The Feral Alpha's Captive

Chapter 41: On His Knees

🦋ALTHEA

The words hung in the air like a spell gone wrong, warping reality itself.

Victim.

Not spy. Not traitor. Not enemy.

Victim.

The room erupted.

Not with sound—there was no shouting, no chaos—but with a collective intake of breath so sharp it felt like the air itself had fractured. Shock rippled through the gathered Vargans like a shockwave, their hatred stuttering, confused, seeking a new target and finding none.

I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t process what I’d just heard.

"That’s impossible!" Ivanna’s voice cut through the stunned silence like a blade, sharp and disbelieving. She stood, her chair scraping against the floor. "She was found with his arm, covered in his blood, reeking of—"

"Decorum, Ivanna."

The Hell Hound’s voice wasn’t loud, but it carried absolute authority. Not a request. A command.

"Zeta Kael speaks. You will listen."

The words were measured, controlled, but there was steel beneath them. Even Ivanna, with all her simmering fury, sat back down. Slowly. Her jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscle jumping beneath her skin.

But her eyes never left me, still burning with that barely-contained hatred that said she didn’t believe a word of this.

I didn’t blame her. I barely believed it myself.

Kael cleared his throat, and the room fell silent again. Every eye turned to him—this elder who had survived what should have killed him, who had lost an arm and returned anyway, who now stood as the only witness to whatever truth lay beneath the evidence that had damned me.

"It was during my daily meditation," Kael began, his voice steady despite the tremor in his remaining hand. "By the mist’s edge. I go there every morning at dawn. Alone. Always alone."

His eyes swept the room, making sure everyone understood the significance.

"I was taken suddenly. No warning. No chance to fight or call for help. One moment I was in meditation, the next—" His voice caught, and for the first time, I saw the trauma flicker across his weathered face. "The next, I was somewhere else. Somewhere dark."

The room leaned in, collective breath held.

"They tortured me."

Then he look away from everyone, his gaze suddenly locking on me. My breath snagged. I blinked and for a ghost of a second, I saw something that made my blood turn to ice.

Hate.

Flaring in the storm grey whirls of his eyes.

Another blink and it was gone—like it never existed.

His gaze swelled with pity that jarred me. Was i losing my mind, had I not caught the sliver of the hatred in hiw gaze.

"They tortured me for information," Kael continued, his voice growing stronger even as it shook with barely suppressed emotion. "Not about clan secrets. Not about our defenses or our numbers."

His eyes found mine again, and this time there was no hatred. Only devastation.

"They tortured me for information about her. About Althea. Her whereabouts. Her condition. Her... connection to this place."

The room’s confusion was palpable. Why would anyone torture a Zeta for information about a supposed spy?

"I held out as long as I could," Kael’s voice cracked. "But they were relentless. They wanted to know everything. And eventually—" His remaining hand clenched into a fist. "Eventually, I broke."

Shame flooded his weathered face.

"I told them she was here. That she was with the Hell Hound. I told them—" His voice dropped to barely above a whisper, but in the silent room, everyone heard. "I told them she was his mate."

The room exploded into chaos.

Voices erupted—shock, disbelief, fury, confusion—all crashing together like a tidal wave. I couldn’t process any of it. Couldn’t hear individual words through the roaring in my ears.

Mate.

Before I could draw breath, before I could think, Kael moved.

He broke away from the deltas supporting him and ran toward me—not the careful approach of earlier, but a desperate, lurching run that sent everyone into motion.

Chairs scraped. Shouts erupted. Bodies surged forward to intercept—

But Kael reached me first.

He dropped to his knees before my chair with a sound that cracked through the chaos—bone meeting stone, hard and painful—and the room froze at the sight.

A Zeta. On his knees. Before a prisoner.

"If I had been stronger—" His voice broke completely, tears streaming down his face. "If I had just been stronger, you would have been left alone. Especially after everything you’d already gone through. Everything they’d already done to you—"

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be—

His remaining hand reached for mine, touching the silver shackles with shaking fingers.

"You didn’t deserve—"

"Deltas!" The Hell Hound’s voice cut through the moment like a blade. "Help him up. Now."

Two deltas moved immediately, but Kael was still talking, still crying—sobbing now—as they tried to lift him.

"You didn’t deserve those horrible things," he said, his rheumy eyes boring into mine with an intensity that made my chest ache. "You were young. Naive. You made mistakes, yes, but not—" His voice hitched. "Not the kind that warranted that. Not what they did to you. Not for years—" 𝕗𝐫𝚎𝗲𝘄𝐞𝕓𝐧𝕠𝘃𝕖𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝚖

The deltas finally got him to his feet, but he kept talking, words spilling out like a confession he’d been holding back too long.

"They spoke about you like you were nothing. Like you were a problem to be solved. Your own—" He choked on the word. "They destroyed you, and then they wanted us to finish what they’d started."

My mind was reeling, trying to piece together what he was saying through the fragments, the riddles, the horror of realization creeping up my spine like frost.

They spoke about you.

Draven. My mother.

They’d talked about me. In front of Kael. While torturing him.

They’d discussed what they’d already done to me. What they wanted done next.

Years, he’d said. They’d been destroying me for years.

"What do you mean?" The Hell Hound’s voice was different now—harder, colder, with an edge that made even the chaos-filled room fall silent. "What did they do to her?"

Kael turned toward the masked figure, still supported by the deltas, tears still tracking down his weathered face.

"Althea Nocturne," he said, and there was something almost reverent in how he spoke my name now, like an apology and a benediction at once, "has been through hell long before she ever stepped foot in this fortress."