Song of my Heart

Chapter Thirteen

I stayed in the room with Marcus in total silence until they decided it was time to resume. Not all of the Councillors came back in, and I couldn't find it in me to blame them.

"Right, so where were we?" Jeremiah took the lead again, settling his bulk into his chair and taking a deep, steadying breath. "You said your fourth fight was against... Alice... and that it changed things?"

It took me a moment to recentre. I hated talking about her and she was about to feature heavily for a while. "Yes. The fourth fight... I was about fifteen and a half, I think, and though I hadn't cared at all about the three girls before her, there was something about Alice – her age, her eyes, I don't know – that made me hesitate. I couldn't do it. So, I decided to throw the fight, to let her kill me."

I heard a collective sigh of relief around the room, as though they were grateful that I hadn't completely damned myself by killing a pup. They all relaxed a touch, except for Marcus and Maria, who knew her story didn't have a happy ending. I explained the way Master stopped me and changed the rules, keeping the loser of each fight alive but making the consequences for losing enough of a disincentive to keep his business going. I kept my other training to myself, for now. They didn't need to know that, yet.

"The punishments varied. At first, he let his men do whatever he wanted to us... well, me, as the first official loser of a fight. Rape, torture, anything really. But after they were done with me, he realised that he would have to... contain them... a bit better; otherwise, the recovery times were too long and messed up the fight schedule. Especially since there were so few of us back then."

"I'm sorry, you've mentioned his men a few times. They were all rogues?" Jeremiah broke into the story.

"Yes, right from the beginning they were. I don't really know the whole story, but none of the males who worked for him were pack wolves. The only pack wolves I ever saw were those who came to watch and bet on the fights."

"And how many males would you say came to watch?"

I knew what he was asking, saw the need to uncover the extent of corruption within the packs, but I shrugged, unable to give him what he wanted. I didn't see all the fights, and it varied too much... but I knew that Master enjoyed that part of it. Finding young males from different packs, whispering in their ears, twisting their minds until they were happy – no, excited – to watch two female wolves tearing into each other like rabid dogs. The ones that were his special little protégés even got to join in on punishments, sometimes.

"I couldn't tell you that, sorry."

Jeremiah watched me for a moment, a little disappointed, before he waved his hand. "Continue."

"Well, after that, the Ring became much more established. More females were taken, and we began to move around to different locations to keep it all a secret. Maria here was kidnapped and made into a servant when I was seventeen; she was the first one brought in to work around the Ring instead of fighting in it. I protected the others when I could, especially Alice, but there was very little I could do. I was kept in a room by myself when I wasn't fighting and when he wasn't around."

Master had kept me with him up until around my seventeenth birthday, playing with me himself most of the time, which meant that I didn't fight as much as the other girls. Especially because, by then, I was uncontrollable in wolf form, and he didn't want me 'damaging his investments'. But then he disappeared for a while, coming back after about six months looking very satisfied with himself. He celebrated whatever it was he had achieved in his usual manner – blood, sex, that sort of thing – and then a new cycle began. He was at the Ring less often, letting Jared run things for the most part, attending every now and then to collect money, or watch a fight, or to 'visit' me.