Skinned

“Where’s my brother? Where’s Kade?” Killian asked, his voice breaking at the last part, “Please, don’t hurt him. He’s just a kid—I can’t lose him too, please.”

“Mikhailov?” Someone asked, and it sounded like it came from the other side of the two-way mirror where Killian couldn’t hear.

“He can’t know,” A woman firmly said, her voice an icy tone, “Grief ruins werewolves. We need the boy compliant.”

Killian made a harsh jolt when he heard a screeching sound of a heavy door being slid open, and from the corner of the video, walked in a woman with white pristine skin and sleek dark red hair tightly pulled back into a bun. My breath hitched the moment she allowed her eyes to meet the camera, her irises holding a vivid glow of red that seemed to slice through my screen.

There was something in the way she carried herself that the air around her was brooding—threatening. Despite her youthful features, the cut of her gaze and the grace of her posture told me that she was not as young as she looked to be.

“You ask for an answer unearned, Killian,” Mikhailov said.

A look of undisguised pain crossed Killian’s features, as if her words alone left an ugly ring to his ears.

“And it wasn’t enough that you killed everyone in my pack? My people? My parents?” Killian shot back, and I could clearly feel his grief pouring out for the blood that laid waste in his perished territory.

A vein on Mikhailov’s jaw ticked as she pressed her lips firmly together, her patience quick to wear thin, “You choose your next words carefully, Killian.”

And from there, Killian must have gotten the idea that she wasn’t there for his sentiments. She wasn’t there to talk about the slaughter she made, not when she had done it all without a hint of mercy.

Mikhailov merely wanted him to submit to her game.

“Just tell me what you want from me, I’ll do anything. Just don’t hurt Kade.”

Mikhailov tipped her head up, her interest peaked.

It was as if Killian’s words were enough for a contract signed—his blood as the ink to mark the promise of his compliance.

And I gritted my teeth when a small, winning smile reached Mikhailov’s lips as she finally got what she needed the most with utmost ease.

The scene then shifted to a dozen of people in white coats surrounding Killian who had his forehead, wrists, and ankles bound onto the chair with thick silver cuffs. His head had already been shaved and his features were more terrified than ever as his eyes took in his surroundings, and what made me sick to the stomach was the horrific amount of tubes stuck behind his back. And the tubes were all connected to a glass cylindrical container that carried at least a gallon of what looked to be a thick, crimson substance.

“I can’t ask you to be calm with this,” Mikhailov’s voice rung through the place, “I will not lie that the first process will be painful, so I ask of you to go through this not for us, but for your brother alone.”

Killian pressed his lips firmly together, his eyes wide as he tried to control his impending tears. And I noticed the way his hands balled into tight fists beneath the silver cuffs, drawing in a huge breath before giving Mikhailov an accepting nod.

A man stepped up behind him holding another tube with a lengthy needle, and I raised my hand to my mouth as I watched Killian shut his eyes as the man went in to stick the needle at the back of his head. Unable to move his head away from the needle plunged halfway into his skull, all he could do was release a pained scream that had me turning away from the screen in horror.