Page 42 of Shattered Fears

“Seriously, threaten me with all the violence you want. Your questions will go unanswered.”

Isobel’s father laughed. It wasn’t the chuckle of a sane man, no, it was that of someone high on the power they had.

“I wasn’t threatening the violence on you.” The senator stepped closer to his son, and before Zain had had a chance to say anything, the man punched his own son in the stomach. Kingsley groaned out loud and tried to curl his body up but couldn’t. The cut to his side, where his tattoo had been cut away, started to bleed afresh and dripped on to the floor. “Now, I do believe the doctor asked you a question. I suggest you answer it, or there’ll be more pain for my son.”

“Zain, don’t listen to him,” Kingsley breathlessly moaned, and his father hit him again.

“Come on. We don’t have all the information we need. I want to know what I’m up against when I go to retrieve my daughter and add some shifter heads to my trophy collection.”

“What kind of sick individual are you?” Zain couldn’t believe what he was seeing. A father inflicting violence on his own son just to obtain information. “You’ve got no chance of ever getting near Isobel again. Not if I have anything to do with it.”

The senator rolled his eyes.

“I’m getting bored. I want answers, thing. Now, give them to me.”

Zain looked over at Kingsley. He was sturdy and well built; he worked out and looked after himself. He could withstand a few more punches to buy them more time. Kingsley saw him weighing up his options and gave him a nod to say he agreed with keeping quiet.

“Go to hell,” Zain stated and turned his head away.

The senator grumbled loudly and cursed a profanity, which Scott would have been proud to use, even after someone told him that he had a gray hair. He stomped to the door, every footstep filling the clinical room with the sound of the anger that the older man was feeling. He flung the door open and called for someone named Jett. A man, as tall as he was wide, entered the room.

“I think our visitor needs a bit of extra encouragement to tell us more about himself.”

“At once, sir.”

Zain shut his eyes. A sixty-year-old man hitting Kingsley was one thing…but this other guy. It was going to hurt badly.

“What the fuck?” Kingsley exclaimed loudly. “You’ve gone mad.”

Zain opened his eyes and saw the man, who had just entered the room, pull a finger guillotine out of his pocket and push Kingsley’s left index finger through it. Kingsley tried to pull away, but he was bound too tightly. No, no, no. He couldn’t let this happen.

“I can hear up to twice the distance and frequency that you can,” he spluttered out as quickly as he could.

“Thank you.” The senator smiled. “That wasn’t hard, now, was it?”

“Let him go, and I’ll tell you everything you want. He’s not a part of this.” Zain was trying his hardest to bargain, now. The senator obviously meant serious business, and he needed to get Kingsley out of there as soon as possible.

“Not happening.” As he said it, Isobel’s father signaled to Jett to bring the guillotine down. It severed Kingsley’s finger with such ferocity that the digit flew across the room. Isobel’s brother howled out in agony, but when Zain looked at her father, no emotion flickered on his face. From that point, the senator ceased to be a man who demanded any respect from him, whatsoever.

“In future, you will answer my questions straight away.” The words were spoken in a tone laced with ice, causing Zain to shiver. “How do you change?”

Kingsley screamed louder and louder in the background. Zain could only compare it to the pain a shifter experienced on his first few changes. It was often painful because the bones broke, but if you got through it, then it rarely hurt after that.

“We think about it, and it just happens. Our bones break and reform into that of an animal.”

“It’s genetic? No moonlight needed or anything?”

“No.”

“You’re a black bear?”

“Yes.”

“Were your parents?”

“Both of them.”

He was answering the questions like he was on autopilot. His whole mind was shutting down, despite the danger he was in, because of the shock of seeing a man torture his own son to obtain answers about his kind.

---