Chapter 48: Breaking an Alpha

Jude POV

Strapped to a cold metal table, Jude wished he'd clawed Melisande harder before she knocked him flat with her magic. As it was, it gave him satisfaction to see the angry red slashes across her face. She didn't seem to care, or feel the pain. 

"This table has traces of silver in it," she informed him, looming over him as he lay helpless on his back. 

He stared into her eyes with a stone-cold wolf gaze, showing zero fear. His back felt on fire, along with the rest of him, but he would gnaw off a limb rather than admit that.

He focused on remembering the details of the walk here. The tower passageways had some kind of magical or otherwise artificial light–no torches. They looked as ancient as the rest of the tower. 

Of course, even chained, he'd tried to throw Melisande down the stairs when she and Marieke took him to the workshop. She'd levitated out of the way, and yanked his chain to stop him from taking a fall in her place. She'd dragged him upstairs to her lab, high in the tower. He remembered a brief flicker of hope and triumph when Melisande fell backward, only to have that spark snuffed out.

Melisande's lab looked new as well, with vials and beakers full of chemicals and potions, jars full of preserved specimens, and magical artifacts that would have intrigued him if he hadn't just become an experiment himself. 

"When I'm done with you, you'll be a bit more talkative," she said in that creamy voice.

He snarled, "There's nothing to talk about."

"I knew you'd say that. Then I'll talk. I'll tell you what's in store for you, even though you don't deserve the information on what I have planned."

He continued to give her his stare of death and said nothing.

"Let's call it a healing experiment," she said, licking her lips.

He snorted. "Other than the silver, I don't need to be healed. YOU'RE the sick one."

Whatever she did to him, Ravyn would feel. Every bit of it. He reached for her through the bond and felt her anger and pain.

"You're weak," Melisande taunted. "If I took control of you–"

He kicked his feet and snapped his teeth, thrashing around. "Never!"

"Your precious Ravyn is hurt, you know." Her eyes were full of concern. "You came with her to be the big, strong Alpha and protect her. Well, look at you both now!"

"Thanks to you!"

"It was tragic how your Emer died–there was barely enough left of her for a funeral."

He howled in rage and tried to break his bonds. "Shut your mouth!"

But he felt sick to his stomach at Melisande's words. He smelled his own despair, more potent than the other disgusting odors in the room. 

Rotating her body, she reached out and pulled a wheeled cart closer. Magical potions and bizarre-looking enchanted artifacts made him shudder, and yet he couldn't look away.

He knew enough, from his studies growing up and being friends and now family with magicians, about the right and wrong uses of magic to know that whatever Melisande planned to do with those potions and artifacts would be ominous for him.

"What does all that do?"

He hated the smell clinging to her. The scent of victory.

"It will make you invincible," she said boldly. "If you let me transform you, you'll be unstoppable. No one will be able to defeat you. Not Dane, not Jiro, not anyone. Certainly, no weak human will stand a chance. The elves, the orcs, even the fiercest monsters, will tremble before you. No one in your pack will ever have anything to fear again. Especially your family."

Jude scoffed. "No magic is that powerful. Death, injury, and tragedy come to us all."

"It doesn't have to. There's a better way. You could live far longer than your normal lifespan. You could enjoy your mate's company for centuries. She's a witch, after all." Melisande's voice had a hint of grudging respect. "And among the most powerful witches living today. A little thing like death is nothing to her."

Jude's wolf snarled at him not to listen, but his heart got in the way. Temptation crept in.

To never worry about losing Ravyn, or his children, or his future grandchildren. To keep all the Crestas from being hurt. To be so powerful and fearsome that no one would even dream of attacking his pack. 

The proposal was seductive and irresistible.

He opened his mouth to speak, and then something silvery drew his attention. The muzzle sat on one of the work counters in the lab.

He jerked his head away, turning it to the left, and saw a dead gnome preserved in fluid in a jar. Immediately, he thought of Ravyn's friend Duffy. 

He looked up at the ceiling and, instead of bare gray stone, he pictured the design on the furniture that Emer had picked out.

"NO!"

He looked up at Melisande and thrashed on the table, the bonds digging into his flesh.

"I won't be anyone's puppet–least of all yours!"

* * * * *

Melisande POV

Typical Alpha! Typical Cresta family member. Never knowing what was good for him.

"Puppet?" She laughed mockingly. "How little you understand. I'm cutting your strings."

"Everyone has strings–or as I call them, bonds. But I prefer mine to anything you offer."

"Really? The council, your Shifter Parliament, your brat of a son, the Crestas, and your loyalty to your Moon Goddess? Don't you feel strangled by them at times?"

He snapped at her. "My son suffered a loss!"

"Which he won't have to do again, if you'll just open your mind and–"

"As a merchant, I know a sales pitch when I hear one."

Melisande exhaled in frustration. She wanted a cup of wild bittersweet tea with honey. Hades had learned to appreciate Melisande's vices–sugar was one of them. 

"I'll just let you think about my offer for a while. I'll be back shortly."

The trip to the kitchen several floors down allowed his borrowed eyes to appreciate the desolate beauty of this ancient tower. Humans could build spectacular towers, but that was about all Hades could say in their favor. Elves and orcs had superior architecture–even equal to the shifter palaces.

As far as he could figure, it was once a military base–typical humans, always fighting. One more trait Hades could respect. Three years ago, when he first found this tower, guided by the Dark Goddess, he'd had to step around countless fallen rusty swords. Fortunately, in this form, he could pick them up and store them, or sell them to buy some of the artifacts and potion ingredients he needed. 

He brewed the tea in the gleaming kitchen, added spoonfuls of honey, and drank the beverage thirstily. Armed with a jug of water, he returned to the lab, where Jude still wrestled with the tight straps. His hair in disarray and damp with sweat, his face red from the effort, he'd worked himself up into a frenzy. 

Melisande's witch nose couldn't pick up the range of scents that Hades' shifter nose had, but the salty sweat surrounding Jude reeked of desperation and panic.

With a benign smile, Melisande uncorked the jug and held it to Jude's lips. "You will drink. It's only water."

Jude sniffed. "If it's not, I have no way of knowing. If I die, it's on you."

He drank without stopping for several minutes until he coughed and jerked his head away. His eyes met Melisande's, humiliated. 

"I have no wish to kill you, Jude."

"That's Alpha Jude to you."

Melisande's lips twitched as a smile threatened to break out, but she looked stern. "Not for long, unless you've reconsidered my proposal."

He was the key to controlling Dane, and then Jiro, and then the rest of the twenty-four Alphas. The Dark Goddess still insisted on that high price for Hades' freedom from eternal slavery.

"I told you, I won't be your puppet. Ever."

If Hades had thought loss would make Jude Faolan soft, he'd clearly been mistaken. The same thing for his uncontrollable offspring, Bram. 

But having known love once, would Jude be so willing to risk losing his new love? Supposedly, love had beaten Hades and the Dark Goddess once. Jude had been in the room when Hades' enemies mocked the Dark Goddess about not being able to control the heart.

Maybe Hades couldn't enslave hearts, but he could use emotions to his advantage.

He took his time selecting the Circlet of Conscience with a pulsing fire opal set in the center of the delicate bronze band. He placed it on Jude's head. 

"This should help you think more clearly. About your violet-eyed mate, and how easily, even as a witch, she can experience pain. A staggering amount of pain, until she's begging for mercy. And her daughter–your new daughter-in-law–will be next, unless you do as I say."