Spellbound: Mated To The Tribrid

I lost track of how long I sat in the dark before the door opened again.

The same two soldiers from earlier stepped inside, followed by a third vampire I had not seen before. He was older, thinner, with the calm, clinical expression of someone who had done this work for decades. He carried a small black case and set it on the stone floor without looking at me.

“Leave us,” he told the soldiers.

They locked the door behind them. The older vampire studied me for a long moment, then crouched so we were at eye level.

“My name is not important,” he said. “What matters is that you answer my questions. The faster you do, the less this will hurt.”

I said nothing.

He opened the case. Inside were several thin silver instruments and a small device that hummed faintly with residual magic. He selected one of the instruments and turned it slowly between his fingers so the light caught the edge.

“You were present at the scene of the third crescent murder,” he began. “You work at a clinic that treats supernaturals off the books. You carry a silver crescent pendant identical to the mark left on the victims. And last night you spent several hours in the private company of the Lycan King. Those are facts. Now I want the rest.”

Still I said nothing.

He sighed, almost politely, and pressed the silver instrument to the inside of my wrist. The burn was immediate and vicious. My wolf snarled. I locked my jaw and kept my eyes on the far wall.

“Who are you really, Miss Fallon?”

I made no noise as the entire surrounding became really quiet waiting for my answer.

“Who gave you the pendant?” He spoke up trying to force words from my mouth but I didn’t yield as I still held my tongue.

“Did you kill the nobles, or are you working with the person who did?”

I paid him no attention as my mouth was kept shut. He moved the silver higher, along the sensitive skin of my forearm as he noticed I wasn’t going to talk. The burn deepened and I could feel my sweat forming beads at my temples. I tasted blood where I had bitten the inside of my cheek.

“You are making this harder than it needs to be,” he said. “Rose is not a patient woman. She believes the crescent bloodline has returned to finish what it started decades ago. If you are part of that bloodline, cooperating is the only way you leave this cell alive.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” I managed through clenched teeth.

“Then explain the pendant.”

“It was my father’s.”

“And where is your father now?”

“Dead.”

“Convenient.” He set the silver aside and picked up the humming device. “This will be less pleasant.”

He pressed it to the side of my neck. Pain exploded through my nervous system—white-hot, electric, designed to scramble both human and supernatural senses. My wolf howled inside my skull. My vision blurred. I tried to keep the masking on my scent intact, but the device tore at every layer of control I had left.

He asked the same questions again. And again. Each time I refused to speak, he increased the intensity.

I lost count of how many times the device activated. Time stopped meaning anything. There was only the pain, the cold stone under me, and the steady, patient voice asking about the crescent, about my parents, about Peter Reeves, about why a simple clinic doctor would be carrying a symbol that had not been seen in decades.

At some point my body decided it had endured enough.

The power I had kept locked down for years finally slipped its leash.

It did not come as a controlled release. It tore out of me in a raw, uncontrolled surge—neither fully wolf nor fully anything else. The air in the cell thickened. The silver-lined bars sparked violently. The device at my neck shorted out with a sharp crack and a burst of acrid smoke. The interrogator was thrown backward against the far wall hard enough to leave a crack in the stone.

I collapsed onto my side, gasping, every muscle trembling. The power receded as quickly as it had come, leaving me hollow and shaking, but the damage was done.

Alarms began to sound somewhere above. Boots pounded down the corridor. The cell door flew open. Guards poured in, weapons drawn, staring at the scorched bars and the unconscious interrogator.

One of them dropped to a knee beside me, eyes wide with something close to fear.

“What the hell is she?”

Another guard swore under his breath. “That’s not a normal wolf. Did you feel that? That didn’t feel like Lycan power either.”

The word spread through the corridor like fire.

She must be a Hybrid.

They hauled the interrogator out and left two guards posted outside the cell with orders to shoot if I so much as moved wrong. I stayed on the floor, cheek pressed to the cold stone, trying to force air back into my lungs. My wolf was quiet now, exhausted. The rest of what I was had retreated again, but the mask was gone. They had felt it. They knew I was more than I claimed.

I closed my eyes and listened to the distant chaos of soldiers reporting what had happened. I could barely use my wolf powers as the silver deadened her powers for a while but I knew Rose would know within minutes. And once Rose knew, the information would travel.

Peter Reeves would soon hear that the woman from the Black Moon was a wolf hybrid currently locked in a vampire dungeon.

I had no idea whether that knowledge would bring him running… or make him decide I was too dangerous to save.

Either way, the secret I had protected for years was no longer entirely mine and I have failed my parents.