The Alpha King Marked Me. I Still Haven't Told Him I'm A Girl novel Chapter 129

Chapter 129: One Hundred & Twenty Nine

Valka

Vise-like grips crush my arms as I’m dragged forward into the black mouth of the dungeons.

The air hits me first--thick, wet, and alive with the decay of a festering wound. My slippers skid through the filth, vomit and urine pooling in the grooves of the stone, something soft and wet bursting under my heel. My stomach lurches. My eyes water from the stench.

I look left. Then right.

Women. Scores of them. Unclothed, covered in bruises. Some heavy and nearly due for birth. Others bent over half eaten crumbs of stale bread, rats gnawing on feet missing nails. There is no light in their eyes. No life.

No one looks up. Not when the guards pass. Not when I stumble by. There’s not a splinter of hope left that they may ever leave those walls.

I stare at their arched ears. Faces that might have once been considered beautiful, but not dried and hollow, skin sagging and grey.

The horror of it brings tears to my eyes.

And further down, they take me.

Further. Until we reach a different part of the dungeons, sectioned off with more guard detail manning the doors.

They move methodically, unlocking the doors and I am shoved inside, nearly falling hard into the ground. My eyes adjusts to the blackness inside and my ears perk up at the sound of tortured roaring.

I see them, then. The men. Muzzled. Hung up from chains nailed to walls of silver, their cages more confined and built to hold them back. The smell of burned flesh is stronger than that of faeces. Every head hung low in surrender bears a brand upon their skin.

"Mongrel." "Filthy." "Unclean."

There is no end to the depravity of it. None.

My breaths grow short and panicky, especially when I am led past a cell with a male snarling through the bars of the gates. Both his eyes have been gouged out, leaving two black hollows that leak slow tears of blood. When he snarls again, it sounds more like weeping.

Gods...above. And beyond.

Do the gods really exist? Do they look down upon us and see these things happen? Does the Moon Goddess watch the sin her favoured children commit and choose to turn a blind eye instead? Does she despise us Lycans that much, that she’d send a guardian to ensure I won the wolves this war, so that this madness can continue?

At the end of the darkness is a door, large enough to encompass the entire wall.

My heartbeat quickens and I know, I know I will not be stuck here for much longer, not if my plan works, but everything inside me roils against the idea of being shoved in there. It is the wrongness spreading down my spine. The ill feeling curling in my stomach. The airs on my skin rising. I can smell the ash. The whole cell is built in ash and silver.

Because it is not a cell. It is a tomb.

I put my foot down and begin fighting. It is panic. It is fear. It is the thing people feel right before they die. It is wrapping around my neck and suffocating me.

"No," I rasp, breath shredding in my lungs. "No, please--"

They shove me anyway.

Stone and bone collide. My knees split open. And before I can find my footing, the iron door slams shut with a final, echoing clang that feels like the snapping of a trap.

A cruel voice filters through the slit of the metal. "His Majesty bids you to sit in silence and consider what you have done. And when he calls upon you, you will tell him what punishment you deem yourself deserving of." A small pause. "He wants you to know that it was this same cell your dead king was broken in. And now, for you betrayal, you will share the same fate."

***

It takes hours before my sight adjusts to the infinite black stretching before me, and even then, it stretches deeper, wider, staring back at me and daring me to move from my spot in the center of the room. There’s not a stream of light available. No windows. No air. Breathing feels like a privilege.

And it is cold. So cold, my teeth clatter.

I begin fumbling forward on my hands and knees, searching for a latch, a crack, anything that leaks warmth. The stone bites into my skin. My breath echoes too loudly. The cold draft must be coming from somewhere.

Minutes trickle into hours. My fingers grow numb. I find nothing.

What I do find are lines.

Sets of them, clawed deep into the stone, so deep they might as well be part of its bones. At first, I think them random scratches until my hand fits neatly inside one, and I realize they’re deliberate. Tallies.

Marks of passing days.

Five. Ten. Thirty. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Fifty.

Five months.

Eight.

A year.

More than his plea; Remember.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify