Chapter 92 Dungeon
Maddie POV
The dungeon was cold in a way that settled into your bones and stayed there.
They had put me in a cell at the far end of the corridor, away from the small window near the entrance that let in the only natural light. The walls were stone, the floor was stone and the air smelled like damp and something else underneath it that I recognized after a few minutes.
Wolfsbane.
Not enough to knock me out but enough to keep Gory quiet. I could still feel her but she felt far away, like she was at the end of a long hallway with a closed door between us.
"Gory," I said quietly.
"I'm here," she replied, but her voice was thin. "They know what they're doing."
I sat on the floor with my back against the wall and looked at the ceiling. There was no point standing. There was nowhere to go and nobody to perform for so I just sat and let myself think.
The enforcers had not spoken to me much on the way over. One of them told me to watch my step on the stairs leading down and that was about it.
They were not cruel but they were not warm either. They were just doing what they were told to do by Alpha Hawthorne, the man who had my actual parents killed.
That thought sat in my chest like a stone.
I had known for a while that the Alpha was dangerous. I had not known until this morning that it was personal.
Calix had handed me his phone and I had read his father's handwriting describing my mother like she was something he owned and then ordering her death like it was a pack decision when really it was just a man who could not handle being rejected.
Now I was sitting in his dungeon.
I pressed my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.
The hours passed slowly. I counted them by the shift in the light from the corridor torch outside my cell.
At some point I fell asleep sitting up, i woke with a stiff neck and no idea what time it was. My mouth was dry, nobody had brought water or food and I was not going to ask for any either.
Then I heard footsteps.
They were lighter than the enforcers, more deliberate. I opened my eyes and waited.
Jace appeared on the other side of the cell door.
He looked different without the easy confidence he usually carried around. His hands were at his sides and he was watching me with an expression I could not immediately name.
"Hey," he said.
I looked at him and said nothing.
"I know you're angry," he said.
"You helped Simone set me up," I said. "You stood outside my building as a distraction while she went to the Alpha. So yeah, Jace, I'm a little past angry."
He exhaled and looked at the floor. "It wasn't supposed to go this far."
"Then how far was it supposed to go?" I asked. "Because I'm in a dungeon right now so help me understand where the line was."
"She told me they would just question you and send you home," he said. "I didn't know she was going to have you locked up."
"You gave her my identity," I said.
"What did you think she was going to do with it."
He did not answer that.
I looked at him for a moment and then looked away. There was no version of this conversation where Jace came out looking like anything other than what he was so I was not going to waste energy being surprised by it.
"Why are you here," I said.
"I want to get you out," he said.
"No you don't," I said. "You want me to owe you something. That's different."
He was quiet for a second. "Maddie."
"Don't," I said firmly. "Just say what you actually came to say."
He stepped closer to the door. "I can get the key. There's a guard rotation at midnight and the corridor is empty for about four minutes. That's enough time to get you out of the cell and through the side exit before anyone notices. Be fast about it"
I looked at him. "Why would you do that."
"Because I made a mistake," he said.
"You made a choice," I corrected immediately. "Those are different things too."
He looked at me with something in his face that might have been genuine and might not have been. With Jace I had never been able to tell the difference and that was part of the problem.
The wolfsbane in the air was making my head ache steadily and Gory was too weak to give me anything useful in terms of reading him. I was on my own with this decision.
"If I say yes," I said slowly. "You do exactly what you said and nothing else. You don't touch me and you don't talk to me about anything other than getting out. Understood?"
"Understood," he said.
"And after," I said. "We are done. Whatever you think this is going to fix, it doesn't fix anything."
He nodded and left without pushing it further, and I was grateful for that at least.
I leaned my head back against the wall after he left and stared at the ceiling. I did not trust him and that had not changed.
But the wolfsbane was getting heavier by the hour and Gory was getting quieter. I was not going to sit in this cell and wait for Alpha Hawthorne to decide what to do with me.
Calix was out there looking for me. I knew that without needing proof because I could feel it faintly through the mark even with the wolfsbane dulling everything.
But I could not wait for him.
I had to move on my own and deal with whatever came after. I just had to.