Page 113 of Mate to the Alpha Predator

He went silent.

Every moment that passed, every moment the silence remained unbroken, the heavy lead that has settled on Ismena's heard became heavier.

So heavy, she was having a hard time breathing. "And then...?" She whispered then, when she couldn't bear it anymore.

Even as she urged him on, fear weighted like a huge imposing figure inside her. Ismena was scared to hear what happened, but she was also scared of him stopping this way.

Finally, his cold eyes blinked once. "And then...I smelled her fear. Aila.One of them had gone into the house, dragged her out by the hair, held a dagger to her chest, and was smiling at me triumphantly from behind."

"Oh no...!"

"It was the first time I saw that kind of terror in her big brown-eyes before. Wolfhunters gave a condition...'we surrender or they plunge the dagger through her heart.' I surrendered. We lost and they won." Silence, "I was holding Aila's small hands in mine when they plunged that goddamned injection through my arms."

His eyes closed again. "I woke in a cage. I needed no one to tell me that I am in their infamous laboratory. According to words we heard over the years, their scientists have a monstrous, well-equipped laboratories they used to torture our kind who are werewolves. Other species, they just kill. We have been searching for their hideouts and laboratories for decades, but they stayed well-hidden."

"Finding myself in that large cage, I went into a raging frenzy, demanding to see my sister. I felt fear for the first time in my life, because I did not know if Aila was alive or not. I practically dared those scientists to come into the cage to try and punish me for the uproar, but no one dared. Instead, they convinced me that Aila was alive by making her scream from a different part of the cell which I couldn't see."

Ismena finished applying the healing potions and dropped the small bottle aside. She reached for the bandages then.

"I knew there were more of my packmates in that lab, but I was isolated just like the rest of them so I had no idea who was captured and who wasn't. To them, we were just experiments. Just animals. And they tortured and treated us like one."

"Oh my God!!" Ismena gasped, disgustedly. Her hands gripped the bandage so tight in her anger, her knuckles turned white.

He continued anyway. His tone was flat. "I was called Number 6. Aila was Number 26. For weeks, I was more drugged than sober. They did all kinds of experiments on me, focusing on me solely because they got the idea that I was the strongest of 'them all'."

"In that lab, their aim was; to know everything about our DNA so they can find out our weaknesses and explore them, and also to create werewolves babies, keep them away and raise them into armies under their commands that can do all they say, and also help annihilate our kind."

"That is so horrible...!"

"I heard most of my people die from the monstrous drugs and experiments. I was in a rage all the time...fear and misery. I was unable to protect my sister. I know they'd drugged her up and forced our males to rape her several times. She and the few other changeling females in that lab. Their screams—likewise the roars of the males—can be heard through the thick walls and iron barricades."

Her hands shook as she put the last bandage on the wound. Her vision of his leg blurred, not because of the darkness of the night, but because of the tears that has filled her eyes.

"They used drugs to keep us in animal form most of the time, and still use drugs to make us force-shift when they want to, especially when they want to breed us. Two scientists discussed my people's pains all the time in front of my cage." He swallowed again, his eyes opened. "They talked casually about how my people die so rapidly from their drugs and tortures."

Age-old rage filled him, Wolfaraine can no longer sit still again. The werewolf and the mountain lion were filled with fury inside him, clawing at him in agitation and restlessness to be let out.

Barely keeping himself from vibrating visibly with his rage, pain, and misery. He rose to his feet and walked towards the big window beside his bed.

His shoulders still bled from the ghastly untreated bruises, and his left leg throbbed in a giant pain with each step he took towards the window, but he did not stop.

He did not stagger. He did not limp.

"Most of those untested drugs they used on us were very hard and deadly to the wolf but because those drugs get the job done, those humans did not care about the consequences...the excruciating pain. It only angered those humans that their lab-rats were dying off, not that they are actually killing beings with feelings. They drugged me up more than the others, so why am I not dying? Those were their baffling questions."

Ismena stood up too but she didn't move with him. Instead, she wrapped her hands around her suddenly chilled arms and rubbed vigorously.

"They had no idea that I have two beastly forms. That was how I stayed alive as long as I did. Most of those drugs that would have killed me in wolf-form were absorbed by the part of me that is a cougar. They did not know that, they only know that I was more powerful and not dying."

"Because of that, they focused more of their drugs and experiments on me and made it their life's mission to make sure that my seed takes root in a female. They bred me with all females both humans and changelings. They needed my child."

"Heavens..." The tears she was trying to hold for minutes finally escaped her eyes in waves, down her cheeks, and splashed on her chest. Her body, naked under the towel, have long dried but she did not bother with it.

He turned and faced her. The fury and raw pain she saw on his face were like a punch to her belly.

"In that cage, I swore that I would never birth a child. Not then, not in the future. Not ever. It is better any child of mine does not come into this world than to be caged, tortured, or trained by those monsters." He looked her in the eyes and stated baldly.

How can people be so wicked? She looked away so he wouldn't see her blink those tears away.

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