Ghost Towns

Twenty Three

A long time passed. It may have been months, it could have been just weeks. At some point, Rye lost track of time. Every day seemed to blend into the next, and every hour felt sluggish and surreal at once. Every time she thought she'd die from hunger, they brought her to the Alpha's dinner table, where her body rejuvenated its physical health.

The Alpha rarely said anything to her anymore. Instead, he'd sit in satisfaction, watching Rye as she scarfed down food until she felt sick. Desperation did strange things to a person. She never learned her lesson, no matter how many times she made the mistake of eating too much and too quickly. All she thought about at the table was the feeling of hunger awaiting her down in the dungeon below.

She did not want to admit it, but her mind was slipping too. Her thoughts had become fluid, rather than distinct. Most of the time she felt half-gone, laying in silence and loneliness, caught between sleep and waking, between living and dying. The only clear thing was Jax's face in her mind's eye, urging her to hold on.

Sometimes she'd catch herself leaning out to touch him. He just seemed so real. Everything was exactly the way she remembered - his black hair curling over his grey eyes, his nose a little bent where it was still recovering from breaking. Often, he'd sit on the stone floor across from Rye's straw pile, shoulders slouched and knees drawn up to his chest. She'd watch his fingers as he fiddled with pebbles, and watch him as he watched her with unseeing eyes. If he was a figment of her imagination, why did he always seem so troubled? Rye wanted to remember him laughing in the sun. 

I'm coming, he kept saying to her - that phantom version of him. She used to beg him not to. But as the days passed, Rye couldn't bring herself to do even that. So she nodded as he whispered to her all his promises of escape. He told her of the future, and she believed him no matter what he said. The two of them, leaving to live far away. In a cottage by a lake. With a garden so full of roses it scented the whole street. A box of band-aids beneath the kitchen sink, kept especially for repairing tiny scraped knees-

Jax disappeared as Rye's attention snapped back to reality. Her door was opening, and that only meant one thing. On shaky legs, Rye stood, trying in vain to straighten out her latest dress. It was hopelessly dirtied, just by being in this cell.

Alex stepped in, and Rye frowned. It was unusual for him to actually enter the tiny space. Even stranger, he shut the door behind him, leaning back against it as if weary.

"You can sit," he said, the characteristic easiness in his voice missing. "Alpha Adrian hasn't summoned you yet,"

Slowly, Rye sat back down, in the makeshift bed she had made from straw.

"He hasn't summoned me...?" She repeated, thoroughly confused.

Alex sighed, sliding down the door until he sat on the ground. He stretched his legs out and ran a hand through his hair. "No." He confirmed. It was startling to see him like that, so casual, when she was technically his prisoner.

"Then why are you here?" Rye asked, wincing right after when she realized how harsh it sounded. She was glad for the company, after so many days of mind-numbing silence. Even if it was her captor speaking, she relished the sound.

For a moment it looked like he would answer her. But when their eyes met, he stumbled over unintelligible words. "I...I don't know," he managed to get out at last.

"Oh." Rye didn't know how to answer him. A long moment passed in silence, Alex digging through his pockets. Eventually, he produced a slightly crushed half of a sandwich and a cookie wrapped in paper. Awkwardly, he extended it to Rye.

She stared. Was she hallucinating this too?

"Take it," he urged her, though he refused to meet her eyes or even look in her direction. As if he were ashamed by the greatest act of kindness she had experienced in weeks.

"Thank you," Rye whispered. Somehow, the half-stale sandwich tasted much better than any of the fine dining the Alpha forced her to consume.

"I don't understand the conflict I feel," Alex muttered, half to himself, as Rye ate. "I shouldn't be here." He ran his hand through his dark hair again. "I don't even know how I'm here. It's my Alpha's orders against you, just a human-"

He paused then, abruptly, startling Rye.

"Against you, a Luna," he finished, quietly.

Rye wiped the crumbs from her mouth, "Luna?" She had never heard the word before.

He was blinking rapidly, his face impossibly more confused than before. "Luna, mate of the Alpha," he explained distractedly, "figurehead of the pack. Of the Alpha's pack,"

The Alpha? Jax. Rye blinked. She still had a hard time getting used to the idea of Jax as an Alpha.

"It doesn't make any sense," Alex's muttering grew more frantic. "I have nothing to do with Jax. Nothing to do with the Midnight pack, nothing at all,"

He stood, pacing the tiny space. Three steps in one direction, then he turned and made the three steps back. Something in Rye felt unsettled by his unease, as if his restlessness needed her reassurance to calm it. This version of Alex was a stranger to her. And yet this version of him called out to her in some odd way. Perhaps she would never have realized it if he hadn't mentioned it first. Did Lunas have a connection to the pack the same way the Alpha did?

"Perhaps one day the Midnight pack might mean more to you. Who knows?" Rye suggested, as gently as she could.

He didn't stop his pacing, but he turned to look at her, eyes narrowed. "Onyx is my home," he said, defensively.

Rye shrugged. "My home betrayed me and then left me abandoned. It turned my friends against me. Years ago, I would have never dreamed of the reality that I live now,"

After a while he seemed to settle, sitting again with his back against the stone wall opposite Rye. With his legs outstretched, his feet nearly touched the straw pile. It felt crowded in the small space, but Rye didn't mind. As opposed to the vast emptiness of the usual, this was strangely nice.

"What did you dream of then, years ago, when you were a kid?" He asked, seemingly still embodying that new, vulnerable version of himself. When he was stripped of his snarky confidence, it felt like maybe the world of werewolves wasn't always about war and rivalry.

"Well, it seems too far off to remember," Rye started. But now that she was thinking about it... "I think I would have lived in Goldcrest all my life, dreaming of other places. And I would have spent my whole life trying to ignore the calling i felt from the forest and from my mate and from a whole hidden universe I'm only now learning exists. I used to dream of a simple, normal life. Now I know that it would have worn a hole through me. Goldcrest may have been my starting point but it would have killed me quickly."

Almost assuredly, it was the isolation of the last few weeks making her so open. Rye knew that she was talking to the wolf who had stolen her from her mate and locked her in a cell, and yet... this was like looking into a mirror, only the reflection was a few months outdated. Rye remembered this restlessness well enough.

"What do you dream of now?" She asked, cautious. At any moment, at any wrong statement, he might leave, and Rye would be alone again.

Indeed, he stood up and pushed the door open, but paused in the doorframe. Looking back, his face had taken on a different mask, one that she was all too familiar with. His voice carefully neutral, he answered her, "I don't."

And then he was gone, leaving her bewildered and deeply sad on his behalf.

***

A/N: out of school, back to work (a spring job)

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