*Maddox*
Well, I fucked up again. Obviously.
Leaving Isla alone to get some rest or maybe visit with her brother if he comes back, I head back to my office. Now that I’ve had the relaxing diversion of arguing with my breeder–or lover–or whatever the fuck you want to call her–I’m ready to get back to work.
I see Seth in the hallway walking at a brisk pace, and the way he’s flying down the hallway, practically running, I have to wonder what the hell has happened now. I don’t even want to know. But I ask. “What’s going on?”
Seth shakes his head. “It’s Zabrina,” he says. “She’s just down there in the dungeon throwing a fit, and the guards want to know if they can sedate her. I told them to go ahead, but somehow, when they went in to give her the shot, she managed to rip it out of the guard’s hand with her teeth and plunged it into the guard’s face. Now, they’re all hesitant to go back in there.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” I say, wondering how this woman has gotten to be such a pain in my ass. Thank the Moon Goddess she will be dead tomorrow, even if I have to rip her head off myself.
“I’m headed down there to handle it myself now,” Seth says to me, and I can see in his eyes he’s had just about as much as he can take from her, same as me.
“I’m coming with you,” I decide. The work in my office that needs to be done is all trivial shit that can wait, though I know that Alpha Jordan’s Luna has all kinds of other Alphas calling me, trying to convince me that Zabrina is innocent, and I’m going after the wrong person. I didn’t buy her bullshit story when she pitched it to me, and I don’t buy it now. I won’t buy it when I hear it on my answering machine from other Alphas who are clearly more loyal to Alpha Jordan than me, either.
As soon as we open the door to the stairwell that leads down to the dungeon, I can hear her screaming.
“Fuck you! Fuck all of you! I’m going to rip your dicks off and shove them down your throats! You might think you can kill me, but I will be back! I will haunt your dreams, I will haunt you every moment of your fucking lives!”
When I get to the space right outside of her cell, I see that she’s feeling a lot better than she was when we brought her in. She’s practically naked, her clothes in tatters, like she’s attempted to shift and hasn’t been able to do that, probably because she did have a shot earlier of something that would keep that from happening. But she’d been wounded then, and she’s obviously healed herself.
I stand back and watch her as she practically rips her own fingernails off, her hands clamped along the bars as she shakes and screams, banging her head against the bars.
My mind goes back to the first time I met her. She seemed to be a polished, well-educated, sophisticated young woman. I wasn’t interested in her one bit, and it was clear that she only wanted to date me–or have sex with me or marry me or whatever–because she wants to be the next Luna Queen.
Now, looking at the wild creature in front of me, it’s almost impossible to believe she could possibly be the same person. Her hair is ratted and messy, not the coiffed pinned up, elegant locks I remember. Her face is a mess, with scratches all over and cracked lips. Her eyes are swollen and bruised, and she has dried blood under her nose. She’s hit her head on the bars a few times, so she has welts and bumps on her forehead.
I remember the elegant dresses she would wear to dinner. That’s a far cry from the rags she has on now that don’t even properly cover her. Her exposed body is covered in bruises and cuts.
It’s honestly hard to believe this is the same woman.
But… when I stop to ponder all of the horrible things this monster has done to so many people, including killing her own maid and an innocent guard, I have to think this wild version of Zabrina is probably more accurate than the one she’d tried to present herself as when she first arrived at the castle.
“Zabrina!” I finally bark at her. “Shut the fuck up!”
When she realizes it’s me speaking, she continues to carry on for a long moment, but then, her wailing fades, and she begins to hyperventilate, sucking in air as she tries to calm herself. Her erratic behavior calms as well, and she stands there, her head resting on the bars in front of her as she gasps for air.
My Alpha King ability to bend my subjects has worked well on her. Sometimes, it’s not as easy to get my biggest advisors to do as I say, even with this ability given to me by the Moon Goddess, but considering she is exhausted and mentally drained.
“Zabrina, you’re wasting your final hours acting like a fucking psycho!” I tell her. “You’re dying tomorrow. There’s nothing you can do to get out of it. You may as well calm the fuck down and enjoy the few hours you have left. If you’ll stop acting like a crazy person, I’ll have the guards bring down one of your favorite dishes, but otherwise, you’re going to die on an empty stomach.”
Rather than verbally responding, she looks up and meets my eyes, staring right through me for the longest moment before she begins to sob. At first, it’s just a few tears as she continues to gasp for air, but then, she breaks down completely in loud, vibrating, deep sobs that fill the entire dungeon with their lamentable sound.
“I don’t want to die,” she says, over and over again. “Please, please, Alpha King Maddox. I’m too young. I don’t want to die.”
“You know who else was young?” I ask her, not waiting for her to stop crying to answer me. “Your maid. Private Parker. Even Private Wylie.”
She doesn’t respond, only continues to cry, on her knees now, her hands over her face.
With a sigh, I move toward one of the guards who was clearly involved in the mauling earlier as he has claw marks across his chest where his uniform is ripped, and the scratches on his face, though crusted over now, look deep.
He is holding the one thing that Zabrina deserves right now. As I motion for him to give it to me, he complies quickly. Zabrina isn’t looking at me as she weeps bitter tears into her hands.
I crouch down across from her. Even though her hands are through the cell bars, I’m not afraid of her. She’s tired, weak, and distracted. She won’t be able to get anything over on me.
I can sense it in her, though, as I get close to her. All of this is an act, and she thinks I’m too stupid to know what she’s up to.
“Zabrina,” I say, “you’ve made your bed. And now you’ll lie in it.”
Her eyes latch on to mine, her tears dry up, and that wild look is back on her face as she reaches for me.
I am faster than her, though. I catch both of her hands, claws extended, in my right hand, holding them together as I plunge the needle I’ve gotten from the guard into her upper arm and push down the plunger.
“Nooo!” she screams, her fangs protruding from her mouth as she realizes she’s not going to be able to hurt me. And now that she’s drugged, we can keep her sedated until we take her to the gallows tomorrow. We’ll need to let her wake up a little so she can walk under her own power, but there will be no contemplating all of her mistakes tonight. Even before I stand up and release her arms, her eyes are starting to gloss over.
“There you go, bitch,” I say as she slowly falls backward onto her bottom. “The next time you wake up, you’ll be facing the gallows and then your maker.”
“Fuck you, Maddox,” she says, her words slurred slightly. “You think this is over, but it’s not. It doesn’t end with me. I already warned you. I’m not the culprit here. There are others, stronger than me, angrier than me, and more compelled to bring you down than me.”
“Then I hope they’re a fucking lot smarter than you, too,” I say, just to jab her.
She glares at me, and I can see she wants to try to spit on me, but I’m far enough away now that if she does spit, it will land on the floor. “I hate you!” she says. “I will haunt you! I will show up in your nightmares and when you’re walking down the hallway at night! You think your fucking Rebecca haunts this castle? You just wait! And if I see that bitch in hell, I’ll kill her again!”
She’s trying to hurt me, but it just pisses me off. “Rebecca isn’t in hell, but if she sees you on the other side, she will shred you to pieces, Zabrina. You have nothing on her. She was a Luna Queen, and you’re just a selfish little bitch daughter of an incompetent Alpha.” I keep my voice even, my tone unstrained.
“Well, you’re forgetting one similarity between Rebecca and I,” she says, pausing like I might ask her what she’s talking about, but I don’t because I don’t give a fuck what she’s talking about. She continues, “You killed both of us.”
The guards and Seth move toward her then, ready to beat her for saying such an awful thing to me, but there’s nothing Zabrina can say about Rebecca that can hurt me. I’ve already accepted the fact that I’m responsible for my wife’s death. The words coming out of her vile lips don’t make it any more or less the truth.
The guards don’t need to pummel her, she’s already fallen backward onto the floor, her head making a sick cracking sound on the concrete, and for a moment, I hope maybe she’s already dead. But she’s not. She’s still breathing. I can hear her heartbeat.
Now that my job here is done, I turn and head back upstairs, Seth behind me. “That was… vicious,” he comments.
I say nothing. I don’t have any words to describe what it was. I’m just glad it’s over. I decide to head to my office now since Isla is probably still sleeping, but as soon as I get to the top of the stairs, I hear Mystica’s voice in my head.
“Can you come back to Miss Isla’s room, please?” she asks me, her tone calm.
“Okay,” I say, using the mind-link. “Is everything all right?” Unlike my time with Zabrina, this makes me nervous. I am doing my best to sound calm.
“Well, I’ll leave that for you to decide,” she says. “I just need you there when I give her the results of the tests I ran.”
I feel my heart stop beating and practically have to thump myself in the chest to start it again. “Mystica, what is it?” I ask her.
Her only response is, “I will tell you when you get to her room.”