Page 102 of The Alpha King's Fate

“Wait,” Dylan said, pulling a phone from his pocket. “Gavin’s moving. I think they’ve taken him.”

Chapter 46

‘You have to move back, Miss Layla. There’s nothing you can do for her now.’

Faith’s words cut her—nothing she could do.

How many children did they have locked up like this? What traumas had they already endured? Was this the world Hope would grow up in?

Her stomach rumbled, but she ignored it as she kept her face against the silver bars, looking over at the girl who hadn’t stopped crying since the Hunters threw her into the cage. She looked even younger than the girl above Faith, maybe five or six.She hadn’t heard anyone else being brought in with her, so she might have been alone. Where did the Hunters find her? Why was she covered in blood?

‘Do you think they killed her family?’

‘Or they could have just snatched her off the street like they did to me,’ Faith answered. ‘I still don’t know how they found out. I was always so careful around humans and went two towns over when I needed to shift. But they caught me as I walked back to my room after classes.’

She turned back to look at Faith. It was easy for a wolf to know when a Hunter was close because of their scent, so how were they hiding themselves? How were Hunters being so accurate in determining where the wolves would be? The unshifted girls barely smelled of wolves, so even if they used their hounds, they shouldn’t have caught the girls.

‘Something is different with them. Something’s off.’

‘I’ve never seen a Hunter in person, so I don’t know. But I’ve never heard of them experimenting on us before. You might be right.’

Faith sighed and put her head down on her knees. Her arms trembled as she tightened them around her legs to keep her body on the small mat under her. She could see the exhaustion that was weighing the young girl down. How long were they expected to sit like that? Not moving in case they sat on the silver and poisoned themselves?

She looked back down at her own body. She stopped bleeding and was far from healed, but she’d been able to sprawl across the cage to get into a more comfortable position. No one else could do that.

Except for her mother.

Somewhere in this hellhole, her mother was going through the same thing.

Wincing, she forced her body back on the mat and mirrored the way Faith was sitting. Since the Hunters had cameras on them, it wouldn't make a difference now, but she didn't want to be comfortable when her people were not.

Her people. She had to save them. Somehow.

A sound she came to dread echoed through the warehouse, and the atmosphere changed again. The metal door, the heavy boots... Who did they come for this time?

'Keep your head down,' Faith said urgently.

She didn’t think they were picking their victims randomly. She and the scout were chosen soon after their arrival. Did that mean they had come for the little girl?

She rose to her knees and rushed to the bars again. As expected, four Hunters appeared at the top of the aisle—the two in front with their weapons and the two at the back ready to drag the next wolf away. The little girl wouldn’t survive the things they subjected her to.

Desperation rose inside her when she saw their expressionless faces. They didn’t care if the girl survived or not. They would just remove her body from the cage as they had done several times.

They walked past her and stopped at the cage. The girl must have sensed them because she stopped crying and lifted her head. And then she scooted to the back of her cage, her fear clear on her face and eyes. They must have already done something horrific to put that much fear in her.

“Please... Take me, instead,” she whispered. “She's just a little girl.”

One Hunter unlocked the girl’s cage, and the other reached inside. The girl screamed and pushed back against the silver bars.

“Please! Leave her alone,” she shouted.

They didn’t react to her words; she wasn’t even sure if they could hear her.

‘Miss Layla. Please don’t do this,’ Faith said in her head.

The Hunter reached in farther, his large hand swiping across the empty space as he tried to get his target. Her screams turned to sobs. Gut-wrenching sobs as if, even at her tender age, she understood that she wouldn’t come back alive.

The Hunter pulled back without a word and stood back, signalling for another to step forward. The monster pulled something off the arsenal of weapons strapped to his body and approached the cage. It wasn’t until the little girl’s sobs cut off that she understood what she was looking at.

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