Chapter 562 - Let’s start over
Gray and Riven locked eyes for half a second, the same dread flashing between them, then tore out of the pack house without another word, as they raced toward the dungeon like the place itself might swallow her whole before they got there.
Ravyn pushed himself up off the floor of Bryan’s room, face completely blank and empty of anything that looked human, and walked straight for the wine cabinet in the main hall.
He needed something strong enough to shut his mind up for even a little while, something that would burn the memories out of him if he poured enough of it down.
He grabbed a bottle of hard liquor, cracked the seal with one hard twist, and poured the whole thing down his throat like it was nothing more than water.
The burn tore through him hot and vicious, but he barely flinched, eyes already searching for the next bottle. He reached for another and emptied that one too, throat working hard as the liquor hit. Then another, and another.
By the time he staggered back toward Bryan’s room his steps were all over the place, vision swimming in and out, and the alcohol still hadn’t quieted the memories clawing through his head like they had claws of their own.
He collapsed onto the floor beside the bed, body too heavy to move another inch, the empty bottles rolling away from his fingers.
Down in the dungeon Gray and Riven could hear Daisy’s cries long before they reached the entrance.
The warrior who’d been posted there had even stepped away from the door, face tight like he didn’t want to be anywhere near what was happening inside. Riven’s voice came out sharp and hard.
"What’s going on?"
The warrior turned and started talking, eyes not quite meeting theirs.
"That woman sent pack members down here before and told us not to feed them. Even when they died, she wouldn’t let us take the bodies out. Our Alpha only found out after he dragged her down here himself, so he left her with the skeletal remains of the people she starved. When she saw Raul the two of them got into it hard. She overpowered him because of his injuries and killed him right there on the floor."
The warrior hadn’t even finished the last word when a shrill scream ripped through the dungeon, raw and panicked and full of pure terror.
"Please, I’m sorry. I’m pregnant. Don’t kill me. Ravyn. Ravyn, please, you’ve gotta get me out of here. I already killed him. He won’t claim Bryan, Ravyn. Let’s start over."
Gray and Riven moved closer, faces hardening as Daisy’s voice bounced off the cold stone, every word soaked in desperation. Her tone dropped lower, almost like she was trying to convince herself Ravyn could still hear her through the dark and the walls and the distance between them.
"Don’t blame me, Ravyn. If you give me a chance, I can plead with the moon goddess to give me a new wolf. We can be happy. We can fix this."
Her voice cracked into broken sobs just as they reached the entrance, the sound so raw it scraped at their nerves. The old metal grilles looked ancient, caked with years of dirt and rust that flaked under the light.
The stench rolling out of that place hit them so hard Gray clapped a hand over his nose, eyes watering from the thick mix of blood and rot and fear. Neither of them could force themselves any farther in, feet rooted to the ground like the horror inside had reached out and grabbed them.
Riven lifted his phone light and angled it through the bars with a hand that wasn’t quite steady. The beam cut across the blackness and froze him solid. What the light caught didn’t look like Daisy anymore.
It looked like some broken, wretched thing the world had already given up on and left to rot.
Blood coated her hands and arms as she sat on the freezing stone floor right next to the man she’d just killed, face buried between her thighs like she was trying to hide from what she’d done. Her hair hung in matted clumps around her face, stuck to her skin with sweat and blood, and her whole body shook with every sob that tore out of her, shoulders jerking hard.
Gray’s stomach lurched so hard he had to swallow against the urge to gag.
"We need to get her to the hospital. Now."
He spun toward the warrior, but the man only gave them a helpless little smile that didn’t reach his eyes. "Our Alpha is the only one with the keys."
Gray’s face fell, the weight of that landing heavy. "If she stays down here much longer she might lose the pregnancy," Riven muttered, eyes still locked on the trembling figure inside like he couldn’t look away even if he wanted to.
The warrior shrugged, palms open in a way that said there was nothing he could do about it.
"Alpha says he wants nothing from her and he’ll banish her the second she loses the child. He told us not to give her food or even water."
Riven slowly shook his head, disbelief and anger twisting hard across his face until his jaw flexed.
"Ravyn’s gone ruthless. He already lost one pup. He should be protecting this one no matter what she did."
Right then the future of the pack sat at the front of his mind, louder than anything else. Whatever Daisy had done, whatever kind of monster she’d turned into, the pup inside her hadn’t done a single thing wrong.
What mattered was Ravyn’s blood running through that child. Its mother could be pure evil down to the bone, but they both believed the pup would come out different if it ever got the chance to draw breath.
They couldn’t stand there another second. Gray and Riven spun and raced back toward the pack house, lungs burning, the image of Daisy still burned into their heads.
When they burst inside, they found Ravyn’s unconscious body sprawled on the floor where he’d collapsed, empty bottles scattered around him. The sight stopped them cold.
After everything they’d just seen in that dungeon, finding him like that sent a whole different kind of fear crawling up their spines, the kind that made their hands shake when they reached for him.
They hauled him up between them and carried him straight to the pack hospital, neither of them saying much because there wasn’t anything left to say that would fix what they’d just walked into.
Both of them ended up crashing there on the hard chairs, exhaustion finally dragging them under after the night they’d had, the smell of the dungeon still clinging to their clothes.
They had no idea how much time passed when the sharp crack of a slap suddenly cut through the room, loud enough to jolt them both awake.
Neither of them felt any sting, so their eyes snapped straight to the bed. Ravyn was sitting upright, head turned to the side, eyes wide and shocked as he stared at the person standing over him.
From the look on his face the slap had landed square on him, the red mark already rising on his cheek. But when Gray and Riven saw who had delivered it, they both dropped their heads in shame for their friend...