Kate’s POV
The days following my reckless ultimatum were a waking purgatory unlike anything I had experienced before.
I had expected swift and merciless reprisal from Dimitri for my insolence – vicious beatings, psychologically torturous mind games, or worse.
Yet my cruel keeper stayed his hand, leaving me to stew in paranoid solitude within the dark confines of my cell.
Perhaps that was his newest torment – to leave me trapped within the depths of my own spiraling imagination until I went utterly mad envisioning the horrors soon to come crashing down upon my foolish head.
The pregnant silence gnawed at my frayed nerves more insidiously than any physical abuse he could inflict.
I startled awake from fevered nightmares at every rattle of the chains bolting the outer door, half-expecting Dimitri to barge in at any moment breathing brimstone fury.
But the ominous footfalls never came. Only more suffocating silence and isolation.
A balm one moment, but a fresh hell in the next panicked heartbeat.
Had he forgotten about my defiance already?
Was he simply toying with me, lulling me into a false sense of security before springing his trap?
The maddening unknowns swirled through my mind endlessly, an accelerating vortex of paranoia that slowly consumed every sane thought until only primal terror remained.
This couldn’t go on forever… could it?
He had to make his move eventually!
I wasn’t sure how much more of this unbearable tension my body and spirit could endure.
“Just get it over with, you sadistic beast…” I growled weakly through cracked, bleeding lips. “No more games… no more torment. Do your worst!”
As if in answer to my desperate plea, a heavy thud rattled the cell door – the first real sound in what felt like an eternity.
I flinched violently, pressing myself flat against the rear wall as my heart thundered in dread.
Here it comes… he won’t let me suffer any longer before breaking me utterly for my hubris!
The rusted hinges screeched in protest as the door ground open, groaning like the maw of a ravenous beast.
Yet the shadowy silhouette that emerged from the murky corridor outside was not Dimitri’s hulking frame.
Smaller, more willowy… feminine.
I squinted in confusion, my terror momentarily displaced by disbelief.
A young woman stalked into my cell with a predatory slink to her movements, crimson wisps of tousled hair catching the guttering torchlight.
Angular features twisted in an unsettling smirk, eyes glittering with cunning malice.
“Well, well… the mighty Alpha’s stubborn little omega bitch at last,” the woman purred, circling around my prone form like a panther assessing its cornered prey.
I instinctively flinched away when her keen gaze raked over my naked body in an assessing leer. “W-Who the hell are you? I won’t play Dimitri’s sick games any longer!”
“Aww…” The mocking coo dripped with sadistic amusement. “Such a feisty little thing. I can see why our glorious Alpha has been struggling to properly tame you thus far.”
Her mocking laughter echoed off the dank walls, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
There was something unhinged about this female, a feral mania gleaming behind those predatory emerald eyes that made her seem less than fully stable.
“And here I thought you were just some pitiful runt he’d taken in off the street to further torment. Now I can see why he keeps you… relatively intact for now.” The woman dragged her tongue over her full lips in a slow, deliberate tasting. “I can almost taste the power simmering beneath that pretty little shell. No wonder he’s so… obsessed…”
And with that, realization crashed over me in a frigid, gut-wrenching tidal wave.
This depraved female was part of Dimitri’s inner circle… perhaps even the wretched soul unfortunate enough to be considered his mate by pack law!
Why else would she reek of unhinged jealousy and envy at the mere thought of Dimitri coveting another female… any female… in the slightest?
“You…” I breathed, the word a bare husk of sound as my mouth went cotton-dry. “You’re mad with envy over him, aren’t you? Driven to torture and madness by how he treats me as more than just… disposable meat!”
A rhythmic pulsing began in my ears, clouding my senses with an encroaching roar of white noise.
I couldn’t even flinch away as the scorned woman surged forward and seized a fistful of my matted hair, wrenching my head back in a cruel arch that strained my neck.
“Listen here, you defiant little cunt!” She hissed, spittle flying from her contorted, twisted features. “What our Alpha does and who he graces with his affections is no concern of yours! You’re merely a fucktoy conveniently delivered to slake his baser needs when his own personal Lunas can no longer satisfy him properly…”
The next words chilled my very marrow with their venom-laced promise.
“And when he finally tires of your pitiful antics and cries for ‘respect?'” She spat the word with sneering contempt. “Well, I’ll be waiting patiently to revel in slowly stripping away every shred of defiance and hope from you before the end…”
A sudden, savage yank tore my head sideways in a blinding haze of pain and whiplash.
I cried out hoarsely, coppery warmth flooding my mouth as rows of serrated fangs laid open my cheek in a spray of crimson.
“Stand in my way again, Omega… and I’ll make certain your death is the slowest, most anguished fade into oblivion imaginable!”
The woman released her grip, letting me slump bonelessly to the floor in a limp, winded tangle of limbs.
I could only lay there, cradling my ravaged face as an ever-widening bloom of scarlet seeped through my fingers, staining the stone beneath my a garish red.
Each shallow, gurgling breath sent fresh spurts of gore spattering down my bare chest and abdomen.
When I finally managed to pry my eyes open through the misting haze of shock, the nameless, sadistic packmate was already gone.
Just the echoes of her receding laughter twisting the knife in my battered soul.
I had pushed Dimitri too far and inadvertently stirred the hornet’s nest surrounding him.
Now I would pay the ultimate price for my defiance, and the female was going to revel in being the instrument to finally, utterly break me for good.
With the last dregs of my waning strength, I tried to force my body upright, tried to cry out for aid or mercy that would never come.
But flashes of crimson obscured me dimming vision as more vital fluids poured free from my torn throat.
The final, crushing truth loomed before me like a harbinger of grim release: I wouldn’t survive the night with wounds this severe.
Not without intensive medical treatment or an Alpha’s timely intervention to initiate emergency healing protocols.
And both of those mercies would be forever denied by the sadistic Alphas of the Bloodmoon pack.
I wheezed out a wet, rattling gasp as my body gave one final lurch of defiant resistance… then surrendered to the encroaching black oblivion creeping over me.
So this was how the fates would see my tragic tale end: ruined, butchered and discarded like offal without even the barest trace of dignity or mercy to warm my final moments.
No final revelations or profound realizations of the cosmos.
Not even the bitter dregs of isolated fury to cauterize my wounded spirit in the end.
Only a cold, lonely silence reigned over the shadowed prison cell.
And the inert, my lifeless body slowly growing colder within its squalid confines…
Then darkness.
I was… dead.