Wolf-less Omega Luna

CHAPTER 28: TRIP TO THE DUNGEON

Alana's POV

—The pack hates me more than anything.— The same line chimed in my head repeatedly for the entire hour I spent in the shower.

I instantly felt Axel's absence and woke up just as he shut the door behind him. I proceeded to the bathroom where I let the hot water tingle and almost burn my skin for minutes.

Flashes of last night forcefully made their way to the front of my mind and I imagined how disappointed everybody must be at me.

Kennedy. The teen wolf that gifted me a copy of Purple Hibiscus. I hoped she didn’t drink from the champagne. She looked young but I don’t know if she would have been allowed to drink.

Axel. The look of pain was obvious on his face at first but it seemed as though the unbridled anger and his Alpha instincts to protect everyone numbed the pain because I didn't remember him taking any activated charcoal pills.

I sighed long and hard for the umpteenth time that morning.

Goddess, Lexi. Hopefully, she was so deeply engaged in omega duties that she didn’t have the graces of drinking champagne.

Who knew one could be thankful for being an…

“Fuck, Alana, stop thinking about it. The damage wasn’t that much,” I said out loud under the hot water, a habit I turned to whenever I thought too much.

The door to the bathroom burst open with a chaotic Axel with…panic?… in his eyes.

He practically dragged me out of the building without telling me why we were in such a hurry. Well, ‘I’ was the one in such a hurry as I struggled to catch up with Axel’s monster strides.

The routine of people dragging to and from places had to stop. Good intentions or not.

When it registered where we were headed, I froze.

My openly bruised body on the cold, hard floor of the dungeon.

Blinking between consciousness and unconsciousness.

Desert-dry throat, rumbling stomach from exhaustion, and extensive starvation.

Wilted like stale vegetables due to the banging headache and the burning fever.

No.

“It’s okay, baby, you’re with me,” Axel’s soothing voice retrieved me from my rough trip down memory lane. Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

He turned, fully facing me and blocking the rest of the dungeon walls before invading my personal space and enveloping me into one of his thousand-dollar warm hugs, wrapping my mushed-up brain in his fresh scent of earth, cedarwood, and the freshest fruits.

I breathed in and out, settling down slowly.

Just when my head was clearing all the panic, my eyes opened and the blonde hair of none other than Crescent Moon pack’s two-faced raccoon came into view.

As though he heard my heart skip a beat or two, Axel’s head snapped to Britney before I said two words.

“I asked you a question, Britney,” Axel demanded.

She returned to her all-high and mighty stance, fisting her hips before she spat.

“Nothing, Axel. I looked for you and I heard you were headed this way.”

What? My blood rose in temperature. Hold on, Alana. Give her the benefit of the doubt that she was searching for Axel for whatever reason high-ranked wolves communicate with each other.

“For what reasons?” Axel asked, his brows pinching.

“I thought she would be gone by now.” She tossed me an irritated look, acknowledging me for the first time. Well, good thing she didn’t see a fly instead of me. “She’s not fit to be a queen and if anything, last night showed it,” her words carried a sneer when she got to the “queen” part.

“You will consider your next words. Carefully.” Axel’s voice had dipped low, laced with venom.

She shifted her weight to one side, gave the room a once over, and spoke again. Without considering the words carefully, might I add?

“WHEN Alana is gone,” her upturned nose scrunched as though the name was disgusting. “I will still be here, and we will make the perfect Alpha and Luna and…”

Axel’s aura turned dark, permeating the whole room, and making the guards cower. His voice dropped thick, predatory, and freaking outrageous.

“It’s. Luna. Alana. to you.” He lifted Britney by her already pale neck, cutting her air supply at a shocking speed. “And if you ever. Ever, threaten her, you will as well be drawing your last breath.”

Axel tossed Britney to the far end of the room and she practically scrambled away like a chicken splashed with hot water after huffing angrily.

That was a sight I could get used to.

After walking on for about a minute, Axel’s eyes slowly turned deep blue, flickering with bolts of silver, and showing that he wasn’t working on beast mode anymore but was still pretty pissed.

“Alana, please stay out here with Tyler and the guards. I didn’t want to leave you by yourself in the room but you can’t come in with me either.”

There was something that he wasn’t sharing.

“What’s going on, Axel?” I asked with concern.

“An intruder was caught by the border. He’s the only one, but I still want to make sure you’re in safe company.”

It felt like he tried to say the least words possible so as not to put me in a panic.

“Okay. But are you going to like … him, right?” I imitated a slit to my throat, erupting a deep chuckle from Axel that made me squeeze my thighs together.

“I’m only going to question him. Find out what he wanted.”

I nodded.

He turned to Tyler and the three guards who remained silent behind us the entire time. “If you need to take a piss or a shit, do it here,” he commanded. “Do not leave this spot, and protect her with your lives.”

I rolled my eyes to the back of my head inwardly at Axel being extra dramatic. Wasn’t he going to be just behind those doors?

They bowed and with that, he retreated into a cell where I caught a glimpse of a chestnut-haired male hanging from a chain.

The tattoo I saw on his bicep made my heart skip a beat as a euphoria spread through me.

Was that the scar-faced man who attacked both our packs?

Blood rushed to my head.

The prisoner tipped his bloodied chin to Axel and relief spread through me.

He only had the same tattoo with him. They weren’t the same people.

“Alana, let’s get you away from here,” Tyler’s voice pulled me back to earth.

“Okay,” I whispered.

He led the way to a considerable distance from where the ‘questioning’ was taking place and we waited. Still inside the dungeon.

After waiting for minutes that felt like days, a pained growl sounded from the cell and I shot to my feet in panic. It wasn’t Axel. It was the prisoner.

The growl was followed by a scream that was completely silenced just seconds after it started.

A cold shiver ran through my bones as I thought about how Axel was handling the intruder. His reputation for these things was all I heard about him before I knew him. Now experiencing it firsthand unbalanced me in a way.

Axel stepped out with dots of crimson staining his white shirt and he ran a hand through his hair, pinching his high-bridged nose.

“Come now, how did it go?” Tyler asked rather impatiently.

Axel narrowed his eyes in response.

“What happened?” I asked next.

“Nothing happened.”

“What do you mean nothing happened?” Tyler questioned, confusion spreading across us all.

“He’s dead.” Axel deadpanned.

My jaw dropped. My stomach painfully twisted in knots, threatening to spill the food I consumed last night.

“What? Dead? How?” Tyler continued.

Axel gave Tyler, the guards, and me a once over, and glanced back toward the cell before returning his attention to us.

“He chewed his fucking tongue off.”