The pain medication was wearing off when I heard the screaming.
My eyes cracked open in the darkness of the recovery wing, and every nerve in my body protested the movement. The bullet wound in my shoulder throbbed with each heartbeat, a constant reminder of how close I had come to dying. But the sound coming from somewhere below me made my blood run cold.
I should not have been able to hear anything from the dungeons. The palace had been built with thick stone walls specifically to muffle the sounds of interrogations. But my wolf hearing, even weakened by blood loss and medication, picked up every agonized cry that echoed up through the floors.
Someone was being tortured.
"You should be resting."
I turned my head slowly to find Nurse Helena sitting in the corner, her weathered face creased with concern. She was one of the few humans who served in the palace, trusted by the royal family for decades.
"Who is that?" My voice came out as a rasp.
She pressed her lips together. "The assassin who shot you. The Alpha King is interrogating him personally."
My stomach twisted. I had heard stories about Jack's interrogations, whispered rumors among the pack about his ruthlessness when it came to protecting his people. I had never wanted to believe them.
Another scream pierced the air.
"I need to go down there," I said, trying to push myself up. The room spun violently and I collapsed back against the pillows.
"Absolutely not. You lost too much blood and the wound barely started healing. If you tear those stitches, you will bleed out." Helena was beside me in an instant, her hands firm on my shoulders.
"Please." I did not know why it mattered so much. The man had tried to kill Jack. He had shot me instead. He deserved whatever punishment the Alpha King saw fit. But something in my chest pulled tight, an instinct I could not name. "I need to know why."
Helena studied my face for a long moment, then sighed. "I will take you to the observation room. But if you collapse, it is on your head."
She helped me into a wheelchair, and every bump and jostle sent fresh waves of agony through my shoulder. We took a service elevator down, down, down into the bowels of the palace where prisoners were kept. The air grew colder, damper, thick with the smell of blood and fear.
The observation room was small, with a one way mirror looking into the interrogation chamber. Helena positioned my wheelchair in front of it, and I bit back a gasp at what I saw.
Jack stood in the center of the room, his face carved from stone. Blood spattered his white shirt. Around him, six of his elite guards formed a circle, their expressions blank and professional. And in the middle, chained to a chair, was the assassin.
His face was swollen beyond recognition, blood dripping from his mouth where several teeth had been removed. They lay in a small pile at his feet.
"Will you talk or should I continue?" Jack's voice was flat, emotionless. It was the voice of an Alpha King, not the man who had held me while I bled.
The assassin spat blood on the floor. "Go to hell."
Jack nodded to one of the guards, who stepped forward with pliers. I wanted to look away but found I could not.
"Last chance," Jack said. "Tell me who hired you."
"I will die before I betray my client." The assassin's words were slurred from his broken mouth, but his conviction was clear.
Jack pulled out his phone, read something, then smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. "My brother has your wife and daughter. Will you die for your client now?"
The color drained from the assassin's face.
"No." The word was barely a whisper. "No, please. They have nothing to do with this."
"Then talk."
The assassin's shoulders slumped in defeat. But instead of giving a name, he lifted his head and looked directly at Jack. "You should have died weeks ago. But she kept getting in the way."
My breath caught.
"The girl you shot," the assassin continued. "This is the second time she saved your miserable life. Her kindness is her curse."
Jack went very still. "Explain."
"The first time, I disguised myself as an old beggar. Your guards were beating me in the street, part of the setup. I was going to signal my team to take the shot while they were distracted." The assassin laughed, a wet, bubbling sound. "But she interfered. Stopped your guards from hitting me, gave me twenty dollars from her own pocket. I could not give the signal with her standing right there. Her compassion saved you."
The memory hit me like lightning. An old man being beaten by guards in expensive suits. I had been so angry, so convinced they were bullying someone helpless. I had given him the last of my money for the week.
"And yesterday," the assassin went on, "I warned her to leave. I saw her in the crowd and I told her to go. But she argued with me, asked why she should leave. She did not recognize me without the costume. If I had known she would throw herself between us, I would have taken the shot anyway. But her past kindness, that stupid twenty dollars, it made me hesitate. And you lived because of it."
The silence in the interrogation room was deafening.
Jack's hands were shaking. I could see it even through the mirror, the way his fingers curled into fists at his sides. "She saved me twice."
"And you treated her like garbage both times, from what I saw." The assassin grinned through his broken teeth. "The moon goddess has a sick sense of humor."
Jack turned away, and I saw something crack in his expression. Guilt, raw and devastating.
"The name," he said quietly. "Give me the name or your family dies."
The assassin opened his mouth to speak, and the lights went out.