Chapter 13

Castor

“You betrayed your pack. You betrayed your alpha. Confess and I’ll see to it that you have an easy death, as my son.”

It wouldn’t happen. Worse than any real betrayal, Castor knew he’d embarrassed his father. He’d cast that pale, flickering shadow of doubt over him, their alpha’s right hand, the man feared by all for his ruthlessness.

Alexander Phaethon needed to prove he was in control, and he was going to do it by making an example of his son.

He, Jax, and Ireland—code names dropped now the mission was over—had been returned to his pack as promised. Castor had been expecting the worst from his alpha, but it was clear that Jax and Ireland hadn’t wanted to reveal that they had been bested and beaten—it was bad enough they’d failed in their mission and been captured. So instead, they’d concocted some story, without revealing too many details about what actually went down in Wyoming.

Indeed, Agnor had seemed quite pleased they had avoided a pack war. Castor’s relief was short lived, leaving his pack alpha’s residence without reprimand, only to face the wrath of his father—he had been sent on a mission to avenge his slain brother, and had failed and returned disgraced.

His father circled him, pacing around the hard packed red sand floor of the cave. It wasn’t a popular location for torture, but then, they liked to change it up. A few of the houses on pack lands had basements, but the basest shit was always done out in the middle of nowhere. The only people who would ever hear the cries and screams were the very people who’d given the order for it to happen in the first place.

Castor knew that the Nightfall Pack alpha had released him to his pack on the understanding that he was not to be harmed. What his father was doing was directly disobeying his alpha, though it was clear that his father felt he was untouchable.

He wasn’t going to make a sound. He hadn’t said a word throughout the three days of torture and beatings he’d already endured. At first, he’d been taken and chained in his father’s cellar. He was given the most rudimentary rations—enough water and just enough food to keep him alive. Three days ago, he was walked in chains out to the barren desert lands that surrounded the lands they used for habitation, where they had drilled wells and made their homes. Briar May’s pack had their forests for their wild runs, celebrations, ceremonies, and protection. His pack had the desert. Those who thought the desert was just an endless stretch of sand hadn’t been to Arizona. Their land was full of caves and mesas, hard rocky bluffs painted in bands of striated red dirt.

Alexander marched him straight to a cave that was already chosen.

It would be Castor’s place of death.

Ever inventive, his father had secured a rope to the cave’s rocky ceiling. It was enough to hold his weight and had been for the past day. There was no light that reached them back here other than the lantern Alexander brought with him every time he appeared, and took every time he left, but Castor figured it had been at least that long. His internal clock was a finely honed device.

If he had a reputation as a stone-cold killer, his father had one for being heartless. He’d never truly believed it, but now as his sire stalked around him on silent footfalls, dressed in his usual black garb and combat boots, he could see the murderous intent gleaming in his eyes.

Castor’s arms had long ago ceased aching. His body was a mess of bruises and cuts. His sire carved his face not more than twelve hours ago, while he hung from the cave’s roof, his hands bound, helpless to resist.

He hadn’t resisted a single thing. It angered his father, he knew. It only made it harder on himself that he didn’t flinch from the blows or make a sound when the knife pricked his skin, when hot pokers branded him, when flesh was carved from his body.

Betraying the pack was a grave matter and they were all raised in fear of it. No one wanted to be tortured for days and killed in some brutal, medieval style execution, so pack members generally strayed from mutiny, disobedience, switching sides, or other acts of cowardice. They toed the line, or they ended up like him. He’d seen what they’d done to their enemies in the past. He knew what his father was capable of.

He’d proved it last night, carving BETRAYER into Castor’s chest with a penknife. The marks were healing now already, despite the lack of food or water his shifter physiology still held up. But for how long he didn’t know. At least he hadn’t tied him in the hecolite stone mesh.

Not that he could shift when immobilized like this, but at least he could still feel his wolf.

Castor’s body screamed with the stretching, all his muscles turning to fire for the first few hours, but now he felt nothing. He would continue to feel nothing. He knew how to go so far inside himself that he couldn’t be pulled back out. He’d started the process the second he’d realized what his father had planned for him. He’d failed to realize just how bitter, prideful, and power hungry his father had grown over the years.

When he was younger, he’d wondered why his father hadn’t challenged for the position of alpha, Alexander Phaethon was one of the most physically imposing wolves in the pack and was unbeaten in fights. It was only as he’d gotten older, he realized that as the alpha’s right hand he held more power. Alphas may come and go, and their time in power was usually short. But the man in the sidelines who had their ear? Well, he remained an unchallenged Machiavellian figure, like the kingmakers of old, able to subtly mold the pack to how he wanted it to be.

It was laughable to think that he loved Castor because he’d fathered him. He loved nothing more than his position in the pack. They’d all subscribed to the warrior ethos and dogma for so long that not one of them had ever known softness. To them, softness needed to be rooted out, it was the source of all unravelling, a great evil.

“Boy. You’re going to say those words before the night is out, even if I have to tear them out of your corpse.”

Castor didn’t blink. He didn’t make a sound and remained motionless. He’d already vowed that he would die silently. He’d die as a warrior would, and that alone would prove that his father was wrong. Unfortunately, he’d be on the wrong side of the turf to ever get to ream any satisfaction from the action.

Like he prepared himself for battle, he prepared himself for death. He’d go boldly and bravely. He’d shut everything else out.

Alexander cracked his knuckles, the pops echoing in the cave. The sound of his fist smashing into Castor’s right cheekbone, breaking open the cut like an overripe apple, echoed as well.

All Castor felt was a dull ache even though he knew that his bones had just shattered. He could feel the hot salty blood flowing down his cheek. The whole cave reeked of salt and metal, but the scent of fresh blood was so much riper than the dried sweat and blood that had already soaked into the packed earth at his feet.

He closed his eyes and let himself drift back. Back to Briar May. Back to her honey soft eyes, shining bright with wonder and happiness. She laughed so easily. She wore her emotions without shame. Briar May wasn’t evil. She was perfect.

As long as he was here, then she and her pack were safe. He’d die, probably hacked to pieces after another week of long, drawn-out torture, but she wouldn’t have to know. She’d think he was free.

“It doesn’t make sense! You think I’m a fool?”

Castor’s body swayed as a series of brutal blows pummeled him in the ribs. He would have doubled over out of instinct if he hadn’t been bound. He wouldn’t have been able to remain stoic and not fight back. It was difficult to breathe past the damage to his internal organs. It felt like at least two of his ribs were broken, jamming into his lung. His airway rattled when he breathed, and he spat out a froth of saliva and blood.

He forced his swollen eyes open and glared at his father.

It rankled that the older man looked so much like Pollux had. He was harder, with lines and wrinkles that a brutal life carved into his flesh. He wore them with pride and honor. He’d cropped his hair short, almost down to the skull, but his long beard was threaded through with visibly silvery strands.

There was nothing human about his eyes, and now they were dark and crazed. Castor breathed out, realizing that the men he killed often looked him in the eye. His light, ice blue eyes were the last thing they saw before they died. He exhaled shallowly, until his ribs pressed in again. He inhaled just as tentatively.

He hadn’t betrayed his pack, but his father had reneged on the promise made between the Nightfall Pack’s alpha, and his own pack. A promise that once broken could usher in a new era of bloodshed. That was the betrayal. He was the one betrayed. He was the one wronged. He should be the one taking his revenge.

In the past, he would have. Even if it meant harming his own father. He might not have killed him, but he would have beaten him senseless and left him behind. He wanted to pummel Alexander until barely a breath remained in him and then walk away. He’d turn his back on his pack. Make a fresh start somewhere else.

But it wasn’t possible.

As long as he was out there and alive, Briar May would be in danger. She certainly wouldn’t be safe if he ever went to her pack. He couldn’t go and claim her. Couldn’t try to live a life worthy of her. He couldn’t do what he’d scoffed at before and try to change.

He couldn’t think that he’d lost her. He didn’t want to relive the knowing that he’d never see her again. She hadn’t been in the crowd when he was released. He’d die here in this cave, far away from her, knowing that he’d never had her in the first place. She wasn’t his. He wasn’t worthy of her. She was innocent and sweet. She had the capacity for great love. He was polluted with a blood-stained soul. He didn’t know anything about love. He knew attachment, duty, obligation. In some cases, people used cruelty as a shield for something worse, but not a single one of them in his pack had ever tried to hide what they were.

For the first time ever, he felt like he didn’t fit.

He no longer wanted to channel inside himself, numb to life, numb to feeling, numb to the endless loss. He wanted to howl and scream and fight and tear his way back to the one woman who ever made him feel like he was worth the life in his body. She made him want a forever he didn’t have.

***

A hissing sound forced Castor to open his eyes again and he wondered if he’d blacked out. Alexander met his gaze steadily. He was standing right in front of him, waiting for him to see and knowwhat was about to happen.

“That’s right, son. I’ll flay you alive. I won’t stop. Not until you’re dead. I’ll make it last days. Weeks, if I have to. You’ll break in the end. No true son of mine betrays his own people. You’re no wolf. You’re unworthy of the Phaethon name. You’ve shit all over your own flesh and blood, so I’ll strip your flesh from your body, and I’ll bleed the blood from you until there’s nothing left. Unless…” He uncoiled the whip and lashed it against the ground, kicking up a fine layer of gritty dust. “Unless you tell me why you didn’t avenge your brother.”

Castor studied the crags and juts in the cave wall, staring fixedly ahead. He didn’t have to worry about breaking. He could die with a clean conscience. It didn’t rankle that his own father refused to believe him innocent. He didn’t recoil from the violence and the pain coming for him. He barely felt it anymore, and not just as a defense mechanism. He’d been trained as a child to be robotic like that. No amount of torture was going to undo the years he’d spent perfecting that skill.

Alexander stalked around to the back of him. Castor had immediately been stripped naked in the cave, as if that humiliation would force him to feel the sting of shame.

His father tested the whip, letting it sing through the air, crackling like a jagged lightning bolt. He didn’t brace. It would only hurt more. He closed his eyes and went to that place he’d carved out inside. Tunneled into his own skin so that when the first ripple of air shifted in the cave and the first stripe of fire peeled his flesh from his shoulders and cut all the way down to his ass cheeks, it was no more than a minor sunburn.

He counted the blows like he was outside of himself. By the tenth, he wondered how much skin actually remained to flay off his body. Everything from his shoulders down to his calves had been opened. The floor beneath him was stained red, his blood pooling until it was soaked up by the thirsty earth.

“Say it!” Alexander’s screamed command echoed through the cave. “Fucking say it, or I won’t stop until there’s nothing left to bandage and repair. I won’t stop until you’re cut into pieces, your body burned and the earth you were scattered on is sown with salt. Your spirit will have no rest. This is no warrior’s death. This is the death of a man too afraid to admit to his shame. This is the death of a coward.”

Castor almost wished he could make his thick tongue work in a mouth that was all metal and salt. He would be able to get the words out past his broken, split lips. Through the thick, dry paste of days without water. He almost, almost wished he’d break the vow he’d made to himself to stay silent no matter what happened, just so he could inform his crazed sire that kindergarten taunts weren’t going to work if tearing half the flesh from his body hadn’t already. He might goad Alexander into finishing the job early. It only rankled that the loss of control would indeed feel like the coward’s way out, and that wasn’t for him.

A noble death wasn’t in the cards, but then, he’d always thought he’d end up taking a bullet in the back of the skull one night. It was a hazard of the profession. He didn’t think it would be like this. It was quite ignoble, but ultimately, what death wasn’t?

The next inhale sent a wave of light flashing through his skull. Briar May. His arms wrapped around her. Old. Together. The sun coming through a cabin window, both of them tucked up on a bed they’d spent a lifetime loving in. They were ready, and yet still, a lifetime wasn’t even close to enough.

Forgive me. Forgive me for being only a mortal. Forgive me for not fighting my way back to you. I would move the heavens themselves if it would make a difference.

“You’re no son of mine. The greatest relief I will ever feel in this life is when you take your last, traitorous breath. You haven’t just betrayed your alpha, your pack, and your father. You’ve betrayed your twin brother. You failed to avenge him.”

That stung the way that no whip could. It curled through him like his own axe blades had been sunk deep in his chest, severing the cords of his heart. Would his twin understand why he didn’t want to hurt Briar May’s family, or would Pollux sneer at him? Would he too accuse him of betraying him, of weakness? He pictured the bright shining star in the sky he looked to, now that his brother was gone. Pollux had murdered a woman in his lawless group for simply falling in love. She’d broken their oath. It wounded him like salt poured over his broken body that no, his brother wouldn’t understand.

“I don’t think what I carved into you went deep enough for it to register.” Castor tried not to choke on the shock of seeing his own axe, a weapon he’d wielded many times like it was sacred, in his father’s bloody hand. “This should be more effective than the knife. What say you, boy? Have you a confession for me now?”

Castor’s broken lips pressed firmly together. He let his head hang limp, let his whole body go. He turned into nothingness again, evaporating like smoke while his blood continued to drip into the sodden earth at his feet.

“Alexander!” Heavy footfalls blared loudly through Castor’s skull.

He was fading in and out of consciousness. He tried to wrench his eyes open one more time, but there was nothing. Nothing but the firm, raspy burr of authority. He heard the strains of disgust in it as it grew closer. Agnar. His alpha.

“Get him down, now. You will patch him up and see that he won’t die when he’s transported. He needs to make it back to Wyoming or we’re at war with the Nightfall Pack. I gave them my word and you’ve turned me into a liar.”

“I don’t understand.” Alexander spat into the dirt. “He betrayed us. He’s paying the price. He’s not going anywhere.”

“He is indeed leaving. I’m washing my hands of him, and so will you or you’ll have me to answer to. You’re convinced he betrayed us, but I have my doubts. I don’t think Kieran Nightfall would have a reason to lie to us, in order to save a wolf that he should by all rights want to kill himself for kidnapping his own sister. We’d repay that act with death here. Not everyone practices the same way of life as we do, but all the same. He has no reason to play us false. They have greater resources. Wealth. Alliances. They could bring the entire force of the packs who surround them after us. This is a war we can’t win. I won’t take it on when I’ve promised my people peace—your son, Pollux, joined the Rangers and brought this upon us, death for a death. The debt has already been paid. He’s to be cleaned up and sent back to them as a continued measure of peace.”

“Why would they demand him?”

“I have no notion of their reasoning,” Agnar said roughly, and it was clear what he thought of the idea when his voice lowered. He was eager to be rid of the whole mess. He didn’t truly care whether Castor lived or died so long as he did it after he’d arrived packaged neatly onto the Nightfall doorstep. “I’ve already given my word that it will be done. Make a liar of me and I promise you, Alexander, you will end up right where your son is now.”