Chapter 8.
-Lisa's POV-
It hurts. My whole body is in agony. I'm trapped in darkness. I can hear a voice, faint, soothing, I like it but I can't recognize it. It's nice.
Sometimes I hear the voice talking to me, begging me to hold on, hold on to what? Wasn't I dead? And, if I am dead, why do I still hurt? Everything is so confusing. It makes my head hurt worse. Almost as much as the constant beeping sound I keep hearing. It's driving me insane.
Was I broken to the point of insanity? Is this what happens when a mate bond is broken the way mine was? I had read once that normal disruption of the bond can cause insanity…
After a while I heard more voices. A woman's voice, she sounded warm, pleasant and I liked her voice. She was telling the other voice to go handle what he needed to do and she'd sit with me.
I'd gathered I was in a hospital, I am apparently in a coma. I thought it was like sleep, you couldn't hear anything, but I could hear everything. I just couldn't respond. The hands that belonged to the female voice brushed my hair out of my eyes, I could feel her wiping my face and arms and legs, another voice joined hers after a bit, another female. They were cleaning my body, carefully, so carefully I barely felt any pain. I'd normally feel embarrassed, but I can't seem to care about that right now. I just feel grateful that someone is getting the sticky feeling off my skin. I drifted off again while the voice, a woman named Lili I came to learn, was reading to me from a book called Jane Eyre. I like this story.
-Jasper's POV-
I hated leaving her. But I have duties to perform and I know she's in good hands with Lili, and Alpha John's mate Pamela would come by later. Pam was very maternal. I know she'd take care of her. Red Dawn lent 150 warriors as well as Alpha John and Sam to help us take down Thorne. The hope is to catch and take the Alpha, Luna, and former Alpha and luna, as well as the beta, delta and top warriors alive. We had questions and they needed to answer, no matter what it took.
We all converged on the Thorne pack at dawn the next morning, but the spineless Alpha and Luna managed to escape us. They ran into the woods and got away from our trackers. They were out scouting for them now. We caught the rest though, they were now guests of the Red Dawn dungeon cells. We were clearing the pack house and sorting through the members. They didn't seem too loyal to their Alpha. At all. That speaks volumes. Most are fine with the council appointing a new set of pack rulers, a few, want to go to other packs.
For now it seems that the former Gamma couple would hold things down until someone was either appointed or earned the spots. We didn't even know they existed. It seems that Gamma Charlie's mate, Stacey, knew a place still protected by the magic that hid the Fae and hybrids when they fled originally. They hid out there to stay away from the Alpha as they could not live how they did. They were not cruel.
Though they were there when Lisa arrived, they had no idea of her origins that we didn't already know. So, after settling that, we left them to do what they wanted with the remaining pack members as we moved on to the dungeons.
I had a horrible feeling that things weren't going to go well when we approached the dungeons. There were guards here. One very large one was blocking the doorway. He was massive. I didn't like the vibes I was getting from him. He seemed like he had a mean streak in him that enjoyed hurting people for sport.
Inside the dungeon we dismissed the guards and told them to surrender or be arrested, all but the big one surrendered right away. We knocked him out in no time flat, fat ass was no match to our warriors. He was currently tied up to a post.
We found a computer and figured we'd better get info on the prisoners before we go letting them go all willy-nilly. Some might actually be dangerous. A guard came forward, John I think his name is, and opened the files. I could smell my mate's scent in this place. She must've been held here at some point. That made my anger rise more, my aura slipped again and I felt like I'd flatten the whole pack if I didn't get back to her side soon.
The fat bastard was coming around, he was making sounds like a snuffling pig hunting food. It was appalling to say the least, outright obnoxious. The warriors stood near him should he try to get free, I gave clear instructions and permission to snap his head from his body. I can't explain it, but I really really don't like him at all.
John gets my attention, he is showing me the files.
CELL ONE: Agatha McCann: Threat Level: 1. Theft. Imprisonment for 20 years.
I raised my eyebrow. 20 years for theft? What did she steal? A royal heir?
"20 years?" I asked
"Yes sir, but, well fuck it, the alpha is fallen now, so is his bitch, Aggie is innocent. She never stole a thing, Luna simply didn't want to admit she was too drunk to remember giving away a very expensive and important ring to a visiting Luna friend. So, Aggie was blamed. She was the Luna's maid. When Alpha got mad, she blamed Aggie, she hasn't seen her mate or kids in years."
"Release her now." I said my authority as a Beta rang out and he did.
Out stepped a woman, maybe 40 with premature graying black hair and almond shaped brown eyes I couldn't smell her wolf, but behind her rolled the scent of my mate. Her sweat, tears and blood. Precious bodily fluids she must've shed inside the small, crammed cell.
"Why do you smell like my mate?" I asked
She bared her neck to me in submission. "She was my cellmate, I did everything I could to help her survive, please, where is she Beta? Is she alive? Did he kill her?" she fell to her knees crying while she clung to my pants leg.
I gingerly knelt beside her taking her face into my hands. I tilted her chin to look me in my eyes.
"She's alive, badly hurt, but alive. I want to thank you personally Agatha. You saved my mate the first time."
"First, and second Beta." She said her eyes shifting towards the guard we had chained. "Mace over there tried to trap her in the showers and have his way with her, but you little mate, Beta? She's a damn scrapper. She broke his nose and he backhanded her so hard the wound on her face reopened, and then he threw her in the cell and kicked her a few times for good measure."
SAW. RED.
I walked to the guard called Mace, he wasn't fully conscious, but I didn't care. I punched him in his gut.
"DRAG THAT FILTHY TRASH BACK TO OUR PACK DUNGEONS. PUT HIM IN SILVER CHAINS BUT NO ONE TOUCHES HIM. HE'S MINE TO DEAL WITH. JUST LIKE THAT PRICK ALPHA."
I turned back to Aggie
"Can you tell me anything about the other people here?"
"Only the other women, they didn't let the men out of their cells when we were. There's Jeanna, she was a pack nurse, she was accused of hurting the former Luna, she didn't but Natalie was a bitch, and she was bored so she stirred drama. There's also Megan. She is seventeen. She is only here because a high ranking warrior decided to assault her repeatedly and his mate was being harmed from it, now one would think 'hey Megan is the minor and the victim here but the warrior's wife worked for Vicki so she imprisoned her for it."
"The whole line of them are corrupted. Nasty business all around." I said. I got a mind link from Sebastian.
"Jas, we found proof in the alpha's office, they are in cahoots with the Movement trash. And I know who is leading the Movement. It's the Red Lake pack. Luis is the leader. We are going to need a lot of manpower to bring that one down. But thanks to this moron's overblown vanity, we have all their correspondences and meetings saved on videos. Plus all their emails. This little shit was actually attempting to use it for blackmail on a land deal. There's other packs involved, but they're the most involved."
I ended the mindlink and made it through emptying the rest of the cells, one housed a man around 20, he was only locked up because he dared to disagree with rejecting his mate because one of the warriors wanted her for himself. She refused the guard and ended up leaving the pack, running in the middle of the night. I offered any help we could to find her and reunite them. The other cell held an older man, he was a rogue, arrested for falling asleep by a lake here on the lands. Not a person locked up here were even guilty of any kind of real crime. As such, we released them all and Agatha and her mate asked if they and their children could join our pack. I promised them they absolutely could. We'd find a place for them among the ranks. But first, they needed to catch up, and Aggie desperately needed to see Lisa for herself. She had to know she was alive. I gave her my blessing and headed back to the main pack house to meet with Bastian.
"Both former Alpha's have been stripped of their ranks. Luna's too. They're being transported back to our land and imprisoned. Go on to her Jas. I know you need to. I can feel your need."
So, I did. I headed for my car and ran into Agatha and her mate on the way. They joined in and rode with me to the hospital. I had questions burning in my brain and I tried hard not to let them overtake me but I just had to know.
"When Lisa was brough to that hell…. How bad was it?" I asked Aggie
"She was close to dead, they'd whipped her over 100 times, she was so pale, she had lost so much blood. But I could feel her still there. I don't know how to explain it, but I could feel she was a fighter. She had this…. Aura around her, I have never felt such a power before. But please, understand, even if she'd been a human, I'd have STILL helped her."
"I truly appreciated you and what you did to save her. I don't know how she got in that state, but I promise, I'll be getting to the bottom of it all. I WILL have every piece of truth from that pathetic excuse of a former alpha before I toss his worthless ass into a cell for the rest of his life. I won't kill him, I know that will upset her, but oh how I want to."
"I do too. Him and his lowlife parents owe me for a decade of my life and I want it in blood. Their blood." Aggie said in a voice that left no room for doubt that she meant it.
Our conversation ended as we approached the hospital and parked.