Slade’s POV~
The rogue’s face was unrecognizable now.
I’ve broken his nose four times and it keeps healing wrong because of the silver suppressing his wolf.
Three of his fingers were bent at angles that would make a geometry teacher weep.
His left eye was swollen shut, and I was fairly certain I cracked his orbital bone an hour ago.
But he’s still breathing.
Which means I wasn’t one.
“Please…” he whimpered, blood bubbling from his split lips.
“Please, I told you everything—”
“Shh.” I pressed a finger to his mouth, smearing his own blood across his cheek.
“The begging is my favorite part.
Don’t rush it.”
I heard Colt sigh behind me.
“Slade, come on.
We got what we needed.
Father just wanted information about the rogue movements near the eastern border.
He’s given us that.”
“Twice,” Maddox added coldly.
He’s leaning against the stone wall, checking his phone like this is boring him.
“He’s confirmed the same story twice.
He’s telling the truth.”
“So?” I smiled at the rogue, watching hope and terror war in his remaining good eye.
“I’m not done yet.”
I picked up the pliers from my tray of tools, yes, I have a tray; I’m organized about my hobbies and gripped his pinky finger.
The one I haven’t broken yet.
His scream was magnificent.
It echoed off the stone walls, reverberating through the chamber.
I could feel it in my chest, vibrating through my ribs, and my wolf purred beneath my skin.
“SLADE!”
Colt’s hand clamped down on my shoulder, yanking me backward.
The pliers clattered to the ground, and I rounded on him with a snarl that’s more wolf than man.
“Don’t.
Touch.
Me.”
My voice came out guttural.
My wolf was too close to the surface, and Colt knew it.
His eyes flashed gold, his own wolf rising to meet the challenge, but Maddox stepped between us.
“Enough.” Maddox’s voice boomed.
“Both of you.
Stand down.”
I was panting.
When did I start panting?
My hands were shaking, not with fear, never fear, but with the need to hurt something.
To break it.
To watch the light fade from its eyes while I smiled.
Colt took a step back, hands raised in placation.
“Shit, Slade.
Look at yourself.”
And I did.
My hands were covered in blood up to my elbows.
It was dried and cracked on my forearms, fresh and wet on my palms.
There was a spray of it across my chest, from when I got a little enthusiastic with the knife earlier.
I looked like a fucking horror movie.
I look beautiful.
“You’re getting worse,” Colt said quietly, and there’s something in his voice I don’t like.
Pity?
Concern?
Fuck that.
“I’m getting better,” I corrected him, turning back to the rogue.
He’s unconscious now… how pathetic.
“Every time I do this, I learn more about the human body.
About pain thresholds.
About how much someone can take before they break.
It’s educational.”
“It’s psychotic,” Colt snapped.
“And staying down here in this bloody fucking dungeon is ruining my mood.
I don’t want to smell like a slaughterhouse.”
I laughed.
I couldn’t help it.
“Then leave, baby brother.
No one’s forcing you to watch.”
“Father sent all three of us—”
“And the job is done,” Maddox interrupted, pocketing his phone.
He looked at me with those calculating green eyes, and I saw the gears turning in his head.
“The rogue talked.
We have the information.
Continuing to torture him serves no purpose.”
“It serves my purpose,” I growled.
“I know.”
Maddox smiled, and it’s the smile of someone who understands monsters because he is one.
Just a different breed.
“Which is why I have a proposition for you.”
I wiped my hands on a rag but it didn’t help much and I faced my brothers.
Colt looked disgusted.
He’s always been the squeamish one, for all his sadistic tendencies.
He liked psychological torture, power plays, making people submit.
But physical violence?
He doesn’t have the stomach for it.
Maddox, though.
“What kind of proposition?” I asked.
“You need an outlet,” Maddox said simply.
“Father’s noticed.
Mother’s worried.
The pack elders are starting to whisper that you’re unstable.”
“I am unstable.”
“Yes, but they don’t need to know that.” He tilted his head, studying me like I’m a puzzle to solve.
“You need something to occupy you.
Something to…
channel your urges into.
Something that won’t result in us having to pay blood money every other week.”
“What, like a hobby?” I scoffed.
“Should I take up knitting?”
“I was thinking more like a toy.” Maddox’s smile widened.
“A personal one.
Something breakable, but not so fragile that it shatters on the first use.
Something that can take what you need to give.”
My wolf instantly perked up, interested despite myself.
“You mean a person.”
“I mean a plaything,” Maddox corrected.
“Someone who’s already broken, so you can rebuild them however you want.
Someone…”
He then paused for effect.
I remembered the exact moment I fell inlove with Isla.
Three years ago.
At the high school cafeteria.
Lunch period.
Colt was bored.
That was the problem with Colt.
When he was bored, he became a natural disaster.
He’d been sitting on the edge of the table, swinging his legs.
Isla had walked by.
She was trying to be invisible.
Her head was down, shoulders hunched, clutching her tray like a shield.
She was wearing that ragged grey sweater that was two sizes too big.
Colt moved fast.
He didn’t even stand up.
He just hooked his foot around the leg of her chair and kicked.
She went down.
The tray flipped.
A gallon of spaghetti and meat sauce went airborne and landed on her.
The cafeteria went silent for one second.
Then it erupted in laughter.
Teachers looked up, saw the mess, saw the Black Star heirs involved, and immediately looked back down at their salads.
Some of them smirked.
Isla was covered.
Red sauce was dripping from her hair, running down her face like blood.
It soaked into her sweater, staining the grey to a dark, muddy brown.
She should have cried.
Any other wolf would have crumpled.
They would have run.
Isla didn’t move.
She stood up.
Slowly.
The sauce dripped off her chin, hitting the floor and then she looked at Colt.
She looked at him with eyes that were too old for her face.
There was a fire in them.
Then she turned.
She didn’t wipe her face.
She walked out of the cafeteria with her head high.
She walked like she was wearing a crown made of diamonds, and the rest of us were just peasants throwing mud.
The room was still laughing, but I wasn’t.
I felt a jolt in my chest.
Like someone had reached into my ribcage and squeezed my dead heart until it skipped a beat.
My cock got hard.
Right there.
At the table.
In the middle of the cafeteria.
While she was walking away, covered in slime.
I shifted in my seat.
“Slade?”
Brock’s voice cut through the fog.
He was sitting next to me, frowning.
He’d been watching Isla leave, too, but for different reasons.
He looked worried.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked, leaning in, his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear.
I blinked.
The world came back into focus.
I looked at Brock.
Then I looked down at my lap. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The bulge was obvious.
I couldn’t stand up.
Not yet.
“Nothing,” I said.
My voice sounded raspy.
I reached under the table, my hand shaking slightly.
I gripped the zipper.
I needed to relieve the pressure.
I needed to adjust myself before I embarrassed myself in front of the whole school.
I pulled the tab down just an inch.
The fabric strained.
“You’re sweating,” Brock said, narrowing his eyes.
“And you’re…
tense.
Did you see something?”
“I said nothing,” I snapped, too quickly.
I adjusted the waistband of my boxers.
The friction helped.
It grounded me.
I took a breath, letting the pain of the tightness center me.
But damn it.
It wasn’t nothing.
This was everything.
From that day onward, I watched her.
I watched her hungrily like a predator would watch a prey.
I noticed things my brothers didn’t.
The way she flinched when you raise your voice at her and not your fists.
It seemed she was okay with fists raised but was sensitive to yells.
But here’s where I differ from my brothers.
I didn’t want to break her more.
I wanted to break her perfectly.
And when the mate bond snapped into place on her eighteenth birthday, it nearly drove me insane.
The pull.
The need.
The overwhelming instinct to claim and protect and possess her.
Because here’s what my brothers don’t understand.
Violence was easy, pain was easy.
Darkness was easy when it’s all you know.
But Isla?
She was light.
She was damaged and dark like the rest of us but she was my light.
When I hurt her, I feel alive.
When she fights back, I feel human.
Ever since the sex session on her birthday and watched how she almost broke and realized she was our fucking mate, I had been terrified.
Every time I touched her, I was terrified that I would lose control again.
Every time we fuck, even when it’s rough, even when I’m choking her or cutting her or making her bleed, there’s a part of me that’s screaming in panic.
But I can’t stop.
Because she’s the only thing that makes the darkness quiet.
When I’m with Isla, the constant scream in my head for violence and blood and pain goes silent.
When she’s in my arms, whimpering and broken and mine, I feel peace.
She’s my addiction.
My obsession.
Now standing in the forest with rogue blood cooling on my hands, I felt good.
The patrol had been satisfying.
Quick, and brutal, and efficient.
Three rogues tried to cross into our territory.
Three rogues died trying.
I’d torn through them like a surgeon and with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning.
My wolf was purring, sated and content.
My clothes were ruined with blood everywhere.
I didn’t care.
I was already thinking about going home.
About finding Isla.
About pulling her into my arms and breathing in her scent until the adrenaline fades.
Maybe I’ll run her a bath.
Maybe I’ll—
I froze.
No.
Fucking.
Way.
My wolf went utterly silent.
Because there, twenty feet ahead of me in the clearing, bathed in moonlight…
Was Isla.
Completely naked.