Chapter 62

Her diaphragm protested in short stabbing pains each time Sophia gulped for air and her lungs would press up against it too much, so she was forced to keep her breathing shallow to avoid it from lashing out at her.

It must have been due to the kick she’d been rewarded with there, between her ribs and her stomach, for not complying with the female officer’s orders earlier. Short and burly, she watched the woman who appeared to be in her late thirties walk away from the car she had just shut Sophia in the back of.

Bristling with indignation as she glared at the mean female’s back, her burning eyes trained to how this excuse of a law enforcement officer made her way up to another officer standing close by, as though she was extremely proud of how she’d just treated Sophia. The way her short stubby arms stuck out from her sides, held out almost to shoulder level, looking like she had some sort of fucking superiority complex, if her smug facial expressions the whole time hadn’t given it away already before that.

Sophia’s anger quickly gave way to concern as her eyes scanned the crowd of people bustling about, hoping to catch a glimpse of Neil. When she finally did, she had to look twice, doing a double-take at the sight of a man that looked like him, but wasn’t.

No, that wasn’t the Neil she knew. Broody, indifferent and even angry Neil she would have taken above this Neil she saw there kneeling with his head bowed in defeat, on her father’s immaculately kept lawn, any freaking day. This was someone else entirely. That wasn’t her Neil.

Sophia’s Neil would never give up completely like that!

Neil! Get up and fight! She tried to call him telepathically, even though she’d known it would be a long shot.

He didn’t even show a reaction to her plea. Not even a twitch. He was as dead still as a robot that had just gone offline, his eyes staring unblinkingly at nothing in front of him on the ground.

What had gotten into him? She wondered. He had been fighting and much more alive-looking when she’d seen him just a moment ago. Even the split lip was proof that he had still had some fight left in him earlier. Where had it gone so suddenly?

But she didn’t have to wonder too long, as she recalled what they had accused him of…

Murder?

Torture?

Taking hostages?

Genocide…?

There was just no fucking way! Not her Neil. There must have been some sort of terrible mistake. They had the wrong guy…

Then why wasn’t Neil standing up for himself like he’d taught her to do? Why was he submitting to their wrongful accusations?

Then suddenly, as though two incomplete images came together as she watched his vacant features and disconsolate posture, all of him screaming hopelessness and utterly defeated acceptance, she remembered how he’d wanted to tell her about his past before. A very dark past it had seemed to her like that night that he’d wanted to reveal to her.

She had stopped him, and she remembered that it hadn’t entirely been out of unconditional tolerance for the scary things she’d known he had wanted to come clean with her about, as much it had been due to her not wanting to know them. Again, her denial had played its part in keeping her ignorant.

Denial had made her blind to the darkness within him. Denial had kept her from seeing Neil’s qualities that scared her, preferring to only see those that had made her fall in love with him more and more each day…

There it was. Sophia was in love with the man on the lawn there – or was it rather the one that wasn’t there?

She’d been in love with Neil for a long while now, she knew, although this was the first time she’d actually admitted it to herself. But that unmoving, unalive shifter there bore no resemblance to the man she loved. That was barely a shell of him. That was a husk of the man she’d gotten to know over these past months.

But how well did she really know him? The horrifying things he’d been accused of didn’t fit the Neil she knew. The Neil she thought she knew. Those were things she would rather have compared to her father and Matthew. Not him.

Then why had he gone so robotic-like right after they had named the things he’d been accused of? That wasn’t something Neil would yield to. Not if it wasn’t true.

His face grimly set in compliance and resignation should have been enough to answer her, but still, Sophia refused to believe it. She didn’t care if she was in denial, Sophia just simply couldn’t believe that the man she loved would be capable of such atrocities. She knew bad men when she saw them – she had the life experience to back up that claim – and Neil wasn’t it. Not even close.

Sure, he was undeniably lethal, dangerous, and powerful to a point she was certain she still hadn’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet. But a barbaric monster? No. That was something she just knew, from the very depths of her heart, her belly, she simply knew. Sophia knew that there wasn’t a single immoral bone in his body.

More than anything, she wanted to speak to him now. He would be able to clarify things to her and tell her that all of this had been one big horrendous misunderstanding. Just as this escapade of theirs had turned out to be a colossal disaster.

It was Sophia’s fault that her friends were in handcuffs just like her now. Maybe theirs weren’t causing them as much pain and discomfort as the ones she wore, for that damned woman had tied hers tighter than was necessary. But she was the reason why they hadn’t had enough time to properly plan for this search and rescue mission. She was to blame for them falling all helter-skelter into it, which had left them no other option but to trust someone that had obviously betrayed them.

Where is that fucking traitor now?

It didn’t take Sophia long to find that ginger-red blotch between all the other heads around the area. Jackson was sitting at the back of what looked like a military vehicle, holding his nose with bloody tissues stacked underneath. The pleasure she felt at seeing him bleeding and still in pain was short-lived when she saw her father’s friend, Uncle Vlad, talking to him.

Immediately, she concentrated on honing her enhanced hearing in on the two males, wanting to hear what they were clearly discussing with severity. She knew she’d missed most of it already, but thought that maybe there was still possibly something she could get from it, even if it was just to explain why Jackson would have betrayed them the way he did, and had basically delivered them right to the belly of the beast, where they were all stuck now, their futures uncertain. Well, only uncertain to the point of their executions looming on the horizon.

“And Tamryn?” Jackson asked, eyeing Vlad nervously.

Her father’s friend looked almost bored, as though he wanted to be anywhere other than there at that moment, having to deal with Jackson’s questions. “As agreed, she will be released. You can go pick her up in an hour.”

Sophia saw the relief he tried to hide, not very well at that, as Vlad was about to look like he wanted to leave. “Wait,” Jackson reached with his free hand to stop the giant shifter, but right before he could touch his shoulder to turn him back he realized his mistake, but Vlad halted and looked over his shoulder in expectation. “What about my pardon?”

He just shrugged at Jackson as though he didn’t care one way or the other. “The Alpha told you that she would pardon you if you brought her the two most wanted criminals of the Lucian pack, Neil De Boule and Sophia Tibald, and you did, so I would think that she intends that deal to still be on the table.”

Vlad then glanced over at Sophia in the back of the police cruiser, giving her a sneer as though he knew that she’d heard that part, before he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

She and Neil were the most wanted criminals in the whole pack? And most importantly, he said that Jackson had made a deal with ‘the Alpha’, but then he said it was a ‘she’... Did that mean that her father wasn’t the Alpha anymore?

What the fuck was going on here? It was like they’d stepped through some sort of stargate that teleported them to some sort of an alternate universe that was parallel to the Tibald they knew, but wasn’t Tibald at all anymore.

Not that that was necessarily a bad thing. The city and people she knew weren’t that great to begin with in any case, but it didn’t take away the utter confusion and terror she felt. Their futures were more uncertain than ever now.

Sophia realized then that Jackson was looking at her as well, and instead of the triumphant smirk she had expected to see there, his eyes shone with pity instead, still holding the broken nose she’d inflicted on him.

Shit. That could only have meant that even after she had hurt him, he still felt sympathy for what she was about to face…

His attention then snapped to someone passing him then. It was the husk that bore Neil’s face, escorted by two officers who didn’t look too weary of the dangerous shifter they were following, as though they too could see how he’d give up completely, and wouldn’t be giving them any trouble.

“I’m so sorry Neil,” Jackson said to him, but Neil didn’t notice, or showed no sign that he had in any way. “I had to do it. For my and Tamryn’s freedom?”

“What about our freedom, you fucking asshole?!” Sophia screamed at him against the closed window, but he heard her well enough. “What about Leo and Bella’s freedom? Who will help them now?”

Not looking at her in acknowledgment, but bowing his head shamefully nonetheless, Jackson turned and disappeared into the crowd as well, his nose still bleeding.

Sophia slammed herself back into the seats a few times in frustration, each time sending a sharp piercing pain through her wrists where she hit the too-tight-cuffs there, but she didn’t care. She welcomed the pain. The physical distraction was better than feeling the full force of her fear and despair.

They’ve failed. They failed to save her brother and the girl Bella, and whoever else they might have found there. She had failed them all. What was going to happen to them now?

Sophia knew she wouldn’t be able to do much about it from her compromising position now, however, she still had some remaining hope left that they would find a way to escape somehow and return again to save them.

But as she watched Neil also being pushed into the back of the car next to her, she saw that she was the only one still seething and furious from being hindered from their mission. Sophia could see then, beyond any doubt, that the chances of an escape ever happening was next to nil. No man that had some sort of hope or plans to still fight their way out of this would look so utterly vanquished of his will, his very life force. He wouldn’t be sitting there like an empty and frigid statue. A statue that wouldn’t look at her.

“Neil?” Sophia still tried. Nothing. It was like he was somewhere else completely. She couldn’t even feel their connection anymore. “Tell me that what they said isn’t true…”

She couldn’t help but notice that her voice was shaking and small. Her heart didn’t want to believe such things, things her logical mind was trying to clarify and nudge her to put two and two together already. She couldn’t believe such things. She was barely holding that small bleeding part of herself together as it is already.

But there was no denying that her resolve had been cracking the whole time up to this point, and she could feel gaping tears starting to open there. It allowed for her own hopelessness to seep through there. It was relentless and overpowering in its effect on the little bit of willpower Sophia still had tucked away somewhere.

“Neil, they must have made a mistake,” she pressed desperately. “Why don’t you tell them that? Why are you just allowing them to accuse you of such things?”

Finally, there was movement from Neil, but only to turn his face away from hers the moment she’d said ‘such things’.

No. No. No…

It couldn’t be true…

“Shut up you murderous bitch!” The dick of a female officer reprimanded her in her gravelly voice, from the front as she got into the car, and she felt Neil stiffen next to her, but when she looked over at him in hope, he still wasn’t acknowledging her existence.

“Can’t you see that that’s the look of a guilty man?” the other officer added scornfully. He was the guy that she remembered seeing shooting Neil with a taser gun, and for that alone she wanted to reach over and bite his ear off. “Not that you’re any better, girl. So just accept that you are both filthy lowlifes and leave us in peace. We have a long drive ahead and I will tase your ass as well if you speak again.”

For a small moment, she could feel Neil’s eyes flashing darkly at the officer’s words, but it was gone within an instant again. It wasn’t necessary for threats to keep her quiet anymore anyway. Neil had done enough to warrant her heart the explosive release of the irreversible despair that had been building and building there.

As the car started to move to take them to their impending doom, Sophia let a silent tear drop for the Neil she thought she loved. The Neil she’d lost, who wasn’t this one sitting next to her that had done unspeakable things. No, he had taken the real Neil from her.

She could feel her Neil drifting aimlessly in outer space somewhere unknown, circling closer and closer to an ever-expanding black hole, holding a big piece of herself with him there within him. A piece she feared she would never be able to recover before that unstoppable dark force sucked him into its crushing void completely.