The prison stank of damp stone and rust, but Inez could hardly notice anything other than the darkening sky and the silence. The thick and pressing silence, only broken by Scarlet’s occasional restless sighs. Inez could already imagine how worried Killian might be due to her sudden disappearance. She wanted to tell him that she was fine, other than getting trapped in this rotten prison. But with the shifter restraints, she couldn’t reach him, not unless she found a way to break the chains that were holding her shifter abilities back.
"Staying awake is not going to help. You might as well accept your fate and just wait for the day when you will be executed," came the words from the man in the next cell.
Inez turned to look at him, but she couldn’t see him clearly as the man was now hidden in the shadows. She wanted to snap at the enigma of a man, but something held her back. It was as if she knew that she couldn’t hurt this man...
Deciding upon civility, she ignored the annoyance in her heart.
"It is a good thing that you have stopped making a fuss. You two were acting so foolishly that I thought I was going to see a live show of voyeurism. Not that I would have disliked the show; it has been many years since I saw anything good," the man laughed as if he found everything that was happening to Inez and Scarlet amusing.
"Why are you even locked up in here?" Inez asked. She didn’t see how this man, who seemed way too jolly, was involved in any crime that would lead him to be locked up in prison. "Were you also accused of doing something that you didn’t do?"
"Haha, do I look that innocent? This is my first time hearing someone say such a thing to me," the man laughed. Several seconds passed, and the man didn’t say anything. Just as Inez thought that the man had lapsed into silence, the sound of someone crawling echoed in the prison cell next to her, and a second later, the man came to sit against the bars of the cell. His dark eyes stared at Inez, eyes that gleamed with secrets too heavy to carry.
Scarlet pressed close to Inez. She whispered softly, "Don’t believe anything he says... I think he is half mad."
Inwardly, Inez agreed with her. But they were not going anywhere for the time being, not until the half-vampire came looking for them.
So why not listen to the story of this man?
"I tried to bring my mate from the dead... I used dark magic," he turned his gaze to look in the direction of the two sisters. "I allowed a witch to trespass on my pack lands and massacre the members of the pack. I watched them die right in front of me. In exchange, I wanted the witch to bring my mate back to life, but she only brought her corpse back to life. So I killed the witch; unfortunately, that only added more to my crimes, as I violated the treaty with the eyewitnesses around. She ran to a human settlement, you see? If I had done it secretly, no one would have found out anything. I was too big of a fool."
"Why did you kill them?" Scarlet asked, despite being the one who asked Inez to stay clear-headed.
"They were the ones who killed my mate. Just because she was born as an outcast. They killed her–tore her apart because she was not a shifter. They deserved to die for what they did to my mate," the man smiled with a hint of reminiscence on his face.
Inez didn’t make a comment on it. Cautiously, she asked, "Then how long have you been locked up here?"
"I don’t know when I was brought here; I was only twenty-one... I stopped counting by the time I turned thirty," the man sighed with a hint of melancholic amusement. He then turned to look at the two of them again, and after a short while, he asked, "Where did you two come from?"
"Ah, those are some really strong names. I remember that my pack’s alpha tried quite hard to grab an opportunity to form an alliance with the Venus pack. But I have never heard about the Blood Hill pack; it must have been formed recently. Anyway, even if it’s a new pack, it must be better than my own. You have no idea the kind of trouble that I suffered in my pack, and it became even worse when my alpha aligned himself with that female alpha."
"A female alpha?" Inez’s voice rose a notch as she turned to look at Scarlet.
The two of them shared a look, but the man didn’t seem to notice. He was still lost in his own thoughts, as he nodded and continued speaking, "That’s right... Someone called Ria... I guess. I don’t remember her. A really cruel woman—truly cruel. How many lives she might have taken under her reign; even now, the thought sends a chill up my spine, making me shiver. You two are far too young to understand, but that woman was brutal. controlling and really manipulative. I heard that she used to brand her pack members. The old way: fire and an iron club. You see? Brutal."
Inez clenched her fingers tightly in her lap. Even though her mother had never branded her with iron and fire. She had left her mark in some other way. She closed her eyes and sucked in a breath. Next to her, Scarlet asked, "Did she ever get involved with a siren... we have heard a little rumour about her." ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ NovᴇlFirᴇ(.)nᴇt
The man tilted his head to the side creepily. He stared at Scarlet and turned to look at Inez. His lips cracked into a grin too wild, and he exclaimed, "Oh, you are the daughter of that siren."
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