Page 60 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
Because her own childhood had been entirely devoid of fairness, of any semblance of what could reasonably be deemed right and wrong, Jack fervently believed in taking responsibility for those errors one could claim as one’s own . . .
And this one was all hers.
Hawk. My strange, maddening, wonderful enemy/protector/betrayer/friend . . . this one isn’t on you.
“Mr. Alpha,” Jack said quietly, looking at Alejandro, “I will tithe for both of them. I offer belu for Hawk and Nando.”
The hooded man seemed aghast at the turn in events. He stood dumbly with the cane gripped in his hand, looking back and forth between her and Alejandro, his gaze confounded.
The Alpha stared at her long and hard. He muttered, “So be it,” and gestured for Hawk to be released.
It took four men to subdue him once his wrists had been unbound. They wrestled him to the ground, shouting, throwing punches, until finally he lay on his stomach with his arms bent painfully behind his back, a knee between his shoulder blades, pinned but still struggling to get free.
He kept shouting as the Alpha opened his palm toward the hooded man, kept shouting as Jack stepped to the tree, kept shouting as the hooded man instructed her to remove her jacket and shirt. She did, hands shaking, and stood there in only her bra, deeply frightened but understanding this kind of ritual punishment meant there were rules, rules that could be learned and obeyed—or smartly circumvented.
If they meant to kill her, there would be a different kind of ceremony for that, she felt sure.
The hooded man’s two assistants encircled her wrists with iron, and chained her to the tree. The rough bark scraped her stomach and breasts. The night air felt cool and soft against the bare skin of her back.
Her heart pounded so frantically she couldn’t catch her breath.
“Jacqueline Dolan,” said the Alpha, his voice tight and dark. “Reporter for the New York Times . . . human. You have invoked belu in accordance with the ancient rites, and will stand in place for the two you have named. You will receive . . .”
There was a long, terrible pause. Jack closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the tree trunk, waiting.
“Fifty lashes.”
Only fifty. She sagged against the chains, grateful for this show of mercy. On the ground, Hawk began screaming.
“No! No! No! Alejandro, please! Don’t! I’ll take twice my punishment! She can’t heal the way we do—she’ll be hurt—she’ll be scarred!”
His screams were ignored.
The Alpha asked her, “Do you have anything to say before punishment commences?”
Jack began to shake so badly the chains rattled. She looked up and found Morgan’s face in the crowd, saw her standing with both hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes bright with unshed tears.
It hit her like a wrecking ball. Morgan was going to cry for her.
Witnessing her fear, this woman, this stranger—this creature she’d once argued should be exterminated—was going to cry. She was going to engage in that dreaded, deadly show of weakness. And there was Hawk on the ground, screaming he’d take twice what he’d been given, so she could be spared. Even the hooded one didn’t want to hurt her. She’d seen it in his eyes. As she looked around the gathered faces—most stunned, some confused, others obviously feeling compassion for her predicament—she had the startling epiphany that Hawk had been right.
She was a bigot. She’d judged them all based on the actions of one.
Then came another swift, terrible realization: they lived in isolation like this, here in the darkest heart of the jungle, because of people like her. Because of humans, who’d hunted them near to extinction centuries ago, who were even now trying to do the same thing.
And this Draconian system of punishment she was about to become so familiar with was, in all likelihood, designed in an effort to keep them safe. Hidden.
But it actually kept them oppressed.
In a hoarse, tremulous voice, Jack said, “Yes, I do have something to say.” She took several deep breaths, trying to steady her shaking voice and body, but it didn’t help. So when she spoke it was with that awful, telling tremor of fear, her voice as loud as it would go. It carried well past the tree and the clearing, into the humid dark of the night.
“I was wrong to judge you. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
There was another silence, broken only by Hawk’s continual pleading.
Then Alejandro said simply, “Begin.”
Four feet long, half an inch thick, soaked in an antiseptic bath made from boiling the roots of the suma plant and the leaves of the flowering herb clavillia, the cane applied with full force to the naked skin of Jacqueline Dolan’s back and shoulders was mad
