Lucy’s POV
WEEKS LATER
Once again, I found myself at the mercy of others. Treated like trash, and unfortunate enough to be treated like my life didn’t matter. There was no difference between myself and mere scrap found on the earth, and the Shadow Howl made sure that each and every day we were spared from death, we knew, and we were thankful for the . . . privilege.
I had survived my near-fatal wounds, but with what followed after, I started to entertain the idea that death would have been better. Maybe the only thing that kept me going was the thought of the people I loved, and the fact that I didn’t want to leave behind.
After we had been subdued by the enemy, they gathered what was left of the pack leaders. The woman who had stabbed me turned out to be the leader of their movement, and they called her Admiral Fern. Her name didn’t do justice to her character, for she was an unyielding personality, capable of so much evil, and yet, able to turn away without a second glance or thought.
We had all been asked to pledge allegiance to her, or suffer a painful, peolonged death. A request that was first resisted by many. The uniaon was admirable, for many were ready to lay down their lives than to be treated as slaves. I for one, had been ready to die, than to have my kife pressed under the thumb of another person once again.
Silence filled the air from the absence of responses. We congratulated each other with open gazes and controlled smiles. We thought that they couldn’t break us.
Admiral Fern had smiled at us, and had a woman brought out to stand before her in front of us. The woman started to tremble immediately she was called upon, and before long, we all understood why as another set of heartbeats could be heard inside of the woman’s belly.
She was pregnant.
“Pledge allegiance to us, and you will survive. You will live to carry this child in your arms and sing joyous lullabies. Don’t you want that? Or is your pride worth the life of your child?”
The woman fell to her knees, shaking her head. She was the Luna of one of the distant packs, and the child in her belly was her first. I knew this because earlier during the meeting, I had been opportuned to hold a small conversation with her when she was having a slight panic attack. She and her husband had tried for six years to have a child, and they had almost given up until miraculously, she conceived.
Her husband had been killed in the fight with the Halflings, meaning that she sole responsibility of raising her child, now fell on her.
“Please,” the woman had begged, bowing her head low. “Please, just . . . just spare us.”
Admiral Fern’s eyebrows pressed together, a false show of pity for the woman. “And I will, once you simply tell me that you belong to the Shadow Howl.”
The woman sobbed, lifting her head to look at the rest of us, who had been forced to our knees to witness everything unfold. Leaders, turned into servants. Her eyes were bloodshot, and with every breath she forced through her lungs my heart went out to her and her baby. She didn’t deserve any of this, and it was cruel to put her in such a position.
If the woman agreed, no one could blame her.
But the woman pressed her lips together, and silenced her sobs. She looked up at the admiral, and shook her head. “You murdered my husband. I will not birth a slave,” she said with determination flashing in her eyes.
My heart sank as the admiral shrugged and lifted the blade in her hand. She took a moment to admire her reflection in it, before deftly twisting it in her hand like it was a mere twig and swinging it right into the woman’s neck. The blade went neatly through her flesh like it was cutting through butter, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air.
Her head rolled across the floor over to the rest of us, trapped in an open-mouthed expression of horror.
I had shut my eyes and looked away, but it was too late. There was really no way I was going to sleep without being haunted by such an image.
Her death had been convincing enough for the rest of us.
–
“Take this to the Admiral’s room,” a man from the Shadow Howl told me, pointing to the room that used to once belong to me. “And be quick, she likes her food steaming hot.” He shoved me forward, not caring that I was carrying a full tray of food and could have spilled it.
I didn’t have a choice, so I obeyed. Besides, it was the only chance I had to get to see Shaun.
I had been made into a servant for the Shadow Howl. Doing laundry, serving dishes, and other menial jobs that I had never done before, not even when I had been enslaved under Daven. As a joke, the leaders of the other packs had been specially made into maids, cleaners, and butlers simply because they wanted to make a fool out of us.
I knocked on the door twice, and a strong “Come in” responded.
Shaun . . . he had been taken by the admiral. He was never one to cower, and she had selected him because of that trait.
“I am going to enjoy breaking you,” she had told him right in front of us, before having him dragged off to her chambers. I hadn’t seen him since then. This was going to be the first time.
I entered the room, keeping my head down.
“Oh, you’re finally here!” came the enthusiastic voice of the admiral as she sat atop a chained-up Shaun. “Come here,” she said calmly, but underneath her voice was the promise of a threat. I couldn’t refuse.
As I moved closer, I saw that Shaun was actually naked underneath her as he writhed in pain. She was pressing a red hot iron poker on his shoulder, opening her mouth in a sinister smile as he groaned, refusing to cry out from the pain.
The tray shook in my hands, but I didn’t drop it. I didn’t want to look at him, but I had to. I had to remember this moment so that I knew exactly what it was I was still fighting for.
His eyes found mine, and in that single moment, the world fell away as the bond between us came to life.
“It’s okay, Lucy. You don’t have . . . to see me like this,” his soft voice poured into my mind. Deep. Reassuring. If I couldn’t see him in such pain, I would have had no idea what he was going through.
I shut my eyes, trying to hold back tears. “I’m sorry I can’t do anything-”
“Knowing that you’re alive is good enough for me. Go, don’t let her target you too.”
“I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”
“You will. Look after Seth and Scott.” I opened my eyes, and he was still looking at me.
I put down the tray where the admiral had requested, using all the power I had inside of me to not do something-anything-just to free my mate.
“I love you,” I told him through the mind-link, already walking out of the room. The admiral didn’t know that Shaun and I were mates, so to her, I was simply just a random woman working closely with the triplets. She didn’t know that she was hurting my mate right in front of me.
After leaving the room, I ran off to a hidden corner between the rooms, finally giving myself the chance to cry.