Chapter 211
(Cole’s POV)
It takes some time for me to relent to alpha’s request but it makes sense to talk, as much as I don’t want to. I take a seat at the end of the table, Jessa is on my right and alpha on my left. I’ve been in a bad place all morning and I have no idea how to clear my head as I know escaping Red Fang with my life is going to be a complex undertaking.
“I know this is going to scare you but it’s the only way out.”
Is the first thing that registers in my head. Alpha started talking almost as soon as I sat down but his words are lost in the jungle of my thoughts and fears. He places his hand on mine causing me to wince, whine and pull away from his touch.
“I’m sorry.”
I whisper as it’s a mental battle to get my body to stop overreacting to every touch I receive.
“You’re having a hard time focusing.”
Alpha comments gently as he starts a light rub on my hand.
“I’m sorry. I keep going over different options for getting back here but the only one that would work now is to straight up run.”
I finally admit my greatest fear.
“I know and you seem very fearful of doing exactly that.”
I nod my head as I force myself to focus on the topic.
“Why are you so afraid of running?”
Jessa’s sweet voice reaches my ears.
“My father has been telling me since I was sixteen that if I ever ran that he’d pursue rape charges against me.”
“Isn’t that what he’s doing with the council now?” Jessa asks.
“I’m not certain.” I admit with a sigh.
“I know it’s hard to go back to last month when you got trapped in that link with him but what exactly did he tell you?”
“He reminded me of what he had told me. That if the council came poking around there again I wouldn’t be allowed to leave the territory anymore. That he’d remove me from the prospect program. What he didn’t tell me was that he had started researching how to make me a feral after the second time they came. He wasn’t ready to start the process when they came after my run at Red Moon. I guess that’s why he let me come on this run.”
I try to answer his question without choking on the words.
“What do you understand, outside of what I explained last month, about being labeled a feral?” Alpha asks me gently.
“Not much, sir. Just that it’s a death sentence if I leave my territory after the council labels me as such.”
“As an alpha male, being labeled a feral….”
He pauses in the middle of the sentence giving me the sense that he really doesn’t want to tell me what it ultimately means.
“If you don’t get out before the council labels you a feral, then your father could kill you, very similar to what you survived in January, without repercussions.”
I’m staring at him hard, completely speechless trying to process what he just said.
“Are you saying it would be legal for his father to kill him?”
Jessa chokes out the question I couldn’t bring myself to ask.
“I’ve been meeting with Angela daily for the last month. She actually started the meetings after we got you through the worst of the psychiatric meltdown your father caused. She explained that while you did not indicate a good understanding of what would happen if you were successfully labeled a feral she felt that you understood enough that your response was actually quite normal.”
“I don’t remember talking to her. Most of that day and the days following are a blur.” I admit, quietly finding my voice again.
“She didn’t think you would, which is why she emphasized that it was critical for me to understand exactly what this means as I have never requested for any wolf to be labeled as such. I have always felt that the council’s definition of a feral was much too vague making it too easy for an alpha to label an abused wolf as deserving of the treatment they receive.
During the first two days where I took care of you and you refused to leave my sight she started digging. She used her credentials as a council member, as well as her previous involvement in creating the laws surrounding the proper treatment of ferals, to confirm the laws and procedures before coming to me with the information. It’s taken me several weeks to digest the severity of the consequences you would face should your father succeed.”
I’ve never heard the alpha sound so broken up while trying to explain what’s going on. For the first time I don’t want to leave. It was during my first run that I brought my laptop with me. I had convinced myself that anywhere was better than Red Fang and I was secretly hoping that I would be able to stay at that first pack.
The yellow tail pack shattered that ideal quickly when a week into that run I ended up in a panic induced asthma cycle. My father’s beatings weren’t nearly as harsh back then but they still left the necessary evidence for them to realize I was being abused. They found the scar on my back and was the first of two packs to attempt to do an X-ray dye test on it to verify that it was from being whipped. It was one of the most painful things I had encountered. I literally went crazy from the pain it caused and seriously injured several of the doctors in my attempt to escape.
I was eleven weeks and five days into that run. Two days later I was forced to strip naked in the alpha’s office, chained to the ceiling with my hands above my head and received my age on my ass before being sent home with the rest of my pack the next day. After I got home I spent a lot of time crafting an elaborate, hidden in plain sight, cabinet to lock my laptop in. That, right now, is proving to be my undoing.
“Why do you have to return, Cole?”
I can tell by her voice that she’s in tears before I even look at her.
“I don’t know anything about the process that my father needs to go through to classify me as a feral but I do know that my only freedom comes from innocence. My laptop has information that will prove that I’m not raping the littles or she-wolves of my pack. I have that laptop hidden in such a way that if my father were to break into my room he would never find it.
The problem is, no one else can find it either. I never created an email account separate from what the school gave me and once I graduated it was deleted. I completely dismantle all connections with the internet every time I leave so it’s not possible to hack into my own computer and I have to be near my father’s computer in order to hack into it. Even if I had a way of contacting Olivia, which the only way I could would be through Jon Jenkins, she would not be able to reach where the laptop is at. I use a small ladder to put it in a secure location inside the false ceiling I created in my closet.”
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