoever was coming would see a calm man. A patient man. A man waiting for others to understand that this was all wrong.
The footsteps became louder. The hallway light moved slightly, like it too felt the shake of their steps.
I squinted.
Shadows resolved into figures. Figures resolved into men. And at the front of them, taller than I had remembered, broader across the shoulders, moving with the particular stillness of someone who has never once in his life needed to announce himself because every room has always already known he was coming.
King Xavier.
The Alpha Dominion's pack king.
The footsteps stopped.