Chapter 31 Syra

Asplash of cold water wakes me.

I sputter and roll onto my side. It feels as if no time has passed since the Farlanders attacked us, but I know that's not the case. When I passed out, I had relatively soft grass and dirt beneath me. Now I'm sprawled on a surface as hard and unyielding as stone.

For a wishful moment, I think I'm back in the cave. The events of the past several hours have been nothing more than a bad dream. Maybe Thorus never even got into trouble at all. Maybe he's already returned from his scouting session, waiting for me to wake up so he and the other alphas can mate with me again.

I open my eyes to look, and another cold splash hits me right in the face.

I'm temporarily blinded, but I was able to get a glimpse of my surroundings before the water forced me to shut my eyes again.

Flat floor. Flat walls. Bars.

Not a cave.

Dripping wet and groaning, I roll onto my stomach and shove myself up onto my hands and knees. My arms and legs feel incredibly weak and heavy at the same time. I guess that's normal for waking up, but this feels excessive. I barely have enough strength to support my own weight.

Then I remember the darts.

I'd assumed they were poisoned, but I guess not—not a lethal dose, anyway. It must have been some kind of sleeping potion, kind of like the stuff Markus drank in the mausoleum, only more powerful.

I almost want to lie down again and drift back to sleep…

Then more water splashes across my back.

I growl and try to stand, but I slip on the wet floor and fall onto my back. Almost immediately, another splash of water hits my breasts and stomach. That's when I realize I'm naked.

"Enough," says a woman's voice.

A familiar woman's voice.

I open my eyes again. I'm lying on my back on the floor of a small cell, looking up at a ceiling covered in old paint that's peeling away like dead skin. Next to my head is a wall of metal bars. There are three figures standing on the other side.

One of them is Delphine.

Anton is beside her, a metal pail in his hands. He is grinning darkly.

Another alpha is standing on the other side of Delphine, and he's also holding a pail. He has a fresh-looking scar on his upper chest. He's the one I stabbed with my spear back in that barn.

He is not grinning.

Delphine isn't grinning either, but her lips are curved into a slight smirk, and her eyes are glimmering with that same sadistic look I noticed during our first encounter.

"Well, well," she says cheerfully. "Look who's finally awake! You had me worried there for a bit. I thought my friends might have hit you with too much tranquilizer."

She curls her fingers around two of the bars and presses her face between them so she's looking right down at me.

"Tranquilizer," she says. "That's what the stuff in the darts is called. Pretty neat, huh?"

I want to tell her to go fuck herself, but I don't want to get another faceful of cold water, so I keep my mouth shut, for now.

How long have I been unconscious, I wonder.

As if reading my mind, Delphine says, "You've been asleep for most of the day, honey. It was around noon when our friends caught you. Now it's almost evening."

Our friends.

I remember Delphine used that phrase at the barn too. At the time, I didn't know what she meant, but now I do. Delphine and her alphas are conspiring with the Farlanders. Were they also in cahoots with the Farlanders who attacked me and Markus in the cemetery? Bet so.

Anton leers at me through the bars. He grips the bulge at the front of his loincloth.

"I had fun breeding you while you were asleep."

Those words make me go cold inside.

I want to cry and vomit at the same time, but somehow I manage to keep myself from doing either. I don't want to give these pieces of shit the pleasure of seeing that.

Delphine clucks her tongue and crouches, keeping her face pressed between the bars. Her eyes are within arm's reach, and I consider clawing them out, but in my weakened state, I doubt I could move quick enough to get her. She stares at me for a long moment, seeming to savor my horror and disgust at what Anton just told me.

"He's lying," she says at last.

"What?"

"Anton. He's lying. He didn't fuck you while you were sleeping, and neither did the other alphas. Oh, they wanted to, believe you me. But I wouldn't let them."

I want to feel relieved, but I don't know if I can actually trust anything Delphine says. There's a good chance she's just saying that to mess with me. Get my hopes up just to dash them again. It sounds like something she would do.

She twists her mouth into a fake frown.

"Aren't you going to thank me?" she asks, then she smirks again. "You probably don't believe me, do you? But it's true. If I'd let them rape you while you were sleeping, it would have completely spoiled my plans for you."

I'm tempted to ask what plans she's talking about. Then again, maybe I don't want to know. Besides, I have a more pressing question.

"What have you done with Markus and Brik?"

"Markus and Brik? Guess those must be your new mates, huh?" Her gaze shifts slightly, and I can tell she's looking at the marks on the side of my neck. "You've been busy since we last met."

She purses her lips in disapproval.

"And here I thought we were a pair of kindred spirits, you and I. Guess I was wrong. Turns out you're just another stupid little slut like all the other omegas in the Zone. One taste of alpha dick and you were probably begging them to mark you."

"What have you done with them?" I growl.

Delphine sighs and gestures through the bars. "Well, one of them's right there in the cell with you."

For the first time, I turn my head and look at the back of the small cell I'm in. The wall opposite the bars has a small, narrow window with a single metal bar in the middle of it, probably to keep prisoners from escaping. A short length of chain is looped around the bar with iron shackles on each end. The shackles are latched around the wrists of the naked alpha who is kneeling there, half conscious.

"Brik!"

I've regained enough strength to push myself up and stumble to the back of the cell. I fall to my knees beside the chained alpha, who is just beginning to wake up from his own tranquilizer-induced slumber. I throw my arms around his body and kiss him on the side of his face.

"Syra?" he murmurs, his voice slurred from drugs.

"I'm here," I whisper.

His body is naked like mine, but all of the scent-masking paste he was wearing earlier is gone. I guess Delphine and her goons washed it off while he was asleep.

I also guess that's why they were throwing water on me a minute ago. I thought they were just doing that to wake me up, but it also served to wash most of the paste from my head and upper body.

My lower body, however, is still coated with the stuff.

It occurs to me that Delphine must have been telling the truth about Anton. If he and the others had raped me while I was unconscious, it would have rubbed the paste away from my skin down there, but the paste is mostly intact.

That gives me some relief, but only a little. I'm still a captive, and so is Brik. I have no idea what has happened to the others.

"Markus?" Brik groans softly.

"I don't know," I whisper, trying to keep my voice low enough so that Delphine and her alphas can't hear what I'm saying. "I don't see him, or smell him."

"Can you feel him?"

Good idea. I probably should have thought of it sooner, but between the drugs and the panic, my brain is not functioning as swiftly as it should. I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and search my feelings.

"He's alive," I whisper. "And he isn't here. He's somewhere… far away."

Thorus is still alive too, but he is closer. Much closer. Before I get a chance to tell that to Brik, however, Delphine interrupts us.

"Are you talking about the other alpha?" she asks. "The one who got away? Don't worry, he won't get far. We sent a band of Farlanders after him."

"They should be back by now," says the alpha standing next to Delphine. Not Anton, but the other one. The one I stabbed with my spear. "If that alpha reaches the Central Ruins, it could mean trouble for us. He could gather reinforcements and return to save his friends. We should leave this place, mistress. We should retreat to the Farlands."

Delphine frowns with disappointment. She obviously doesn't want to retreat. I have a feeling her reluctance has to do with her plans for me and Brik. I still don't know what those plans entail, but I'm sure they aren't nice.

Suddenly, Brik growls beside me.

"That coward won't go back to the Central Ruins," he says angrily.

Delphine's interest is piqued.

"No?" she says. "I thought he was your friend."

"Fuck no!" Brik snarls. "That piece of shit is no friend of mine. Hell, you saw him. No piercings on his face or body. He abandoned his pack. He's a traitor to his tribe, just like you. He can't go back to the Ruins. They would execute him."

Brik's acting is so good, for a moment I actually believe what he's saying. Then I realize what he's really doing.

He's trying to throw our captors off.

If Delphine and her alphas think Markus is coming back here with reinforcements, they might move us to a different location. Or they might just kill us and be on their way. Brik is trying to make them think Markus won't go to the Central Ruins. That's some quick thinking, especially considering he just woke up from a tranquilizer-induced sleep.

But Delphine doesn't look fully convinced. She wants to believe what Brik is saying, but she has doubts.

"Strange," she says. "You're telling me you aren't friends with that other alpha… yet you and he both marked this omega as your shared mate."

"Markus didn't do this to me," I blurt out in an attempt to help with Brik's lie. "A different alpha did it."

"Oh?" Delphine says, smirking. "Was it, by any chance, this one?"

Until now, she and her two big alphas have been blocking my view through the bars of my cell. Now, all three of them step back, allowing me to see more of the abandoned prison facility where I am being held captive. There is a wide corridor out there, and on the other side of the corridor are several levels of walkways leading to even more cells like the one I'm currently sharing with Brik.

And there, directly across from my cell, hanging from the railing of the second-story walkway, is Thorus.