Moonstruck

𝓽𝔀𝓮𝓵𝓿𝓮 | Running Rogue

"What are they going to do to Mateo?"

Lizzie lifted her tear-streaked face from her smarting hands and stared back at Seth through the bars of her dungeon cell. They had silver in them, as she had discovered when she'd grabbed a bar in each hand earlier and tried to rattle the cell door to test its firmness. She half-fancied she could see it—the faint, sickly sheen of silver alloy, an aura casting stripes of lurid light across Seth's shadowy figure. From where she was huddled on the ground in a corner of the cell, as far from the bars as physically possible given the small space, it almost looked as if they enclosed Seth. It almost looked as if he was the one locked in a dungeon cell, not her.

She hadn't heard much about Seth Reagan before he became Alpha earlier that year—and she doubted anyone else in the Azure Pack had, either. In fact, his name had been virtually unknown compared to Kiera Lin—famous child prodigy and protege of Luna Zahra—and even more so in the face of Beta Caleb's litany of scandals and transgressions. Clearly Seth—or someone high up in the Sanguine Pack—had taken deliberate measures to keep his history and presence in the dark.

Nevertheless, Lizzie reminded herself, he was the son of Caleb Reagan. Silver-blond hair and cold gray eyes, even colder gaze—the resemblance was striking.

Lizzie cleared her throat and steeled herself, still slightly sniffling from crying. "I'm not scared of you, you know." That was a lie. Lizzie was no fighter; she couldn't throw a punch—least of all take one—to save her life. But Seth didn't need to know that.

"I literally couldn't care less," Seth said, stepping closer. For the first time, Lizzie noticed what he was holding— a neat bundle of pilly blankets in one arm, a bulging brown paper bag in the other. Evidently, Ellie had succeeded in convincing him to make her at least somewhat more comfortable during her "stay" in the House of Red Ochre. Lizzie was surprised, though. She hadn't expected the Alpha himself to stop by and drop off the amenities. "What are they going to do to him?"

Lizzie eyed the brown paper bag hopefully, suddenly realizing how hungry she was. "Is that for me? Is it food?" She imagined him refusing to give it to her if she didn't tell him about Mateo. And then the memory of Caleb trying to force-feed her who-knows-what reared its ugly head and struck her in the face. "It's not poisonous, is it?"

Seth opened his mouth, looking like he was going to say something far more poisonous than anything anyone could cook up, and then evidently thought better of it. "It's just some things I picked up from a nearby human bodega. Unless you don't—"

Despite herself, Lizzie almost had to laugh. "What do you mean, a human bodega? As opposed to what? A werewolf-only one?"

Did the Sanguine Pack really segregate their two populations? Were humans and werewolves not allowed to drink out of the same water fountains, use the same public toilets, go on late-night snack runs at the same convenience stores? How strange. And backwards.

Seth reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy-looking ring of keys. There were at least a dozen. They clinked against each other, the sound drying up almost pitifully into the deadening silence of the stone corridor outside the cell.

"Don't even think about trying to run away," he warned her as he swung the door open with a screeching creak and handed her the paper bag. Up close, he didn't look as much like his father as she had initially thought. Despite the fancy suit and the slicked-back hair, the rigid straight-backed posture and the affectedly aloof expression—admirable attempts, it was now painfully obvious, to make himself seem older—he looked no more than a year or two older than her. His features were softer than his father's, plainer than his mother's.

"I wasn't going to." Lizzie tore open the bag and warily peeked inside, half-expecting a grenade to explode in her face. Instead, she found a surprisingly decent-looking sandwich, a reasonably fresh apple, and some chips. No poison. Definitely no grenade. "Um... thanks, I guess."