Chapter 158: Take him down

The Cybertruck slammed open with a heavy, industrial clang that echoed through the parking garage of the new Redmoon headquarters.

Thorne was hauled out of the truck bed like a sack of spoiled grain. The pristine, white marble and polished chrome of the lower receiving bay were instantly smudged with the sticky yellow yolk, crushed cabbage leaves, and dried mud that covered every inch of the ex-Alpha’s skeletal frame. He was shivering violently, his teeth chattering a frantic, desperate rhythm against his cracked lips as the high-intensity security lights overhead exposed the absolute ruin of his majesty.

Justin stepped out of the glass elevator bank, holding a digital clipboard, his nose wrinkling automatically at the smell. "Wow. The public really didn't hold back on the dairy products, did they? He smells like a broken refrigerator in a garbage dump. Are we routing him to the federal transport grid? The international legal team in the South has already drafted the modern human-rights tribunal documents. They’ve got a lovely air-conditioned holding cell waiting for him in the human world."

"No," I said, my voice cutting through the hum of the garage’s ventilation fans like a drop of liquid nitrogen.

I stepped out of the front passenger seat, my tactical boots clicking sharply against the immaculate floorboards. My face was a mask of cold, unyielding marble. The dark gold of my eyes had hardened into something predatory and ancient,a look that didn't belong to the modern world of lawyers, charters, and diplomatic compromises.

"He doesn't get a sterile courtroom, Justin," I said, my gaze locking onto the shivering wreck on the floor. "He doesn't get a team of human lawyers spinning his atrocities into a psychological defense. He doesn't get a clean bed and three balanced meals while his case spends five years winding through the appellate courts."

Rayder stepped up beside me, his massive hand gripping the heavy silver-lined bindings that held Thorne’s wrists. The Alpha of the South looked down at the fallen tyrant, his golden eyes reflecting a grim, absolute agreement. "The law of the people handles the territory now, Justin. But the debt of the Thatcher bloodline is a private account. And today, we close the ledger."

Elias walked over from the cruiser, adjusting his silk tie with a small, dark grimace of satisfaction. "Well, if we aren't using the international legal cells, I suppose it’s a good thing I didn't completely demolish the deepest foundations of the old stone structure when we built the penthouse. We reinforced the sub-levels with three feet of high-density eco-concrete and solid steel blast doors. It’s entirely soundproof, completely cut off from the pack network, and boasts an absolute zero percent rating for aesthetic comfort. It’s essentially a high-tech tomb."

"Perfect," I whispered. "Take him down."

The descent into the lowest sub-level felt like traveling backward through centuries of pain.

As the elevator passed the glittering, glass-walled administrative floors and the warm, wood-paneled residential suites of the pack house, the air began to lose its modern warmth. By the time the heavy steel doors slid open at Level Minus-Four, the environment had shifted into a brutalist nightmare of raw, unpainted concrete, flickering fluorescent strip-lights, and a silence so dense it pressed against the eardrums like deep water.

This was the exact geographic location where the old Northern dungeons had once crawled with damp rot and iron shackles. Elias’s engineers had scraped away the filth and the chains, replacing them with thick panels of reinforced, smart-tinted ballistic glass and heavy magnetic door seals,but they hadn't changed the purpose of the isolation.

Rayder dragged Thorne down the narrow concrete corridor, the ex-Alpha’s useless, withered legs scraping a dull, pathetic sound against the floorboards. We stopped in front of Cell 01,a square, empty room containing nothing but a low concrete bench, a single floor drain, and a high-intensity observation camera that fed directly into my personal terminal.

Rayder cut the heavy travel bindings, throwing Thorne’s emaciated body onto the cold concrete floor of the cell. The tyrant collapsed in a heap, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps as he rolled onto his side, his single, milky eye blinking frantically against the sterile white light of his new prison.

I stood in the open threshold of the cell, my hand resting flat against the heavy steel frame of the magnetic door. I looked down at him, the memory of my youth,the memory of the four long years I had spent living as a phantom because of his cruelty,surging through my veins like a cold, toxic current.

"You are going to sit in this light, Thorne," I told him, my voice dropping into a low, terrifyingly calm register. "You are going to look at these four walls every single day until your rotted heart finally forgets how to beat. You wanted to build a kingdom of cages? Welcome to the center of your empire. You are going to suffer the exact same fate my parents suffered in the dark of your old palace. Alone. Disgraced. Erased from the memory of the living."

The heavy magnetic door began to slide shut, its hydraulic arm hissing as it prepared to seal the tyrant away from the world forever.

But before the steel could lock into the frame, Thorne let out a sudden, high-pitched, rattling laugh that turned into a violent fit of coughing. He dragged his skeletal torso upward, his long, dirt-encrusted fingernails clawing at the smooth concrete of the cell floor as he forced his head up to look at me through the narrowing gap.

"Selene..." Thorne wheezed, his voice suddenly losing its pathetic, broken cadence, turning into a sharp, venomous needle that found the exact structural weakness in my armor. "You think you’ve won... you think your black glass and your Southern gold make you a Queen..."

I didn't move. I kept my hand on the door frame, my expression unchanging.

"Tell me, girl..." Thorne hissed, a grotesque, yellow-toothed grin twisting across his rotted face as a thick drop of egg yolk dripped from his brow into his eye. "Before you turn the key on the monster... don't you want to know how the story ended? Don't you want to know your parents' last words?"