A Rejected Wolf and a Court of Ash (Eden and Azriel) novel Chapter 97

Chapter 97

Elvira

The floor is wet again and it isn’t from cleaning. The pack dungeons aren’t tended to, but water is dripping down from the stones in the ceiling. Drip. Drip. It sounds like the walls are mourning me. Or maybe mocking me. Hard to tell.

“Another cold night,” I murmur and hug my arms around my knees like I’m trying to fold into a dimension where this never happened.

Spoiler: I can’t escape from here.

The worst part?

The pack won’t leave me to die either.

Somewhere down the hall, chains clink. They aren’t mine. I don’t get the luxury of movement. It’s probably Screamer again. He still got hope. Screamer still yells when they come. Screamer still thinks someone is listening.

I don’t.

And then I hear him.

Calven.

Heavy boots. Sloppy rhythm. Like he is proud, of every step. My stomach knots, but not from fear. That left ages ago. It’s the tension and the endless loop of him taking what he wants from me and never thinking twice about it.

I hate him for it.

Calven is a new recruit, Logan’s new Gamma in the pack. But he is far from kind. Calven rose to power by being the kind of man who watches others flinch and calls it respect.

The door groans open.

“Look who is still breathing,” he says.

I don’t respond to the fool. I never do. I wish it would make him keep his distance, but he steps inside anyway while holding something in grease–stained paper. I try not to look at it.

But I’m not strong enough.

Curiosity wins and Calven smiles when he sees me staring at the food.

“Are you hungry?”

I give him silence.

But it doesn’t save me.

A large hand tangles in my hair and I yelp in protect. Calven doesn’t care. He yanks me up so fast my spine protests.

“I asked if you were hungry and I brought you food,” he sneers. “You gonna thank me like a good bitch, Pretty Råt? Or sit there pretending you’re still somebody important?”

My eyes sting with unshed tears. Calven smiles at that, but instead of letting the damn break, I give

him a slow blink.

He hates that.

Good.

He leans closer, his breath hot and rotten against my cheek. “Don’t forget what happened last time you ignored me.”

My stomach turns. My skin tries to crawl off my bones. The others were away that day. It was just me and him in here. And the memory I refuse to replay.

“You’re not gonna speak? Fine,” he spits. “Starve then.”

He throws the food on the ground and kicks it, hard. It hits the wall with a splat. Wet. Final. The smell of something that used to be meat fills the air.

I stare at the food while Calven leaves, shutting the door behind him.

The second he is gone, I lunge for the food.

But it ends in disappointment.

My fingers sink into something that should have been bread, but it smears like mud. The heat leaves a greasy smear on my palm. I pull back like I’ve touched a curse.

Am I supposed to get full from eating this? Where is the real shit?

Whatever.

I curl back into myself. The shame of moving too late is worse than the hunger now. I don’t even know why I reached. Instinct, maybe. Hope disguised as habit.

Stomach growling. Muscles aching. Pride clinging on by one cracked fingernail.

I don’t cry.

I’m past crying. Crying is for people who think someone will hear them.

Instead, I press my forehead to the wall. It’s cold. It’s real. I breathe through the stench and the phantom taste of rot I didn’t even get to chew.

My wrists ache. The metal cuffs don’t bite anymore, they have settled in like they belong. The skin is raw. Cracked. Bleeding. And I think there might be infection. Good. Let it come. Let it do what the guards haven’t finished.

I ran once. Three days through the woods with cracked ribs and no shoes. Thought I’made it. Thought I was free. Then they caught me and dragged me back in chains that smelled like silver and betrayal. They laughed the whole time. Said I was stupid to think anyone would come.

They were right.

Hope isn’t a door in this place. It’s a rusted lock with no key, a memory of something soft that doesn’t belong in stone. I let it go a long time ago, folded it into the corner of my cell and watched it dissolve like mist.

And yet,

Something stirs.

Not noise. Not movement. Just a flicker. A breath that isn’t mine. A rhythm that presses through the bones of the earth, like the walls themselves are humming.

Flicker.

Not sight. Not sound.

Feeling.

Like a hand brushing mine through a dream I’m not allowed to have. Like the echo of a name I’ve never said aloud. Like the memory of warmth in a world that punishes warmth.

It’s real. And it isn’t. And it breaks me anyway.

A heartbeat not mine. A tug like memory, except I don’t remember it.

This must be a mate.

He is out there somewhere and now I feel something. Not a voice. Not words. Just the shape of one syllable brushing across my ear,

“Elvira.”

What a sexy voice. Familiar too, but there is no hope for me. I must be hallucinating!

I try to ignore it, but… I can’t stop my mind from responding.

Why haven’t you come?

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