Chapter 192
Chapter 192
Citlali's POV
"She's the Queen Bee now," Layla explained.
"She oversees all of us. Checks our work. Makes sure we're behaving. Reports to the prince if anyone causes trouble."
The betrayal was complete then.
Kira hadn't just saved herself. She'd become part of the system that oppressed us.
"Does she hurt you?" I asked, my voice hard.
Layla shook her head slowly.
"Not really. She's not kind, but she's not cruel either. She just... does her job."
She paused.
"Sometimes she helps us. Just a little. Sneaks us extra food, or warns us when the guards are in a bad mood."
"I think she's just trying to survive, Citlali. In her own way."
I sighed, a complicated mix of emotions swirling in my chest.
Anger. Disgust. But also... understanding, perhaps.
"Maybe I was right to spare her life," I said quietly.
Layla looked confused, so I explained.
I told her about the night of the human attack on our pack.
How Kira and her squad had abandoned their patrol post to come after me instead, seeking revenge for some imagined slight.
How that had left the border unguarded, allowing the humans to slip through.
How the attack had resulted in deaths, injuries, and Layla's capture.
How Kira's own mother, Gamma Lydia, had died protecting the children during the raid.
And how, at Kira's trial, when everyone was calling for her execution, I had spoken in her defense.
I had asked for mercy instead of death, arguing that she had already lost everything—her mother, her position, her future.
That exile was punishment enough.
Layla listened in silence, her expression unreadable.
When I finished, she simply said, "I don't hate her."
She looked at me with those too-old eyes.
"None of it matters anymore. What she did, what happened to the pack... it's all in the past now."
She gestured at the cell around us.
"This is our reality now. Hating her won't change anything."
The resignation in her voice broke my heart.
I remembered something else and asked, "The other girl who was captured with you—the older one, maybe thirteen or fourteen. Where is she?"
Layla's face fell, grief flickering across her features.
"Margaret. She got sick on the journey here. Some kind of fever."
She swallowed hard.
"She died three days before we arrived. They just... they just left her body by the side of the road."
Another life lost. Another name I'd never really known.
I felt the weight of it pressing down on me, all these deaths, all this suffering.
But I couldn't afford to drown in grief. Not yet.
I pushed it aside and asked the question that had been burning in my mind since I arrived.
"Layla, do you know why they're doing this? Why they captured us?"
She nodded, fear clear in her eyes.
"I heard the guards talking. They don't care if we hear—they think we can't do anything about it anyway."
She took a shaky breath.
"The humans want to breed controllable wolf warriors."
The words sent ice through my veins, even though I'd already suspected as much.
"They force human men and wolf women together. To create hybrid children."
She continued, her voice getting smaller.
"The children will have wolf abilities—the strength, the healing, the senses. But they'll be raised by humans from birth. Loyal to humans."
I felt dizzy, the room spinning around me.
"So those pregnant women..."
"Were all forced to carry human children," Layla finished.
"Some of them have been here for months. The guards say the first babies should be born soon."
The full horror of it crashed over me.
This wasn't just rape. This wasn't just imprisonment.
This was genocide. Worse than genocide.
They were trying to create a new race of wolf-human hybrids, raised as weapons against their own kind.
"This has been going on for months," Layla said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"They've captured so many girls. From different packs, different territories."
She paused.
"The guards say no babies have been born yet. But it's only a matter of time."
I could barely process what I was hearing.
"This is..." I couldn't find words adequate to describe the monstrosity of it.
"This is worse than anything I imagined."
Layla nodded, tears streaming down her face.
"And the worst part is, the guards say this plan was approved by the king himself."
She swallowed hard.
"Prince Snow—he's in charge of running it. Of making sure it works."
She added quickly, "I don't think he likes it, though. I've heard him arguing with some of the nobles about it. But he does what he's told."
I sat there, my mind reeling.
Everything made horrible sense now.
Why they captured young wolf women specifically—we were fertile, healthy, in our prime breeding years.
Why they fed us so well—they needed us healthy for pregnancy.
Why this place looked like a brothel instead of a prison—because that's essentially what it was.
Why those women were pregnant—forced to carry the children of their rapists.
This wasn't just imprisonment. It was a breeding program.
A systematic plan to create an army of hybrid warriors, loyal to the humans who raised them.
It was monstrous. Unthinkable.
And it was happening right now, all around me.
I suddenly thought of Rowan, and the grief threatened to overwhelm me.
I tried again to reach him through mindlink, but the silver blocked everything.
Just empty silence where his presence should have been.
I didn't know if he was alive or dead.
The not-knowing was its own kind of torture.
Layla noticed my expression, the way my hand had gone to my chest as if trying to feel a connection that wasn't there.
"Citlali, what's wrong?"