Wolf-less Omega Luna novel Chapter 66

Alana’s POV

A few months. It was just a few months. I stayed in Axel’s company for only a few months and I suddenly forgot what it was like to starve. I'd eaten so much in a few months than I had in my entire years of life put together, and doubled, that I felt like dying when I didn’t get any food to eat for two days.

My stomach was eating me from the inside out. I was sure of it. I stopped praying for Axel to show up somewhere around midnight and I started to pray for a drop of water instead.

As I woke up that morning to the steady dripping of what had to be water, and the smell of petrichor, I knew that the Moon Goddess had at least answered one of my prayers. Axel’s rainy and muddy smell filled my nostrils, and I forgot that I had been hungry for a stretch of time. Although there was that metallic smell obstructing the dish I was relishing, I continued to inhale with my eyes closed.

Then it hit me. Axel was here. I could hear him breathe. My eyes snapped open so quickly, it surprised me that they didn't pop out of their sockets and fall to the floor.

“Axel!” I shot to my feet, adrenaline pumping me full of strength, making me forget in an instant, all the pain I was in.

“Hello, Princess.”

The whizz. The zing. The shivers. The breath hitch. The feeling where I froze like a deer in headlights. They all flooded me without warning. And two words from Axel was all it took. Hello, Princess.

“You came,” I said slowly.

“You left,” he responded with both sadness and guilt in his eyes.

It wasn’t until I found the will to break eye contact with Axel did I notice all the dried blood that clung to his face, his neck, his shirt, and his hands. The steady dripping from earlier was blood. His blood.

His hands. They were in chains, much like mine. The only difference between him and me was that Axel was dangling from his hands chained to the roof right in front of my cell. My eyes trailed from Axel’s boots that were barely touching the floor to his bloodied hands straining on chains much bigger than mine.

“Alana, look at me.” I sniffed and locked my gaze on Axel. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” I choked.

“Cry. I’m fine.”

I hadn’t even noticed that tears were now streaming down my cheeks. How could Axel say he was fine in a situation like this? This was all because of my stupidity. “What was I thinking?” I said out loud.

“Alana,” Axel called softly.

“I’m sorry. I’m so…sorry. I was such a fool. Look wha… look… what I put you through…”

“Hey, hey, listen to me.” He inched closer to the bars that were separating us on his toes.

“Don’t touch it! It burns.”

Axel looked at the silver bars knowingly and nodded before he spoke.

“This is as much my fault as it is yours, okay? You don’t get to blame yourself without blaming me.”

“How do I get us out of this mess?” I asked amidst sobs. “This is my doing.”

“I’ll get us out. I promise,” Axel said.

“It’s not. It’s…” 

A blinding light flooded the dark dungeon from the steel doors being opened and a familiar face walked in.

As he did, followed by guards by his side, Axel gave off the same annoyed and warning growl he usually did whenever a threat was around us — around me—.

“Sorry to cut your reunion short,” the person who spoke cast a glance at Axel, my dad behind Axel, and finally his eyes landed on me.

“You.”

“I didn’t think you would remember me, Princess.” He jeered the last word. 

My skin pricked with irritation at the height of the disrespect and I snarled at him. If we weren’t separated by the bars or the chains on my hands, I would have taken a swipe at his face.

“You were at the multipack meeting,” I said with disgust.

I remembered his face as the strange Alpha who was staring at me from the shadows during the multipack meeting. I also remembered him talking to Britney when Axel dragged me away after the pack’s wine was compromised.

I didn’t expect anything from the Alpha of my real pack, especially after hearing that he wanted revenge on Axel for something he also had a hand in, but I also didn’t expect him to be a snake or a coward.

“Guilty as charged,” he smiled and bowed.

“You didn’t think there were other ways to settle a quarrel than to go behind everyone’s back, poisoning Britney’s mind? Or keeping my dad captive? Or holding a female in chains?” I raised the chains that had now eaten deep into my hands for him to see.

I was in pain, but more so in rage than anything else.

“Why do that when we can do this?” he gestured at the show around us. Me, my dad, and Axel, in chains.

Axel’s growl could cut through steel. The anger seeping from his pores was enough to heat up my entire cell.

“Pick on someone your own size,” my dad chipped in from behind us. “Leave Alana out of this. Let her go and you can have me.”

My dad and Axel must have spoken while I was out because neither of them seemed surprised that the other was here.

“Oh, I will,” he gave Axel a once over before turning sideways to face my dad. “And as for you, I already have you, Jake. I don’t think you’re in the position to bargain, so be quiet.”

I spat from where I stood in my cell, making sure to do it from an angle that it went between two bars and it landed directly on the side of his nose. “Don’t you dare talk to my father that way. You’re not suitable to be an alpha.”

“You are feisty. Just like they said.”

“I’m not surprised Alistair works for you.” And I wasn’t. “You’re both so fit for each other.”

Even if I didn’t need it, his words only gave me more clarity that Axel wasn’t the person they were desperately painting him to be. Alistair didn’t work for Axel like Britney said. Although there was some truth in her words, she twisted so much in an attempt to manipulate me. Again.

“Let Alana go.”

Axel’s face gave off no emotion or expression. Not hate, not anger, not determination, not fear. But I felt it. All of those things and more. He feared for me. He hated this man to his core and he was determined to make him pay.

“I just might, if you are a good boy.”

Axels clenched his jaw. “You promised to let her go. I gave you what you wanted. Me.”

Derek sighed. “That’s not enough. I lost everything, thanks to you. Do you think you’ll suffice for that?”

“What more do you want?”

“I’ll tell you. But I'd rather show it to you.”

Derek flicked a finger, summoning his men to get Axel down. Relief washed through me before the panic of what they wanted to do to him set in.

“Remove the chins from her first,” Axel tipped his chin toward me as his legs touched the ground fully.

Derek hesitated.

“Don’t be a coward, Derek. You’ve hurt her enough and you’re going to get what you want. She can’t run away from here so you might as well treat her with decency.”

My heart clenched in my chest. Here Axel was, heading towards what was most likely doom because I ran away without thinking properly. In spite of all that, his concern was still my comfort. I looked away from him. I didn’t deserve this. I said it before, but I meant it differently this time.

The door to my cell was opened and Derek walked in with a bunch of keys in his hand. I looked him right in his dark eyes and all I wanted to do was pound on his face till he wasn’t recognizable anymore. As soon as the keys jingled and I was sure the chain had come undone, I connected the unlocked chain on my wrist with his nose with all the strength I could muster.

If I wasn’t going to get on with pounding his face in, I might as well do what I could.

He only groaned in pain. I stood tall in defiance, expecting him to hit me or lock the chains back. He didn’t.

“Feisty.”

He cleaned the trickle of blood from his nose before it immediately healed and took to its original form.

“That’ll teach you something,” I spat.

“If only you know what I have planned for you all,” he said with a grin.

He walked out of my cell and sealed it shut before motioning to his men to drag Axel out behind them.

Right before they did, Axel locked eyes with me. “Do you trust me?”

I kept nodding. It wasn’t up for thinking. “I do. With everything.”

“I’ll get you out,” he promised, and they left.