The Luna's Forced Mark

Chapter 8

Axel’s POV

I had really hoped that Cat wouldn’t fall for our trap and we wrong were about her but no she walked right into it. The trap was accidental as we had our dates wrong because if anyone else found her she would be dead.

When she punched me, I heard several of her knuckles break. Skoll and I were pissed, but we admired her bravery. I had to leave before we did something we regretted. I threw her on the cot and ran outside.

Skoll shifted as soon as we were outside. He took off running. I let him take control and do what he needed to.

My mind kept going back to the moment she jumped out of the tree. We had spotted her and that same guy she came in with this morning. We had shifted and slowly made our way to them. They never noticed us. We sat most of the day watching them and when a warrior came through, he spotted her friend. We tried to warn him, but he didn’t listen and got shot. After we brought Cat to the dungeon, we cleaned up the mess and talked to the family.

I hated locking her in there, but we didn’t have a choice right now. We didn’t know what she was capable of yet. We searched her and found all of her weapons and then waited for her to wake up.

I now sat in the back seat and let Skoll run the show. He was pissed and hurt and sad. We were confused and didn’t understand why the moon goddess paired us three together. Skoll ran until it wore him out and then headed back to the house. We made it to the tree line and shifted back. I grabbed a pair of shorts that were in a tree. We added boxes or hollowed out a part of a tree and shoved extra clothes in there so if you shredded your clothes when you shifted, you could easily find something to cover with to walk to your place.

I needed to talk with Dax so after I put my shorts on I headed towards the pack house.

“Dax, where are you?” I linked him.

“Office.”

I headed to our office and found Dax sitting on the couch drinking a whiskey. He had the bottle out on the table and a glass in his hand. I walked over to our cabinet and grabbed a glass and joined him.

“What the f**k are we going to do?” I asked him.

“I want her. She is our mate,” he said, but I could hear the sadness in his voice.

“I know that, but she is a hunter. She has killed our kind. She punched me in the face. All of those are punishable by death,” I said taking a long drink of my whiskey.

“You will not kill her,” he growled back at me. I could see his eyes flashing black and Rocky was pushing forward.

“I never said I was going to. I was just saying it can be punishable by death.”

“We won’t hurt her.”

“No, but we can scare her some. We know what she is, but she needs to be truthful with us,” I said, watching him drink his whiskey.

“We don’t know what she knows. Maybe this is new to her, and she has killed no one,” Dax said hopefully.

“We both know that isn’t true. We may not know much about hunters, but our little huntress down there has to come clean. She will remain down there until we know how much of a threat she is to our kind.”

“I agree, but no one, and I mean no one, knows about her. I don’t want anyone to know she is even here, and if they do, I don’t want them to know she is a hunter and our mate.”

“We have to leave in six days. Someone is going to have to know if she doesn’t come clean by then.”

“We have six days to figure it out.”

After a little conversation, we sat back on the couch drinking the entire bottle of whiskey and then another. We were both fairly drunk by the time we got done drinking and headed out of the office.

The mate bond made me feel Cat. Since she was a human, I shouldn't be able to. I couldn’t stand the feeling I had, and I had to make her more comfortable. I wanted to take her up to my room and snuggle her in my bed, but I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. I could, however, take her a blanket and some ice for her hand. Dax gave her some pain pills while I was running, and I knew he wrapped it.

I went to a closet and found a warm blanket and headed to the kitchen and grabbed an ice pack out of the freezer. I walked down to the dungeon, and as soon as I opened the door, it flooded my nose with her scent. It had finally started to come back. I walked to her cell and saw her cuddled up with the thin blanket that was there. She had pulled herself as far into herself as she could. She was shivering. That’s what I could feel. She was asleep. I just stood there and took in her appearance. I have never seen a person like her. She was so beautiful. She had these emerald green eyes I wanted to get lost in and she was so short, but that was part of what made her beautiful. She differed from most other women. I could stand here all day and just stare at her, but I can’t, I had things to do and I would give in and take her to my room.

I opened her cell door, and this woke her up. She opened her eyes, and they landed on me. She scooted back a little bit in fear. This stung. She was terrified of me. I didn’t want her scared of me, but it was inventible. We were going to have to scare her into telling the truth, but the mate bond wouldn’t allow us to hurt her. I walked up to her and covered her up with the blanket and placed the ice pack on her hand. I took her in for a second longer and then turned and left.

I was still feeling the effects of the alcohol and so I went back to the kitchen and grabbed a large glass of water.

“I’m surprised you are not marked yet,” Amber said, walking up to me.

“Sometimes it takes time,” I told her, finishing my water.

She walked up to me, ran her hands up my chest, and I grabbed her hands and threw them off me.

“Amber, I have a mate. You need to stop,” I told her as I stepped away from her.

“Come on, she hasn’t marked you yet and we both know that if she was worthy, she would have done that and you haven’t even introduced her yet and I haven’t seen her either.”

“She’s human, it’s going to take some time,” s**t why did I tell her that? We were supposed to be keeping it under wraps.

“Oh, that’s unusual,” she said, smiling.

“That stays between us,” I told her.

“I know, but baby, we could have tonight together. She is human she will never know.”

As soon as she said those words, she literally jumped on me and wrapped her legs around me. I pushed her off me.

“Amber, I would never do that to my mate. You need to leave me alone,” I spat at her and walked away.

I’d never seen her act this way, but she seemed jealous. But I wouldn’t do that to the mate. I had too much respect for the mate bond. I headed to my room and fell into bed.

I woke up hours later, and my heart was beating fast and I could feel Cat again. She was scared again, but this time it was worse. Way worse. I jumped out of bed and ran to the dungeon. Dax was flying out his door as well. He could feel it, too.

We both ran to the dungeon and flew down the stairs to run to Cat’s cell. She was asleep under the covers, but she was tossing and turning and talking in her sleep.

“I think she is having a nightmare,” I whispered to Dax.

“Do we wake her?”

“I want to so bad, but we can’t keep comforting her if she won’t tell us the truth.”

We both stood there and just watched her and we could feel her fear coming off her. She suddenly let out a loud scream and sat up in bed, crying and breathing hard.

Dax moved to the door, but I grabbed his arm and mind-linked him. “We can’t trust me. I want to also, but we have to be tough on her right now. She has to tell us the truth.”

He said nothing, but stormed off. I don’t know if she knew we were here or not because she had just pulled the surrounding blanket further around her and cried. It was killing me. I had to leave.

I went back to my room to shower. It was still early, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep.

I stepped into the shower, and Skoll started linking me.

“Please go to mate. She is scared and lonely.” He linked me.

“I can’t. She needs to tell me the truth and once she does, we can try to figure out what to do.”

He got sad and went and laid down in my head. He was making me sad with his mood. I finished my shower and got dressed, and headed to my office.

I walked in and Dax was already there. He looked just as bad as I felt. I went to my desk and started on my paperwork for the day and went through my emails.

“Hey man, you want breakfast?

“Yes, and we need to take a tray down to Cat. Maybe she would talk. What if we told her we would move her out of the dungeon and give her a room if she talks,” I suggested to Dax.

“No, she needs to come clean on her own. It’s hard, trust me, but I want her to do this on her own.”

I just got up from my desk and headed downstairs. I started to fix a tray of food for her but wasn’t sure what she liked, so I just added a little of everything on it. Dax came in right behind me.

Once her tray was ready, we headed to the dungeon and got to her cell. She was now sitting up, wrapped up in the comforter wrapped around her. Her knees pulled up to her chest and her head was down on her knees. She didn’t look up when we got there but I could still feel her sadness and when I looked at her, I could see her body shaking with crying.

Dax opened the door, and we both went in, not being able to stand it anymore. Both of our wolves were pushed forward and wanted us to comfort her.

Dax reached down and scooped her up and went to sit down with her on his lap while I put the food down.

“No, please don’t,” she cried, trying to get out of his hold.

“Baby, why are you crying?”

“Just kill me already. I know you are going to. You killed him and you will me too,” she yelled at us while trying to get out of his hold still.

I walked over and went to touch her face, but she flinched back from me.

“Please, just get it over with,” she yelled and started thrashing against Dax.

“Baby, calm down. We will not kill you.”

“Let me go. Don’t touch me.”

Dax let go of her and she jumped out of his hold and ran to the back corner of the room.

“We just want you to tell us the truth,” I told her.

“No, I won’t tell you a thing.”

“Ok, we will come back later and talk again,” I said and left. Dax got up and followed me out.

We got to the top of the steps and just listened to her. She was crying even harder. I don’t know who she was talking about. If she meant that guy she was with when we caught her yesterday, then she is wrong. We didn’t catch him because we wanted her and didn’t even chase him.

“What are we going to do?” Dax asked me.

“She has to admit the truth one way or another. We can never trust her unless she comes clean. I think a trip to the torture room to scare her might do the trick,” I said to him.

“You want to torture it out of her? We can’t hurt her even if we wanted to.”

“No, we’re not going to torture her, but she doesn’t need to know that.”