Captivated

Revenge

He had chosen.

As each day passed, the void in his heart grew despairingly larger. He was sure she would return, so painfully sure but the lack of her presence was a daunting shadow looming over his mind.

He remembered Mikhail's last words to him and bristled angrily. Had that bastard done anything to her? Did she not come simply because she couldn't, as something had happened to her?

Malik took a deep breath and rested his head on his pillow. There was no point wondering about the 'whats ifs'. She had not shown and it had been a week. If she wasn't going to come to him, he will go to her.

For the first time in his life, Malik was going to make a selfish decision. He loved his mother with every fibre of his being but that could not compare to the immense, overwhelming raw love he felt for his mate.

If something were to happen to his mate, he would die of sorrow and anguish but if it were to happen to his mother, he would grieve and surely move on. There was never a second mate, she had half of his soul and he had half of hers. If she were to go, he would remain half full for the rest of his miserable existence, half-crazed, half-sane. He would be weak and vulnerable to anyone, especially to his brother.

In the distance, there was the familiar rattling of the medical trolley wheeled along the concrete floor approaching his room. It was the nurse who, like clockwork, would show up at his room at five in the afternoon for his dose of aconitum. He hated how submissive he had to act, how he had to roll up his sleeve and grit his teeth as she would inject him, day in, day out with a poison that was slowly leeching at his strength, mind, senses and wolf.

It took a while for the aconitum to merge with his body and he remembered that searing pain in his soul he felt when suddenly half a year after the first dosage, he felt the emotional connection with his wolf sever. Now in its place was a void, a cruel empty mass that teased his sanity. Every now and then, he would feel a whisper of what he used to be but before he could hold on to it, it would disappear, leaving him ever so lonely.

Losing the ability to shift was one of the cruellest fates to land on a wolf. Without the wolf, one was simply... human. Scents become bland and dull. Audios become muted and deaf. Your eyes lose visual acuity and sensitivity. Slowly, Malik could feel all of those gradually creeping upon him. When he first came, he could scent animals miles away, hear insects creeping along the rafters of the sixth floor and see the pores in the concrete several metres away. Now all of those were dulling. Fading. The concrete looked smooth. The insects were quiet. The scents had disappeared.

Seeing Arya had been a necessary shock to his system. All of a sudden, he could smell once again. See once again. Hear once again. It made him feel alive, woke him from the comatose state that he had been in for so long.

If he was to break free, he couldn't allow himself to be injected again. He needed to be strong to find her. In fact, if he didn't have Alpha blood running through his veins, he would never have stood a chance. He could only hang on to his former self by thin threads because of his Alpha blood.

The handle slowly twisted open and the nurse walked in backwards, wheeling the trolley in.

Strangely, that angered him. He was seen as so little of a threat that she could face her back towards him. He had weakened so much that the nurse who at first was too terrified to breathe the same air as him, could comfortably inject him with the damned poison. She was the predator and he had become the damn prey.

She turned to face him with a disinterested look on her face. She wore the signature blue uniform a nurse would wear, a thin gold chain with her blonde hair tied up neatly in a tight bun. As she pulled out the familiar bottle and syringe with ease, the familiarity symbolising how often she would practise this routine, Malik felt the first tingle of adrenaline.