Heart Of The Storm

-Chapter 6- The Awful Truth-

Apollo

I watch as Aella and the girl Brooklyn walk out the door after their embrace. Their heartfelt reunion no doubt means they are very close. However, when the blonde called my mate 'sister' it threw me for a moment.

"I can't believe it's really her..."

Beta Ryan of North River says in disbelief, seeming just as stunned as his mate. He knows her too?

"How do both of you know my mate?"

He turns to me in surprise, looking first at me, then Alpha Darin, Beta Coran, and their mates in the room. A distant look in his eyes appears almost immediately, it strangely being the same look in Aella's.

"That is a very long, and very complicated story."

"I have all the time in the world to hear it."

A grim smile contorts his expression as he sits down along with his Alpha, we follow suit.

"I suppose I should start at the beginning, with the biggest threat to the supernatural...the SEP."

My eyes widen, Darin and Coran gasp. The Superhuman Experiment Project? As in, the laboratory whose main focus is discovering how supernatural creatures live and exist? How is my mate tied to that evil organization?

"The SEP functions under the facade that they run humane tests on willing individuals with superhuman abilities to discover how they have those abilities, and find way to use the knowledge to benefit the rest of the human population." He pauses, sighing.

"But the truth is, none of their test subjects are compliant, and their testing methods are far from humane. It's torture, I should know, considering I was one of their subjects."

I clench my hands into fists, my nails biting into my palms. I don't like where this is going, I can already feel my blood beginning to boil. Hera's words are suddenly making sense. How my mate had been through much suffering, has eyes of a weary soldier, and immense power inside of her.

"I first met Aella two weeks after I was captured. She had already been there a long time, at the time she was 17...anyway, she was the one who helped us survive inside that hell hole. Taught us the routine and how to get through the tests. And in exchange we shared stories of werewolves and our history, explaining how our pack functioned. It helped us all stay sane. But, she always had to pretend not to care about us when we were under supervision, showing attachment to others inside only caused more suffering."

"How so? And how did humans manage to control all of you?" Darin asks, and I watch Ryan flinch and run a hand around his neck reflexively.

"They used tranquilizers to sedate us initially, but they had these collars that blocked our abilities. Werewolves wore ones lined with silver and filled with liquified wolfsbane, witches had the equivalent of shock collars."

I growl angrily, me and my wolf enraged at the idea of such torture. Coran rests a hand on my shoulder in an attempt to comfort me, but I barely feel it through my fury.

"Aellas' was different, her abilities made her immune to the shocks, rendering them useless against her. So, instead they had to use heat..."

I barely keep Ronan under control, trying to fight the urge to shift and tear something apart. I don't want to imagine my mate suffering like that, knowing I wasn't there to protect her. But she lived through this, and I need to know the story.