Elara's pov
Pain was the first thing I knew when I woke up, but it was better than being dead. Although, on second thought, I might have preferred that too.
My head throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a dull, heavy ringing that made my stomach turn. For a few long seconds, I couldn't remember where I was.
I tried to move my hands, but the cold bite of iron stopped me. My wrists were chained to a damp stone wall, but I had to keep my arms strained and rigid; the moment my shoulder blades brushed the rock, a jolt of blistering heat lanced through my skin.
The links rattled softly every time my body trembled. The air was thick with the smell of wet earth, urine, rust, and old blood.
But the pain in my head wasn't the worst part. It was the ache in my chest.
It felt like something had been carved out of me, leaving behind a hollow space where my heart should have been.
For days, I'd been saturated in the heat of Lucian's energy and the steady, rain-like calm of Killian. Now, both were gone. The connection had been severed so completely that it felt like withdrawal. I felt cold. I felt... empty.
"Awake at last," a raspy voice drifted through the dark.
I looked up.
Malakor was standing outside the iron bars of my cell. In the dim torchlight, his orange eyes looked like dying embers. He wasn't wearing the tactical gear anymore; instead, he had on a dusty long velvet coat that looked like it had been stolen off a dead king.
"Where am I?" I croaked.
"In the belly of the mountain," Malakor said as he paced slowly outside the bars. "Somewhere the Valerius twins will never think to look."
I started to lean my head back for support, but the sudden, white-hot sting of the stone made me recoil, forcing me to hunch forward and breathe through the nausea.
"They'll come for me."
Malakor laughed. It was a dry, hacking sound.
"Will they? Killian left you. You're just a human, Elara. A debt."
I closed my eyes. It didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. I was used to being the one left behind. Killian choosing a real wolf over a human anchor was just the way of the world. It was a Saturday in my life.
"You don't even know what you are, do you?" Malakor asked, leaning his face against the bars.
"I'm an Anchor," I whispered.
"No. You're a leash for a murderer," he hissed. He gripped the bars, his knuckles turning white. "They're bastards of a bloodline that should have ended years ago. That's why they need an Anchor to suck away the rot so they don't go feral and turn into the monsters they truly are."
"He even killed one of my own," Malakor sneered. "A girl who was worth ten of you."
A low, mocking laugh echoed from the cell next to mine. The neighboring cell was swallowed in darkness, but I could make out the faint glint of eyes reflecting the torchlight.
"Still crying about the girl, Malakor?" the prisoner rasped. His voice was deep, gravelly, and full of a strange authority. "Or are you just pained that she wasn't enough to make you an Alpha?"
Malakor whirled around, his face contorting with rage. "Shut up, you dog! You're lucky I haven't cut your tongue out yet."
He turned back to me, his breathing heavy. "I killed the other Anchors. I spent years hunting down every human with the scent. I thought the line was dead. Imagine my surprise when my spy told me there was one more hidden in a failing businessman's house."
He reached through the bars and grabbed a handful of my hair, jerking my head forward.
"I don't need to kill you yet," he whispered. "I'm just going to keep you here. Safe. Locked away. And I'm going to watch. Without you to stabilize him, Lucian's power will turn into a wildfire. He'll burn out. He'll go feral and tear his own pack apart. And when he's nothing but a mindless beast, I'll be the one to put the silver through his heart and reclaim my rightful place on the throne."
He let go of my hair, causing my head to thud against the wall. A scream caught in my throat as the impact didn't just bruise—the stone scorched my scalp like a hot iron. He turned and walked away, the heavy iron door at the end of the hall slamming shut behind him.
***
Silence returned.
I crawled toward the bars, my fingers trembling as I reached out, but as my fingertips brushed the metal, a jolt of pure agony lanced through my nervous system. It burnt my skin, leaving a blackened mark. I had thought it was only the walls that burned.
"Don't," the prisoner muttered from the darkness. "Those aren't just iron. Malakor had them forged with obsidian Marrow. It's harvested from the fossils of the First Alphas."
I shivered, the chains clinking softly as I tried to stay in the center of the small space. I looked toward the darkness.
"Who are you?"
"Someone who has been told over and over again that he made the wrong choice," the man said. I could hear the rattle of his own chains.
I didn't have an answer to that, my father had also made the wrong choice.
I looked at the scratch marks on the floor. Someone had been here before me and had tried to dig their way out and I wondered if they'd died in the dark, waiting for a savior who never came.
"How... long have you been here?"
"Long enough to know that nobody comes to this mountain unless they're bringing more chains."
"He said he killed the others. The other Anchors."
"Probably did," the man said. "That man is unwell and unpredictable."
I looked at the scratch marks on the floor again. They weren't just random. They were deep, frantic gouges that stopped abruptly at the base of the bars. Whoever was here before me didn't escape.
They just... stopped.
"What happened to the one before me?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
The prisoner didn't answer for a long time. The only sound was the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of water somewhere deep in the mountains.
"While touching the iron burns," he finally said, his voice dropping to a gravelly low. "The stone is just as bad. Just by sitting here, the resonance from the walls peels away your mind. And burns...You wake up one day and you can't remember your mother's face. The next day, you forget your own name."
He took a deep breath, then continued:
"The cruel part? The Marrow only eats the old world. But any fresh hell you learn inside this cage? That sticks."
And what happens if you finally stepped outside? I wondered.
I nearly asked him but thought better of it. There was no point. I doubt there was any outside for me again.
Rather than saying that, I said:
"I won't let it take me."
"That's what they all say," the man replied. "I thought I was strong, too. Now? I spend half my day trying to remember what the sky looked like the last time I saw it. The other details about me, Malakor makes sure to keep reminding me."
Panic flared in my throat, but my body wouldn't move. I was an Anchor with nothing to hold onto, sinking into a mountain that wanted to erase me.
Then, I heard... voices.
It wasn't a rescue. It was the heavy, rhythmic thud of footsteps in the hallway. Malakor's voice drifted through the iron door, muffled but unmistakable, laughing with someone else.
"The twins are already tearing their own pack apart," Malakor's voice drifted in. "Lucian is losing his grip. They probably think she's dead, and that's the best part. A grieving wolf is a blind wolf."
The door slammed shut. The words stayed, ringing in my ears like a funeral bell.
"He's going to let them destroy everything," I whispered.
"He is," the man replied, his eyes unfocused. "And by the time the Marrow has finished with us, there won't be a Valerius pack left to return to."