Hard Truths

I lay there, trying without success to poke holes in the logical conclusions I’d made. My anger built as I felt my life slipping away. It was worse than my worst fears; I’d turn into Princess Puppy Mill without the Princess part.

I picked up on what the Beta had done to Todd. There was no way the Pack Beta could disappear without raising suspicions, especially since Killington would be a prime suspect. His son was stuck here with me for the next nine to ten months. He seemed like a decent guy when I talked to him at the beach party. Was that an act, or was all this dumped on his shoulders?

His father was an asshole, expecting me to be broken and raped into compliance. It was just the two of us for the rest of the year; his father might stop in with supplies every month or so. My life would be better if I could get him to see me as a person instead of a womb.

I didn’t want to be beaten and used every night.

I heard him walking towards the door and pushed my anger back. He pushed the door open, seeing me lying on my side on the thin mattress. He had a first aid bag in his left hand, which surprised me. “Vicki, my Dad has the only key to your collar, and he’s not here. If you think you can take me out and escape, you’re wrong. You’ll die of dehydration before he comes back here.”

I was weak and could see out of only one eye. If he was going to patch me up, I wasn’t going to fight him. “Don’t hurt me,” I said as I wiped a tear off my bruised cheek.

I didn’t move as he set the bag down on the table, well out of my reach. He pulled out an ice pack and handed it to me. “Put that on your eye while I clean you up,” he said. The cold helped calm the pain and throbbing. He was surprisingly gentle with the washcloth as he cleaned the drying blood off my face and neck. “That ring of his did some damage to your face,” he said. “I’m going to have to stitch it up.”

“Do you know how?”

“As my father’s son, I had to learn early to patch myself and my siblings up.” He went back to the medical kit as I considered what that meant. Warrior training could be rough, and cuts and injuries happened. The way he said it implied it was more than just ‘training.’ If his dad beat them, I needed to use that to get him to see me as a fellow victim and not an assignment. He came back with a hemostat and a curved needle with stitch attached. “I don’t have any local anesthetic,” he said apologetically.

“It will distract me from how much my ribs hurt,” I replied. Todd was efficient with his stitching, covering the wound with antibiotic cream and a band-aid.

“Won’t your father get mad at you helping me,” I asked softly.

“Fuck him,” Todd said. “He’s not stuck in this house with you. If that wound gets infected, he’s not the one at risk trying to keep you healthy. Now, let’s see those ribs. I’ll need you to sit up,” he said. With his help and a grimace of pain, he got me sitting on the edge of the mattress. I yelped in pain as he probed the bruised area, feeling the bones. “Best I can do is give you more ice packs and some anti-inflammatories,” he said. “You have two broken ribs, but they haven’t punctured anything.”

“I’ll take it,” I said. “It hurts like a bastard when I move.”

He grabbed his trash and put it back in his pocket, then went back to the small fridge. The shelf was full of water bottles. Todd grabbed two, along with a handful of granola bars. He set them all by the bed, then went over and shook out a couple of Aleve capsules. I was already drinking the water when he handed me the pills. I tossed them back and drained the rest of the bottle. “Thank you for helping me,” I said.

“Both of us are stuck in this shitshow, and I’d rather not fight you the whole time we’re here. It’s going to suck enough as it is. Make sure you eat something with the pills. I didn’t follow the ‘take with food’ instructions a few years ago and ended up shitting blood.” He walked out, leaving the door open. I opened one of the granola bars, chewing it slowly, then washing it down with the water. I was starving, my breakfast having been interrupted. From my hunger, it had been a while since the Beta snatched me.

When he came back, he had some things in his hand. He set the bucket and a roll of toilet paper by the bed. “Let me know when you've used the bucket and I'll empty it out. These won’t fit, but they are better than nothing.” He tossed a shirt on the bed as he held out a pair of boxer shorts. “Sorry.”

Todd moved the underwear over my legs and pulled them up as I painfully lifted my butt off the mattress. They were hopelessly big, so he twisted the front and put a rubber band over it to hold it in place. Crude, but effective. He then held out a short-sleeved button-up Panama shirt, helping me get it on and buttoned without hurting me further. “Why give me these,” I asked.

He got a little embarrassed. “You’re a beautiful woman, Vicki, but you aren’t my mate. You don’t need the embarrassment, and I don’t need the temptation.”

“Your father seemed to think you would take advantage of me.” Todd’s father told him to use me for his sexual release as long as he didn’t risk pregnancy. The way he said it told me he’d done it himself.

“My father is not the person I aim to be.” He was getting a little upset, and when he turned and fled the room, I watched the door slam shut behind him. Did I go too far?

I took the ice pack off my face and moved it to my ribs after laying back down. I was going to use it until it was warm.

I must have drifted off because I woke to the door opening. I could smell the food, and Todd had two plates in his hands. He set one of them on the table, then handed me a paper plate. “I’m not much of a cook, but it’s edible,” he said. It was a steak from the grill, with instant mashed potatoes and two dinner rolls with butter.

I took the plate and the plastic fork, my stomach growling as I smelled it. I didn’t have a knife, so I picked the steak up and took a chunk out of it. It was perfectly prepared. “You grill like a champ,” I said after I swallowed the first piece.

“I hope you don’t mind if I eat with you. Eating alone sucks.”

“Did that happen a lot as you grew up?”

“No. With Mom and the three of us, I was rarely alone. That makes this time all the more grating. They get to go home and act normal while I am stuck here with you.”

I snorted. “It’s not MY choice,” I said.

He took a big bite, taking some time to think as he chewed. “Both of us are caught up in things that are much bigger than ourselves. We can’t avoid the outcomes, but we can try to make things less, um, unpleasant.”

“Unpleasant is a pretty weak term for being kidnapped, raped, bred, and killed,” I told him.

“Dad said they’d let you go after you give birth. He promised me.”

I dropped my fork and looked at him. I kept staring until he looked at me. “There is no way in HELL your Alpha lets me leave this room alive,” I said. “He can’t. You took me out from under the noses of every Alpha in North America. There won’t be a human or werewolf in the country who doesn’t know about me.” I pointed at him. “You both didn’t hide your identities, so I know what Pack is responsible. If I leave and tell someone what you’ve done, there won’t be a male left in your Pack by sundown.” I let that sink in. “What do you think Alpha Leo and the Council are doing right now?”

He took another bite and slowly chewed it. “They are looking for you.”

“Exactly. Every Pack is suspect, but some more than others. Killington is at the top of the list, along with Alpha Carl Owens of Little Canada. He’s the fucker who got Leo arrested and tried when I was five years old, and he tried to get me assigned to his Pack. Your Alpha was major-league pissed I didn’t mate his son.”

“Timothy was always going to mate Traci,” he said. “They swore it to each other.”

I just shook my head. “Leo will be out for blood, as will my biological father, Alpha Ivan, and all our allies. They dumped you down here with me because they have to pretend they have nothing to do with it. The Council and the other Alphas will be all over Killington looking for me.” He picked at his food, and I kept going. “Timothy lost his Mantled Heir, didn’t he,” I said.

Todd’s eyes got big. “How did you know that? NO ONE knows that.”

“Logic,” I said.

“Four years ago, Timothy got an Omega in the Pack pregnant. She knew what would happen to her child if she stayed, so she fled. No one has seen her since, but Timothy got a photo of her and her son a year later. Alpha Theodore has been trying to find and kill the family ever since.”

“Nice. That’s the same thing that happened to me as a child. As for how I knew, their actions bear it out. Why go through all this? Why risk getting the Pack eliminated to get a child from me if Timothy can have a mantled heir with his chosen mate?” I let it sink in. “Your father has you tracking my morning temperature. When they hear I’m ovulating, Alpha Theodore will send Timothy down her to rape and impregnate me.”

“Timothy isn’t a rapist,” he defended.

I laughed. “Who is going to tell anyone? You? And why wouldn’t he want to find out what he gave up when he rejected me? He’s going to have to drug me to do it. There is no way I’m letting that diseased dick of his anywhere near me while I’m conscious.”

He looked down at his food and pushed it away, drinking some water. “What else did you figure out?”

“You’re going to be tossed to the gators right after I am.”

Now I had his attention. “No. I’m the Beta’s son; Alpha would NEVER do that.”

“Really? Let’s play a game of what if. Under your plan, you and I stay down here for the rest of the year, giving Alpha Theodore plausible deniability they had anything to do with the kidnapping. They don’t call, don’t talk, and cooperate fully with the Council investigation. I’ve disappeared without a trace, and so did you.”

“Dad said they would say I was training in Russia.”

“And it would take the Council less than five minutes to prove that was a LIE, and implicate Alpha Theodore in a conspiracy to abduct a Mantled Heir. Now, would you like to try that plan, or what is behind door number two?” I was reeling him in like a walleye.

“What’s that?”

“A version of the truth. Your father says you disappeared overnight. On your computer, they find messages talking of your obsession with me, and insisting I will be your mate. They open everything to the Council, working by their side to track you down. Alpha Theodore even kicks you out of his Pack in disgust.”

He tapped his fork nervously. “But, Dad still has to come here to give me food, and Timothy still has to come here.”

“They can ditch their duties long enough to do that, especially after the initial investigation ends. Of course, they won’t tell you anything about what is going on out there. They didn’t even leave you with a radio or television, did they.”

He shook his head, no. “The radio in the van was removed.”

“So now we fast forward to the end of the year. Your Alpha treated you like a mushroom, keeping you in the dark and fed a line of shit. They take the baby and kill me. The next bullet goes in the back of your head. With you dead, everything gets wrapped up in a neat little bow. Case closed.” He was closing his eyes. “Now they have a baby that has my smell to it. Timothy feels a family bond and adopts the orphan child. Better yet, Traci fakes a pregnancy, or gets knocked up at the same time and presents my child as a fraternal twin. By the time the wolf emerges, and the mantle is evident, everyone believes the child is theirs.”

“Traci wouldn’t do that,” he tried to say.

“Tracy becomes Luna with a mantled heir. Timothy gets the Pack. Theodore gets his grandchild with dual Alpha bloodlines. And the Beta sees his daughter as the future Luna. The only one who doesn’t make out is you, Todd. You’re the expendable one.”

He got up and closed the door behind him as he ran away. The truth hurt, but these truths would be hard for anyone to accept.

I finished my food and laid down on the mattress again, falling back to sleep.