CHAPTER 86: MESSENGER

He writhed against the restraints, fighting Dmitri’s iron grip on his head, his escaping breath bubbling to the surface of the water-filled basin.

I gestured to Dmitri and he yanked the prisoner’s head up, water spilling and sloshing with the motion.

The prisoner gasped, taking in gulps of air as the coughs he hacked rattled his entire body. Water streamed from his mouth and nose, his chest heaving with the desperate need for oxygen.

I waited. Patient even as the ice in me manifested, turning the water in the basin cold enough to steam.

I was sure the ice-cold water had shredded his lungs with every breath.

The cell was dark and dank, water dripping somewhere in the darkness beyond the single light that illuminated our work. The smell of mildew and fear hung thick in the air, mixing with the metallic tang of blood from earlier interrogation attempts.

This was the third session. The third time I’d watched this man nearly drown and still give us nothing.

"Tell me about the Oath of the Black Moon," I said, my voice level despite the frustration coiling in my gut like a serpent. "Tell me where they’re hiding. What they’re planning next."

The prisoner’s head lolled forward, dark hair plastered to his skull. When he finally looked up at me, his eyes were bloodshot but still defiant, even as he shivered.

"Black moon will rise," he rasped, the words barely intelligible through his damaged throat.

The same answer. Always the same answer. My eye twitched.

My jaw clenched so hard I felt my teeth grind together. Frost crept across my knuckles where my hands were clasped behind my back, ice spreading like a disease I couldn’t quite control.

That was why I let Dmitri handle the physical interrogation. Why I kept my distance even though every instinct screamed to TAKE this man’s throat in my hands and FREEZE the answers out of him.

Because I knew myself. Knew that in my current state—frustrated, running on too little sleep, the rut still pulsing beneath my skin like a second heartbeat, and the fact that he had been one of the reasons that Lilith was harmed—I would lose control. Would freeze his head solid and kill him before we got what we needed.

And we NEEDED what he knew.

And he knew that enough to make not it easy for us.

"You’ve killed so many," I said, moving closer but keeping my hands locked behind my back. "The Fenrir’s bile bomb at Moonclaw’s museum. Three dead, twelve scarred for life. Somehow you got your hands on the only type of acid that we are not impervious to. The attack on Duskhowl where you stabbed the Alpha’s mate and wrote your message in his BLOOD."

I leaned down, bringing my face level with his.

"’Luna Atra orietur,’" I quoted. "Always the same message. The Black Moon will rise. Always in blood."

The prisoner’s lips curved into something that might have been a smile if half his face hadn’t been swollen from Dmitri’s earlier work.

My beta might have seemed like a lightweight but he had no qualms when it came to getting his hands filthy.

"And Hollowfang," I continued, my voice dropping to something colder, something MORE. "The hunting ceremony. You captured twenty-three pack members and force-fed them wolfsbane until their wolves SCREAMED and receded. Until some couldn’t shift without agony. Until some of them went MAD from the pain." I gritted my teeth, remembering the report, headlines, the pictures, the chaos. Days that were supposed to pass and be forgotten, forever engraved in their minds.

I straightened, looking down at him with all the ice I’d spent years cultivating.

"That’s just what we KNOW about," I said. "There are dozens more incidents. More deaths. More mutilations. More of your cult’s handiwork scattered across every territory in the Concord."

The prisoner said nothing. Just stared at me with those dark eyes, water still dripping from his chin.

"Dmitri," I said quietly. "Again."

Dmitri didn’t hesitate. His hand clamped back onto the prisoner’s head and shoved him under the water once more, and I had the delight of making the water colder.

This time I let it go longer. Watched the bubbles grow frantic. Watched the body jerk and spasm against the restraints. Watched until the movements started to slow, until the fight began to leave him.

Then I gestured again.

Dmitri hauled him up.

The prisoner vomited water and blood, choking and retching, his entire body convulsing with the effort to breathe.

I waited until he could focus again. Until those dark eyes found mine through the haze of pain and oxygen deprivation.

"You WANT to be here," I said, and watched him go still. "Don’t you?"

His eyes widened slightly. Just enough to confirm what I’d suspected.

He could hide his cult’s secrets but he could not hide the fact that I had figured him out.

"None of your kind has been captured and stayed alive this long," I continued, circling him slowly like a wolf around wounded prey. "Every other member of the Oath we’ve caught has killed themselves within hours. One howled so loud the pitch popped his own eyes, made his ears bleed until his heart stopped. Another shifted and unshifted repeatedly until his body gave out, his heart unable to sustain the transformations." They didn’t need cyanide to kill themselves, or to swallow a pellet of silver. The abilities that made us impervious to what humans and some other creatures were not, also gave us creative ways to end ourselves. And the Oath of the Black Moon had discovered more ways than I could count.

I stopped in front of him again.

"But not you," I said softly. "You’ve been here for more than a week. four days of interrogation, of pain, of nearly drowning. And you’re still alive. Still conscious. Still WAITING for something. You are here for a reason."

The prisoner’s breathing had changed. No longer just the desperate gasps of someone who’d nearly drowned, but something else. Something almost like anticipation.

"So tell me," I said, my voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "Why did you LET me capture you?"

I heard Dmitri’s breath catch in the silence that followed.

For a long moment, silence filled the cell. Just the sound of water dripping and the prisoner’s labored breathing.

Then he laughed.

It started as a wet chuckle that turned into full, broken laughter that shook his entire body. Blood-tinged water sprayed from his mouth as he threw his head back, the sound echoing off the stone walls like something unhinged.

When he finally looked at me again, his eyes—deep onyx that should have been brown but weren’t, that reflected light like polished stone—were TWINKLING. Like stars trapped in darkness. Like something ancient and wrong wearing our eyes.

"There he is," the prisoner said, his voice suddenly clearer, stronger than it had been. "There’s the High Alpha we’ve been hearing so much about."

He grinned, showing teeth stained pink with blood.

"You got me," he continued, his tone almost conversational despite the circumstances. "You are good. Admittedly so." He seemed to lean back, casual without a seat. His shoulders slouched, the tension draining out of him. It was like resignation tempered with relief.