*Maddox*
When we arrive at the castle, I have the pack members of Hill Country who slaughtered Alpha Hayes and his household moved into the dungeon first. I’m glad to see that Alpha Jordan hasn’t managed to find his way out of his cell. Everyone who was in the dungeon when I left appears to still be there.
Zabrina is another matter altogether, and I have her moved down by a team of Omegas who I know won’t put up with her shit. They’re all female, and they don’t mind slapping the cuss out of her every time she says something that she shouldn’t.
By the time Zabrina arrives in the dungeon where I am overseeing the escorting of the other assholes into their new homes, she is bleeding from her mouth, nose, and one ear.
Something tells me that the ladies were lenient on her after all.
“Put her in that one,” I say, pointing at the smallest, dirtiest, darkest cell we have. “Chain her to the wall.”
“No, don’t do that!” she barks. “My ribs are broken! If you do that, it will hurt like fuck!”
“Do it.” I keep the calm in my voice as I tell them to do something they were already doing. Looking the princess in the eyes, I remind her, “You don’t give the orders around here, bitch.”
“Listen,” she says as the guards yank her arms up over her head. “Son of a bitch!” she shrieks, and I can tell it hurts. I almost smile, just thinking about this woman who tried to kill my Isla in pain, “You don’t understand, Maddox!”
I was about to walk away, but when she uses my first name like that, I stop and wheel around on her. I get to within an inch of her bleeding face, and in my still-calm-but-obviously-irritated-voice, I say, “You will address me as Alpha King. Nothing more; nothing less. Do you hear me, Zabrina?”
I narrow my eyes at her and watch as her lip quivers ever so slightly.
She’s trying to pretend she’s just angry, but she’s obviously scared, too, and she should be. I intend to do everything to her that she did to Isla and Private Parker–every ounce of torture they had to endure, and then some, she will feel, for just as long–probably longer.
“Alpha King,” she says, her voice wavering. “You don’t understand. You think I’m the enemy, but it’s not me.”
I scoff at her. “Oh, really?” I ask, taking a step back, glad to have some space between us as she reeks of urine and blood. “I thought it was you who kidnapped two people that were under my care, drove them out to a cabin in the woods, and tortured them–one of them to death–but, please, if that wasn’t you, enlighten me. I’m sure Isla was just confused when she told me that you were the one seated in the car with her.”
She takes as deep a breath as she can with her ribs broken, and I see her throat quake slightly as she tries to come up with the correct words, something she thinks I will believe. Something that will still get her off of the hook for the horrors she’s committed, but something I might believe to actually be true.
“All right,” she says, her voice soft. It’s the least aggressive I’ve seen her since we brought her in. “It’s true. I did do that, but you don’t understand. I didn’t have any choice.”
I cock my head to the side and study her face. She has a slight twitch in her upper lip on the right side, and her heartbeat is more erratic than it was before. Tiny beads of perspiration spring to life on her forehead.
She’s clearly lying to me. I can tell by those signs alone, even if there was absolutely no reason for me to think that she isn’t to blame for what happened.
Yet, I want to hear the story she’s concocted. I’m curious. It might be interesting.
Perhaps someday I shall write a fiction book and need some storylines. This might come in handy….
“All right,” I say, clearing my throat. “Tell me your tale, Zabrina. But make it fast. I’d like to go see my woman.”
I see her eyes narrow at the mention of Isla and how she is mine and Zabrina never will be.
Not in that sense anyway.
“It was… Alpha Grant’s idea,” she tells me, and I see her eyes widen slightly as the plan begins to come together. Like a black widow spider, she is weaving her web, hoping to catch a male in it and bring him certain death.
Or whatever the fuck it is black widows do to kill.
“Alpha Grant?” I repeat. “From River Crest pack?”
Alpha Grant has always been one of my most loyal followers. He is about my age and has been Alpha there for about five years. He has a lovely wife, Nina, his Luna and fated mate. Nina just gave birth to their second child, a son, the heir to the Alphadom.
It seems ironic that Zabrina would pick him to pin this on, but I am curious now and want to see where she goes.
“That’s right. River Crest pack is near my father’s territory, you know? Alpha Grant thought it would be more believable for my father to get into the castle and make a deal with you. Originally, the plan was for you to marry me. I’d become your Luna and my father would murder you on our wedding night after I slipped something into your drink. Then, Alpha Grant would take over the kingdom, and my father would be his second in command.”
I raise my eyebrows. Zabrina is lucky she’s not a movie producer. No one would want to see this film. The plot isn’t believable. “But?” I say, prompting her to continue.
“But….” As she speaks, flecks of blood fly from her mouth. She pauses to spit a mouthful of pink saliva onto the stone floor. It mingles and coagulates with all of the other fluid that’s been spilled here over the years. “But, my father let him know that it wasn’t working. That you had this breeder that you were in love with, so I would never get to be the Luna.”
“So Alpha Grant told you to kill Isla and try to take her place?” I surmise.
She nods. “More or less. I didn’t want to do it, Mad–Alpha King.” She catches herself, corrects her course. “But I didn’t have any choice. Alpha Grant told my father that if he didn’t go through with the plan, while he was away, he’d burn our villages to the ground, one by one.”
“So you had to go through with it?” I ask her.
She nods. “That’s right. And that woman, that maid… she was a spy for Grant. She was trying to… kill me. So I had no choice but to kill her first.”
“You mean Agatha?” I ask her, knowing full-well that wasn’t the woman’s name.
“Yes, her.” I notice Zabrina is looking around, as if she’s trying to figure out if she might be in the same cell now where she murdered the poor maid–Alva–that she’d forced to poison me. She’s not–that one was far too nice for Zabrina.
“So… if that’s the case, why isn’t Alpha Grant burning down the villages in your territory now?” I ask her.
“Well… because… he knows the plan fell apart, and he’s trying to look innocent. He probably knows I’ll rat him out to you, and he doesn’t want to have any reason to look guilty.” She tries to shrug and then winces at the pain in her ribs.
“And when your father wakes up, he’ll be able to corroborate this?” I ask her.
Again, her eyes widen for a moment as she contemplates how to respond. Does she think she can get a mind-link message to Alpha Jordan in time to tell him what to say? He isn’t conscious at the moment. I noticed that as I came through the dungeon.
“I thought my father was dead until Alpha Vinny told me otherwise,” she says.
“Beta Vinny,” I correct her. “Beta Vinny who is no longer with us.”
“Right,” she says. “But I think that my father is probably pretty messed up mentally from… the lack of oxygen.” Fake tears spring up in her eyes, and I want to slap them away. She doesn’t care about her father. If Isla's dream is true, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t be since I found Zabrina with men in suits who picked her up in Duster pack, that means Zabrina essentially just left her dad there to die.
No, she’s full of shit.
I slam a hand down on her shoulder. “Listen, Zabrina, most of us learn when we are young children that we have to take responsibility for our own actions. Sometimes that is a difficult lesson. Sometimes, children want to do right and please their parents, so they do their best to make them happy.”
She is staring at me, not sure what I’m getting at. I continue.
“Clearly, you never learned that you need to fess up when you do something wrong. Admit the mistake, try to correct it, promise not to do it again, and move on. So you just keep fucking up over and over again, and you have no one to blame but yourself.”
“But I–” she begins, but I press a finger to her mouth to make her shut up.
“We are done here. You can consider yourself convicted of two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, two counts of kidnapping, and probably a hundred other crimes that would keep you in prison for the rest of your life.” I pull my hand back, letting her speak.
“So… that’s what you’re going to do then?” she asks me, those tears springing into her eyes again. “You’re going to keep me in this filthy dungeon for the rest of my life?”
She’s already escaped from here once, and I am so fucking tired of chasing her. I shake my head, and I can see she’s not sure whether or not to be hopeful. “No, Zabrina,” I say. “I believe the other crimes I didn’t list are worthy of earning you a life sentence. But the ones I did list, well, those will earn you something else altogether.”
Her lips are trembling again as she asks, “Wh-what’s that?”
“Well, you see, first you're going to go through the hell that Isla and Parker went through–the silver, the wolfsbane, all of that torture. Then… well, then I make sure that you never, ever hurt anyone again.” I stand up to my full height and tower over to drive home my point.
“H-how’s that?” she asks. I think the tears are real this time.
I only have one word for her in response.
“Execution.”