To Suffer With

Chapter Two - The Alpha

My eyes travel slowly upwards towards the source of that voice. The sun is shining in the wrong place obscuring him but I see the jet black hair and glowing eyes. The Alpha. He had stopped the other wolf from killing me but why? My heart was a thundering mess. Whatever came next I knew it wasn't going to be pleasant.

Those eyes turn from me to the wolf beside him, "Wilder, go finish up," he orders it, and there was no mistaking his words were an order everything about his tone screamed command and authority.

"Alpha," the other wolf replies before leaving us and me to my dark fate. The Alpha's eyes turn back to me and I can feel the fear crawling up my throat.

"I'm," I begin, cursing the shake in my voice, "not going to tell you anything."

He must want me for information on the resistance and part of me wished the other one had just finished me off. Now my death was going to be long and painful.

The Alpha laughed at my words. And it wasn't some sadistic laugh either, it was light casual as if I had just made a joke. He crouches down so he's at eye level to me and I try to face his gaze defiantly. Though I fear I fail drastically. His hand comes towards me and I flinch expecting pain, but none is forthcoming he just lifts my chin up and I realize he's looking at my neck. I could feel it was still bleeding but the adrenalin still flooding through my body was blocking out any pain I might feel, from my neck, my arm, even my battered body that had been thrown into a tree. His eyes travel from my neck to my arm and then over the rest of the body, assessing the damage I could tell. Clearly trying to figure out how much more pain he could inflict before he broke me.

He releases my chin and stands again and before I have a moment to react his hands are on my waist and he hoists me up. He picks me up as if I weigh nothing. One arm goes under my knees and the around back to support me. Unbidden my mind reminds me this is how brides were carried over the threshold and I couldn't help but feel how twisted this was. Instead of being carried to safety I was being carried toward torture and execution.

My damaged arm I cradle to my stomach but that still leaves my other one free. I push against the Alpha's solid chest and attempt to wiggle out of his grip. My efforts are so weak its as if he doesn't even notice that I'm trying to escape. He's not even looking at me just focusing on navigating the forest, the sun was beginning to dim as night approached. I halt my attempts to escape and instead look upwards at his face, taking a few seconds to study him. He's handsome I suppose in the traditional sense, with the sharp jaw and angular cheekbones but that's not what I really notice about him. It's his eyes that draw me in and terrify me. They're ice blue, the colour of the glaciers I saw pictures of as a child, cold, distant, with something aggressively wild in them. At the moment they also have a slight glow to them, a reminder to me that I am in the company of the enemy. I force my vision elsewhere not wanting to accidentally meet his stare. His jaw is clenched, and my eyes wander down to his neck allowing myself to imagine stabbing a knife into it and watching the blood pour out of it until those damn eyes dimmed to nothing.

As if sensing my dark thoughts his eyes look down to meet mine, the strength of his gaze forcing me to look away. "I hope you're smart enough to not try anything," he says.

I wonder briefly what would happen if I did. Would that make him angry enough to just kill me? Maybe another werewolf would give in to his anger, but I had an inkling that Alphas had more control than that. For the first time I wonder just who had attacked us, what pack was he the leader of? Usually it didn't matter to me, all wolves were the same, but I needed to know who held the last few hours of my life in their hands. God, why didn't that thought scare me more? Why wasn't fear forcing me to try and escape even if I knew it was hopeless? Because that's not what I had been taught I remind myself. Better to remain calm, clear headed, and take your chance at escape when you have the highest possibility of success. Escape in any form, even if it meant taking my own life before I could betray our resistance. The thought terrified me, but I knew my duty. One death was better than the hundreds of others I could cause if I talked. The children, my mind finally remembered the rest of the resistance hiding out at this spot and a let out a small whimper unintentionally as I imagined those small bodies torn apart and mangled. As I imagined almost everybody I had known a corpse like Jo. I fight the sob crawling up my throat so determined to be strong. To be in control. I swallow it down barely and squeeze my eyes shut because I know that he's looking at me and I can't handle that right now.