“If you are done,” Saffron snapped, and pulled Jaeden’s body up off the floor and dumped her into a seat. “Marion, put Hephaestian ropes around this one.”

“Why?” Caia snapped, making a move towards Jaeden. She was blown back by Marion.

“Good grief,” the witch cried before Caia could complain, her gaze switching between Saffron and Jaeden. “Dimitri will be devastated.”

“Why?!” This time both Caia and Sebastian yelled in fear.

“Caia.” Marion’s face crumpled in sympathy, causing Caia’s heartbeat to pick up speed, those old butterflies flapping their wings around the pit of her stomach. She looked at Jaeden, now tied to the chair unconscious, and she remembered that unfamiliar trace.

“What’s going on?”

“That’s not Jaeden. That’s a faerie from the Midnight Coven.”

Jaeden tried to contain her sigh of relief as Ethan walked away from her cage. He always came back if he felt her relief, and he would push the pain to her limit. She had also learned quickly to try and suppress the urge to vomit. He enjoyed her fear and pain too much. It spurred him on.

Once the light from his flame had disappeared and she could no longer sense him in the dank basement with her, she began to shudder and whine with her fresh burns. The bastard had put a spell around the cage that stopped her from being able to change into a lykan; otherwise he would never have been able to hurt her. But trapped in her human form, naked as the day she was born, Jaeden was covered with healing wounds that would have mended much faster had she been allowed to change. The new burns sliced across her back. He must be in a good mood. When he was angry he had always targeted her stomach, one of her more vulnerable areas as a lykan.

She unconsciously pulled her knees further into her chest so that she would be curled up as tight as she could be in a fetal position, but the movement tightened her back and thus her burns, sending another involuntary whimper into the darkness.

When they had first taken her - drugged her - she had woken up in the cage and had tried to keep an ear out and listen to what was happening. She knew this had to do with Caia. And soon she knew that Ethan was Caia’s uncle. She waited, hoping and praying that her rescue would be soon. Her father would have the entire pack after her once they discovered her gone.

She clung to that hope through his torture and his taunting, but as the days passed - or was it weeks? She couldn’t tell anymore - her hope began to crumble. Where was the pack?

And then Ethan, in one of his more sadistic moods, had told her about the faerie that had infiltrated the pack disguised as her. He’d had to blast her unconscious after his revelation sent her into an uncontrolled rage.

Now there was only darkness and pain, and the never ending breath of time. When once she had waited here hanging onto her hope, she now waited for the moment when Ethan would go too far … and end the agony of her twisted body and mind.

21 - Realities

Caia watched numbly as Lucien and Dimitri manhandled the faerie that looked like Jaeden. They were trying to secure her so she couldn’t pull any funny stuff while they took her down to the basement.

“What are they going to do?” she asked softly, bleakly.

Magnus stood by her protectively, his eyes blazing with anger and sadness. Before he could reply Caia jumped at the hideous crack of Dimitri’s hand across the faerie’s face. “CHANGE!” he roared at her.

Caia flinched, an unexpected tear rolling down her cheek. Dimitri was bristling with rage she had never witnessed before, and he no longer wanted the evidence of his daughter’s disappearance in his face.

The faerie spat out blood and glanced anxiously at Dimitri. “I can’t with these ropes on me.”

Lucien sighed, his eyes fully of sympathy and anger, too. “I’m sorry, Dimitri. We can’t take them off her.”

“I can do it.” Saffron sneered at the faerie in the chair.

“How?”

“Faeries can unmask one another.” She stepped forward and put her hand on top of the faerie ‘Jaeden’s’ head. Saffron’s beautiful face crumpled into a mask of distaste at having to touch her, but a wave of energy hit them all as the faerie’s form began to waver in the chair, and finally Jaeden disappeared from them. For some reason that made Caia want to cry even harder. She glanced at Sebastian, who was trembling with fury. His best friend had been gone and in the hands of the enemy for how long? Her eyes flashed back to the faerie, who was now a serene looking blonde with velvet brown eyes.

“Your name?” Saffron hissed.

The faerie said nothing. Saffron did the honors and slapped her with a surprising amount of force.

Caia was troubled with more than the faerie’s name. She stepped towards the faerie involuntarily and her brown eyes locked onto her.

“How long has Jaeden been gone?” she choked.

The faerie shifted nervously.

“How long?” Caia repeated.

Nothing.

“HOW LONG!” Dimitri bellowed. He was immediately restrained by Magnus and Lucien. They couldn’t chance him ripping the supernatural apart before they had the information they needed.

“Let’s get her down to the basement.” Lucien sighed heavily. He did not look pleased by this.

“The basement?” Caia asked in confusion. Why the basement?

Magnus cleared his throat. “They need to get Jaeden’s whereabouts from her, one way or another.”

She understood, and a shudder ran through her body. They were going to torture this creature.

No.

Without thinking, Caia hurried to the faerie to question her once more, and placed her hand on her shoulder. Before she could say a word a riot of images blasted her mind and threw her physically back. She landed hard on the floor and, although she could hear the chaos it caused in the room, her mind was too busy being assaulted by the dark images of rusty bars and the smell of fear to care. Unfamiliar faces hit her, and blood. Lots of blood. The most prominent images, however, were of those bars. Caia tried to hold onto them. And then she saw her. Jaeden lying naked and bleeding - her skin ripped and torn and burned - behind the bars of a cage. White heat shot through Caia’s body and she came back to the room she was in, Lucien bending over her anxiously and Magnus holding Dimitri back, while Saffron interrogated the faerie.

Caia looked at the remorseless creature in front of her, and tears of fury trembled down her cheeks at the images of Jaeden. They were real. She knew they were real.

“They have Jaeden in a cage,” her voice came out in a growl. Her wolf had taken over her in her own frightened fury.

Dimitri let rip another roar.

“Caia, how do you know?” Lucien asked tentatively, helping her to her feet.

She shook her head. “When I touched her I saw things. About her,” she bit out and glared at the murderess. The faerie looked frightened now. Good. Caia glanced up at Lucien who still held onto her. “Take her to the basement, Lucien. Find out everything you can... however you can.”

He nodded, but his jaw tightened. He wasn’t happy about torturing any creature, for any reason, and he seemed even less happy that Caia was ready to do so.

“You didn’t see her,” Caia choked an explanation.

“Is she alive?”

She nodded, her head dropped. “Barely.”

It was as if someone had died, the dark tension of grief that gripped the house was so intense. Sebastian was sent home despite his protesting, while Dimitri, Lucien, Saffron, and Marion interrogated the prisoner in the basement. The basement must have been soundproofed because no noise filtered up to Caia’s ears as she sat anxiously with Ella and Magnus in the kitchen, cupping a now cold mug of coffee between two frozen hands. Magnus sat close to Ella, his big hands wrapped around hers on the table, offering her comfort. Her steel grey eyes were puffy from crying. She had just gotten back from Julia’s, having left her in the care of Christian and Lucia. By the strained look on her face, Caia knew that Julia had collapsed at the news. She hissed. The tension was making her angry. Everyone, including Jae’s own mother, was acting as if Jaeden was dead. She wasn’t. Caia didn’t know why she was so certain, but she was sure that Jae was alive somewhere. The handle on her mug broke off in her hand and she glanced up sheepishly at Magnus and Ella’s enquiring eyes.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“A few days ago and this place would have been flooded. Furniture would have been broken.” Caia gazed blankly at Magnus, who smiled. “I’m saying I’m proud of how quickly you’ve mastered your powers, Caia.”

Oh. She flushed a little at his praise and shrugged. “Marion has been very patient.”

The Elder sighed at her modesty. “She says she’s never seen anything like you. Marion’s not one for exaggeration.” His lip curled as if he was remembering something. “Or praising for that matter.”

She shrugged again. “It’s no big deal.”

“Cai-” Magnus began only to stop quite abruptly at the sound of feet stomping from the basement door into the hall. They waited expectantly and, while she knew Ella and Magnus could smell that it was Lucien and Dimitri approaching, only Caia knew that Dimitri’s rage was now mingled with grief, and Lucien oozed anguish. Her heart faltered. She must have been wrong.

Oh Goddess, Jaeden.

They appeared, their expressions mirroring the emotions rolling off of them. Not only that, but Dimitri’s knuckles were smeared with blood. Caia sniffed subtly. Not his. She winced, but then stubbornly stamped out any sympathy for the faerie that had caused more bloodshed than Caia cared to know.

“Well?” Ella trembled.

Dimitri turned away, his head bowed, his breathing erratic as if he were drowning. Lucien sighed heavily, running his hand through his hair in that familiar gesture of frustration. “She’s alive.”

They all let out a collective breath of relief.

“But?” Caia asked, bracing herself. Jaeden may be alive but there was reason Dimitri looked like a grieving father.