Slain

When you see my face

Hope it gives you hell

-Gives You Hell, All-American Rejects

Fluffy puts thick iron cuffs on my wrists before the other wolf lets go of my throat. He then jerks me to my feet and pulls me back towards the large stone building I came from, through the stone hallways and back down in the dungeon where I’m put back in my cell. He leaves without a word.

I sit down on my cot, trying to block out the stench of rotting flesh and feces as I begin to work out a better plan of escape. The guy in the cell to my right pushes his dirty face between the bars and watches me silently. After a few minutes of him staring at me, I finally snap. “Do you like having eyes?”

He seems surprised by my words at first, but then quickly nods his head yes, a smile spreading across his face, displaying brown, rotting teeth.

“Then stop staring at me.” He doesn’t seem to understand my meaning, so I lean towards him, making sure to speak slowly. “If you don’t mind your own business, I’m gonna gouge your eyes out.”

He bursts into a thick, wheezing cackle, seeming to find my threat hilarious. I narrow my eyes, unamused. “What’s so funny?”

The man pushes his greasy, dirty blonde hair back from his face before grasping the bars in his hands. “You,” he says simply, his words thick with poor articulation.

“You think losing your eyes is funny?” I question in annoyance.

He shrugs his shoulders, the thin, tattered rag he wears as a shirt slipping off one of his shoulders to expose more dirt covered skin. “When the threat comes from a little girl, it is,” he responds, still smiling. My anger rises and I’m about to make good on my threat when a voice sounds from behind me.

“Leave the girl alone, Felix,” the man in the cell on my other side says with a sigh. By his tone, I can tell he doesn’t like Felix anymore than I do.

Felix scowls at the other prisoner. “You’s wasn’t asked for you’s opinion, Garred.”

“Yeah, well you’s wasn’t asked to bother me,” I cut in, mocking the way he speaks.

He turns his orange-y yellow eyes back on me, now seeming angry. “If I ever reach you’s-”

“I’ll kick your sorry ass.” I cut him off, completely uninterested in his threat. I sit back down on my cot and lay back on the lumpy rolled up rag that serves as my pillow, intending on getting some rest. I’m gonna need it if I’m gonna get outta here.

I’m jolted awake by loud metallic clanking. I quickly realize it’s the prison guard walking along the cells dragging a short metal bar against the cell bars. He yells at the prisoners as he passes and someone follows behind him with a rusty metal cart with small bowls and a hunk of old, crusty bread on top who slips the bowl into the cells as he passes. They reach my cell, pausing outside my bars to peer inside at me in wonder, muttering to each other. I glower at them, waiting until they get a good distance down the corridor from my cell before I grab the bowl on the floor. I realize the hunk of bread is sitting on a small plate that rests in the top of the bowl. When I remove the plate, I see that the bowl is filled halfway with water.

Old bread and water, my favorite.

I nibble on the bread, realizing how hungry I actually am. The bread is terribly dry and crusty - barely edible. I wouldn’t eat it if I hadn’t lost so much blood yesterday. After every bite, I have to chase it with a gulp of water or I can’t swallow.

The sound of feet on stone catches my attention, but I make no visible acknowledgment of it. Instead, I continue to nibble on my bread. The feet approach my cell, stopping in front of it without a word. I look up to see my two new best friends, Scruffy and Fluffy.

I lean back on my elbow, smirking smugly at the two. “Oh, how honored I am that you’ve come to visit me in my humble home. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Both of them ignore my words. “How many slayers are in your settlement?” Scruffy asks instead.

I frown at him in mock disapproval. “You can’t answer a question with a question, that’s rude.”

“Answer,” Fluffy growls in annoyance. I’m amused by his anger and can’t help but egg him on.

I tear off a piece of bread and throw it at him, saying, “Not unless I get better food. That’s barely edible.”

“You don’t get to make demands,” Scruffy responds.

I simply tear off another chunk of bread and throw it at Scruffy. “Well, I am.”

“Tell me what I want to know and maybe you’ll be rewarded with a better meal,” Scruffy offers gruffly. He’s not as laid back as yesterday, maybe because we have an audience and he doesn’t want to show weakness. Either way, it’s much more fun.

“You’ll have to kill me,” I say smugly, throwing the rest of my bread at him.

He presses his lips into a firm line. “That can be arranged.” He gestures to the prison guard standing a few feet away. The guard comes and unlocks my cell, surprising me. I didn’t think he would take me up on it right now.

Scruffy walks in, grabbing my arm and jerking me to my feet. He pushes me face first against the bars, roughly pulling my hands behind my back and putting the thick iron cuffs that I failed to notice before around my wrists. Once they’re secured, he pulls me back and shoves me through the cell door and down the corridor wordlessly, leading us up the steep staircase and through the stone corridors.

He drags me outside where I immediately see fifty or so male werewolves in human form doing some sort of combat training.

As we pass, the wolves stop their training and follow us, calling out rude things to me. Scruffy takes us to a lush garden; in the middle is a wooden platform where he pushes me up the steps and centers me. He then forces me around to face the wolves who have crowded below the platform, Fluffy standing among them. Scruffy grabs a handful of my hair, jerking my head back so that my neck is fully exposed.

“You want an execution, I’ll give you one.”

He places his other hand at my neck and I feel his now elongated claws nick my skin. At that moment, I realize I’m going to die. I thought that if I ever had to face death, I would be able to die dignified and strong, like my father, but now that it’s actually happening, I’m terrified. My heart pounds in my chest and I want to beg Scruffy to let me live. Luckily, I’m too stubborn to give in to the urge and I bite down on my tongue, steeling my expression. I close my eyes in hopes of hiding my fear from the wolves, not wanting to give them the satisfaction of it, when I hear a loud, aggressive snarl.

My eyes snap open to see Fluffy leaping onto the platform. Scruffy drops his hand from my throat and loosens his grip on my hair as Fluffy rushes over and shoves Scruffy away from me. I’m completely shell shocked.

Scruffy crouches, mirroring Fluffy’s stance. They stand there growling and snarling at each other for a few seconds before Fluffy reaches down and grabs my arm, never taking his eyes off of Scruffy. He pulls me to my feet and pushes me towards the stairs of the platform, backing away from Scruffy all the while still snarling at him viciously. Scruffy watches him back away calmly despite his defensive stance.

Fluffy pushes me gently down the platform steps, turning so that he can walk down the steps and keep Scruffy in his line of sight at the same time. Once we reach the ground, Fluffy turns his attention to the wolves crowded before us. He lets out a deep warning growl and the wolves part immediately, creating a wide pathway through the center of them.

Fluffy guides me through the pathway, continually growling lowly in his chest in warning at the others as we pass. I’m so relieved that I’m not going to die that I forget to be confused or even concerned that this wolf is leading me somewhere alone. I don’t come back to my senses until we stop abruptly at a door a ways into the pack house. Fluffy pushes the door open, revealing nothing but a very dim room. There’s obviously a window on the opposite wall from the door, but a thick curtain hangs in front of it, blocking out most of the light. He waits for me to walk in, but I remain motionless, now very aware of the situation. There’s no telling what awaits me in this dark room; what if he stopped Mr. Scruffy Alpha guy from killing me so he could have me as his own personal chew toy? I’m not down for that!

After standing in the doorway for several seconds, I turn my head to look up at him. He’s already staring down at me with an expression I can’t quite place. It’s a mixture between amazement, confusion, and disbelief. I swallow thickly, mustering all the strength I have and open my mouth. “I’m not going in there.”

I expect him to become angry at my matter-of-fact tone, but he surprises me by laughing. This gives me more confidence and I’m able to square my shoulders, facing him head on with a stern scowl. “What’s so funny?” I demand.

He shakes his head at me while grabbing ahold of my arm once again and beginning to drag me into the room with him. Now that I have my confidence back, I don’t take this controlling behavior kindly. I lean back against his grip, putting all my weight on my heels to try to keep myself from being drug into the room with him, but of course, I’m much smaller than him and he’s a werewolf, so this only succeeds in him dragging me behind like a pouting child.

“What’s going on?” I demand, now jerking my arm against his grip. He suddenly releases me, almost sending me tumbling backwards into the now closed door. The room is nearly pitch black, making me nervous seeing as I don’t know exactly where he is or what he’s doing. I can hear rustling across the room near the window, then the strike of a match, before light flares up from the source of the rustling. I watch uneasily as he lights a rather large lamp, brightening the room significantly.

Now that the room is bright enough to see, I realize it’s a bedroom. A tall, plush, full-sized bed sits with the headboard against the wall on my right, a wardrobe in the far left corner near the window, a closed door on the left wall, and a padded chair drawn up to a small table just off to my right. Fluffy stands next to the lamp that’s mounted on the wall across the room, now facing me.

“You’re a slayer?” He questions, studying my face.

I glance around, unsure of why he’s asking this; we’ve already talk about it. “Uh, yeah?”

“Then how is this possible?” he mutters, stepping towards me. I take an instinctive step back, causing him to freeze. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says slowly as if talking to a frightened animal.

I snort in response. “Yeah, okay, like I’m gonna believe anything that comes out of your mouth.”

He holds his hands up in surrender, showing me a small key in his left hand. “Can I at least take the handcuffs off?”

I narrow my eyes at him suspiciously as I slowly nod. “Fine.” As he slowly crosses the room, I try to figure out what the point of all of this is. What could he possibly gain from getting me to trust him? Why would he go through all the trouble to save me, to go against his Alpha and pack?

He gently grabs my hands, lifting them as he places the key into the cuffs. Then it hits me. This was all planned. His Alpha wasn’t angry at him for saving me, none of the wolves tried to stop him; this was all planned before they even came to speak with me in the cells!

As soon as the cuffs pop open on my wrists, I leap forward, scrambling across the bed to the other side where I stand in a slight crouch, ready for an attack. Fluffy still stands where we had been before, watching me with amusement. “What are you doing?” He questions.

“What’s going on? What do you want?” I question, already working on a new escape plan.

“I need you to relax, okay?” He says calmly. This only serves to irritate me.

“I’m not stupid, wolf. What the heck is going on? Why go through all that trouble to stage my execution and then save me? What could you possibly want from me so badly?”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise at my words before a bark of laughter escapes him. “You think all of that was staged?”

“What else could it be? You went against your Alpha, which means you went against your pack, right? So why would they just let you walk out of there without any sort of retaliation?”

He lets out a sigh, suddenly seeming very tired. For a second, I drop my guard and I wonder what could be weighing on him so heavily, but then I realize what I’m thinking and stop myself. He’s my enemy, I shouldn’t care what’s bothering him.

“You’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you.”

“Try me.”

“Just, don’t do anything rash or stupid, okay? Let me explain before you freak out.” His words begin to confuse me. Why in the world would he care about me freaking out over what he tells me?

“Okay…” I watch him cautiously, now very uneasy.

“I think you’re my mate.”