An Alpha's Claim

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J wasn't sure how many hours had passed. How many days.

She knew pain though. It was all she knew. Pain that burrowed deep in her body, in her subconscious, until every breath seemed to feed it.

The Alpha paced before her, laughing as he went. J wanted to glare at him, wanted to tell him that her mate would kill him soon enough, but her eyes were swollen, her vision blurred and she was pretty sure her jaw was broken.

A wet cough shook J's body and she nearly passed out at the pain that flared to life at the movement. She knew she was in trouble, such awful, awful trouble. Why hadn't Logan found her yet? Was her mate not coming for her?

The Alpha laughed again – maybe he'd said something, maybe he hadn't. J could only hear the high pitched whine that had been plaguing her since a bucket of ice water was thrown over her head to wake her up in time for another beating.

She was disorientated, unsure whether they woke her once a day, or multiple times an hour. Maybe she'd been here a day or two, maybe it had been a week. Faces, injuries and threats had blurred into one, long, endless moment.

The high pitched whine intensified and J bit back a growl at the sound. It was so annoying. So frustrating. Why wouldn't it shut up!

The sound stopped so abruptly that it made J flinch. In its place was a chilling silence followed by the gravelly voice of the alpha who stood before her threatening her with what he claimed was a silver blade. But J knew he was bluffing, she could smell it. The metal was steel, not silver.

She'd have tried to chuckle had it not been for the realisation that she could smell the metal.

She could smell it all. The rope that cut deep into her wrists but held her tightly to the metal chair they'd tied her to. She could smell the brief hint of soap that the alpha had bathed himself with that morning, could scent his enjoyment of her pain, but frustration at her lack of reaction.

If he'd wanted someone who would scream under torture and beg for mercy, he probably should have kidnapped someone who hadn't been brought up in these conditions. J knew better. She knew that if she begged for death, it would only take longer to arrive.

So instead, she'd taken each blow, blade and kick and maintained her silence. Only after they'd left, if she hadn't slipped into unconsciousness, had she allowed her tears to fall and her whines to fill her cell.

The first day, he'd dragged her like a prize across his packlands for all of his wolves to see. Following the parade, her beatings had begun. Not much had changed since.

J took a deep breath, wincing at the action, but slowly realising that some of the pain had faded. The heavy, smothering cloud of agony was lessening by the second. Smells assaulted her senses, allowing her to get some bearing on where she was and who was around. She reached out with her senses, tracking the guards that walked up and down the corridor and the alpha who had walked to the other end of the room to get whatever weapon he'd been trying to torment her with.

Realisation dawned deep in J's mind. She turned her focus inward, searching for that high pitched whine, but it didn't come. Goosebumps spread across her arms and down the back of her neck, as her slightly less foggy mind recognised what the noise had been.

Her wolf. Her wolf had been whining in protest, begging to be released. But there was no whine now, no sense of fear. There was, however, a growl. A growl that was growing and growing and growing inside J as the power of her wolf bathed her body with an unearthly glow.

She felt her wolf's power slide through her veins, felt her skin and bones begin to knit back together. She felt whole.

She had her wolf back.

The alpha stumbled to a stop as J's eyes snapped open, her face almost healed, gold eyes pinning him to the spot.

"But-but that's...it's impossible...." He trailed off as his body began to quake.

He turned as though to run.

He should have run faster.

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A/N

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