"So, Miss Winton," the portly wolf who was leading the interviews glanced at me over the top of his reading glasses. I didn't know werewolves could get so... round. "It says here that you prefer to be called 'Az'. Is that correct?"
I snapped away from my ridiculous distracting thoughts and nodded to him, deliberately ignoring the other eyes on me. We were in a meeting room in the pack house basement, designed for secure, important meetings, the walls soundproof and the seats uncomfortable. All seven High Councillors were here, along with Maria, Marcus, Jace, and two other Alphas from local packs. The Alphas made me uneasy, but no one would have known by looking at my face. I had my deepest, strongest mask on, something that I knew was causing Marcus to radiate concern. Maria was the only person in room that I had asked to be there. She needed to know some things, things I had never told anyone before, that were about to be dragged into the light.
"Yes, sir, that's right."
"Well... Az... we have been conducting interviews for the last four days. There are only a few females left to hear from, including yourself. And do you know one common thread that we have discovered?"
I shifted on the hard wooden chair, not quite ready to hear this. "No, I don't."
"We have found that, in every story, you are there. You seem, without exception, to be the most prominent of the survivors, having helped every single female here in some way or other."
"Well," I forced myself still, ignored the urge to dart from the room. "The ones that didn't like me left Haven, I suppose."
The Councillor – Jeremiah, he said his name was - twinkled at me, showing a hint of humour. Apparently, I knew him before I was taken. He was one of the many details that I had lost. "All six of them. Six, out of forty rescued wolves, not counting yourself. It also appears, from what I have gathered, that you were already held in captivity before each and every one of them arrived, unless the last few females after you have a different story."
"No. No, that would be right. I was there before all of the survivors."
"Before every other female who was taken, Miss Winton?"
I met his gaze, knowing this was the tipping point, that all the poisonous truth was about to spill from my body and taint the very air we were breathing.
"No. I wasn't the first one taken. I was the sixth." I turned to Marcus, surprised to find the slightest urge to cry build up within me. I hadn't cried in a long, long time.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to him. "I'm sorry you have to hear this."
***
He liked to take female pups from their homes, between ten and twelve usually. He kept them as his pet, and then when he grew tired of them, he kidnapped a new girl, began to train her up to replace the old one. That was a pattern he kept up until I was the new girl, a bit over ten years ago, now.
"I'm sorry, he?"
"He liked me to call him Master, never gave me his name." I paused for a second, gathering my thoughts. "I was taken from beside the pond near the edge of this pack, and after about two months of conditioning –"
"Conditioning?" He interrupted again.
I was annoyed this time. "Do you really need details?"
Jeremiah's mouth hardened. "Yes. We need to know."
He didn't, but okay. "Fine." The words came flying out of my mouth; I couldn't catch them, couldn't hold them back.
"I was taken to a mouldy, rotting basement underneath a shack in the middle of nowhere, and for two months the rogues that took me broke me down. I never knew when I would get food or water, and when I did it would be randomly poisoned, or they would hit me every time I took a bite, that sort of thing. It only took a week before I couldn't voluntarily force food into my mouth. Then, the physical torture started. They broke my fingers, reset them, broke them again. They cut me, whipped me, strapped me with their belts. They kept me awake for three straight days, shocking me with a taser every time I started to drift off. They drowned me and resuscitated me, I lost count of how many times. And then, after two months of that and more, when they'd decided I had lost any will to fight, they brought me to Master."
Shocked silence filled the room. I hated it, hated that I had done this to these people, hated that I was barely scratching the surface of all I had to tell them. I felt like their ears might bleed and fall off if we kept this up.
Jeremiah cleared his throat, twice. "And you were how old?"
"Twelve."
"Right. Right, um, continue, please."
I sighed. "Master was different to the conditioning. He had rules that I had to follow, and nothing too terrible happened to me if I obeyed. I was barely alive when they brought me to him, and he was gentle with me, in a way. It was..." I struggled, not sure I wanted to let the emotions come out with the words. "He kept me as a pet, just like the others he had taken before me. When I didn't follow the rules, he hurt me. Badly. He was inventive, always thinking of new ways to make me hurt; for ten years he hardly repeated the same torture session twice. But regardless of how I behaved, every night was the same, for about two and a half years."
"Every night..." I heard the question, the confirmation he was seeking.
"He raped me, yes."
Again the silence, that rang in my ears and hurt the fractured edges of my soul. I felt a blast of rage from Marcus' end of our bond before he carefully pulled his shields back up. I couldn't bear to look at his face.
I told them, then, of the new girl he brought in, of the way he decided to have us fight instead of just replacing me like he had with all the others. He had told me about them, the five before me, how they had all barely lasted a year before he got sick of them. But not me. Somehow, he didn't get sick of me. He only brought a new girl in because he felt like he needed a change.
"He made us fight each other in wolf form, and I... I killed her. And it gave him an idea." The fight excited him, fed his fantasies. He fucked me that night while I was still covered in her blood.
"You killed her? Why would you do that?" One of the other Councillors, who had been silent until now, spoke up, the words bursting from her ashen lips. I shrugged.
"I don't know why I went along with it. I suppose it was the one thing I had left to hold onto, at that stage. My family wasn't coming for me, my agency was gone, my body belonged to him. But I had my life, and I fought for it. I killed three others to keep it."
I explained that, at first, the Ring was a fight to the death, and only for the entertainment of Master and his rogues. "On the second fight, he brought a friend along, who offered him a wager. When I killed the girl and Master took his friends' money, he realised what the Ring could become. He began to kidnap more than just one female at a time, not caring as much about their ages, hosting fights and raking in money from the audience he gathered to him. The fourth time I was forced to participate was maybe about six months into the whole operation, and when I stepped into the Ring, this little pup was standing there. She was maybe nine years old. And things changed again."
I had been staring at the table all this time, unable to look at anyone, unwilling to see their reactions. But at this point, I turned to Maria, ignoring the tears slipping down her face, the way her hand was pressed to her mouth.
"It was Alice," I whispered, and her face crumpled in understanding.
"Alice," I was jolted back into the present by Jeremiah's voice, and he checked over his copious notes, confusion clouding his face. "I don't recall any survivors with that name."
I tamped down on the surge within; Marcus didn't need to feel that. "That would be because she didn't survive."
He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. The air in the room was so heavy it was a wonder any of us could breathe. "I think we'll take a break," he murmured, and the Councillors all shuffled out of their chairs, their shoulders drooped as though I had transferred some of my burden onto them. I suppose, in a way, I just had.
Jace was the first one out the door, his face a nasty shade of green. Then the Councillors and Alphas, and Maria, her brown eyes shining with unshed tears and sympathy as they met mine. They all filed out, one by one, until I was left alone with my mate.
He came closer, his broad frame towering over my chair, and slowly crouched down next to me. I felt his gaze searching my face, but I couldn't force myself to look at him.
"You killed a nine-year-old pup?" he asked me quietly, probably trying to confirm what he thought was my most grievous sin.
"No," I replied, my voice barely above I whisper. "I didn't kill a nine-year-old pup. I killed her when she was fourteen."
***
The darkness slowly receded, and I was careful to hold myself still, delay whatever reactions my body decided to have, until I could assess just how bad it was. Lesson learned the hard way.
"He's going to be here soon, and I'm not covering for your arse."
The hushed voice came from beyond my head, and I felt a wash of relief that it wasn't him, not this time, not yet. I made careful, unmoving assessments of my surroundings. I was on a cold, hard surface, curled on my side. Most likely in my cage. So far, so good.
"Why did you make her fight in wolf form, anyway? You know how she gets."
I froze, panic sweeping through me as memories flooded my mind. The panic was swiftly replaced by despair as flashes of what I had done came back to me. I just couldn't remember yet who it was.
"I was bored of the usual fights. We haven't had a really gory one in ages," Goon Number Two spoke up. It wasn't worth learning most of the rogues' names, they were interchangeable. I waited, keeping my breathing even. They had to say the name, had to tell me who they made me fight against.
"You're an idiot," Goon Number One sneered at him, "and you're paying for it, not me."
The other rogue snorted. "I think it was worth it, though. She's brutal. Tore the skinny one clean apart. And did you see her face when she saw who she was fighting?"
No. No no no no no. I remembered, and pure, terrible anguish flooded over me. Not her. Please, not her.
The door opened and the room fell silent, save for the footsteps making their steady way towards me. I knew who it was straight away, but I was drowning and didn't care.
"Who is responsible for this?" My eyes fluttered open at the sound of his voice, and there he was, staring down at me, his expressive face hard.
"Uh, well, you see boss..." The cocky rogue was gone; in his place was a stuttering, fearful male, who, I suspect, knew his days were over.
"Evan," Master's voice cut over the stammering, addressing the other male, "Take him away and deal with him, please."
He crouched down onto his haunches as one male yanked the other out of my room, his eyes never leaving my face. "I would punish you for killing one of my girls," he whispered to me, "but I can see that you're punishing yourself enough, for now."
He saw, he knew what I was feeling. I tried, but I couldn't bury it, not this time, not when the image of her mauled face was screaming through my head. He sighed, eyes remaining ever watchful, and said the one thing that he knew would punish me more than anything physical ever could.
"A pity. Alice was one of your oldest friends, wasn't she?"