I'm a Slave for You

I shrugged on a clean pair of clothes, pulling my damp hair to the side of my head, over the unwanted mark on the left side of my neck. My face was hard with a certain determination as I focused on the one thing that had been on my mind since Roxy had left what had to be a few hours ago.

She’d been brought in by a two men who escorted her inside the room, informed me that I had twenty minutes and waited outside with nothing else said. I observed the girl, my stomach panging when I finally discovered that my friend, someone whose face I saw on a regular basis, now looked unfamiliar and wilted beyond recognition.

She had always been rather skinny, but now she just looked unhealthy with bones protruding angrily at certain points and her body and legs shaking like it was a task to keep herself on two feet. Her skin was caked in dirt and her hair was matted to a knotty mess.

What was the most shocking though, was her eyes. They almost always held a smile and silent laugh, but now, they were empty, desolate and shimmering with hopelessness.

I hurried over to her, wrapping my arms around her fragile torso and pushing aside the pure hatred that rose in my at my friends nasty state. She reluctantly hugged me back, but I could tell the action was mechanic.

We moved over to the couch where Roxy sat down, her head going slack against the cushioned backing. She looked so tired…

“Roxy,” I said in a small voice. She rolled her expressionless gaze over to me, prompting me to continue. “What happened to you, Roxy?”

She slowly clenched her eyes shut, pulling in a shaky breath while she continued to stay silent. I wanted an answer, wanted to know what was going on, but I wasn’t going to push it. If she didn’t want to talk about it now, I wouldn’t make her talk about it.

“She’s gone.” My friend said after a very long stretch of silence.

I furrowed my brows at her. “Who’s gone?”

Opening her eyes to lazy slits, I could see the sheen of tears that was now painted there. My heart ached at the sight. “My wolf, Mara, she’s gone.” Her voice cracked, adding even more to the overall pathetic tone. “He took her.”

It was my turn to be silent.

What?

That wasn’t possible. You can’t just take another person’s wolf away. It would be like taking away their sight or their hearing- taking away a part of them. A person’s wolf was a piece of every werewolf kind’s being. As far as I knew, there was no way to get rid of it.

But Roxy looked like she was telling me the truth 110%. She believed that her wolf was gone, I could see that in the way she stared at me.

With the shake of my head, I swallowed. “It can’t be gone, Roxy. Maybe your just having some trouble finding her or-”

“She’s gone, Mara.” Roxy interrupted, a tear slipping loose down her face. “That man- the one who made you join his pack- he came to me the day after you disappeared. He took my wolf away. He took all our wolves away.”

I shook my head again, almost frantically this time. “No, that can’t happen. Adrian can’t do that. No one can do that.”

My friends gaze softened as her lips rounded to say something, but her words were cut short as the door was shoved open and the two men from earlier reentered the room, informing us that our time was up. One assisted Roxy off the couch while the other acted as a barrier between my friend and I before the three left the room altogether, leaving me alone to stew in my thoughts.

After the initial panic and denial wore off, I started to wonder if maybe, just maybe, Adrian was capable of doing something as impossible and just plain horrible as taking away another person’s wolf. I mean, he could do so many other things and it had already been established that he wasn’t like the rest of us. Maybe this was just another one of his sick superpowers.

Either way, I needed to know for sure what was going on here. I needed to know what Adrian was. I needed to know how he was capable of things that seemed just plain wrong. I needed to know everything.

That meant that, for now at least, I was going to have to play dirty. Adrian would give up the answers to my questions’ sooner or later; I just needed to work them out of him. So, there I was, pulling on a shirt that revealed so much it shouldn’t have really been considered a shirt and dolling myself up just to the point that I knew I’d catch my alpha’s attention.