"I am merely waiting for you to ask the right question." My voice was like gravel in my throat. It had been for the last day and a half. Whatever that boy had done to my throat burned like a raging inferno when I ate or drank. The mere thought of something brushing against my windpipes made me shutter.
I starred at Alpha Arden as he took in my words. His look went from a stone-cold pack leader to a charming young Alpha the moment he had turned toward me after ripping the boy off of me.
"And you aren't going to make things easy by telling me what the question is, will you?" he asked, a sly grim curling up the side of his face.
"No, it wont work that way." I replied, feeling more like a genie in a bottle with 3 wishes than a wolf in a cell with a secret.
"Very well then. Why does the book you stole have an unreadable language?" Alpha Arden started, sitting down across from me in the cell. I could feel Beta Drake watching us, his eyes flickering between the Alpha and me.
"Bane books are written by Banes in the language of the Banes. Only a Bane or one graced by one can read and write it." I sighed, forgetting I now saw the language as clear as they read English. "I could grant you the ability to read it, but it hurts. I'd be unlocking a part of your inner-wolf you probably don't realize is locked."
The look on Arden's face said it all. Surprise, guilt maybe. He still wasn't sure of what the book held for his mate's answers and the idea that a part of him wasn't fully unlocked. Even the best of Banes had to swallow that pill whole.
"Maybe at a different time." Alpha Arden replied and my hopes for a quick death sunk to the bottom of the cell floor. "Liam said you were under oath. What is that about?"
"All banes are under a Pledge, not an Oath, to their Alpha to follow their commands and obey them until their pledge is broken." I replied, trying not to recite from the text forged into my memories. "If a Bane doesn't pledge to any Alpha, they will go crazy with the Bane abilities and die."
"How long do you have before you will begin to go crazy?" Asher asked, concern filling his eyes for a moment.
"How long until the next full moon?" I replied curtly before watching him stand and move to leave.
"I will be back tomorrow. Get some rest if you can." Alpha told me before turning to the guards outside. "Only Beta Drake and myself are allowed to open this door unless it is an emergency and you have my direct permission via a mind-link. Do you understand?" He growled at them and I could feel the power in his words as they submitted to him. "Good."
The next day was a bit of the same. Alpha Arden would bring my tray of food and we would sit and eat while I answered his questions. They always started simple before getting back into the meat of things.
"Where did you grow up?" He asked, taking a bite out of his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
"Alpha Flynn's territory. I'm a born-in pack member to a family of four children." I replied before taking a bit of my own sandwich.
Arden nodded before hitting me with a harder question. "What did Alpha Flynn and Luna Lyla do to you. Liam wasn't able to hear them speaking to you but knew they were communicating."
Liam didn't hear them taunt me or hear the completion of the pledge. My eyes filled with wonder as I looked straight at Arden. He was getting closer and closer to the correct question. With a hurtful gulp, I told him everything they said, word for word.
"They took your mate?" he asked, trying to clarify what I had told him.
"Basically." I replied, taking a drink of water before looking back at him. "They took my ability to smell or find my mate, thus taking my mate. Yes."
"All this in order to punish you for what?" Asher asked, his question freezing the water in my throat for a moment, making me cough.
"I refused to follow my Alpha's order." I told him once I got my breath back under control.
A hit of anger flashed in Alpha's eyes as he looked at me. "And what exactly was this order they commanded of you? What was so worthy they deemed a mate was a valid punishment?"
I gulped. There it was. The question I had been waiting for. And yet, somehow, I wasn't quite ready to face his wrath when he found out the answer. "I would rather tell you in the presence of the Luna. As the answer to that affects her as well."
Asher sighed before mind-linking with someone. I assumed he had linked Luna Alice because we sat in silence until she made her way down the corridor. She small feet making more noise than the rats.
"Alice, darling, please come join us." Alpha called as her footsteps got closer. "Bailey here was just about to tell me what order was so important she lost her mate over."
A gasp came from the Luna as she came into view. Her raven black hair struck out against her soft white skin. "Okay, but it better be a good one." She said as she sat down next to Arden and stole one of his chips.
I sighed, moved my tray closer to the door and bowed down, curling my feet underneath me and lowering my head to the floor with my arms outstretched like a T.
"I, Bane Amy Lynn Bailey, fully accept the wrath of punishment I may receive for the information I am about to give you." I told them; my voice only slightly muffled by the ground below me. "I was ordered by Alpha Flynn under my Pledge to kill Alpha Arden or suffer the punishment of my pledge."
"What..." Luna asked as I felt the heat radiating from Alpha Arden's body. "What exactly did you pledge, dear?"
"I pledged to live in hell for the rest of my life. However short or long it may be." I told them, believing it to be my final statement as the anger rolled off Arden in waves. Then the miracle happened.
A hand touched my shoulder, just underneath the joint and pushed me back up into a sitting position. Alpha Arden raised my chin with his finger, so I was forced to look directly at him as he spoke. "You choose to live in hell instead of kill me?"
"I did, and I would willingly do it again." I told him, readying myself for the fatal blow, but it never came. Instead, Luna Alice wrapped my shoulders into a hug and cradled me. I didn't understand. I had made my way into their boarders, onto their land. I had deliberately tried to kill their Alpha, and yet she was hugging me.
"Bane Bailey, you are no longer to be held prisoner in my cells." Alpha Arden told me as I felt a tear roll down my cheek. Damn it. Second time that this damned Alpha has made me cry in front of him.
"You will need to continue to answer our questions as they come up, I have a feeling I will have more the more I read that book."
"Of course." I told him before turning to Luna Alice. "You both aren't mad? I tried to kill you. I got so close?"
"We aren't mad at you, dear." Luna Alice spoke, her hand outstretched to help me stand. "You're past doesn't make you who you are. Your choices in the present do. And when it really came down to it, you choose well."
I couldn't help but feel a bit of recognition as I watched Alpha Arden and Alice exchange a glance, both making eye contact before turning back to me. "You will however be housed and guarded no different than now. Just not in the dungeons and not down here."
I looked at both, of them as a smirk filling their faces as my disbelief filled me. "Then where?" I asked.