Chapter 13: Alexis

Chapter 13: Alexis

I stood by the water, my feet submerged in the sand, my eyes on the blue horizon where the moon touched the dark wavering sea. I told myself that I could not go back. Behind me, I could hear the sounds of the men talking loudly and boastfully as they left the clearing and exited through the forest. I could have joined them. Will was in that crowd, along with Vince. This could have been a better reunion than the one I already had with Will. This time around, I’d have said nicer things and would have been softer to him.

I had eventually, after a long walk that started from the commune and ended on the beach, decided not to rejoin the pack. Admittedly, I was a mess of emotions, all over the place and with zero coherence. Yet, this time around, there was good reason for my choice not to rejoin the pack.

It was a simple realization that I had rejected Will when he was down. He had just re-emerged from his grave with no shifting abilities. He saw that the world around him had fallen. Maurice had regained control of the pack, and I was nowhere to be found. When he somehow found me, I was beyond coarse with him.

Now, when he had regained power when the pack had emerged victorious against the vampires, and when Ralph had been killed, and Maurice had been made to run off, Will was in a very powerful position. It would make me appear as nothing more than an opportunistic bitch if I went back to him and accepted him.

Besides, there was the entire element of me not believing him. I still thought that he had said Ariana’s name for a reason, and it wasn’t the reason that he had given me.

So here I stood, on the beach, thinking of my recourse. I still had most of the money that Izzie had given me. I could go back to her and beg for my job and apartment back. But if there was one thing I wasn’t, it was a beggar. I would rather eat dirt and live under a bridge than go back and grovel for something. The irony of both situations—Will’s and Izzie’s—being so similar was not lost on me.

Yet there was another reason I was out here, on the other side of the forest. I wanted to see what had become of the vampires. The ones who had survived must have escaped, but they would have been foolish to run back to the cove. Now that they knew that Will was back and had killed their leader, the vampires must have had no recourse other than to leave the cove. Could it possibly be that after all this time, the reign of the bloodsuckers was finally over?

I was still in disbelief. There was nothing more that I badly wanted to see other than the cove, completely stripped down from the inside. Once I had gotten enough of the view of the moonlight and the beach, I put on my shoes and headed to the cove. Maybe if I’d report back to the commune with news that all the vampires had fled the cove, they would receive me with some warmth.

“Don’t run in circles around the same thing over and over, Lexie,” I said out loud, frustrated at my inability to come to terms with the fact that I was not going to go back. “Home is where the heart is, and it seems your heart’s not in Fiddler’s Green.”

I made a valid point now that I thought about it. My heart wasn’t in Fiddler’s Green. My heart had been ripped out of my body and squished down to a pulp in Beckett Tower when Will had died in front of me. Somehow, miraculously, Will had resuscitated himself. But I had not been able to resuscitate my heart. As of right now, any emotions that I felt were very muddled and distant, as if they were the ghosts of the emotions that I had once felt back when my heart was still alive.

So, the question remained—if my heart was not in Fiddler’s Green, where was it?

Rather than grapple with philosophical concepts bigger than me, I jogged toward the cove, hoping to catch some action. Having missed most of the fight in the clearing, my body craved some good old-fashioned combat, especially with some fleeting vampires. Will might have gotten his fair share of closure after killing Ralph, but what about me?

Once I reached the cove, I quickly peeked around the corner to see if there was anyone left. All I saw was a mess of broken crates, clothes, and bottles smashed on the ground. My ears picked up no sounds coming from inside the cove. When I walked around the entrance and stared inside, I gasped loudly at the sight I was beholding.

It was deceptively huge from the inside, with tiny structures running along the length of the walls, giving the inside of the cove the look of a small city. Wooden and metallic rooms hung suspended from the walls, lit by orange lamps that hung from the roof of the cove. They were so dangerously packed together that I feared going inside. When I finally gathered the courage to step into the cove, I was overwhelmed by the disgusting smell of stale blood that lingered inside. It raised the hair on my body, this macabre smell in this foul place.

Once my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the cove for what it really was—a smuggling hub. Just ahead of all the construction, there was a harbor with half a dozen ships still tied to it. Here, crates were piled along the cove walls in all directions.

I kept looking around to pick up some hints of where the vampires had gone off to. After half an hour of combing through the entire place and finding no clue, I gave up and exited the cove.

At least, this was good news. With no more vampires in the vicinity of Fiddler’s Green, I could rest easy in the knowledge that my departure this time around would not result in any immediate danger to the townsfolk and my pack members. It made sense that with Ralph dead and Maurice on the run, Blair would sooner or later disappear, as his crimes would come into the light now that Will had reappeared and had so publicly regained control of his pack. Removing me from this equation meant that the town was in safe hands and all imminent danger was over.

As I stood by the entrance of the cove, I tried to convince my deadened heart to feel something other than shame, remorse, sadness, and misery. All the thoughts that came to me wore a dark cover, suggesting that no one missed me back at the commune, that Will never really loved me to begin with, and that it was better for everyone if I just left.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” A cruel voice growled from behind, and before I even had a chance to register that someone was standing behind me, I was hit on the back of my head with such force that I fell on all fours. Within a second, I was hit a second time, this time on my back. I collapsed, having been caught off guard, and it wasn’t until a heavy foot rested on the nape of my neck that I realized that the voice and the foot belonged to Maurice. As much as I struggled, Maurice’s weight on my body was heavier, preventing me from moving.

“I thought you ran away with your vampire buddies,” I muttered.

“What vampire buddies? Don’t you see the cove is empty? You have been the cause of pain in my ass ever since you dragged Will back with you in that commune. You should have died the same night as your parents, and that would have saved me a ton of trouble, you fucking bitch,” Maurice spat, pushing his weight on me.

But here is where he made an error. He made mention of my parents in such a condescending way that it awoke all the rage I had kept buried in me. I immediately shifted, throwing Maurice off me, and pounced on him, trapping him under my body. This could be my shot at closure. Will had killed Ralph; I could end Maurice’s life. If I returned to the commune with Maurice’s lifeless body, they’d hail me as a hero, and all would be forgotten.

“Fucking cunt, you forget that I already defeated you once. Didn’t I throw you off a building? How many times do I have to teach you the same lesson over and over?” Maurice growled, then dug his nails into my skin. He pushed me back, tearing slashes under my fur, and then shifted in front of my eyes.

It would have hardly been a fair fight if he hadn’t shifted. Now, I could finally get my revenge and not feel bad for beating up a defenseless old man.

Maurice launched himself in the air with his claws out. As I swerved, I discovered that he had pinned me strategically against the cove wall, leaving no place for me to escape. He landed beside me, then slashed at my face with his extended claws. I held up my limbs in front of me in defense, barely able to fend off his attack.

His neck was undefended, as he had just landed on all fours and was about to recoil. I shot my jaw at the underside of his neck and bit down on his skin. It didn’t matter to me if I killed him. With this in mind, I held nothing back. My teeth tore through the skin of his neck and drew blood.

Maurice whimpered loudly and tried to retreat. But I dug in even harder, hoping to find the jugular and end his life here and now. In his blind retaliation, he flailed his paws in the air, catching me in the face by surprise. I stepped back and registered the damage to my face. It was a light gash, nothing that wouldn’t heal itself within a few minutes. It wouldn’t leave a mark, that was for certain. But my stepping back had finally freed Maurice’s neck from my death grip, and now he was nowhere to be seen.

I looked around, trying to find out where he had disappeared within seconds. Then, a howl erupted from right above me, and I saw Maurice perched atop the cove’s entrance, ready to pounce. Even as I retreated, he managed to jump and land right on top of me, hitting my body with the full force of a projectile werewolf hitting terminal velocity.

I felt a few ribs crack as he crashed into me. The air blew out of my lungs, making everything seem dark all around me. I tried to move, but my legs felt like they had crumbled.

Maurice got up from me, then shifted back into his human form.

“You know, I didn’t expect to find you here. I just came around to mourn my friend, Ralph. But you can serve as quite the consolation prize for me. I can kill you. Or, even better, I can trap you and torture you for the longest time. Wouldn’t it be a very fitting end to your story? Your mate spent his life imprisoned and tortured, and you get to end your life imprisoned and tortured. Ah, Will’s going to lose his shit when he finds out that even in defeat, I managed to get the better of him,” he said.

I could still feel the throbbing bruises from Maurice’s collision with my body. They had rendered my body painfully numb, limiting my ability to move. Each muscle ached terribly when I tried to crawl.

“Just think how your precious Alpha will feel when I deliver your corpse to him. An eye for an eye. Kind of fair, isn’t it?” Maurice growled.

Before I could do anything else, he brought down his boot on my face, knocking me out.

***

It was a strange, dark, smelly, and wet place that I woke up in. I could hear water splashing somewhere in the back. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything around me except for some sheen coming off the metal bars that had trapped me inside. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw grotesque cave walls around me. They were wet and slippery with seawater.

I was hogtied and thrown on the ground. During my unconsciousness, I must have shifted back to my human form. There was tape over my mouth and rope on my arms and legs. Maurice had tied me very sadistically. The more I struggled, the tighter the ropes got until a point came that my bounds were painful enough to draw tears.

I knew that screaming or struggling would be a futile gesture. So I did the only thing that I could do in my position. I looked around. There was a distant light coming from the other end of the cave. At first, I thought it was the end of the tunnel. But when the light grew nearer, I saw that it was Maurice holding a flashlight in his hands. He approached the bars and kicked them, creating a loud rattle.

“Now, isn’t this perfect?” Maurice spat. “Face it, there’s no way you’re ever going to escape from here. We’re so far away from Fiddler’s Green that even your mate can’t come to save you. You thought that you and your pack’s little display of courage would put a dent in our plans? Sure, Ralph’s dead, and that’s terrible and all, but the operation is bigger than any of us. It continues, little girl. And you’re going to watch it all till the day you die. I intend to starve you, torture the life out of you slowly until all that’s left is a little husk of the wolf that you were, and then I’ll deliver your rotting, decaying dead body to your mate.”

I attempted to shift and show him that all his words were just hollow banter coming from a man who had lost everything. But Maurice had bound me so tightly that every attempt to shift failed. I was choking on my ropes at this point, struggling even to breathe.

Maurice opened the cage door and came inside, holding a taser. Without even a warning, he rammed the taser into me and pulled the trigger, sending jolts of electricity running through my body. All my screams were muffled by the tape covering my mouth. As I convulsed under shock, my bounds became even tighter, cutting off the blood supply to my arms and legs.

Maurice stared into my eyes as he tased me again, this time for a longer period. I had made up my mind that I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of writhing and screaming in pain. So, even as he continued to send raw electrical voltage through my body, I stayed still and stared menacingly back at him without so much as a scream. It was pure agony, all that current racing through my body, but I was not about to make him feel like a big man for torturing me.

“Fine. Don’t scream. What do I care?” Maurice said, getting back up and kicking me in the chest as he left. “Rot here all you want.”

Just as he left, I fainted out of sheer pain, and this time, I did not know for how long I was unconscious. When I woke up, it was dark, and not even my wolf vision could help me see where I was. All I could hear were the sounds coming from the far end of the cave. It seemed like Maurice was talking to some people out there. I closed my eyes and focused on the sounds till I could decipher the murmurs and whispers.

“Yes, the crates are all accounted for,” someone hissed. “We made sure to empty the cove before we left.”

“Good, then we must continue our shipping from here. No one’s going to suspect we’re here,” Maurice said.

“But what about the wolf you’ve got in there,” another voice spoke.

“Oh, she’s just my little pet. It gets boring in there, you know. Especially now that I can’t go out in the open, thanks to that whole fiasco, so, yeah, I’m going to entertain myself with her, and when I’m done, we’ll send a little message to Wilhelm Grimm. Show him that he’s not all that powerful,” Maurice said.

Even though I could see nothing, the accents of the people speaking to Maurice were distinct enough to make me realize they were vampires. The context I gathered from their conversation was quite clear. They were using this second location as their smuggling hub now that the cove was deserted.

He had underestimated me. In his pride and anger, Maurice had unwittingly led me to the one place he shouldn’t have. If only I could get out of these shackles, I could put an end to this operation.

While there was nothing else to do, I lay on the floor, my eyes closed in concentration, and tried to get in touch with Will. What people like Maurice did not understand was that bonds between fated mates did not rely upon factors like distance and time to work. Bonds like ours transcended all such limitations.

At least, I hoped that was true.

Will. Are you there? I’m stuck somewhere terrible, I called out with all the strength left in me.