High Stakes

•VIII•

Lucien stared at his battered reflection in the blood pooled between his feet.

His blood, still dripping rhythmically from the wounds at his wrists, rubbed raw from the solid silver shackles that constrained them. He had tried fruitlessly to slip free, as well as from the ones around his feet and neck, but all he'd managed was to nearly flay the skin from his own bones.

Not that it mattered anyway, since he was scheduled to die tonight.

He anxiously watched the sun dip further and further towards the horizon through the small, barred window in his cell, pondering how likely it was that his father would decide to spare him. But seeing as how Dire hadn't even bothered to visit during the four days he'd been kept here, Lucien assumed it was extremely unlikely.

The cell door rattled, and Lucien looked up just in time to see a plate of food being tossed at his head, but he wasn't fast enough to completely dodge it. He winced as it connected with his already sore ribs, the food splattering across the blood on the floor. If it had been anything like what he'd been served so far, it was probably moldy and spoiled anyway, and Lucien didn't mourn its loss as he looked to the one who'd thrown it.

"Eat your last dinner, mutt," the wolf said with a shit-eating grin, before slamming the door and locking it.

Lucien again tugged at his restraints, the silver sizzling against his skin as he tried to dive for the door and the asshole standing behind it. The wolf laughed, low and cruel, before leaving Lucien to his fate. He tried to spit in his wake, but was so dehydrated that nothing came out, and soon slumped back to the floor in defeat.

Lucien reached up to the nape of his neck, feeling his now shorter hair that had been sheared off without his consent. "You look like that vampire's little bitch with that long, pretty mane," the wolf had said as he'd held Lucien down and sliced at his hair with a dull knife, cutting the back of Lucien's neck in the process. The auburn strands were now short and jagged, and crusted with dried blood.

He didn't recognize the young wolf that had been tasked with his torment, and assumed he'd been recruited to the pack after Lucien was exiled. He was everything Lucien wasn't - large, strong, with hair cropped neat and close to his head. It was unusual for the pack to adopt an outsider, and Lucien wondered what he'd done to earn the trust and respect of his father apart from acting like a sadist. It was a slap in the face that his spot in the pack had been replaced by someone who was capable of doing the things he'd done to Lucien while he'd been held here.

Except Dire was not his father, he had to keep reminding himself.

Although it had been days since Lucien had learned that fact, he was still reeling from the revelations. And it didn't help that this asshole of a wolf had been rubbing it in from day one, calling Lucien names like "mutt" and "bastard" and "vampire fucker" as he'd gleefully tortured him. He was also pretty sure that he was the one who'd hit him over the head and dragged him here in the first place. All he knew was that if he ever got free, this wolf would be the first to die.

It was a new moon tonight, and Lucien was too weak to shift even if he hadn't been bound in silver. Once the sun had fully set, the only light in his cell came from the small lamp in the hallway of the cave where he was being kept, casting shadows from the bars across his broken body. Lucien couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of his situation, since the wolves knew as well as he did that he had absolutely no chance of escaping.

He was still cackling maniacally when a familiar silhouette darkened his cell door.

"Is something funny, Lucien?" a deep, gravelly voice asked him, and Lucien balked at the sound of it.