Page 18 of Rabid
I claw at the concrete all around me and fight to break down the door.
I don’t know how much time has passed. It’s impossible to know when all there seems to be is darkness. Well, that and the rage festering inside of me. My wolf and I take turns expressing it and then we sleep and wait for the next bout to hit. It’s cold and we call on our fur to warm us in between the purging of our ire. Our stomach is long past hungry, the pains now quiet from being ignored for so long. Our throat no longer craves water, and our body, in both forms, is growing weaker with every bout of snarling fury we discharge.
I’ve heard people watching me from the other side of the door. They seem to only come so that they can set me off again. But my wolf and I caught on. We realized quickly that they might be trying to wear us down on purpose, so we started to steep in our vengeance, waiting to react until it’s the right time.
Burke’s words splash around in my mind,shattered, useless, rabid.I chew on some of them, slowly growing accustomed to the truth of their taste. But I also know there’s more to it. He thought he’d rule over me, and now he knows that will never happen.
And yet, here I am, still alive.
I’ve wracked my mind, trying to anticipate what he’s going to do to me. I think it will be something public and obviously painful in front of the pack. He’ll use my current state to his advantage and try to teach the others a lesson. For some reason, I feel oddly okay about that. Probably because it will be an opportunity to break free and slaughter anyone who’s stood by and allowed this monster to run our pack.
That’ll be fun.
A distant clang has my wolf and me perking our ears and listening to the heavy footsteps that cautiously approach our cell. I chuckle inside at the smell of their trepidation wafting beneath the crack of the door. Satisfaction moves through me at how easy it is to make these big strong wolves so uneasy. I hear one of them messing with something, chains maybe, or some other kind of equipment. I refuse to react, not wanting to take the bait to rage and weaken ourselves any more than we already are.
A latch on the door slides open, but it doesn’t allow any light in, and I can’t see what’s going on. Every muscle in my body tenses as silence once again envelops the space, and we lie in wait to see what they’re going to do. A familiarpopfills the cell, followed by a rush of air, and then a dart sinks into my shoulder. I snarl, fangs jutting out from my gums as I reach up and yank the needle out of my arm.
The drug starts to work immediately. The concoction makes me feel both heavy and weightless while my senses dull and everything around me becomes muted. I work to calm my wolf and to try and steady my heart rate, stopping the shift. Getting angry and losing it now will only help to spread whatever they just shot us with faster. I want them to have a false sense of security. I want them to open that door so we can rip their heads from their fucking bodies.
My wolf warms to that idea and stops pacing inside of me. I sag against the cinderblock wall as my limbs go numb, and I pull back on the change, keeping control of my body. I try not to worry about where we’ll wake up next, confident that we will at least wake up.
After all, Burke has to save face. He has to reinforce his weak control over the pack by picking on the girl that almost tore him apart. I wonder if anyone knows the truth of how he got his injuries. I wonder if any of the betas will get together behind closed doors and discuss when and where to challenge the alpha who’s so clearly unworthy of the title. I know some of them must be itching for more power. Their wolves have to be clawing their insides, just begging for an opportunity to lead.
I wait for unconsciousness to creep over me, but it doesn’t. The door to my cell opens, but by the time it does, I can’t move a limb, no matter how much I want to. I close my eyes against the light that floods my dark prison, but I can’t turn my head away from it. Male pack members in their human form pour into the cell, tense and ready. Someone holding chains approaches me, the links of the metal clinking from the shaking hands holding them. I’d smirk if I could move my lips.
A deep warning growl resonates in my chest as Conrad comes forward and binds my ankles and then clamps chains around my wrists. I bark out a snarl when he moves to fix a muzzle around my face, and it makes him jump back, while another beta in the cell yelps in fear.
Conrad watches me warily, brown eyes thick as mud. “You try biting me, and you’re gonna catch my fist in your fucking teeth,” he threatens.
“She’s drugged,” someone behind him drawls. “She can’t move.”
Conrad glares over his shoulder. “She shouldn’t have been able to resist Alpha’s shift command either, but Nico said she did.”
“Nico’s probably full of shit.”
Conrad thrusts the muzzle at him. “Oh, yeah? If you’re so cocky about it, why don’tyouput the muzzle on her?” The argumentative beta goes silent at that. Conrad turns back to me, grumbling under his breath. “That’s what I fucking thought. This bitch killed Seamus. Just tore his damn throat out as easy as ripping a piece of paper. If it were up to me, she’d be fucking dead already.”
“Come on,” the yelping beta says, kneeling down next to me. Saul, I think his name is. Not very high up, but a beta who’s used to doing plenty of grunt work. “Let’s just get this over with.”
Conrad nods. “Hold her head.”
Try as I might to thrash my head, I can’t. The medicine has a grip on my nerves, my muscles, even my damn bones. Saul squats at my side and grips my head, his fingers digging into my skin. When Conrad lifts the gag in front of my face, a wash of panicked hysteria overcomes my wolf and me. Through my gritted teeth, bloodthirsty growls cut through the air, so vicious that I can practically feel the wolves inside of them tucking their tails.
Conrad wastes no time in shoving it against my mouth, a thick leather strap driving between my teeth. I try to snap at him, try to tear through the leather, but my jaw won’t work. All I can manage is a weak press of my tongue against the foul-tasting band. Saul and Conrad work together to fasten the two other straps on either side of my head, the leather tightened against my skin, ensuring that I can’t spit the strap out, can’t bite or talk, even muffling my snarls.
I start to breathe heavy, true panic setting in when the two other betas yank on the chain attached to the metal cuffs on my ankles and then check the one on my wrists next. The feeling of utter helplessness bleeds through my mind, my vision, my throat.
That wild part of me begins to hammer against the glass of my control, and froth bubbles up, coating the barbaric strap I’m forced to bite down on. But the last of my resolve cracks when Conrad grabs my naked body and tosses me over his shoulder, and the air is stolen from my lungs, ripping away all my snarling with it.
Flopped over him, his bones digging into my stomach, I internally scream, willing my head to lift, my hands to move, my legs to do something...anything.
But the tranquilizer did its job all too well, keeping me on the cusp of consciousness, not letting me tip over, while stealing every ability to move other than breathe and blink.
The lather in my mouth drips down uncontrollably, and I stare at the bobbing floor as Conrad’s footsteps take me out of the cell and into a cold, dark hallway. My chained wrists clank together, hanging impotently against his back, and I wish I could drag my nails down his shirt and shred his skin into ribbons. Someone smacks my bare ass hard when I’m carried up a set of steep stairs, tearing a yelp from me that ends in my eyes tunneling with their heated glow, my snarls coming back full force.
I can’t look in any direction other than down, and I’m carried out of wherever they’ve been keeping me. The floors are bare concrete, and smells hit me of several pack members as I’m taken up a set of stairs and then outside, where it’s still dark. Or...dark again. I have no idea what day it is or how long I’ve been down in that cell. This dark smells like the dark of a pre-dawn. A broody prequel to an angry coming morning.
I black in and out of consciousness as I’m carried, but suddenly the familiar scents of the pack house wash over me, including dozens upon dozens of my pack members. I can’t see them, but I can smell them, and as we get nearer, I can hear them too. Some of them are whispering, some gasp at the sight of my manhandled and shackled body, and all I can do is continue to watch the ground, head bobbing against Conrad’s back with every step, growling out a warning that my body can’t mete out.
