06

CHAPTER 6: The Caged Queen

Safe to say the yapping bulldog wasn’t happy. I still needed to head back to the library, only with his iron grip on my arm. It was becoming difficult, I have research to do, considering I’m stuck here, and you claim I have freedom here, so why are you being a controlling swine?”

He gives me a side glare, “You are clearly against those I am in alliance with, or was the scent of heightened hatred for the Darkling clan something else entirely? Unless you have a mutual hatred with alliance to your pathetic council?” He wonders.

I stare at him, “You’re threatened by the council, why?”

“I am not threatened by anyone.” He snaps at me.

I look at him closely, “Then why are you so angry about it? So tense at the auditorium, I studied your kin before I was forced to kneel before you while you give me this pathetic tattoo. You have me locked here because you want a falsified bond, are you so out of your mind that your wolf now believes I’m your greatest match?” I ridicule him, the situation too.

He grabs me by the arm, “Do not make me do something we will both regret.” He orders.

I growl low under my breath, “Let the hell go of me.” I order.

He narrows his eyes, “I fucking warned you.” He spits, shoving me towards the corner of the room, I yelp in horror when bars slam shut behind me in a cage, a cage he had in his room. One I couldn’t even stand in as he squats down, “You need to learn to behave. You want to act like an animal, you will be treated like one.” He growls at me, pointing at me in a manner of rough lethality. It’s dark and it swirls in his eyes like a feral werewolf lost to the confusions of the woods, or the miles of mountains that can make one lose number, or even coordination.

I smelt it, the bars were laced with silver, a doggy bed in the middle, “Let me out.” I say slowly, my heart slowing, he wouldn’t leave me here in this cage. I swear he wouldn’t, I’ve never heard of an alpha male ever doing something like this. I watch him leave after packing a bag of clothes, a laptop, the first one I’d seen.

“You can starve until I have forgiven you for outrageous behaviour.” He mutters, slamming the door closed behind him. I stare at the door, hearing it click shut with a dark, cold, resonating lock. My eyes flicker while I stare thickly at the two door handles. Sitting in the middle of the cage, I stare at each of the sides like a puzzle, my heart racing when I feel the suffocating air of it brushing my lungs, filling me like a cancer. I gasp for breath, for fresh air, feeling every part of me lose focus when I reach for the bars and mindlessly touch it.

Trouble in paradise?

I close my eyes, “Who’s there? Who’s...there?”

Not a who, more of a what, dearie. Your aura contracted a very intriguing eye, I had to follow it. But now knowing your blood, I’m afraid I want more to kill you than to watch you breathe any longer, but your heart is fascinatingly different to my enemy’s.

“What...are...you?” I squeeze the bar that should be burning against my skin. It should be rippling and blistering each layer, but instead I felt it burn, I smelt it as it flowed through my nostrils.

“Answer me.”

I’m afraid my time has run out, I’ve decided your death at the moment is not written in your book, as of yet. The first one found you, and is trying to hide you, Celestine. Why don’t you go find the two others connected to your soul, be one of very few who get to choose their real mate.

By the time the first few words left the invisible creature’s lips, I fell to the metal floor in sharp agony, too sharp to fully comprehend what I was told, what creature I spoke to. I try to lick my dried lips, only it doesn’t work, I try to move, it won’t work.

I try to breathe properly...it won’t work.

I felt every drift into a dark oblivion, and I didn’t even know when.

******

I felt my body being pulled from something, “What the hell have you done?!”

“She wasn’t cooperating with me, keeps wanting to go to the library.”

His voice.

He’s talking to himself, “I control you. I CONTROL YOU!”

He cannot control his inner beast. I feel the change between each of them, I feel it drifting, transitioning between his beast and him, I felt hands cup my cheeks, “Celestine. Celestine, please.”

“Let go of her, Alpha. You’ve done enough.” Reina’s soft voice resounds, “You can’t do this, you cannot lose it like this, especially to her, otherwise this will never work, Alpha. She will grow to hate you, she will run. Tell the child to sense the room, something smells different in here, like...” She trails off.

“...Death. I know.” A little girl’s voice.

Lorelei. The child could feel another presence, I felt the crisp in my eyes sting as I open them, “You would cage your own mate for over three days, headmaster. Though it is clear you hold a fascination with prisoners.” The child’s voice is different, how is that possible?

“Get her out of here, Beta Robert.” His voice a tinge of feral masculinity. It’s a sharp hiss, the kind of sting you hear from a vampire’s cloaked voice, it was dark, but not as dark as before. I’m moved onto sheets, my limbs too solidified, my breath taken and my body malnourished, the cage pulling an energy from me that should have never been taken in the first place.

The tears breach my eyes, dropping down the corners, he lifts me, I felt it. And then I attack, grabbing him by the scruff of his neck, I slam him, I throw him across the corridor in which he pulled us out of. It’s old, it’s ancient, but it’s powerful. I felt it against the back of my mind as I stare him down, “I. Will. Never. Forgive. You.” My voice was deeper, thicker, darker than liquid black tar burning concrete down to the floor, pouring liquid fire against green grass and turning it to ashes by the side of any road. The path it made was of pure, colourful destruction and it was raging deep within me once I shift in my wolf form and sing out my claws down his abdomen, ripping cloth and flesh, his blood centre’s the air as he rips into a stand, wincing and holding his side, his wolf telepathically trying to make me kneel, I wasn’t having it.

You will pay.

It’s all I had running through my thoughts, “You caged me?”

“You’re dangerous, corrupt, I had to protect you.” He sounds like a demented freak.

“Protect me from you, you mean?” He’s the one who’s so out of order right now. I pause when I feel a change in atmosphere, “What the hell is that?” I feel cold, eerily cold. Not like the snow outside, not like the cold with those dark creature’s with spears for arms and legs, not something that lurks in the trees.

“We have a cold guest.” Robert says slowly.

“I sensed a disturbance and thought to travel closer this time. The snow is quite fierce this year, I imagine water supply and even food is quite troubling.” A voice of the shadows decorated the atmosphere, a vampire steps out of a dark mist. I tense where I am, not once looking into the eye of the undead, a corpse.

“Elias, I thought you would be Alton, he has not checked in yet.” Martin sighs, side-glancing him but eyeing me. I move my wolf head away, hearing the vampire murmur that his master wouldn’t be coming until their beloved tournament is underway. I scruffily move away with a silent note to never trust the man behind me alone again. He cages his own mate because of misbehaviour. Surely they could see a true mate would do no such thing, that harming a real loved one should be punishable by law.

I narrow my eyes, sensing movement, I look down just to see students with bags on and books in their hands led to the library by what I could clearly assume was a professor here, her hair in a strict bun, a blouse that should not be worn in this kind of weather and she was leading the group. I study the group moving, how could people live here, the first leader deserved death worse than what he got and the current one is almost as ruthless, but hard to predict, hard to understand too.

Not that I wanted to understand him, there was no reasoning behind the shit he just did to me. I knew other female Alphas had gotten use to the inferiority they must succumb to with abusive alphas, it was rare to find a good one when they are so built on power and authority.

“We need to talk.”

Females or males, both should be treated with respect. But I never caged him, not the way he has done to me. He reaches a hand over, I grasp his wrist and twist it away, he growls, staring at it in shock. I still, there’s harsh red marks, an imprint of where my hand was on his skin. I wring my fist out and backhand Martin with my own power, “Sparks or fireworks can be created through anger if both parties feel an electric, magnetic pull to one another, every time I touch you, I feel absolutely nothing. You caged me. You’ve abused me and I will not tolerate it, no matter who here looks up to you, I see behind the curtains, I see what you look like when the mask comes off and there’s nothing more ugly than what you show me.” I spit at him, my mind made up.

He stares me down, “You cannot continue to show me this kind of disrespect, to treat me like this.” He mutters, scowling at me.

“What did you caged me for?”

“It was an accident, I couldn’t control him. He’s demanding that you bow.”

I stare at him, “I should be an equal.”

“That is not how the law works.” He snaps at me, shaking out his arm as it heals.

I give him a look of disrespect, “I’m not a prized cow, or breeding stock, you son of a bitch.”

“You are what I want you to be. If you make me, you will be. I have tried being reasonable, but if you go so far as to make my own beast mad, then you give me no choice but to put you in place. I was lenient before, I won’t be if you continue on this path.” He points at me, eyes aggressively angry.

I glare at him, “You have not been reasonable at all. When will you understand that?” I roughly ask.

His eyes change in motion, he clenches his jaw and straightens.

Pursing his lips, nostrils flare, “I will try to be better, Celestine.” I stare at him, I didn’t want him, didn’t feel anything when I was with him. Mates are a precious binding between two people, but there is chemical attraction, there is a strong pull between mates to insert that bond and for two wolves to recognise each other as something more than just a simple ranking system.

It wasn’t like that for him and me.

I turn away from him, “Celestine, you have to meet me half way.” He growls.

I knew he read my mind, “This mark allows you to do what? Read my thoughts, my feelings? Anticipate my actions? It’s one-sided considering I cannot read your thoughts, I cannot understand your so-called lenient actions?” I use air quotation marks.

He just stares at me, “Why won’t you look at me? My wolf wouldn’t attack so much if you just...” He trails off, staring at his hand, I watch him walk away, I wasn’t going to ask whatever it was he cut himself off from saying. I stare out into the snow, it felt different now, my skin felt warmer and this time it felt natural almost. The first time I didn’t feel so strongly urged to shift, or so angry.

I was so very different from others in my kind, shifting was natural for them...not for me. Sometimes it felt like a betrayal in my own mind, like shifting was wrong on some accord, and that wasn’t natural at all. Not for a werewolf. I couldn’t make decisions when that animalistic mind of mine becomes more abundant, holds a more lethal standing than it should. Especially out on the field.

I press my fingers into the powdered concoction of the snow, it blares against my irises everywhere I look, and it melts into a puddle beneath my fingers, swirling with a deep blue colour. Like it’s in motion under my fingers, it’s alluring and intoxicating all at once I almost couldn’t describe that strange feeling, like a connection somehow. I still when I watch the water run up the tattoo inked into my skin and like make-up, it dissolves it, it removes it but when I pull it out, the mark returns like a cursed kind of magic. I hold the urge to growl when I reach further into the snow and it does it again. My pale ivory skin almost matching the shade in front of me. Then that blue motion from before swirls like a tiny tornado in the water. Bubbles of something transforms my reflection, and soon, I am not looking at me.

I still when that blue changes into something more concentrated.

I flinch back when I see blue eyes, pitch black strands and a face staring back.

What the hell was that?