Chapter 22 Ledger of Blood
Aldric The Exiled Alpha POV
Trigger Warning: This chapter contains graphic violence, imprisonment, and coercive obsession.
Pain woke me up again.
Not the fading kind. Not the kind that teaches you something useful. This was deliberate, sustained, and cruel.
Silver sang through my bones. My head lolled forward as another blow landed, this time to my ribs. I felt something crack, sharp and wet inside my chest.y lycan healing tried to spark and failed, smothered by the silver cuffs biting into my wrists. I laughed anyway. The sound earned me a kick to the stomach so hard I gagged.
“Still laughing?” a voice snarled.
I lifted my eyes. Demon muscle. Shadow Market enforcer. Silver knuckles already slick with my blood.
“You hit like a coward,” I rasped. “Send your master.”
The punch came faster than I could blink. My vision burst white. I tasted iron. The floor rushed to my face as I fell, and then the silver chains yanked me back upright.
I finally noticed the screens flickering all over the walls. Her loft in lodo. The twins tower. Portals opening and closing like mocking eyes. Images of her. Nude, not nude. She was utter perfection in female form.
“You still haven't found her,” I laughed. “She’s not here. She’s not anywhere you can reach.”
Another punch. Then another. My jaw screamed. Silver chewed through my cheek. I spat blood onto the floor and grinned through it.
“Getting desperate?”
The demon backhanded me hard enough my head snapped sideways. Stars burst behind my eyes. The cuffs hummed louder, tightening. Then the room shifted. Pressure rolled in like a storm front.
The Broker entered. He didn’t rush. He never did. He walked like time bent for him, like the dungeon itself knew who owned it. He stopped in front of me and studied my face.
“You’ve been very uncooperative,” he said mildly.
I lifted my chin as much as the chains allowed. “You kidnapped me. Did you expect help?”
He sighed, disappointed. “You sensed her first.”
“So?” I sneered. “She is fuckine MINE once I get rid of my idiot sons.”
His eyes flicked to a screen. Her image filled it. Smiling, confident, and dangerous.
“You don’t understand what she is,” he said quietly.
“Oh, I understand,” I growled. “She’s power. She’s bloodline. She’s the future.”
“And where is she?” he asked sharply.
I laughed again. The punch this time shattered something in my face. Silver exploded through my skull. I screamed before I could stop myself, the sound ripped out of me as pain detonated behind my eyes.
“WHERE,” the Broker snarled, glamour cracking, “IS MY RAVELYN?”
I panted, as blood dripped onto my chest.
“She does NOT belong to YOU,” I spat.
He smiled thinly. “Everyone belongs to someone.”
He nodded, and the demon went to work. Fists. Kicks. Silver rods. Spells that burned without leaving marks. My lycan slammed against the bindings, feral and furious, trapped inside my skull as my body absorbed blow after blow.
I roared.
They didn’t stop. Minutes blurred. Or hours. Hard to tell when pain becomes the only clock. Finally, the Broker crouched in front of me, close enough that I could smell old magic and something rotting beneath it.
“You’ve hunted Ravelyns before,” he said softly. “You know their habits. Their circles. Their instincts.”
I dragged a breath into shattered lungs. “And you think I’ll hand her to you?”
He leaned closer. “I think you want her alive.”
That landed. Was the sick fuck planning to kill her? What the hell.
“She carries legacy,” he continued. “So do you. Imagine what you could build if you stopped fighting me.”
I barked out a laugh that turned into a cough. “You don’t build. You cage.”
He straightened. “Break him.”
The demon obeyed. More hours flew by. By the time they stopped, I barely recognized my own breathing. The Broker studied me again, his eyes calculating.
“You will talk,” he said calmly. “You will tell me where she is, who she’s with, and how many have touched her.”
My vision swam, but my smile held.
“Kill me first.”
He smiled back.
“We’re not there yet.”
The screens flickered again. Her image lingered.
And both of us watched her like predators who still believed the hunt was theirs to finish.
Hours later....
The cell door slammed shut with a finality that rattled my bones. I sagged forward as the silver chains were removed, and my knees hit the stone hard enough to jar my teeth. Someone shoved a tray through the bars, with bread, meat, and water laced faintly with healing tonic. Not mercy. Maintenance.
They wanted me alive. For now.
“Eat,” one of the Broker’s dogs sneered. “You heal faster when you cooperate. Then we can torture you all over again." His glee was evident in his voice. What the fuck kind of sick shit is going on here.
I didn’t answer. The door down the corridor slammed, and footsteps faded until the dungeon returned to its usual state, damp, humming with old magic, and thick with despair. I dragged myself upright and sat with my back to the wall. My chest burned, and the silver ache still threaded through my bones. Healing crept in slow and stubborn, my lycan snarling as it knitted flesh that should never have been torn like this.
I ate. Not because they told me to. Because I would need my strength. As I chewed, something prickled along my spine.
Awareness. Not demon. Not fae. Not lycan. Salt, and current. I lifted my gaze. Across the corridor, in a cell identical to mine, stood a man with long pastel green hair that floated faintly around his shoulders as if underwater. His skin was almost translucent, catching the dim light in pearlescent hues. Sea-green eyes watched me with open contempt.
A fucking merman? One of the Broker’s ledger prizes. Interesting. I finished my food, drank deeply, then leaned forward, with my forearms resting on my knees.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He moved then, slow and graceful, stalking to the bars like a predator who knew he was caged but still deadly. His lips curled.
“You don’t deserve my name.”
I barked out a laugh. “Bold words from someone in a cell.”
His gaze sharpened. “I heard you.”
My smile faded a fraction. “He keeps thin walls.”
“I heard you and the Broker,” the merman continued coolly. “Arguing. Posturing. Talking about her like she’s yours to fucking talk about.”
Disgust rolled off him in waves.
“You disgust me.”
I leaned back, wincing slightly as my shoulders hit stone. “She is my mate,” I corrected. “You should choose your words carefully, fish boy.”
The merman smiled. Not amused. Certain.
“Your mate?” he echoed softly. “That’s fucking rich.”
Something in his tone made my lycan stir uneasily.
“I can feel her,” he went on, pressing closer to the bars. “Even from here.” He pressed his fist to his chest. "I can feel her here. She is mine."
My breath caught before I could stop it. The merman’s smile widened.
“I felt her awaken,” he said. “Felt her silver fire ripple through the currents of magic like a tide turning. She is growing. Fast.”
The dungeon seemed to shrink.
“She’s already bonded,” he added, watching my reaction closely. “Already choosing. Already becoming dangerous.”
My hands curled into fists.
“She will come for me,” the merman finished calmly. “Not because she belongs to me. But because Ravelyns don’t leave their own in chains.”
My heart slammed once, hard enough to hurt.
“You don’t fuckin know her,” I snarled.
He tilted his head. “Neither do you. The difference is, you never fucking will."
I surged to my feet, pain screaming through my ribs, and gripped the bars as I leaned toward him.
“She will be mine,” I growled. “She will carry my blood, and my seed. The world will bend for what I create.”
The merman didn’t flinch.
“She will burn you alive,” he said simply. “And when she does, I hope I’m there to watch.”
Silence fell between us, heavy and electric. He turned away first, drifting back into the shadows of his cell like a ghost of the sea.
I stood there long after, listening to the slow drip of water, the hum of wards, and the distant echo of chains.
Somewhere beyond stone and shadow, the Ravelyn was rising.
~
The Broker POV
The spell should have worked.
The sigils were flawless. The blood was potent. The anchors were tuned to her resonance, Ravelyn magic humming just close enough to taste. I pressed my palm into the center of the circle and whispered her name, and power unfurled through the chamber like a living thing.
Nothing. The wards pushed back. Not shattered. Not strained. Refused. I hissed softly and withdrew my hand before the feedback could burn me. Interesting. Whoever had built those protections knew what they were doing. Demon magic layered with fae precision, lycan instinct woven into the seams. Crude in execution, but effective.
Annoying.
I straightened and glanced toward the viewing wall. It remained empty.
“She’s learning,” I murmured.
I was not fucking pleased. Aldric knew nothing, he was a waste of time. The merman mate knows nothing. I rubbed my temples, fighting the urge to kill something.
A ripple moved through the shadow network, and whispers slid along my senses like knives on silk. A dragon. Rampaging through the underworld. Shattering contracts. Incinerating informants. Screaming about ravelyn rejection. I smiled.
“Bring him to me,” I told the room.
My demons moved immediately.
He arrived bloodied and furious, with his scales still smoking faintly beneath glamoured skin. His eyes were wild, his pupils blown, and his rage barely contained.
“Sit,” I said.
He did. Reluctantly. I studied him for a moment, then smiled wider. “Perhaps we can have a conversation about the Ravelyn.”
His lip curled. “She rejected me.”
I said nothing.
“Told me she’d unleash her full power on my ass if I made her defend herself,” he went on, scowling. “Had another dragon with her. The exiled freak. Tharion. His dragon is fuckin unhinged man. Axis. Would’ve torn me apart if I pushed it, so I hightailed it outta there. You don't fuck with a newly mated dragon.”
He snorted. “That Ravelyn bitch is hot as hell though. Worth the risk.”
The punch landed before he finished the sentence. My fist connected with his mouth, snapping his head sideways, and blood sprayed across the stone. He hit the floor hard, stunned. I leaned down, my grip tightening in his hair, and forced his face up to mine.
“That Ravelyn bitch,” I said pleasantly, “is my mate.”
He blinked, then laughed weakly. “My apologies Broker.”
I released him and straightened, smoothing my cuffs.
“Now. Tell me where you saw her.”