The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 36: Blossoming Warmth

🦋ALTHEA

The mark slowly began to burn again, a slow sizzle on my skin before the true constant, nightmarish stinging would begin and I knew no one was here to stop it again. I looked past the oppressive pressing darkness, hoping for a glimmer of hope for the cell doors to open and for me to be told that the truth had been revealed.

But I had learned long ago that the moon did not answer prayer—at least it didn’t listen to mine.

I wished instead again this time for a window but the moon had given me that before and I had chosen the embrace of a man that sooner let me perish that believe me.

How many times would I trust a mate only for me to once again be left wanting.

I bit down on my lips as the hurt amp up like a run up a hill to the peak the real torture out begin.

I whimpered against the slowly blightful burn of the soul-brand, clutching my hand into a fist, my finger nail prickling my palm but as time passed the discomfort was shadowed by the treacherous burn of the mark upon my back.

I arched as if to subconsciously trying to reach for the source of my pain, to soothe as best as I could as futile as it could be.

In a strange, bizarre way, I wanted to laugh a little at the irony of my situation. The first time that ’pride’ was expressed over me, it had been to my detriment, to my utter doom.

If I didn’t absolutely dread the hell hound and I was allowed even an inkling of humor in his intense presence, I would have thought it was some prank. But I knew better than to think that the hell hound had the arbitrary ability to make a joke especially in the face of a severed hand.

It had been no joke—my mother wanted to damn me so badly she even forced herself to feign pride over me. Something that had eluded me since my birth.

And I could not put a perfect plan such as implicating me past my mother dearest. Nothing ever sparked her creativity as much as plotting methods to make me suffer.

Nothing.

But she had not managed this alone.

There was no way that she had.

Because someone had to have planted me in that place, with blood and severed arms. Someone had painted my hand red so I could be caught—red handed.

That meant one thing—someone in the clan was working with Hollowhowl and most likely with my mother herself.

But who could betray Thorne by hatching a ploy with the woman that killed his mother, witch Luna who according to history and accounts was greatly beloved by her pack.

And if the clan had been infiltrated to that level—just how much trouble was it currently in.

Because I knew my mother, if a member of the north clan thought he could enter an alliance with Morgana Nocturne, they were about to lose far more than they could ever imagine to bargain with.

Dealing with Morgana was like dealing with the devil—if she traded a hat, she would take your head in return

The thought struck me like ice water even as the burn intensified—if Morgana had someone inside the clan, if she was already moving her pieces into place, then what the fuck was her endgame?

The North Clan wasn’t just Thorne and his warriors. There were families, children. The lovers. The elderly wolves who’d survived the last war and deserved to live out their days in peace.

If the clan fell—when it fell, because Morgana didn’t make moves unless victory was already assured—those people would be divvied up like spoils of war. The allied packs would descend like vultures, claiming the vulnerable as servants, breeders, or worse. The children would be separated from their parents, their names stripped away, their whole identities erased.

And I was stuck in here, useless, while Morgana tightened the noose around all of them.

Thorne didn’t even know what was coming. He thought he’d caught the threat and locked it away.

He’d locked away the only person who could warn him.

The brand flared white-hot, like someone had pressed a molten iron directly against my spine. The pain ramped from unbearable to something beyond language, beyond thought—

I screamed.

The sound tore from my throat raw and animal, echoing off the stone walls of my cell, and I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t swallow it down. My back arched violently and my nails scraped against the floor as I tried to crawl away from my own skin.

I screamed until my voice broke.

Tears stung my eyes quickly, my own voice echoing in my head like deafening gong—I didn’t know when the cell door opening but my eyes snapped shut against the invading, harsh light of the outside.

I stilled, my breath catching in ragged gasps as arms—strong, impossibly warm—surrounded me.

The stinging began to blur, the white-hot agony bleeding into something else. Coolness. Like a salve spreading across burned skin, like snow against fever.

"Relax."

The voice reverberated through me, low and commanding, and my body obeyed before my mind could catch up. The tension in my spine loosened even as I tried to hold onto my fury, my fear.

The hellhound.

He pulled me closer, and I should have fought it—should have shoved him away, snarled, snapped—but the relief from the soul-brand was so sudden and complete that I went limp against him instead. My forehead pressed against his chest as I gulped down air, trying to remember how to breathe like a person and not a wounded animal.

"There’s a rat in my clan," he whispered, his breath warm against my ear.

My eyes snapped open—or tried to. The light was still too harsh, and tears blurred everything into shapes and shadows. But his words cut through the haze like a blade.

He knew.

"I know," he continued, his voice dropping even lower, vibrating through his chest where I was pressed against him. "Someone planted you there. Someone painted your hands red and made sure you’d be found."

My heart hammered. He believed me? Or was this another game, another twist of the knife?

"Who?" I managed to rasp, my voice wrecked from screaming.

His arms tightened fractionally around me.

"That’s what I need you to help me find out."

His hand stroked my back. "I am a vengeful creature but not a foolhardy one."

I shuddered at the touch, at the way his palm moved carefully over where the soul-brand had just been burning through me. The contrast between agony and relief was making my head spin.

"Then why—" My voice cracked. I swallowed hard, tasting blood where I’d bitten my lip. "Why the fuck did you throw me in here? Why the soul-brand if you knew?"

"Because someone is watching," he said simply, his tone cold and practical even as his hand continued that maddening, soothing stroke. "Someone who needed to believe I’d taken the bait. That I’d locked you away and thrown away the key like the evidence suggested I should."

My fingers curled into his shirt—when had I grabbed onto him?—and I wanted to hit him almost as much as I wanted to collapse into him.

"You used me as bait," I whispered, realizing. The warmth that blossomed at the thought of being believed—actually believed—warred with the cold fury of what he’d put me through.

"Yes." No apology. No softening. Just brutal honesty.

His hand continued its path along my spine, and I hated how much my body craved the touch, the relief, the proof that someone knew I wasn’t guilty.

"I will get to the bottom of this," he said, and there was steel in his voice now. A promise. A vow. "I will not let clan bonds or kinship make my clan fall the way it did for my mother. I will not stand by while loyalty blinds me to treachery."

His grip tightened, almost painful.

"History will not repeat itself. Not while I draw breath."

I felt something shift in him—a tremor of old rage, old grief. His mother. Luna. Betrayed and murdered while her pack looked the other way or actively helped. And now someone was trying to do it again, using me as the catalyst.

"You’ll be protected," he continued, his voice dropping back to that practical, clinical tone. "Fed. Kept safe. Because you’re still useful to me."

The warmth guttered out like a candle in wind.

"But don’t mistake this for hope."

The venom in his voice was sudden and sharp, slicing through whatever fragile thing had started to form between us.

"Don’t you dare think that I see this—" his fingers pressed against my back where the mate mark would be, "—as anything more than a cosmic fucking mistake. The moon’s cruelest joke. You are a means to an end. A tool. And when this is done..."

He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

But his hold on me was still tender. Still careful. His thumb traced small circles against my spine like he couldn’t help himself, even as his words tried to cut me down.

The contradiction was almost worse than the pain had been.

"I understand," I managed, my voice hollow.

I didn’t pull away. Couldn’t. Whether from weakness or pride or some broken instinct, I stayed pressed against him, accepting the comfort his body offered even as his words promised nothing but cold utility.

At least I wouldn’t die in this cell.

At least someone believed me.

Even if he’d never forgive the moon for binding him to me.