Chapter 107

Alyson

Olivera practically shoves me into the bed, the sheets still messy from this morning and his exit to wake me up on the floor nearby. I want to erase the rest of this day from memory, but it's impossible to ignore. Everything has gone to hell today, even meeting with Marshal and hearing him admit the truth; he and the elders are no better than Jennifer and Jacob were to me.

What's worse is that deep down, somewhere way deep in my conscious, is that I truly believed the elders were innocent, and I wanted Olivera to see that. In all reality, he was right. He said the elders were keeping captive rogues, testing on them and hurting them, and I didn't believe it. I should have; maybe this wouldn't hurt so much if I had.

I sob quietly into the pillow, ashamed of my elder allies.

"Lunch is served in the dining hall, Alpha," a lone warrior hums.

Olivera ruffs a reply, sitting beside me on the edge of his warm, soft bed. His hand rests on the back of my upper thigh. It makes me cringe expectantly. It's a taunt, a promise, or maybe even a reminder of his power over me.

"Let's go, blood pet," he says, even his typical snide tone now softer and defeated. "We need to go eat. I have to train the new warriors afterwards."

"New warriors?" I huff. I sit up slightly, his hand grabbing harder around the back of my leg. "Where did you get more rogues?"

"The Wilshire mountain rogues found us and wanted to join," he says while shrugging.

"You did release them, didn't you?"

He simply shales his head. "Not that I owe you an explanation, sweetheart, but my pack didn't release them. Whoever did, doesn't matter—they are here now and willing to fight."

I push his hand off my leg, snapping backwards and pulling myself from his bed. He watches curiously as I take my spot in the corner of the room, curled on my blanket from the night before, and I stay cowering here in my spot like the stray I feel like I am.

War isn't the right choice. I don't know what is, but it can't be more death and pain.

"So pitiful, Luna," he taunts, laying back obnoxiously in bed, as though overexaggerating how comfortable it is over there instead of where I lay now. "I'd like to think I've been quite nice to you and this is the way you repay me. Laying on the floor instead of my lap."

My chest aches in anxiety. "I am not your pet, Olivera, and I'm sick of your cocky attitude. I would help you if you'd let me but you're so damn arrogant it is impossible to side with you. I want space; space from you."

He rolls his eyes, shrugging before he stands and moves to his doorway. "If you desire space, I'll give it to you, but don't try anything over on me, Luna. I'm at my wits end with you and your antics by now. You hear what Marshal said. You were wrong, blood pet. You thought I was making it all up, didn't you? And now you want space because you cannot bare the thought of knowing that you and your precious pack-litters aren't a polished and clean as you assumed."

I flinch, subduing a groan in pain. He's right. The world I thought I knew on the outside of my old cage isn't as different as I assumed. If anything, I traded my life of misery and abuse to be blind to the fact that wolves just like me are going through the same things, the same heartaches, just by the hands of elders I thought were good wolves.

I was wrong. It wounds me to think of it any longer.

He leaves for lunch while I try to get some rest, hoping it will ease my mind on this horrible day. I need a distraction and it's the only one I can come up with. That is until my peaceful dreams are suddenly startled back to reality.

I flinch slightly in the arms that carry me, something tight gnawing on my face, a harsh cloth tie roped around my mouth and tied into a knot in my hair. I gasp slightly, my eyes covered by something that only pools the light into my vision, the rest of my surroundings limited to the arms that carry my body.

Moving to react, I'm stopped, my body thrashed outward and landing hard in a cold creek of water. I subdue a shiver, though they form anyways, the brisk river pushing past me so fast that I almost feel my head completely submerge under the rapids. Someone grabs at the cloth bag over my head and pulls me up, thankfully before the water can completely overtake my airways.

The bag is ripped aside, only Maddox standing over me now.

He gives me vicious look of hate.

He cuts my wrists loose first, then my ankles, my mind so distracted in confusion that I hadn't even noticed they were bound. He then rips the tie off from around my mouth, pulling my hair slightly and letting me dip underneath the water for a moment.

"Ouch," I gasp, backing away, further into the sweeping river. "What are doing?"

He wipes his hands dry on his dark cargo pants. "I'm cutting you free. You distract my Alpha far too much and I can't continue to ignore your influence on him. We will have a war, one way or another, and with you toying with his mind as you do, I won't be able to get him to make clear decisions for the betterment of our kind, not yours."

"Why can't everyone come out a winner?" I breathe, panicked. "Why does anyone have to die? We can make things right and protect all wolves—no one should get hurt anymore."

"You may be right," he says, his light eyes tracing down the sight of me in the cold water of the creek. "But I don't want that. The rogues deserve to be on top for once, to be the hunter and not the hunted. "

I look around slightly, the silencing stones on my wrists still heavy on my wolf. "What does this have to do with me, then?"

He raises a brow, his smile crooked. I spot movement around us now, wolves snarling and drooling from all around the creek-side, heads hunkered down and ready to strike. "So, Luna whore, me and my men will be the hunters."

Swallowing hard, my head spins in a deliriously fearful daze. "So that means I am the—"

"Hunted."