The Alpha’s Pen Pal (Crescent Lake Book 1)

WESLEY

I burst into the cells mere minutes after I got Seb’s mindlink. As soon as he ended it, I threw on a shirt and took Haven to the packhouse. I didn’t bother showering or washing her scent off me. Even though Lennox would be dosed with wolfsbane and cuffed in silver, my lycan wanted Haven’s scent on us so everyone would know she was ours.

“Where did you find him?” I asked Sebastian as I walked into our side of the interrogation room.

“The dumbass went to Haven and Maya’s apartment. I’m not sure what made him think that was a wise decision, but it made it easy for us to find him, so I’m not going to complain,” Sebastian said.

Levi stood beside him, and he cracked his neck. “He gave us a good chase for a bit there, but he doesn’t know this terrain and territory like we do.”

“Right,” I said, glancing at him through the one-way window. “What happened to his face?”

Black and blue bruising covered his pale face. He had a split eyebrow and a busted lip. Dried blood lingered under his nose and on his chin, beard, and neck.

“He looked like that when we found him.” Sebastian shrugged, looking at his fingernails. “He must have run into a door.”

“Ten times,” Levi added. “Probably.”

I looked between the two of them, noting the flecks of dried blood visible even on Levi’s dark skin, and I sighed. “Well, at least you left some for me.”

“You’re welcome.” Sebastian winked. “Is Nolan coming?” he asked.

“No, he and Reid are staying with Haven. Jack and Shirley are here.” Sebastian nodded. “Are you coming in with me?” I asked him.

“You bet your ass I am. His lycan tried to force his mark on our future luna. I can’t let that slide.”

“Levi?” I asked, looking at him.

“I’ll stay out here,” he said. “I already got my hits in, so I’m good for now.”

I opened the door, and Sebastian followed me in, closing the door behind us. Lennox moved his eyes to us. His nostrils flared, and he strained against the silver chains binding his arms and legs to the chair.

“He smells her on you,” Sebastian mindlinked me.

“Didn’t you give him wolfsbane?” I replied.

“Maybe two minutes before you got here. He’s a lycan too, remember? It will take longer to kick in,” he said.

“Right.” I nodded.

“How dare you come in here with Haven’s scent on you,” Lennox snarled.

I growled, and my fist connected with his jaw. I punched him so hard his head slammed into the back of the chair, making it bounce forward again, his chin hitting his chest.

I gripped the arms of the chair and leaned forward, so my face was even with his and only inches away. “How dare you even speak her name,” I said, making sure my breath hit his nostrils. “You don’t deserve to speak her name or even hear it.”

His pupils darkened as he smelled her on my lips and breath. He snarled, snapping his head forward and snapping his teeth at me, but I was already standing straight and moving towards the tray of tools in the room.

“That was gross,” Sebastian said. “Effective, but gross.”

“He needs to understand that she is mine,” I growled out loud as I picked up the pliers. “Should I start with his right hand or his left?” I asked as I stalked back over to him, examining the tool in my hand.

“You could alternate,” Seb suggested. “One from the right, then one from the left.”

“I like that idea,” I said with a smile at Lennox.

He tried to clench his hands shut, but Seb moved behind him and slammed his hands on top of Lennox’s fingers so he couldn’t bend or move them at all.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Seb taunted him. “Did you really think you’d get out of this? That we wouldn’t give you some pain for what you did to our future luna?”

“I claimed her first.” Lennox coughed out.

My lycan pushed forward at that, my eyes flashing and my canines stretching against my gums. The thought that he felt he had some sort of claim over her filled me with a deadly rage. But I held it in, turning that rage into a lethal calm.

My gut reaction was always to lash out like I did when I punched him. However, over the years of watching Sebastian, I’d trained myself to hold it in for longer when needed.

“Your claim is a false claim,” I said as I attached the pliers to the fingernail of his right pinky. “She doesn’t want you,” I told him as I ripped the nail from his pinky, and he let out a choked cry. “And fate gave her to me,” I added as I quickly tore the same nail off his left pinky.

He grunted and squeezed his eyes shut but glared at me as they opened. His chest heaved as he caught his breath, and his jaw clenched shut.

“Why did you want her so badly?” I asked him, remembering the words Haven had told me he’d said to her before he attacked.

“Because I claimed her,” he said.

“But why?” I asked again, attaching the pliers to his ring fingernail.

“Because she’s mine.” I pulled the pliers just enough to lift the nail from the bed, and he blurted out, “Because they promised her to me!”

I looked at him with a raised brow, then ripped the nail off, followed by the one next to it.

“I answered you!” he cried, his blue eyes flashing with rage.

“You’re being deliberately vague,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him as my pliers moved to his other hand. “Now we can continue this way—you giving me vague answers and me removing your nails and then moving on to breaking your fingers one by one. Then I might let my brother have a turn with you, and trust me, you will not enjoy what he comes up with. Or you can start talking.”

He pursed his lips together and stared at me in defiance, his chin raised.

“I guess we’re doing this the hard way then.” I shrugged, although, on the inside, I was happy I got to drag his pain out longer.

He deserved it after what he did to my Haven. My mate. Not just that night at the club but also over the years they’d been together. Nolan had mindlinked me what she’d said during her meeting with Frederick, and the anger I felt from hearing that helped me power through my laps.

“You mean the fun way.” Sebastian smirked, a glimmer of glee in his eyes.

I knew that look all too well. He was already planning what he would do to Lennox when he got a turn. I didn’t even want to know what was going through that calculating mind of his.

That was one side of Sebastian I prayed was never directed towards me. His intuitiveness and strategic mind made him shockingly good at interrogation and torture. He always knew what to do and what to say to get people to tell him what he wanted.

Which is why I’d gladly hand over the reins of this torture if needed. I may have wanted Lennox’s blood, but we needed answers, and Sebastian was the one who could get them.

Without a pause, I removed the rest of his fingernails. Each time I ripped one off, Lennox let out a grunt or a cry. And those noises spurred me on, helped by the image of my Sugar Plum as she lay bleeding and wounded in the hospital bed and the memory of her reaching out for me with pain and fear in her eyes.

I tossed the pliers aside and reached for his finger but stopped as a better idea entered my mind. He had mangled my mate’s neck. So I would mangle his hand.

I stood and grabbed a hammer from the tray, and Sebastian laughed as Lennox’s eyes widened, and the smell of fresh urine filled the room.

“You still have time to talk,” I crooned as I sauntered towards him, tapping my palm with the hammer. “While I decide which hand to hit first.”

My eyes flicked between his right and left hand. His body shook and flinched with each turn of my head.

“You should be scared,” Sebastian whispered in his ear. “Imagine how scared our future luna was when you had her pinned against the wall? Or when you bit into her neck? You deserve to feel that same fear and that same pain.”

I lunged forward towards his left hand, and he flinched, clenching his fist, and at the last minute, I brought the hammer down on the back of his right hand. The crunch of his bones and the shout that filled the room were almost enough to satisfy my lycan and me. Almost.

I brought the hammer down again almost immediately. I went to do it a third time when Lennox yelled out, “Okay, okay, I’ll talk! I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Whatever I am able to!”

Sebastian shook his head in disappointment and let go of Lennox’s arms as he stood up straight.

“I was so looking forward to getting a turn with you,” he sighed. “Although I suppose there’s always later.”

I held in my laugh and my eyeroll. His bloodlust was something else.

“What do you mean, what you are able to?” I asked him, crossing my arms and spreading my legs.

“My dad is an alpha,” he answered, his voice breathless as he worked through his pain. The wolfsbane must have finally kicked in because he wasn’t healing at all. “He has a command on me.”

That also explained how he was a lycan. But it just raised more questions. And the only person who could override the alpha command was the king, and we didn’t have time to wait for him to get here. “From what pack?”

His throat tightened, and his mouth flopped open as he tried to say what he’d been ordered not to.

“How’d you escape the registry and the council all this time?” Sebastian asked, stalking back and forth behind the chair.

“Fake last names. Concealment spells.”

“What’s your real last name?” I asked.

His mouth flopped again, and a vein pulsed in his forehead. Another question he couldn’t answer.

“What about her parents? The Wainwrights. Are they wolves? Or something else supernatural?” I asked.

“Wolves, yes.”

“From the same pack as your parents?” Sebastian asked him, and he shook his head. “And I’m guessing you don’t know or can’t tell us what pack or what their real last name is?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t know what pack they came from. Or their real last names.”

Sebastian moved in front of the chair and crouched to Lennox’s eye level. “How’d you know she’d be at the club? And how did we not detect you that night?”

“I’d been following her in secret. That blonde ballet dancer and her were talking about it when they were shopping, and I knew it would be the best time to get her and take her away. I’d been using scent blockers, but I used my last one that night while I enacted my plan.”

Sebastian smiled and patted his right hand, hitting just hard enough to move the bones around. Lennox winced and grunted, but Seb kept his hand there as he said, “And why’d you attack her?”

Lennox’s face grew angry, and his lip curled in a silent snarl. “Because she should have been mine. I knew all week she wasn’t, but it didn’t fully sink in until I had my hands on her. And then she had the gall to tell me I didn’t own her, and my lycan couldn’t take it anymore. He took control, and I couldn’t stop him.”

I gritted my teeth in frustration. That was why packs were so important. So lycans and werewolves were trained to keep their beasts from taking full control. And pack wolves had a better respect for the mate bond than lone wolves and rogues.

“So you know when her actual birthday is?” Seb asked, catching more in his words than I did.

I stood up straighter, waiting to hear his answer. It was one thing that had been on my mind because I needed to know the moon phase she was born under so I could mark her.

“I can’t tell you,” he gritted out, rolling his head around to push past the pain from our torture and him trying to speak through the command on him.

Disappointment rippled through me, but I didn’t let it show on my face. I wouldn’t let him see any emotions on my face.

“Why did you want to be with Haven so badly? Why did your parents and her parents push you two to be together?” I asked as Seb stood up and leaned against the wall.

“My parents told me if I could take her as my mate and mark her, I could lead my own pack as an alpha,” he explained.

I furrowed my brow at his words. “Why though? Why would that matter or make you able to be an alpha? She’s a human.”

He laughed. Tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling, and just laughed. Sebastian and I exchanged glances and waited until he was ready to talk, listening as his maniacal laughter rang through the room and bounced off the walls.

“You don’t even realize how lucky you are, don’t even understand how important she is. That you’ve been given a gift, a treasure, something truly special,” he said as he caught his breath and shook his head. “And you say I don’t deserve her,” he added under his breath. “At least I know what she is.”

I pounced on him, grabbing his neck and staring him down. My heart raced in my chest, and my brain went a mile a minute as I tried to understand what he meant.

“What do you mean? How is she so special?”

It made little sense. The doctor had confirmed she was human. That there was no trace of supernatural DNA in her blood.

He choked and sputtered, and his eyes bulged, red veins appearing in the whites. I loosened my grip on his neck, but the choking and sputtering continued.

“TELL ME!” I roared, shaking him as hard as I could.

“He’s been alpha commanded, Wes, remember? You’re going to kill him, and then we won’t learn what we need to know,” Sebastian reminded me.

I dropped my hands from his neck and stepped back. I cracked my neck as I inhaled and exhaled, focusing on the remnants of Haven’s scent on my body to settle the fire in my veins.

“There must be something you can tell me? Something I can work with? A clue or a hint?” I asked him.

He coughed and took his time to breathe. His face returned to its sickly pale hue from the purple it had turned while I had my hands on him, and he fought the alpha command.

His eyes moved between Sebastian and me, a calculating look on his face even though he was the one chained up and bloody. “If I give you what you want, what do I get out of it?” he asked.

My first reaction was to laugh. He wanted to bargain? But the truth was more important. And I knew what to offer him and how to word it.

“If you tell me, I won’t touch you anymore.”

Lennox smirked in triumph, and I stayed stoic and blank, letting him think he’d won.

“You already know,” he said hoarsely. “You’ve known your whole life. We all know the tales, the stories, the myths. And all our stories are based on a bit of truth.”

“The Goddess’s Tales,” Sebastian mindlinked me, even though I didn’t need him to tell me. I already knew what Lennox meant, what he was referring to.

I looked over at Lennox, taking in the state he was in. Leaving to read that book would take time, but with the command placed on him, we wouldn’t get anywhere until I did. And we needed those answers.

“Keep him chained in here and have Levi stand guard,” I told Sebastian as I moved to the door. “We’ll be back to ask more questions later.”