Page 82 of The Alpha King's Fate

‘Don’t let them know that we can communicate. I’m behind you.”

She took her time inspecting the other people she could see in the room. Besides the awful smells in the room, she picked up a few different familiar scents. People from her pack. Were the scouts there, too?

When she finally looked behind her, her heart broke.

Faith’s hair was wild and matted already as if she had been there longer than they had been told. Dirt and grime covered her face, and a filthy hospital gown covered her body. It looked more brown than white like hers was.

What did they do to her?

Her hand came up to her mouth to stop herself from crying out. Faith couldn’t fight off so many Hunters... Lead settled in her stomach as tears filled her eyes.

‘They have cameras set up all over the warehouse. We can’t move or talk without them knowing about it. They monitor us twenty-four-seven.’

Faith didn’t move as she mind-linked. She didn’t give any indication that she knew her. The young girl kept her arms around her knees, resting her head on them.

‘Keep yourself on the mat. The cages are silver; they’re using them to weaken us.”

Only then did she notice the small, square mat Faith was sitting on. They were all sitting like that, not out of choice but out of necessity.

‘You’ve been out for a few minutes, lying directly on the silver bars. Move quickly; you might be able to explain it away.’

She looked down at her hands and realised she was still directly on the silver. There were no burns on her skin like there should have been. If the Hunters were watching, then they would have seen that. There would be no explaining that away.

She moved to the mat quickly and avoided Faith’s gaze. The last thing she wanted to do was make them target her.

Her worst fear came true, after all. The Hunters came back for her. When that menacing Hunter called her Catrina Smith, she’d known she was screwed. He still remembered her fake name from their run-in in the woods, and he’d done his research to find her real name.

Because he’d also found her mother?

Her heart pounded as she rose to her knees and looked around the warehouse. Her vision was limited, and her other senses scrambled, but if her mother was near, she would have caught her scent the same way she’d caught Faith’s and the scouts’.

‘How long have you been here?’ she asked Faith.

There was silence for a while. Had Faith not heard her? She glanced at her and saw the tears falling down the girl’s cheeks.

‘I don’t know,’ Faith answered finally. ‘The days and nights are all the same. I don’t know what day it is. Even when they take us out...’

She turned her head quickly to look at the young girl.

‘Take you out? Where do you go? What do they do?’

A sob left Faith’s mouth, and her tears fell faster, no matter how often she wiped her face.

“Miss?”

For a second, she couldn’t figure out where the small voice came from. She looked behind Faith and to the cage next to her. A man in a pair of shorts sat in pretty much the same position Faith was in, but cuts covered his whole body. She could see his body twitch as if his muscles were protesting. The mat wasn’t big enough for his large body.

“Miss?” the voice said again.

She looked up at the cage directly above Faith’s and sucked in a breath when she saw a little girl, no older than nine or ten, peering between the silver bars. She smelled faintly of a wolf but was too young to have shifted. The silver wouldn’t hurt her as much as it did the shifted wolves.

“I think he’s dead,” the girl said, looking at the cage that was beside her.

And sure enough, the man who’d sat on the little mat when she woke up was slumped over. The smell of burning flesh hit her nostrils but the man didn’t react. He was gone.

She covered her mouth again.

Was this going to be everyone’s fate? Were they all going to give up and die rather than endure more torture?

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