Saving my abused mate

10. A confession to make

Rage

"Hey, Rage!" I heard Ax calling me.  "Can we talk for a moment?"

"Hey, I thought you had already left," I said.  After the ceremony most people went back to their packs, only some, especially those that traveled far from their pack, liked to spend more time in the packs they were visiting.  Sometimes we just used it as an excuse to visit friends.}, but staying away from your pack was losing the attractiveness as time went by, and most of us liked to go directly back to our homes. 

"I was going to, but I decided to stay a few days, and, well, I have a confession to make," for the way he was acting, I got worried it was something bad.

"Do you want to go to somewhere more private?" I asked.

“Let’s go for a run, there is a river near here, we could go there to talk.”

“Okay, let’s go,” I agreed, I was curious and a little worried about what he had to tell me.

We took our clothes and changed into our wolves, then we ran. It was always a freeing experience to let our animal side take control. When we shifted, there were no worries, no problems, just instinct. Some people, those without a mate, those without a tether, could enjoy it so much that they never shifted back.

We arrived at a spot that Ax deemed good, and shifted back to our human forms. We sat on the river bank, and I waited for Ax to talk.

“I’m sorry,” he started, “but I was walking around the Pack House while you were having your meeting with Xander’s mate, and I heard most of the story.”

“I don’t think it’s a secret,” I tried to reassure him, “and I’m willing to bet you weren’t spying on us on purpose, and that it was an accident.”

“Of course, I would never," he assured me, and I believed him, but I knew it was something else that was bothering him. 

“I’m willing to bet you didn’t ask me here just to confess to listening to our talk,” I prompted him.

“Do you remember about a year ago when we went to Alpha Stone’s pack?”

“I think so, wasn’t his son that annoying Blast guy? God, he was worst that Fang,” I said, and we both laughed at that. They were both entitled shits, luckily Fang had found his mate and became a better person for it.

“Well, do you remember that we got very drunk and I ended throwing up all over my clothes?” I couldn’t help but roar with laughter. s***h and Ax had gotten into a drinking contest, and neither had ended well, but Ax had really made a fool of himself.

“It wasn’t that funny,” Ax said, and it only encouraged me to laugh even harder. It took me a while to stop, and even if Ax was acting mad, his little smirk told me he also knew it had been funny as hell.

“Let’s say that I do remember that. It’s a pity I didn’t stay for the next day, I’m sure the hangover had to be of epic proportions.”

“Well, it was pretty bad, I slept most of the day, and woke up with a massive headache. Well, I realized most of you have already left, and I started getting ready to leave as well, but when I was gathering my stuff I realized my clothes from the day before were gone. I asked an omega about it and she said that they had sent it to get washed, and it wouldn’t be ready until the next morning, that it still needed to be ironed and folded before she could give it to me. But I didn’t want to wait, and asked where the laundry was, she got really nervous and told me I couldn’t go there, that it was locked and no one was allowed inside.”

“The laundry was locked?” that seemed kind of odd to me, and from Ax’s expression he thought so too.

“Yeah, the omega said it was in the basement, and I went there, but the basement door was locked. I went back to my room, but late at night, I just couldn’t sleep, and went to try again, and found that creepy beta to be lurking outside the basement.”

“I know who you’re talking about, that Andy guy? He was certainly creepy.” I never liked him, but Blast hung on every word that bastard said, it was almost as if their roles were reversed and he was the beta following his alpha.

“So, he asked me what I was doing, and I told him, and he said he had a key, that we could go grab my things. He already had the key in his hand, as if he was going to use it all along. He opened the door and we started descending the steps, and I heard a noise like something dragging on the floor, something metallic. And I saw a shadow in the corner of the basement. I have to accept that I was a little afraid at first, but then I noticed that it was a girl, and she was at the far corner of the basement, trying to make herself invisible, as if she was terrified of us.”

“A girl? What was she doing there?” I asked, not sure where he was going with the story.

“Well, that’s what’s interesting about this. She was basically a slave, she was in charge of all the laundry in the Pack House, and from the mountains of clothes it was not a one person job.”

“A slave? How is that possible? Weren’t those forbidden?” my temper was getting heated.

“Well, it depends on how you call them. From what creepy guy told me, she was paying her sentence. According to Andy, she was supposed to be killed for her crime, but Stone, feeling bad for her, decided to let her live.  Instead of killing her, he sentenced her to work for the pack until she paid her debt, not that I think that day would ever arrive. She will be working there until the day she dies.”

“What did she do?” I had a bad feeling about it, but I wasn’t sure exactly what was going on.

“Well, apparently, when she was just fifteen years old, she went on a run with her parents, the pack’s betas. When they didn’t go back, the Alpha himself started looking for them, since his sister was the girl’s mother. When they found them, the betas were dead, and the girl was almost gone, her throat teared apart. It was a miracle she was alive, and was taken to the pack’s clinic. From what they found, they decided that the girl had gone feral and attacked her parents, killing them in the process. Now, any guesses on when this happened?” he asked, and it didn’t take me long to get to where he was pointing, but it was so unbelievable.

“Do you think this is related to what happened to Xander’s mate?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Well, from what I saw of this girl, she is like a skinnier, paler, broken version of your beta’s mate. And she doesn’t have the scar on her face, but there was some damage on her neck, still visible after all the years since the incident. Andy told me she was mute, that the damage to her vocal cords was too much.”

“A few shifts should have been enough for her to heal that damage,” I pointed out. Vocal cords, along with bones and skin were the things that changed most during a shift, and therefore were easier to fix.

“Yeah, but creepy guy was just too happy to explain that she was unable to shift because Stone forbid her from doing that, fearing she would go feral again if she changed into her animal.”

“It’s extremely rare for a youngster to go feral, that’s something that happens mostly to old wolves that had lost their mates.”

“I know, but the Alpha didn’t care about that. He insisted on blaming her for her sister’s dead, from what I was told.”

“If her mother was his sister, wouldn’t that make the girl his niece?” I asked, as more pieces fell into place.

“It would, unless she wasn’t really his sister’s daughter. If she was, let’s say, the daughter of that couple's previous Alpha and they were protecting her.”

“You are right, it fits,” I said, a clear image of Caroline’s grief as she said her sister had died. “We can’t tell Xander or his mate just yet. It would be too cruel to give her hope of her sister being alive, just to be wrong. First, we need to investigate.”

“I feel so bad,” Ax confessed, “when I left there I decided to investigate more about it. I didn’t like the conditions that girl was living in, but it slipped my mind, it wasn’t until I heard Caroline that I remembered about her.”

“Well, if she really went feral, which I really doubt, she was not in control of her actions, and the punishment she is getting is not fair. Taking her wolf is punishment enough. Remember Menace’s mother? Too long without shifting will kill the wolf and turn you into a human. That girl could already be without a wolf, and therefore not a danger.”

“So what should we do? Talk to your sister and ask for the UberPack to investigate?”

“The UberPack is getting better, but it’s still reluctant to get involved in another pack’s business unless they are called. But I might have a better idea. Would you agree to make Alpha Stone’s pack our next destination to look for our mates?” I was already thinking of a plan, but I couldn’t go alone, and since Ax was the one that knew about the girl, he needed to be part of it.

“Of course, I would gladly help with this. It’s long overdue, and that’s my fault. I feel responsible for whatever it’s happening to that girl. I should have done something about it a long time ago," and I could tell by his voice he really felt remorseful, he was a good guy, and didn't like injustice. 

“We are going to do something right now. Well, we are going to be there for their next Full Moon ceremony and we will make sure to get to the bottom of this. If she is indeed Caroline’s sister, then we will get her out of there. It should be a good gift for my future betas, don’t you think?”

“Well, I only suspect she is related to Caroline, we need to make sure. And what if she is not?” Ax said. I knew he really believed he was right, but needed to go over all scenarios.

“We still have to help her. The odds of a little girl going feral and killing her parents it’s really slim. There should have been other alternatives investigated. And at least we will try to convince Alpha Stone to look into them.”

“And how are you planning on getting the UberPack involved?” Ax asked.

“Well, Dagger still hasn’t found his mate. Don’t you think he would like to join us in our search?” I asked, and Ax eyes were wide open as he understood my plan.

“That’s a good idea. So I guess our next stop will be the UberPack?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s time to pay my dear sister a visit.”