22. Captured (part 1)

Aiden´s P.O.V.

It´s cold. I feel wind coming from somewhere and I shiver as I notice that I only have a few rags on that I can´t remember putting on. I can´t see anything, it´s too dark.

As I fully wake up, I realize that something bad has happened. Then the memories flood back into my mind. Alpha Terrance!

I hyperventilate again as I start panicking, realising my hands are tied up tightly over my head. This cannot be. I thought I was safe. Everything was so perfect...

Now, it smells like mold and like blood, long gone are the comforting scents of my mates.

My breaths are shallow and I shiver. As I move my legs, a seering pain curses through my and my stomach crunches up as all air is knocked out of my lungs. It hurts so much that I have to grit my teeth to stop a scream from coming out.

I lie there, I´m on some kind of bed, and try to get my breathing under control.

He´ll kill me this time.

That´s all I can think about as I try everything to force my breathing to slow down. I can breathe through the pain. I´ve done it before, it just didn´t feel as bad as this.

Suddenly, a heavy door is opened, making me jump and someone steps inside with an old oil lamp. I see Alpha Terrance´s face and immediately start to cry because I have earned my first punishment for looking him in the eyes.

He closes the door, walks down a staircase made out of stone, and comes towards the bed I´m in. I start struggling, only resulting in my wrists starting to bleed a little from the tight rope.

The first thing he does as he arrives is that he punches me in the face, my head flying to the left. "Ah ah ah... I´ve given you a bed to lie in and this is how you repay me?", he asks calmly. Too calmly.

"Please, I-I´m sorry... Al-Alpha...", I utter between sobs.

I scream in pain as he suddenky pulls hard on the chains that are tying my feet together. I shouldn´t hurt that bad...

I look down and thanks to the lamp he brought in, I can now see the horrific sight of both my ankles. They are swollen, red and littered with bruises. They really, really hurt.

I gasp in horror and keep looking at my injured ankles as I slowly ask: "What have you done to me?"

Alpha Terrance laughs. My stomach turns at the sound of that laugh since I´ve heard it so many times before when he had me bleeding and hurting. It´s planted in my head like a parasite.

"Well... I told you there wouldn´t be any running this time. We´ve just made sure that those little legs of yours stay where they are so we broke them both. They´ve done a good job, haven´t they? Those ropes are just there for my amusement", he laughs and I want to scream at him. Scream at him for all the times he´s made me cry, made me feel like I was merely dirt under someone´s shoe and when he made fun of me when I thought I wouldn´t survive the night... but... I just can´t find it in me. Not when I have lived in this submissive state for so long, where I never even dared to talk back to him... The fear of what he might do to me is just too grave.

I bite my tongue, trying not to cry while he´s still in this room. "Oh no need to thank me. Since you´re gonna be unable to walk for quite some time, you´re not getting any chores", he cheers as if that was a good thing, "you can just lie here and think about where you belong and what a horrible thing you did to betray your own pack."

He slaps me across the face again before pulling st the chain on my ankles again, making me grunt in pain.

"Ha... you´re probably not going to dance like that again either", he says, referring to the dancing at the gathering and coming dangerously close to my face. He must have seen me and that´s why Jax was so on edge...

I am angry right now. Angry at him for not only taking so many years of my life away and seperating me from my mates but also stealing every bit of joy that I had... like dancing.

"These Alphas of yours were pretty infatuated by you weren´t they? Well, that´s over now. But don´t worry. They will have found someone better in just a few weeks and will have forgotten about your worthless existance by then.

When we get you walking again in a year maybe, you can dance all you want for the men in this pack. I think you would serve a great porpuse as not only a house maid but also a little gift for my men. They have been on edge lately and they could use something to get their agressions out", he says clapping his hands together like he´s done a hard day of work.

He stands up. "I´ll come back later to punish you a bit after dinner. But I think I don´t want you screaming for a while. How about two days?", I´m scared and my breathing picks up.

He goes over to an old drawer next to the stone stairs that lead down here and pulls something out. I know it´s no use but I still start to beg, like I´ve done my entire pathetic life. "P-Please don´t", I let the first tears fall but he just comes closer and roughly puts a cloth on my mouth, tying it at the back of my neck, effectively gagging me. The feeling is very uncomfortable and I struggle to breathe.

"There... that´s how I like you. Nice and quiet. See you later, Omega. And just so you know, since you´re not doing any chores, there´s no need for us to feed you. You´ve become a little fat lately anyway, so it will do you good to lose some weight." He says it in a mocking tone, trying to worsen my misery. He walks casually towards the door and opens it.

Before he leave though, he turns around once more and says the words I had worked hard for to get out of my mind in the last months: "Know your place!"

With that, he closes the heavy door, once again leaving me in the darkness. That´s when I truly let go and start shaking because I´m cold and I can finally start crying. I cry for so long and so hard that soon, I start to lose my consciousness again and my head just falls to the side. The only thing in my mind the whole time is:

Will I ever see them again?