Traded

Chapter 79

“It won’t work.” A tired voice says from beyond the bars next to me. I stop, holding my dirty shirt close, my excitement waning and taking with it the endorphins blocking my pain.

“Why won’t it work?” I ask, half heartedly believing it now.

They take everything. They do a sweep each day, and they take anything that is not clothing on us.” She whispers. “And they know what you are now, so they may not even bring you water to drink.”

“Shit.” I mutter, pressing my back against the rocky wall and sliding down, hugging my shirt like it is my favorite childhood stuffed animal. This is not how I go out without a stand and as weak as I was when Merikh found me. I have finally found my strength, a life I want to fight for so damn it, I will figure out a way out. I have to.

“It would be a lie to say things will be alright,” Elle says, moving closer to the bar. I slide my eyes to look at her, my heart breaking at her appearance. This isn’t how I wanted to find my mother. I wanted to blaze in and save her. Drag her from this hellhole and nurture her back to health.

“They can’t be all that bad if I’ve finally found you.” I whisper, and she furrows her brows in doubt.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she whispers.

“So you aren’t Caspian’s mate? The king of the sirens?” I ask her, and she blinks at me before looking around. She moves closer, her hands resting on the silver bars but having no reaction to the metal that should burn her.

Are you one of them?” She whispers.

“One of who?” I ask, confused.

“The fae that they used in the past to trick me.” She pushes off the bar, using her arms to drag herself away from me. Her legs are limp as she puts distance between us from the bars. “You aren’t the first attempt to make me think you are my daughter. But I know she is dead, so I won’t fall for your tricks.”

“You left me in a bog and told me someone would be there for me soon.” I tell her. “For years I thought you were dead, and I had no idea who I was, what I was. A slave in my alpha’s house where his daughter made my every day a living hell.”

She covers her ears as she whimpers.

“No, no, no!” she hisses. “My brother would never do that…he…”

She pauses, looking at me with a spark in her eyes.

“What is my niece’s name?” She asks like she is testing me, and I snort.

“Leslie.” I say with ease, “And your brother’s name is Alpha Bentley. Though I didn’t know I was related to them until after The Lycan King took me as his mate.”

“He took you?” She whispers, confused.

“More like he traded for me.”

“What did he trade?” She asks, sitting up and looking like she might believe me now.

“War.” I shrug. “No war if he could have me. War if Alpha Bentley refused.”

“Bentley traded you to the Lycan King?” she repeats the words like she can’t believe them. “He was supposed to protect you.”

“Best trade ever.” I whisper to myself, tears springing in the corners of my eyes. Damn, how I miss Merikh’s stubborn alpha

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ways.

“You love him…” Melody asks, confused.

“Yes.” I nod, regretting the action as pain seeps in from my aching muscles, and I remember just how much I am trying to block out.

There is a stretch of silence, and I hear the soft sound of sobbing. Melody covers her face, her body rocking with heaving sobs before she looks up and drags her broken body back toward me. Her eyes are red and puffy, and her silt covered face clean where the tears have tracked through the ages of dirt.

“C–can I look at you?” She whispers, a fleeting shimmer of hope in her eyes.

“It is me, mom.” I whisper, and she slaps a hand over her mouth.

“Oh, heavens.” She says in a shaky voice before she crumples and weeps.

I watch her, stunned, unsure of what to do as I reach through the bars, my bare arms burning on contact with the silver, but

I ignore it. My fingers finger her hand and I pull it from her face, holding it in mine.

“I’m so happy you are alive,” I say, my voice small and filled with emotions as I try to control myself.

“Are you really her little Letty?” Trina asks. I don’t bother to look at her. How can I when I’m finally laying eyes on my mom for the first time in over ten years?

“I am.”

There is a shuffling sound in through the prison, and my mom snaps away from me. Everyone goes dead silent. I wince as I slowly extract my arm from the bars and inch myself back to the wall, being careful not to bump my aching legs and sore body.

The cell door opens to Melody’s little slice of hell and a little old man pushes a cart inside before closing the door behind him. He hums a little tune, his voice hoarse and crackly as he searches his little cart for something. Fear grips my heart. Would they torture her here? In front of me?

I know the answer is yes, but I can’t bear to see them hurt her any more than she is already injured.

“Don’t fucking touch her,” I roar at him, throwing myself at the bars, trying to reach through and grab him.

I feel nothing, my adrenaline pumping through me as I do my damndest to reach the stubbly old man. He turns slowly, his eyes scanning me with curiosity before he rolls his eyes and begins his happy little hum before selecting something in a small jar.

“Be calm Luna.” He says in song form, in tune with what he was humming.

“He is here to heal me,” Melody says with a soft smile. “Well, as best as he can.”

My stomach churns, and I look at Trina and Lenard, who cast their sad gazes away. They look far better off than my mother. Hell, they look like they have hardly had a whipping in their time here.

“He will move to you next,” Trina says.

“I’d rather he not.” I say stubbornly.

“You don’t have a choice. His job is to heal you so you can handle more punishment later.” Lenard explains, sorrow on his face. The way these two have gone somber makes me unsettled and I furrow my brows, watching them. Lenard seems to pick up on my confusion, and he sighs heavily.

“They will punish you until you give them what they want,” He says.

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“And then once they get it, they will punish you for fun,” Trina adds.

The little old man stops his humming, and for the first time he looks up at me and I realize he is just as much a prisoner as any of us. He looks dead inside, like he is a shell of a being, just doing what he has to in order to go through the motions to trick people into thinking he is actually living.

“What happened to you?” I whisper, and he blinks at me.

“I betrayed the dragon queen.” He mumbles.

“And yet they are trusting you to heal us now?” I scoff and he turns back to my mother, his humming starting up again. “I will heal fine on my own.”

No one says anything. Instead, we all sit in the echo of the healer’s strange, humming voice before he hobbles his way out of my mother’s cage and moves to mine. I stare at him as he moves about his cage and then moves over to me. He places his hand out for me to show him my injuries, but I hug my legs to my body, gasping out as bile flies up my throat from the pain.

“Let me help you, child,” he whispers, his voice below a whisper

“I am not a child.” I grit out. “As you said, I am a luna.”

“Forgive me, luna,” he whispers again. “It’s been many years since I have seen you.”

My eyes grow wide and my mouth falls open with so many questions, but I don’t get any out before the cage door clangs open and the same woman from before flounces in, leaning against the wall across from me with a smirk on her lips.

“You look like you didn’t get too much of a beating.” She muses. I will make sure the next one is a little more…intense.”

I growl low in my chest at her, and she chuckles.

“A wolf’s bite has nothing on a dragon’s breath. You are nothing but a thorn in my foot.” She says with the wave of her hand.

“I suppose you should really watch where you step,” I say, my eyes meeting hers. “It would suck if this thorn gave you a life- threatening infection.”

“Tell you what. From now on, we won’t just torture you to get what we want. We torture mommy dearest while you watch.”

I glance at my mom, who tries to give me an encouraging look, but the fear and years of pain are impossible to mask. At this point they want me to choose between my mom, who I just got back, and my mate and pack. The very existence of my kind. They very well could just send Merikh a note saying they have me and where I am.

But they want me to do it. They want the downfall of my kind and the death of my mate to be solely on my back. Just like Penny’s death. These assholes want to break me before they kill me.

But I am used to being underestimated, and that will be their downfall. Not mine.

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