Chapter 10 Winning the battle, losing the war

Chapter 10 Winning the battle, losing the war
NYX

My words meet rage. Stormy eyes, brimming with hate and contempt.

He scoffs.

I barely get a moment to breathe when his veiny hand crawls up to my head, twisting his grip around a fistful of my locs, and yanking forward so hard my soul almost slips out.

Pain explodes across my scalp, and my vision whites out, tears gushing out of my eyes on command.

“You bitch,” he mutters mockingly. Low. Calm. Then he charges out of the room, pulling me with him. 

I cry out, stumble, miss my steps, fall, and rise, but Alpha Kane doesn’t stop dragging me behind him like a rag doll.

Heat rolls off of him in a torrent. My chest tightens because I know I have done it. 

Provoked him.

I either die tonight or will be around for much longer.

The former is winning. My knees scrape against stone, my arms banging against gravel, and wicked sand that bites into my skin as I am hauled across the coarse floor. 

Every tug rips another sound from my throat.

He’s going to kill me. 

The night air is cool against the tears streaking my face, and I bite my tongue until I taste iron. “This is no way to treat your—”

A huge door opens on command. He hauls me across the courtyard, into the training field where the worst guards and most broken slaves train. 

Alpha Kane flings me into the dirt. “Jungle justice,” he growls. “This slave dies here tonight.”

I land on my side and my breath knocks out of me.

The moon is huge and white overhead, illuminating the faces in the circle. I drink in their presence. Guards. Huge, tall, dirty guards, and some shackled slaves, all with their gazes burning into me, questions sprawled across their hardened, unforgiving faces.

I start panting, doubling over, and wrapping my arms around myself. 

He doesn’t even look at me. “The second I walk out that gate, she’s yours. Rip her apart. Do whatever you want. When you’re finished,” he peers down at me disgustingly. “Drown the body.”

A hungry laugh ripples through them and they close in, circling and assessing me. One grabs his crotch. “Gonna fill her pretty little mouth with this.”

“Me first,” Another argues, laughing hysterically. “We can tear its mouth and fuck it together before it turns to carcass.”

“Haven’t seen tits in months, good gracious!” Another moans. 

Fear sinks into me. I tremble. “Alpha Kane.” My voice cracks. “Please. Mercy. H-have mercy, please! You can’t. You can’t do this. I am sorry!”

I don’t exist to him. My plea falls on deaf ears. He steps back and the animals close in, lips smacking as they start undoing their belts.

Alpha Kane turns toward the gate.

“A—” A hand clamps around my throat from behind, thick fingers digging into my windpipe. 

The guard reeks of piss and sweat. His breath is sour, his erection pressing against my spine. “It’s your lucky night, bitch.”

Disgust curls up my lungs. I bite him and he smacks me across the face. I taste iron. 

“Alpha! Please!” I yell at the top of my lungs, bawling. “Forgive me!”

The guard works fast. His other hand fists my dress at the collar and rips it. One more rip and the dress will fall apart.

I can’t breathe. “Kane!” It comes out strangled. “Kane!” 

He’s one step from the gate.

I scream again. “I’m begging you!”

The guard’s fingers slide lower, groping me. I thrash and scream his name again, again, until it’s the only word I know. I breathe into the mate bond, taking advantage of that connection. “Don’t leave me here!”

Suddenly, he turns.

The moon catches the fury in his eyes as he snatches a sword from the nearest guard’s scabbard in one motion and swings.

He moves so fast he’s a blur. One second the guard is on me, the next his head is rolling across the dirt, his mouth still hung open in surprise. 

Blood sprays hot across my face to my chest and the body drops like a sack behind me.

Silence plagues the air. One could hear a pin drop.

Kane stands over me, his sword dripping. His voice is barely human. “I said after I leave,” he enunciates, rage painting every word. 

Nobody dares to breathe or move. I see the devil they all so fear. Alpha Kane is no man.

He’s the devil. He doesn’t bat an eyelid. He looks proud of his kill. The silence lingers until Daciana’s voice floats in, “Darling, she gets off too easy this way.”

She limps into the circle, clutching her silk robe tight. Her face is still very pale and her lips tremble with hate. 

Those siren eyes find mine and promise a thousand worse deaths. She crosses over the separated head and then kicks it off.

I can’t tear my attention away from it.

“Fifty lashes of piping hot iron tonight. Then next week, when the guards are drunk and gathered for my birthday, we tie her to the target posts. Let them use her for moving archery practice. Hope they make lots of mistakes.”

Daciana flashes me a rotten smile, and her voice drops to a whisper. “I am going to make you wish you were dead.”

Kane’s knuckles are white. His gaze finally drops to me, kneeling half-naked in the dirt, covered in someone else’s blood with tears cutting clean tracks down my cheeks.

I stare back.

I don’t say please again. I tune Daciana’s out, holding the Alpha’s gaze because I know.

We both know I’ll be around for much longer.



Ice-cold water slaps me awake.

I gasp, choking and instinctively curling into a ball on the straw mat. My back is a map of fire, courtesy of fifty lashes with hot iron two nights ago.  

The skin is split, wet in places where the scabs have cracked open again. I haven’t known any pain as much as this, not in my twenty-four years of being alive. 

The head maid, a sour old bat named Greta, stands over me with an empty bucket. “Up, princess. You’re the first slave to kiss the iron, won’t be the last.”

She tosses a rusty cutlass at my feet. It lands with a clang, almost digging into my skin. I shoot the old hag a glare. 

“Grass by the lake needs cutting. All of it, so move ya ass!”

I stare at the blade. Just one swing and her head would roll like a rotten pumpkin, like that guard. Just like that guard.

My fingers twitch, anger pumping in my veins. Every single member of Blackhollow is my mortal enemy. They spark hate and scorn within me.

Greta throws a chunk of hard bread and a bowl of grey slop after it. “Eat. You’ll need the strength to bleed some more.”

I pick through the soup with trembling fingers. I haven’t had a bite in days. Little white maggots float atop it.

I hurl, disgusted. But the rumbling in my belly won’t let me toss it out. Any food at all was luxury. I flick them out, one by one, and shove the bread in my mouth anyway. 

I hold my breath as I chew, tearing up. I just need to survive.

I just need to live through the next three months. 

By the time I limp outside, the sun is already brutal. Worse for whoever carries as many wounds as I am. Even the wind hurts.

My shadow looks thin and broken. Two days without real food. I hate the reflection I catch in a window, like I am an empty shell— some ghost-girl with murder eyes.

“Just a little more…”

At the lake, the cutlass slips from my grip and  I collapse on the bank. The lump in my throat just sits there while I watch the ripples on the water.

I didn’t know it was going to be this hard. That it would hurt this much. A sob racks through me and I can’t hold it back anymore.

I fold over and cry like someone punched a hole straight through me. Big, ugly sobs that scrape my throat raw. My vision blurs with tears.

I unravel. 

I see my Mama’s pale face, Aura’s small hands reaching for me the last time I left. I told them I’ll be back soon.

Told them I would make things better, find my mother good treatment, yet all I have managed to do is make a fool out of myself.

I can’t quit now.  I’m doing this for them. I’m doing this for them.

I just have to kill one monster. One.

Even thinking his name makes my fists clench so hard, my nails dig into my palm. 

“Wow. You’re an ugly crier.”

I spin, raising the cutlass. There’s snot and tears everywhere.

Zephyr leans against a willow, with his arms casually folded, same soot on his cheeks, same calm half-smile. He’s in a brown shirt and a dirty, torn knicker.

“How long have you been there?” I hiss, wiping my face with the back of a filthy hand.

“Long enough to know you sound like a dying goose.” He pushes off the tree, sits right beside me without asking. “Also long enough to know you’re insane. Dropping a snake in the Luna’s bath? Legend. Everyone’s talking about it.”

I snort-wince. Laughing hurts. “She had it coming.”

“No argument here.” He picks up a pebble, then skips it across the water. Five bounces. “Still. Real Ballsy. How’s your back?”

I don’t answer. The silence stretches, but it’s not awkward. Zephyr lets me breathe, looking yearningly at the lake like he sees some distant dream. 

I finally ask, “What’s your story, wine-man?”

He shrugs. “RedHollow pack, born and raised. We made the best merlot on the continent. Alpha Kane rolled in twelve years ago, decided he wanted the vineyards. He burned half the village to prove the point. I was twenty. Waking up choking on smoke is not a good memory. I found that my family was gone,  my mate dead. He kept me alive because I knew how to stomp grapes. Ironic.”

He says it flat as if reading a grocery list. “Your turn.”

I don’t probe. “My parents died when I was little,” I lie, “Been on my own since.”

Zephyr nods, “Liar. But okay.”

I huff a laugh that turns into another sob I swallow down. He skips another stone. It’s seven bounces this time. 

“You ever forgive him?” I ask quietly. “Kane?”

“Yeah,” he says, surprising me. “Kane’s a troubled boy with a troubled past. Doesn’t excuse the bodies, but explains some. He was a kid when he took the throne. Had to become the monster so the pack wouldn’t get eaten by worse ones.”

I want to scream that understanding doesn’t bring back the dead, but the words stick. I am not supposed to argue anyway, Kane is dying soon.

Zephyr stands, brushes grass off his pants. “Stay out of trouble, ugly crier. Time to serve His Majesty his afternoon wine.”

My head snaps up. Wine. This is perfect. If I can have access. If I can be close to the Alpha’s drink.

I scramble to my feet, ignoring the way the world tilts. 

“Can I help? I am skilled at carrying trays.”

Zephyr arches a brow. “And the grass?”

“I can come back. My wounds haven’t healed so bending is torture.”

He narrows his gaze, smirking as though he knows exactly what I’m planning. “Come along, let’s get you to work.”