43. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

L ayla drifted in and out of consciousness as they dragged her back down the hallways. Sunlight filtered through some skylights, so she guessed it was very late in the morning. It had been hours since they strapped her down and started butchering her. She didn't know how long exactly since she passed out often. The fuckers hadn't bothered to use any anaesthetic. The pain was excruciating, and the scent of her blood was overpowering.

Now she understood why her wolf wasn't coming to her aid when they were in so much danger, but she'd assumed she could still heal, even if it happened slowly. Her other senses seemed intact, even if her head was muddled. So why wasn't she recovering?

She'd just closed her eyes again, ignoring the pain from her knees scraping on the concrete floor, when something forced her to open them again. It took all her strength to lift her head, and the huge guards standing outside the restricted door loomed ahead, standing at attention with a hand on their weapons.

Her eyelids drifted shut again but snapped back up, almost like her wolf made her do that. But that was impossible. As they passed the guards and turned into the hallway that led back to her prison, something pulled at her. Something behind the closed doors. It was a room she had already realised the first time that she didn't want to see what was behind it, but after what the Hunters said...

The other red wolf.

She turned her head to look back. That had to be where they were keeping Rebecca.

Guilt filled her even as she fought to stay conscious. She'd suspected something was wrong when her mother didn't return after the memorial. She should have trusted her gut, especially considering how much Rebecca had become attached to Hope. She should have done more, like looking for her before the Hunters invaded their forest. She'd failed as the Queen and Luna, a mate and mother. And as a daughter.

The warehouse doors scrapping open again brought her focus back to the crippling pain in her body and her more urgent situation. She couldn't even save herself from this; worrying about ‘what ifs' was pointless.

The smell was much worse than when she regained consciousness in the cage. The silence was deafening, but the tension and fear in the room were still the same. The eyes that had peered at her from behind the silver bars when the guards dragged her out barely looked at her as they pulled her broken body along the floor.

The two Hunters pulled her up by her arms, and her feet dangled in the air for a few seconds before they threw her back into her cage. The cold metal bars dug into her wounds but she had no energy to move off them.

What was the point? They already knew what she was. They already knew the silver wouldn't hurt her.

The door was shut and the lock loudly clicked in place before the four guards turned and walked back the way they came.

‘Miss Layla?'

She couldn't lift her head to look at Faith and had no energy to respond, even if it was only in her head.

‘You have to move to the mat, Luna. Please. Don't do anything that will make them too interested in you. We have to wait for Alpha.'

Too late, Faith. It's already too late.

But she didn't say that out loud as her eyes closed, exhaustion finally claiming her.

It felt like only seconds passed when her eyes opened again. Her mental escape had been too fleeting. She was stuck in a nightmare of her own making.

Had she left the first time she ran into the Hunters, would everyone else have remained safe? A part of her told her that the Commander would have chased her down anyway, that he would have imprisoned more wolves all over the world in his quest to find her. But she should have tried. She shouldn't have just waited at the packhouse.

The training hadn't done her any good anyway.

Guilt immediately ate her up. She couldn't blame Jax for this. This was all her.

With a sigh, she pushed up onto her elbows. The pain was still the same as before she passed out. She bit her lip to stop crying out as she dragged herself to the small mat in the middle.

‘Miss Layla? How are you feeling?'

It was a relief to hear Faith's voice. It meant they didn't take her while she'd been unconscious. They didn't torture or kill her.

‘I'll be okay,' she answered.

Her limbs were numb as she pulled herself into a sitting position. Her head felt more muddled; everything swam in her head, making it hard to grasp more than one thing at a time. They injected her with several substances while she was helpless. She dared to look down at her body when she was finally upright.

Her breath caught, and she looked away immediately.

She healed people before. She somehow healed the injured warriors and Diedre. She cured Jax's curse. But now she couldn't heal herself. She hadn't even stopped bleeding, like the poor scout they took before her.

Was he starting to feel better?

Her gaze went to the cage across from her, but it was empty. Only his faint scent remained.

‘He's gone,' Faith said.

‘They took him again? But they'd already injured him!'

‘No. He didn't make it through the night.'

Her shoulders slumped. That was the second person in hours, not counting those who looked dead in the cages.

‘Now that they have seen you once, they will leave you alone for a while. We just have to get through this until—'

‘Do you think Jax can save us from this?' she asked.

‘Yes. Our King is the only one who can.'

She didn't want to crush the girl's spirit. Hope was all they had, and she sincerely hoped they could escape and see their loved ones again.

But it was time to face reality. Jax wouldn't find them. It would be up to them to find a way to be reunited with their loved ones.

She turned her head to look up at the cage above Faith's. Did the little girl have someone to return to? Or were her loved ones also in the cells?

‘She's asleep. She stopped crying days ago.'

The metal doors scraped open again, and the smell of food drifted into the room. Wolves stirred and sat straighter in their cages.

‘We get one meal a day and one bottle of water. I think they lace it with something, but if you don't eat, they'll take you out, and we'll never see you again.'

Was that how they were keeping down such powerful wolves? Using drugs and fear of the unknown?

The girl above Faith shuffled forward and put her little face between the bars again as she looked towards where the food was. Her curly locks were matted and dirt was smeared all over her face, but her brown eyes caught her the most. They were as dead as the Hunters' eyes. There was nothing left inside the little girl.

"What's your name?" she whispered.

The girl looked down at her and then back up the aisle.

‘It's better not to speak out loud, Miss Layla,' Faith said.

‘But she's a little girl. Even if any of her pack is in here, she can't mindlink anyone.'

‘It's still better that way.'

She looked away from the little girl and felt the weight of everything again. Why did her wolf make her believe she could do something to save them? Her wolf hadn't known what they were walking into, so why had she believed it so easily?

It felt like forever when some Hunters came to their aisle with food carts. Armed guards opened the cages, and women threw bread and bottles of water at the wolves as if they considered all the prisoners as nothing more than animals. The wolves waited until the cages were closed again before they snatched their bread and bit into it ravenously.

Bread was never enough for a wolf. They were hunters. Meat and heartier food were what helped their wolves to heal.

But, of course, the Hunters knew that. Just as they knew that everyone would accept the scraps they were throwing into the cages.

She couldn't help the anger that bubbled inside her.

As they got to her cage, the guard met her gaze and sneered. And then he walked right past without opening it. She knew it was his form of punishment. He'd seen her anger and sensed how much she wanted to kill him.

It took them longer to walk down her aisle as they revelled in torturing her by keeping the bread in her view. The bread on the cart was small and smelled stale, but as the size of the pile dwindled, her mouth watered more. She hadn't eaten before she'd gone after Jax, and now she would go a second day without food.

She was too focused on the bread to notice that more Hunters came in until they walked past her cage. They stopped at the scout's empty cage, and one unlocked it.

Why? To clean it before another victim occupied it? She hadn't thought they would even bother.

It wasn't until she heard the sniffles that she forced herself to move forward and look down.

A little girl.

They'd brought in another little girl.

Her heart grew cold when she saw the little tear and blood-stained face.

And then she felt the heat rising in her body. The white-hot rage.

These Hunters were pure evil. She had to stop them.