Yuputka — the phantom sensation of something crawling on one's skin
Elorcan Werwolf 10
Now
Elide drank from the heavy cup of bitterness and spat out the viscous liquid of forgiveness. She lost track of time and sense in the sodden cell, and found paths of bruises and sores lining her body. She gave up on hope towards the light and retained resentment towards what laid on the other side of her prison.
All was dark. Dark was all.
Her hair hung matted as a rat's nest, perspiration running down her skin, cracked and peeling. Her lips bled frequently, her ankle more mangled than she could remember.
Pain replaced her loneliness. Regret was a mere notion she entertained of what could have been. Suffering served her reality.
Sleep was simultaneous torture. Nightmares of the day's assault and night's cold swept through every crevice. The first stay in the cell, Vernon had tore her clothes into tatters, fangs tearing at her skin. Elide had screamed and thrashed until those teeth had bit down on her throat, threatening to tear out her neck.
"I conquer," was all her Uncle had said before she'd screamed out in pain, blackness slashing across her vision. Aches had throbbed in parts of her body where she had waited for her mate, waited to be respected, waited to be worshipped.
At first, tears had persisted, the tang of salt cracking her lips. Now she cried no more, for the seconds she knew were filled with the consistency of raw anguish. It was just her own shaking, shredded skin and devastating poor excuse of family that haunted her.
The chains became her tether, lest she slip away into the next life or what awaited. Her ankle became a figment of a reminder in her story, of living with a disability, to a euphoric type of enmity in true healing, to a shattered piece of her inked soul.
For all she knew, the seconds had passed to minutes to pass to hours to pass to days and perhaps months. For all she knew, her presence was a forgotten whisper of dust between the burning and burnt stars. For all she knew, her life was declared deceased, her mate with another, her legacy into ashes, her pack free of an invalid.
And perhaps it was better that way.
She could not fathom how the Lycans could have fought for eons, loosing themselves in the raging battlefield, in the horrid torture chambers, in the unescapable sea of blood.
But perhaps they had never been caged, for this was a different war.
This was a battle to live, persist, endure. This was torture in every sense. This was an ocean of loneliness, pain, and belittlement.
She did not want this to be another facet written within her pages.
For Aelin she would not dwell in darkness, but in light.
For Manon she would not toil in coldness, but in warmth.
For Lorcan she would not waver in passiveness, but in aggression.
Her story was not of loneliness and sorrow, but of hope and affinity.
The cell doors rattled open, and the shadow of the Morath Alpha lurked in.
Predatory eyes met her own bleary ones.
"Hello, Elide," Uncle Vernon said. "Sleeping well?"
When she didn't answer, he slapped her cheek, the sound richotechting across the walls. When she didn't bat an eye, he kicked her in the stomach, her teeth grating across one another. When she didn't flinch, he jerked the chain on her ankle, the scraping scratching the barren floor.
She supposed she should thank her uncle for teaching her to befriend pain.
"I have special news," Vernon sneered. "Regarding your friends."
A momentary thread of anticipation tore through her. She kept her face blank under Vernon's scrutinizing gaze. Her heart did not beat faster, for she had learned that any component of hope was an offering from the devil.
And any dance with the devil ended in the purest sense of hopelessness.
Finally, he said, "I'm moving you to a more secure location."
Moving.
Hands gripped the chains against the wall, and a key clicked several times. The pull of the metal and steel slammed against the floor, Elide's knees following suit. She hissed as Vernon wrapped the chains around her, and dragged her about by her hair, her roots harshly yanked and protesting in pain.
The cell was a ghost, surrounding and haunting and cursing her. As soon as her body passed through the doors, elation poured over her, the flickers of pain seeming to subside.
Moving.
"What do they see in a frail, worthless invalid?" Vernon said as her body was limply hauled across stones, the dripping of droplets digging into her cuts and scrapes.
The damp hallways seemed an eternity's walk, Vernon's nails digging into her scalp. Little lines of blood ran down her neck and face, her heart twisting and turning.
He tossed her onto the curve pathway of stones, and kicked her ankle. She curled into herself, her withered and emaciated body already tired from movement, her muscles faded away into complete atrophy. Her bones seemed to rattle as coldness prickled at her skin.
"Look up," Vernon commanded.
Elide looked up.
"Look left," Vernon ordered.
Elide looked left.
"Move," Vernon sneered.
Elide looked down—and then looked up at the first step of the many stones that spiraled up into an ascension of a new fatigue. All hope dissipated as a lit candle in a storm. The cuts on her knees and shins flared. Her ankle collapsed and twisted and flared with pain.
This was beyond her limits, and her Uncle knew it.
Vernon yanked the chain around her neck. One harsh tug forward, tossing her against the fragmented stones, leaving her gasping for breath, cutting off her circulation.
Dry coughs filled the air as she blinked away the dizziness and clouds fogging her vision. Manon would have fought back with that sheer strength of hers. Aelin had have snapped back with that vicious tongue of hers. Lorcan would not have been in this situation in the first place with his clear brutality.
She was the weak link. The disabled. The handicapped. The misfit.
She struggled to lift herself onto her knees. Her palms hit the damp stones, the crescending slope a mockery of how far she'd descended.
"If you have all the time in the world, Elide, then perhaps I should entertain myself."
Her nails dug into the cracks as she forced her head to slowly turn around, her neck aching, the ghost of fingers choking her.
Her heart sunk.
Vernon slowly unbuttoned his collared shirt, and slid the belt off his pants. With expert grace only mastered by practice, he brought the whip down in a single strike across her back. Her body splintered against the base, and her hands desperately reached up to scrabble for purchase.
"You little slut," Vernon grinned, a maniacal hint tinging the smirk. His fingers went to the hem of his pants. "You want another round, don't you?"
His eyes raked over her body, her exposed skin, her brokenness.
She turned her head back towards the slope of the slanted stones, cold determination fixing within her.
Biting harshly down on her peeled lip enough to draw slivers of blood, Elide Lochan, true heir to the Morath Pack, slowly began the rise of a climb up.
Three Weeks Ago
"What do you mean you don't know where she is?" the dark-haired male snarled.
Trend carefully, her mate had warned, when Lorcan had first arrived, beaten and battered and the borders of her pack.
Standing in front of the Alpha of the Fireheart Pack was a Lycan coated from head-to-toe in blood. Standing in front of the Alpha Lycan's mate was the commander, oozing a stench of something darker and wild.
Standing in front of Aelin Galanthysius was Lorcan Salvaterre, the one who broke Elide Lochan and was broken by Elide Lochan.
Aelin swallowed. As Alpha, she felt each string of connection to her pack members. But a week ago, after her trip to the royal castle, Elide's familiar and warm presence had disappeared.
Vanished.
Without a trace.
"You're a shit excuse of an Alpha," Lorcan swallowed, but she held her stance, finding a soothing in the blades pressed against her skin.
An hour ago, this male had held too-many deaths within his palm. An hour ago, this male had realized that Elide was fully missing. An hour ago, this male had not sensed his mate anywhere within the safe parameters of all the packs.
Yesterday, the onyx-eyed male had snapped her elbow. Yesterday, the male had executed a flawless punch towards her eye. Yesterday, the commander had her ears ringing with his infuriated roaring.
She had merely pointed out that he had been temporarily suspended from his own pack until he resolved the issue with his missing mate.
A week ago, Aelin had lost connection to Elide. A week ago, she had scoured through every book in search of reestablishing the link. A week ago, her pack had been victim to rogue attacks.
A week since Elide's disappearance, Lorcan had gained full control back of his body, demanding to see his mate.
Only to find that his mate had dissipated if she were nothing but a faded passing.
His rage had destroyed fundamental tenements many omegas depended on. His fury had ceased the fields of crops and plants many werewolves depended on. His enmity had caused the execution of many females connected to the Shadow Market.
She had watched the after-effects of losing scent and connection to his mate drive Lorcan to his knees.
She had watched the dark-haired male wreck up his guts into the bucket for the thousandth time today. She had lost count as her Pack Doctor, Yrene Towers, had replaced each bin with another, dutifully monitoring the impossible male that would have given her own mate, Alpha of the Lycans, a run.
Lorcan gazed at her with a dark look in his eyes.
Aelin braced herself for another attack, but the male merely painfully closed his eyes, and croaked out, "I miss her."
Longing.
Aelin let the dagger fall back into her sleeve, and looked over the commander of the Lycan's armies.
Sweat and grime painted the heaving male's skin, those ghastly eyes cracked and shattered. He was shivering, fists clenched against the rim of the bucket. His had lost his voice frequently, only to have the sound rasp out into a guttural scraping.
Aelin loosed a breath. "What did Sorscha say?"
Flinging open the heavy, steel door with all her might from that fateful day in visiting the castle, walking down the damp and dark hallway, Aelin had seen Lorcan convulsing on a bed of spikes and bones.
No Elide.
No connection.
Only a feral Lycan bringing down the castle from its very roots, shattering the entire southern complex.
It had taken three hours and the rest of the cadre in order to restrain Lorcan against the heaviest chains of silver, surrounded by circles of wolfsbane.
But Lorcan's feral side still remained, roaring and hissing and screaming for his mate. Sweat and a thick, glowing green liquid had oozed out of his skin for hours until the commander had gained clear consciousness.
"Yellowleg's Death," Lorcan said so softly Aelin almost missed it.
Her heart skipped a beat. The manipulative, slow-working concoction created by the blessing of a witch's spell, only found within the depths of the Shadow Market.
Manon stood next to them, and watched without emotion as Lorcan leaned against the wall, rubbing his forehead. The half-Lycan, half-witch had spent her evenings and mornings looking for their pack's apprentice healer, her afternoons honing her already skilled abilities with the blade.
A hole had emerged within her pack. A wide, gaping emptiness.
The Fireheart beta let out a dry laugh. "The poison worked."
Aelin coughed, and muttered out, "Obviously."
Lorcan didn't budge from his spot against the wall, a look of concentration and fatigue holding his focus.
"Yellowleg's Death grants the creator full access over the victim's body for an hour. It can usurp power from the victim whenever and wherever. It can take years or months to occur." Manon tapped a nail against the sheath of her blade. "All it took was an hour to break Elide from Lorcan, to spur a rejection, to foster a wound to deep to be mended."
To seize Elide Lochan, true heir to the Morath Pack and second-Pack Doctor to the Fireheart Pack, away from them all.
Aelin looked at Lorcan. "That's why you destroyed the Shadow Market, and executed all those connected to the drug."
A curt nod, and the female Alpha could see the acceptance of the drug settling between the granite-hewn face.
Temporarily expelled from his pack, Lorcan Salvaterre had taken refuge in her pack, where Yrene coaxed the final remains of the poison out.
Where Lorcan had wallowed in self-pity, disappointment and regret drowned him.
Aelin had watched the beta to the Alpha Lycan fade away into a shell, and realized that Rowan Whitethorn had been right: A Lycan would rather die than hurt his mate.
And Lorcan Salvaterre, although slowly being freed of Yellowleg's poison, would die if he did not have his mate near him.