Chapter Twenty-Six
Elle POV

Tim's idea of a good kidnapping involved a burlap sack and coarse rope. He'd watched too many movies, and mocking words tingled on my tongue, but I held them back for another time until our positions could be somewhat reversed, pulling the bag over my eyes.

It wasn't a pleasant sensation, though it was never meant to be. The rope rubbed my wrists raw while the sack scratched against my skin, prickling and uncomfortable. The last thing I saw as the world around me turned to blurry shapes and shadows was Shaun glowering at me, his arms bound tightly across his body, bulging with steroid-built muscles.

The burlap bag allowed some of the lantern light to filter through, and I studied our path as Shaun clamped a hand over my shoulder. He dug the fingers of his other hand into my back as he forced me from my cell.

Mostly blind, the air cold but muggy, I felt like the walls moved, shrinking the corridors like the slow-moving teeth of a trap, preparing to close for good. I wasn't usually claustrophobic, but my breath quickened, my pulse drumming in my ears. I didn't like not knowing where I was walking, and Shaun's hands were unforgiving as he continued to punch bruises into my skin with just his fingers.

Languish, and hesitant, I stumbled more than I stayed standing. Hissing through my teeth, holding cries of pain at bay, I withstood the tortured assault, only whimpering as Shaun stomped onto my toes after they'd been used as a battering ram against the rocky passageway.

The noise upset Shaun, and he dug his fingers in harder, twisting until my back cramped, searing pain jolting through my muscles with each agonising step.

Tim didn't care. He'd kept his distance, leading the way down the corridors. He looked tiny compared to Shaun, who seemed three times larger through the burlap, and for the first time, I wished that it was Tim I was dealing with because at least I knew who he was and what he was capable of.

Shaun grew bigger, his grip tightening and even more painful now. Tim looked larger than life down the corridor as the walls shrunk, like a garbage compactor, unstoppable in their pursuit of destruction.

Heat scored my skin, my heart pounding, and I tripped again. Shaun did not bother to righten me before I slammed against the cavern floors, it felt like the joints of my knees had exploded, and my hands felt sweaty, but the sting of my palms told me it was blood.

'Could you at least try and keep her in one piece!' Tim grunted as the sound of a metal door opening clanged down the corridor.

I was swept off my feet, and a scream lodged in my throat as Shaun tossed me across the room like a ragdoll.

I was plucked from the air before I could fall as though I weighed nothing, and Tim set me down onto a chair, gently lifting the bag from my eyes. Fear caused reckless abandonment to puppeteer my actions, and I slammed my forehead into Tim's, using enough force to rattle my brain.

He sighed, untying the rope behind my hands so he could buckle the straps around my wrists that would bind me to the chair. 'Surely you understood that headbutting me would hurt you more than it hurt me.'

I refused to show him my pain, the muscles in my face twitching as I glared across at him. 'Surely you understood that kidnapping someone will get you arrested.'

He snorted out laughter, 'Elliot,' he smirked, 'They don't know where you are. They are not going to find you unless I want them to.'

'Your kind happens to be excellent trackers, or have you forgotten.'

He settled into a chair across from mine, so close I could kick out my legs and nail his shin if he hadn't bound my legs after my wrists. 'You think that wouldn't qualify me to know how to hold someone hostage? When you know how they'll begin their search, you know what mistakes not to make. Do you honestly think I was stupid enough to leave a trail? Look around, Elliot. Do you know where we are?'

The walls held no insights into our location, but I'd stared at them in darkness for hours, pleading with them to tell me their secrets. Even when light brightened the walls, I didn't know where we were.

He grinned sardonically, glancing across the room as though looking through his eyes would boast the secret. 'I would have thought you'd guessed by now. We are on your family grounds, after all.' He turned back, unblinking. 'As for your kidnapping accusations, the legal definition of kidnapping is to seize someone and move them to a secondary location or to detain them with the intention to move them at a later time. I desire to do neither, and as I have not moved you, I would prefer to use the term hostage situation.'

'You're a psychopath.' I gasped, searching wildly for evidence that this was where my ancestors tortured werewolves. The chains and bones shackled to the walls made sense. 'Why are we here.'

He leant closer, arms on his knees. 'Ironically enough, this place was designed to keep werewolves in, but it does a fine job keeping them out.'

The chains around the chair rattled as I strained against them to free my hands, Tim flinched, and I hid a soured smile at the knowledge that he was wary of me.

'He won't find you down here, Elliot. Your ancestors made sure of that when they put enough silver down here to hold a thousand werewolves. It's so strong that he can't even feel your bond anymore, and you can't track what you can't sense.'

Breathing shakily, I begged, 'Why are you doing this?'

'Are you aware of what your parents do, Elliot?'

I pinched my lips together, holding in a huff of frustration. 'They're missionaries!' I groaned, recalling Kaden's obsession with my parents the other day. 'They travel between in-need communities to provide medical help and aid to war-torn countries and casualties of natural disasters. Why are they so important? They're nobodies!'

Tim snorted, and Shaun grunted, kicking the wall. Shrapnel broke off, darting across the room, 'Your parents are monsters-'

'GET OUT!' Tim roared, twisting from his chair and crossing the space between them. Shaun's face whitened, and Tim's power oozed from him for the first time in a palpable wave of energy that sent Shaun scampering from the room, his shoulders and head hunched low. Tim wrapped his hands around his head, dragging them across his face, sighing heavily. 'I'm sorry, he had been warned about interrupting.'

My rasping breaths turned solid in my airways, catching the whimper of fear that surfaced. I grasped at the air, curling my fingers into fists over and over as sweat slickened my skin. 'Right. So interrupting is wrong, but throwing me across the room is fine.' The words dribbled from my lips without warning, and I regretted them instantly. I pushed back with my feet, the hard metal of the chair welded into my spine.

He surprised me, slumping into his chair. 'I'm sorry about that.'

I scoffed, clenching the arms of the chair to hide my trembling hands. 'Not as sorry as you'll be when I get out. You'll go to jail for this. You're a psychopath.'

His eyes flashed amber, and his lips pulled back into a snarl. 'I would think twice about talking to me like that. You are not a Luna yet!'

'And you're not an Alpha yet, either!'

Akin to an elastic band snapping under the force of being stretched too far, Tim snapped, lunching forward, his fingers wrapping around my throat as he barked a warning, spit flicking through the air. 'You need to listen!'

'To what.' I wheezed, croaking as his fingers slipped and his grip tightened. 'You haven't said anything! All I know is that you think you're great at kidnapping.'

His hands tightened, he growled 'hostage situation' and then dropped them to his side, falling back into his chair.

'Jesus, Tim!' I rasped, trying to wipe the spittle away with the shoulder of my shirt. My neck was stiff, and a dull pain radiated down my vertebrae, permeating my skin from where his hands had been. 'Do the semantics really matter? What you've done is illegal!'

He ground his teeth, gripping the edge of his seat until it buckled, 'You're going to listen to what I have to say, and you won't interrupt me.'

This wasn't a battle I would win, so I waited, pressing my lips into a thin line to show my submission. A minute passed without explanation, and I groaned, 'Well, go on then!'

'Your parents aren't missionaries.' He leapt into his speech, watching me carefully for my reactions. 'They're hunters.' I didn't believe him, but I humoured his need for silence. 'I was too young to be involved, but I remember when it happened. We'd just started school, you see, a couple of months after your sister, McKenzie, was born. That's when they left. Didn't you ever think it was odd that your parents left a newborn and two children in your grandparents' care? That when they come home, their trips coincide with attacks and torment for my kind?'

'No!' I cried, desperate to prove him wrong. 'There are way more attacks! And there are times that they've been here, and no one has been hurt.'

'There are four packs, Elliot, and we don't tend to advertise our vulnerabilities. You've only heard what Jacobi tells you, but they've made it their mission to keep this part of your history a secret.' Emotions piled atop each other, confusion, disbelief, and doubt, creating a teetering tower of thoughts that twisted treacherously inside my head. 'And, of course, there have been attacks your parents haven't been involved with. There are thousands of hunters. The only difference between your parents and them is that they don't usually hit the same place twice, but when you consider that it was us who took you away from your parents, then it's not hard to see why they keep coming back to us.'

'You're lying!'

'I'm not.' He shouted. 'You see your parents once in a blue moon because they rarely get the chance to work stopovers into their trips, but even then, you have to travel to them at the airport because they don't have the time. That's what they've led you to believe, right? But we've got surveillance all over pack lands, and so do the others.'

He flattened a manila folder, pulling one image out after the other, holding them up for me to see before letting them flutter like the dying embers of a fire. At first glance, the people photographed weren't my parents. They had wrong-coloured hair and overly made-up faces that changed the contours of their features. But as I studied them, they started looking familiar. They used wigs and low caps to disguise themselves, but they couldn't hide their eyes, their height, or the matching old workboots Brent, McKenzie, and I had pooled money to get for them five years ago.

I couldn't find any words, and Tim jumped at my silence. 'They are responsible for theft, abuse, and the death of dozens of werewolves, Elliot. They're not who they say they are.'

'I-' I could not catch my breath, lightheadedness rocking me. 'Wh-' words failed me.

Tim sighed, pushing the folder aside. 'Have you ever been on Carmon's tour?'

I nodded.

'Well, she tells the tourists that the Clarke's lineage stopped with Andrew, but we know that's not true. After the sisters died, the house did become inactive, but Andrew continued his life choices. He never stopped, and he raised his children to think the same, and then they grew up and raised their children that way. Your grandparents moved back to Aucteraden when Susan was only five, trying to escape the lifestyle. Still, they mistakenly sent your mother away during the holidays to family.'

'My parents couldn't...'

'But they have. I've lost friends, Elliot. Kaden lost his mother, and so many of us have suffered because your parents, and the people like them, refuse to accept us or relinquish their old beliefs. Every day someone dies at their hands, and somehow we are still the ones who are painted in a bad light.

'Elliot, none of the people I know have done anything worth dying over. We live in a world where werewolves are considered a threat and treated as mongrels. We're objectified and torn down. We have to watch our backs for hunters or humans who still hold us in bad regard. And for what reason? It's nothing other than the twisted lies humanity told to hold onto their power and self-agency when we never wanted to take it away in the first place.

'Elliot, you've lived in a town where humans and werewolves live in harmony, but you've been blinded to the truth that everything is equal. You don't fear death when the wind howls in the night. You don't wonder when the next attack on your people will be. You don't hold your breath when new people arrive in town. You don't see how people look at you when they realise what you are, to feel useless, dirty, unwanted when they sneer and avoid walking by.'

'I'm sorry, but I didn't cause this!'

'I know, but I'm terrified about what could happen if you complete the mating rituals with him. Your parents hate our kind so much that if they found out their daughter's soul-line connected to a werewolf's, they would reign terror upon this town until all that was left was skin and bones.' A sheen of sweat licked his ashen face, and his shoulders were tight as he breathed rapidly, clasping his hands tightly. 'I can't let that happen,' everything, from his face to his tone, was pleading, begging me to listen, 'my pack deserves better than that. They are good, kind people who don't deserve the wrath brought upon them by the mistakes of two people. They deserve better!'

'I don't know what you want me to do.'

'Reject him.'

'No soul-line has ever been rejected.' The light from the lamp caught on the water that welled in my eyes, almost blinding me. 'You're asking me to reject my one guaranteed chance at true love.'

'I'm asking you to protect my kind. I wouldn't wish this sacrifice on my worst enemy, but I must protect them.'

'How long have you known that he was my soulmate?'