Updated: March 18, 2019
L
L wake up!
A voice filled my mind yet the little strength I mustered didn't scratch the surface of what I needed to peel open my eyes. Survival hurt and each day I decided to keep waking up was just another day the mercenaries had their way with my head. Thoughts of the attack flashed in my mind, the violence scarring my memory with tainted blood and death. The mercenaries stopped using physical violence weeks ago – it didn't have the same looming effect that the mental games did. The physical injuries healed but the mental ones? Open wounds with edges that couldn't stretch and mend back together. They couldn't truly get me to bow down with a whip to the back or a boot to the side of my head – my brain needed to really believe I deserved the punishment I received. Without it, those lash marks came and went. They healed in days without communication with the outside. If the mercenary's words pounded through my skull like a horrendous migraine every time I had a moment to myself, I had no choice but to succumb. It took the mercenaries long enough to figure that out. And for a while it worked. But as my trial date approached, the less inclined I was to drop to my knees at each inkling of mental abuse they threw at me. Now, only a month away from my inevitable demise, I couldn't be bothered. Their words were sewing needles added to the endless supply I already had sticking out of my flesh. There was nothing left to prod; all the nerves underneath my skin were too far gone to care about anymore lash marks. And I'd survived all of them. Anything else they threw at me rebounded off the walls of skull around my brain without absorption.
Please wake up. You need to fight them, Margette yelled again, but her voice didn't hold the same determination as it did the past several hours. With each call her faith that I'd respond gradually died away until there was nothing left. Maybe then I'd get some quiet. At least then I'd know she'd given up on my survival. We went through the same routine every day. Margette poked and prodded at my brain until I gave in and answered. But the more days I responded, the weaker I felt. If we continued with our current schedule I'd be a walking corpse by the time my trial arrived. Nothing left to kill in front of hundreds – thousands. A body of flesh with nothing underneath except a skeletal system barely held together by malnourished joints and muscles like gelatin.
There was a continuous ringing at the base of my ears. I couldn't pinpoint when it started but there was no end in sight. No in-between and no change. Days slipped by since I heard another voice besides Margette's. Weeks edged along since breathed a word; the mercenaries came and went without much conversation, and even when they did their words were rhetorical. I was never meant to answer them, only listen. One, however, had a softer voice. She spoke tranquilly and her feet didn't dent the ground when she walked. She never revealed her name to me but I knew she wasn't like Peter. This woman never struck me with the back of her hand, or fought for my trust only to rip it to shreds in front of me. I hadn't a clue what she looked like but I knew she was different.
L please, Margette whimpered this time around. Hearing her so close to accepting failure. I know you're in there; we share the same head.
I just had to go a little longer and she'd understand I had no intention of waking up. With my eyes closed, I pretended to be a corpse. The mercenaries left me alone knowing I had zero intention. That one mercenary saw around the ploy. She saw through the covered eyeballs and motionless breaths I took while curled up on the ground. I never faced the wall, only the door. With my back to the wall I felt vibrations through the stones. The thundering footsteps above me, several floors most likely, that protruded heavy stones with ease. I listened, and felt, while I was alone. A lullaby in an otherwise noiseless world I was captured within.
My finger twitched on the cool floor. A stray stone or other debris caught the sensitive flesh at the tip of my finger but I held back the wince I wanted to yell out. Noises upset the mercenaries. Sounds itched at the part of their brain thirsty for blood. I couldn't give them that kind of satisfaction. With a little more energy I dragged my arm upward above my head and lifted, elbows bent just slightly as my chest lifted off the ground like peeling skin. Soft moans lurched at the back of my throat until I rolled onto my side, my spine pressed onto the far wall. My back arched from the damp wall but I held there, certain and determined to cool my body temperature slightly. Heavy breaths filled my chest and escaped through my nose and mouth. In and out. In and out.
*****
Not long after I gathered the strength to shift from my stomach to my side did the mercenary from before return. The door to my cell wrenched open on heavy, rusty hinges. The noise blasted into the room without warning; I hissed and covered my ears, cowering from the invasion. Snickers came from above me, and the hard steps came into the room. They stopped just short of me and bent at the knee. Their joints popped with their movement. I kept my eyes low, careful to avoid eye contact even though I couldn't see the person in front of me. But the man's smell gave him away without problem. Heavy musk and cigarettes: Jeffries. He was the only person who visited me that smelled of tobacco. But he wasn't a mercenary. Jeffries never revealed his position to me but authority radiated off him like rabies on a diseased animal. It came off him in waves, vibrations that bent a room and the inhabitants. I shrunk away, but with nowhere to go I only trapped myself further against the wall.
"Tsk tsk," Jeffries said. His calloused hand grabbed my chin. Fingernails dug into the soft flesh covering my jawbone. "The sooner you give in and submit, the sooner we can get your trial over with, my dear."
I spat, saliva striking him in the face. The man huffed, taken aback, and ripped his hand from my chin only to send his palm into my cheek. The side of my face slammed into the stone floor with a loud crack. A hairline fracture broke my left jaw. I cried out but made sure to keep my yells muffled the best I could.
"You're a stupid girl," Jeffries growled. "If you think you're going to survive this then you've got another thing coming."
"Go to hell," I muttered and shrank back into the ball he'd found me in. Booming laughter came from above. He stood up, but kept low enough to reach me with one of his hands. Jeffries grabbed a fistful of my hair and yanked me up, forcing me to my feet. I yelled, unable to hold it in my throat any longer. The ripping sensation spread through my scalp. His forearm shoved into my collarbone, forcing me into the wall. The back of my head hit with a thump, and white stars came into my already blackened vision. Blood seeped under my tongue from an accidental bite to the inside of my cheek. I swallowed the metallic liquid and turned my head up so he could see my face.
"You're a monster," the words left my mouth before I had a chance to gulp them back down. Jeffries' free fist went into the wall next to my head. I flinched hard but his arm kept me in place so I couldn't move away from him.
"Me? The monster?" He laughed. His fingers snaked around my throat and squeezed, a boa constrictor slowly killing its prey until all they could do was take their last shallow breaths as the world spun around them. My lungs struggled, my fingers grasping at air in an attempt to keep blood flow through my hands. As I sank, Jeffries' face fizzled into my vision, behind my eyes. Dark skin and even darker eyes. His hair nearly shaved all the way off with a clean jaw. His teeth were brilliantly white, set into a smile that made the entire Lycan community shiver.
"You killed your family, your friends, your Alpha," Jeffries said. His lips were so close to my ear that I could feel them brush the peach fuzz that grew on my lobe. His voice burnt my eardrum with the volume that he exhibited. I wrenched away with his hand still around my neck but he kept a firm grasp on me so I only moved an inch or two before he pulled me back. "And yet you call me the monster? I'm – we're – only trying to bring peace to the lives lost at your hands." His hand left my throat. A lungful of air swept into my mouth and down my esophagus all at once. I coughed, hacking while I tried to refill my body with oxygen.
"You won't get away with this," I spat. Saliva burst from my mouth in miniscule droplets and struck Jeffries' face. He snarled and shoved me harder into the concrete wall behind me. My already scrunched limbs clenched under the pressure applied. I struggled, wincing but my discomfort went unnoticed. "The truth will come out one day and you will suffer," I bit back a taste of blood and swallowed it down with an audible gulp. "Someone knows... they have too."
"What truth do you think there is to know? There is no conspiracy, no hidden agenda made by the Council to try and shift focus from our current target," Jeffries spoke with a low tone. His thumb grazed my broken jawbone, stopping right at the break. A squeak hiccupped in my throat and he pressed harder.
"St-... stop," I cried out. Wet streaks peeled through the layers of sweat on my cheeks, inching slowly toward Jeffries' hand. "Please..." I shook, my entire body shivering down to the cartilage in my bones. The muscles in my neck strained. I tried shaking him off my injured jaw but his hand didn't budge. A statue frozen in place against me. "Please stop!" I yelled out as the pressure built. Quiet, barely heard snaps echoed in my head as he continued his assault on the already split bone. All at once, one loud, violent crack shot through my skull. I screamed, and in that second that the sound left my mouth Jeffries' hands dropped. All the muscles in my body gave out and I plummeted to the floor into a heap. The pain in my jaw reverberated, pulsing hard but I couldn't think to bring my hand up to cradle it. I lay there, face up looking at Jeffries who most likely stared back down at me.
"Pitiful," he said with a smirk. I breathed hard, my lungs working in overdrive to get enough air. Jeffries' feet thundered as he walked away. Large, booming vibrations hit the back of my head while he retreated from the cell, and slammed the door. The metal door swung shut and clanged, the locks clicking back into place.
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Hey all!
Hope you all liked the chapter! L's will be pretty short until the meat of the book comes. Once we get to the actual trial you'll see more of her.
QOC: Do you think L has really given up?
Comment, like, and follow if you enjoyed!
Much love,
-Kate