CHAPTER 458: PRISONER

Xaden woke up, his eyes heavy and his back ned exhausted.

He felt his open wound already smelling with infection.

He gently touched hiss side and felt very dark blood slowly slipping out.

He wasn’t bleeding as bad as he had in the beginning.

But he could tell how dangerous it was getting.

He had been bleeding for almost two weeks now and if he didn’t take care of himself, he might die.

He groaned and laid his head back against the wall.

And then it occurred to him that he had nowhere he was.

He looked around and saw that it was a dark musty room with no lights.

There weee bars before him and he knew it was a cage.

How had he even gotten here in the first place.

The last thing that he remembered was being dizzy and finally passing out.

When and how had he gotten here.

He reached for the bars and it burned him, he immediately flinched.

Then he heard footsteps approach.

Refusing to look defeated and still very much defiant, Xaden looked up to see who his kidnapper was.

He perceived the familiar scent and he knew that this must be one of the people who were present at the gruesome attack that night.

A man probably in his late twenties appeared before Xaden.

He had a smile stuck on his face, and a fur coat that made him seem to look on top of the world.

"Hello Xaden." The man said. "It’s an honor to finally meet you."

"Alpha Xaden." Xaden corrected.

"My apologies, we have seen before. The night I attacked you and your men. Can you remember that?"

Xaden said nothing.

Simply glared at the man before him.

"My name is Hunter. Alpha hunter." He said as he offered his hand out for Xaden to shake.

"Oh sorry you’re in a cell." Hunter laughed and withdrew his hand.

Then Hunter folded his arms and looked at him.

"How quickly the mighty have fallen." He said. "I used to hear stories of you. Great Alpha Xaden. The one who died and came back to life. Lost his family and entire pack and yet created a new ones. Defeated his enemies. Defeated the great Moonlight pack. I have heard so many tales about you. I was so excited to actually encounter you."

Hunter sighed. "But unfortunately you disappointed me. Look at you now. I took your party in a few minutes. Look at where you are now. Look at yourself. Just a mess. A disappointment to your name. You could have done much better. You could have been better."

"Well too bad. You must be a ghost because I’ve never heard of you." Xaden said with sarcasm.

Hunter’s face twitched. "Don’t worry soon, everyone will know me."

"What do you want?" Xaden asked.

"To take over." Hunter said. "I want everything. I don’t just want your pack. I want everything. I want the royal family to submit to my knees."

Xaden was quiet at first and then he threw his head back and roared in laughter.

He laughed so much that he wept a single tear from the far corner of his eyes.

When Xaden was finally done laughing m, he wiped the tears away.

"You want to bring down everyone. Even I have tried to and I didn’t. What makes you think you would?" Xaden asked him.

"Just shows how incompetent you are." Hunter said. "Now that I have you, I’ll march off to claim your pack as mine."

"I have just fifty thousand men ranked as omegas, talk less of the rest of the ranks." Xaden said. "You caught me because you got lucky."

"The royal family is mine." Hunter said.

"What do you have against them?" Xaden asked curiously, because there was no way Hunter was just bent on going after the royal family unless he had his own personal vendetta.

"None of your concern." Hunter said. "But I’ll have it."

"What? are you going to marry the heir? Ig those are your plans then let me give you a heads up. She said is a spoiled and overly clingy girl who is obsessed with me. And I still don’t want to marry her. So good luck convincing her for yourself."

"Who says she is the only one?" Hunter answered back.

Xaden was stunned.

What did he mean by that?

"Offer your pack to me." Hunter said. "And I won’t kill everyone in it. I would also offer you a very swift death."

And at that moment Xaden spat at Hunter through the bars of the cell.

"You killed my men. If you think that I’m going to let you have anything then yoy are sick in your head."

Hunter very gently cleaned the saliva off his face and then used a hankie to clean his hands.

"You want to play the hard way." Hunter said. "So be it. But when they all die the same way your little friend’s family did don’t blame me."

Xaden rose a brow.

Hunter must have read his expression because he chuckled. "Your little errand boy? Marro? The one that you put in trouble. His whole family is dead."

Xaden clenched his jaw in rage.

"His mother, father, brother, dead. All because of you. And who is to blame? Only you. Their bloods are on your head. And when I find your little friend he is going to be skinned alive and hung in the pack square."

Xaden tried his best to not show emotion.

But he was burning as he worried for Marro.

He should have known to never have him involved in all of this.

"Anyone who dies? It’s all on you Xaden. Remember that. Perhaps if you come crawling to me, then I would consider." Hunter said. "I have to go now. I have a very very important guest who is waiting for me. The chat was nice."

And then Hunter flung the hankie at him and turned his back on him before heading out of the cell.

Once he was gone, Xaden leaned his back hard against the wall.

Defeated.