The Feral Alpha's Captive-Chapter 33: Planted

My jaw clenched so tight I heard my teeth grind. Umbra snarled, torn between rage at the enemies who’d taken Kael and a possessive fury that someone would dare suggest handing over what was—

What was mine.

The thought came unbidden, unwanted, and I shoved it down viciously.

"Gather every available gamma," I said, my voice cutting through the rising tension. "I want a full sweep of the Mist. Search patterns, three kilometers deep. If there’s any trace of where they took him, I want it found. Now."

"Alpha—" one of the gammas started.

"Now," I repeated, and shadows rippled at my back in emphasis. "And implement a curfew immediately. No one enters or leaves the fortress without direct authorization from myself or Ivanna. Understood?"

"Yes, Alpha!" The gammas scattered, already moving to execute orders.

I turned to the remaining deltas and zetas. "Double the guard rotations. Triple patrols on the southern border. If the Allied Packs are bold enough to operate this deep in our territory, I want to know how they’re getting through our defenses."

"Thorne." Ivanna’s voice was quiet but insistent. "We need to discuss—"

"There’s nothing to discuss," I cut her off, my tone leaving no room for argument. "A member of my pack has been taken. Tortured. Mutilated. His arm was severed and delivered to my doorstep like a threat. This is not the time for suspicions without proof."

"The proof is in your hands," Ivanna said, and there was something almost pleading beneath her controlled exterior now. "They took Kael because of her. The message will say the same thing—return the omega or more pieces follow. Can’t you see what’s happening? She’s a liability, Thorne. A weapon they’re using against us."

"She was in my fucking arms through the night," I snapped, muscles lock in so I would not hurt her. Althea attempting to end her life because of the agony ripped through my mind like a heated cleaver. "I held the woman you now so mindlessly accuse." I cursed the bond in my mind. I was defending the enemy.

But watching her shoulders slump and her walking away, I expected to feel something. Yet, there was neither guilt nor pain at the hurt I caused. I had bigger things to deal with.

—

🦋ALTHEA

I woke to darkness.

Complete, suffocating darkness that pressed against my eyes like a physical weight. My breath came in short, panicked gasps as I tried to orient myself—tried to remember where I was, how I’d gotten here.

This wasn’t the infirmary. Wasn’t the chamber where I’d last been conscious, wrapped in warmth that had finally eased the brand’s burning.

This was... wrong.

The air was stale, thick, too close. I reached out, my fingers brushing against something solid on either side. Walls. Cold stone walls that felt like they were—

Moving.

No. Not moving. But too close. Too close.

Panic clawed up my throat as I pressed my palms against the walls, feeling them on both sides, realizing I was in some kind of narrow space. A corridor? A closet? A—

Tomb.

The thought sent terror spiking through my chest. I was trapped. Buried. Enclosed in darkness so complete I couldn’t see my own hands in front of my face.

"Help," I tried to call out, but my voice came out as barely a whisper, my throat still raw from screaming. "Please—someone—"

I pushed forward, my hands frantically searching the darkness, trying to find an opening, a door, something—

My fingers touched fabric. Then something beneath it. Smooth. Cool.

Skin.

I froze, my breath catching in my throat.

Then something wet. Sticky. The texture making my skin crawl with instinctive revulsion.

I yanked my hand back, but it caught on something—parchment, crinkling beneath my fingers. And beneath that, more wetness. More of that terrible, slick texture that my mind was screaming at me to identify but I couldn’t, I couldn’t—

I screamed.

The sound tore from my throat, raw and desperate and terrified, echoing in the confined space until it felt like the walls themselves were screaming back.

Light flooded in.

Blinding, sudden, so bright after the absolute darkness that I had to squeeze my eyes shut against the onslaught. I stumbled forward, out of whatever space had been trapping me, my hands still clutching whatever I’d grabbed in my panic.

When I could finally open my eyes—squinting against the light, tears streaming down my face—I saw him.

Thorne.

Standing directly in front of me, shadows writhing at his back like living smoke, his mask covering the upper half of his face but doing nothing to hide the fury radiating from every line of his body.

He looked like he was ready to kill me.

And he was not alone, there Were others with him but their presence blurred to nothing side to side with intense energetthat radiated off him like heat from a furnance.

"How did you get in here?" His voice was deadly quiet, controlled in a way that was somehow worse than shouting. "How did you get past the guards?"

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t process the question. My mind was still trapped in that darkness, still feeling the wetness on my fingers, still hearing my own screams echoing—

His eyes—those amber eyes visible beneath the mask—dropped to my hands.

"What are you hiding?"

I looked down.

Saw my hand.

Saw the blood coating my fingers, dripping onto the floor in thick, dark drops.

Saw what I was holding.

A severed arm.

The scream that tore from my throat was inhuman. I flung the limb away from me like it had burned me, stumbling backward until my back hit the wall. The parchment fluttered from my other hand, stained with blood at one corner.

Blood. There was blood on my hands. Blood on my clothes. Blood—

"No," I gasped, looking at my trembling, crimson-coated fingers. "No, no, no—I didn’t—I don’t—"

"Don’t move." Thorne’s command was absolute, and I froze instinctively even as my body shook so violently I thought I might collapse. "Don’t say anything. Don’t breathe unless I tell you to."

The severed arm lay on the floor between us, silver burns marring the flesh, blood still seeping from the surgical cut at the shoulder.

And I had been holding it.

Covered in its blood.

With a message clutched in my other hand.

My mind struggled to piece together what had happened. I’d been asleep. In warmth. Safe. And then I’d woken in darkness, trapped, touching things I couldn’t see—

Someone put me here.