Page 13 of Despair

I swallowed thickly as he walked away from the bars and slumped to his knees, locking his fingers behind his neck. There was something about seeing his surrender that knocked whatever strength I’d found out of me. The powerful man brought to his knees by the evil of the doctor whose brilliance I’d once worshipped left no room for doubt about exactly how hopeless our situation was.

I didn’t fight Kenneth as burly guards entered 351’s section of the room, dragging all manner of equipment with them. It struck me, as I watched them set up what looked like training dummies and some sort of gym equipment, that they could have easily done this before 351 and I had been brought to the room. But Dr. Axell chose to wait until we were here to demonstrate how complete his power now was over the feral alpha.

When the guards were done and had exited the room, Dr. Axell addressed 351 once more.

“Let’s start easy today. Please complete your training, 351. The full course. You have… thirty-five minutes. Starting now.”

351 cast one long, lingering look on me still sagging in Kenneth’s grip. Then he got to his feet and approached the first training dummy.

6

351

The second the cell door shut behind them for the night, his mate went to the mattress and sank down, curling in on herself.

She didn’t protest this time when he wrapped himself around her. Instead of stiffening at his touch like she had before, she closed her eyes and buried her face in the arm he offered as a pillow.

The wetness from her lashes made the hollow in his gut expand.

He’d done everything that’d been asked of him. He’d worked through the exercises, multiple times at ever-narrowing time gaps to satisfy their captor’s increasing demands, until his muscles ached so bad he could hardly move. And still, he’d continued becausehe’ddemanded it. But in the end, it wasn’t fast enough—he couldn’t physically press his body any faster, and she’d suffered for his failure.

Her screams of agony still haunted him.

351 had refused to play the doctor’s games since he got there, only ever indulging in the heat-provoked matings. He had taken every beating and sick punishment, refusing to bend to the other alpha. His conviction that he would never submit to the doctor’s will had lasted until he saw his mate writhing in torment.

He could take pain—had been trained to take it for as far back as the fog would let him remember. But nothing had ever felt like the bond hooked in his chest had while the woman he was born to protect cried out for mercy, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

That… that had broken him. Even in his drugged state, he’d known he’d been beaten. Known his captors truly owned him now. They’d taken the last scrap of him, leaving nothing behind but a void.

And her.

He clutched her tighter to his chest, ignoring the agony in his worn muscles. If they ever took her from him, there would truly be nothing left of what had once been a man, only an empty shell and the broken mind of a tortured beast.

The next day was better.

They strapped them both to a chair, told him if he screamed the pain would be given to his mate instead, and sent electric currents through his body.

He didn’t make a sound—couldn’t, because directly in front of him sat his female with wide, frightened eyes. And he couldn’t fail her again. Couldn’t hear her pained cries and feel the agony in their bond.

So he endured in silence, even as his body twitched and strained while the voltage surged through him, stronger and stronger until finally, blackness took him.

They forced him back to consciousness with a bucket of freezing water and started the electricity again, but he never broke. And his mate was safe.

When they tossed him on the floor of his cell after, he didn’t have the strength to move the few feet to the mattress. But she brought it over to his side and pulled and strained to get him off the concrete, begging him to move, and somehow he managed to climb onto it.

His mate curled up by his side, her slim arms wrapping around his body as she whispered“I’m sorry”over and over.

Her tears wetted his skin again, but this time it felt like rain after a long drought. He fell into darkness, the bond in his chest humming softly as his mate tended to his beaten body.

He was awakenedby a female’s hysterical sobs, and jerked upright despite protesting muscles, heart slamming into overdrive as he sought his mate.

But she was sitting on the mattress by his side, eyebrows locked in a frown as she peered out through the bars.

It took him a moment to realize the commotion was coming from out there, but he couldn’t see anyone. Steel shrieked as the door opened and the alpha in the cell on the other side of the concrete wall growling accompanied the panicked female’s sobs.

“What’s happening?” he asked, voice low to not draw attention from their captors.

His mate turned toward him, eyebrows raised. “You can speak?”

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