Time dragged on, seemingly endless. The cold, silent halls on the thirteenth floor were currently occupied by three guards. Up and down, up and down, up and down they walked the hall. The pattern was irritating. Her eyes watched their shadows carefully from underneath her door where they shone in subtly.
The creaks and groans of the hard metal bed opposite of hers shattered her reverie. She felt her left eye twitch. A tired moan hauled Olympé to her feet and towards her barred windowsill. Fortunately enough for her, she had a large enough space for her to sit on the sill.
"Lym?" A husky voice called out to her through the darkness. Bracken, her cellmate, had woken. It was early for him, just past eight at night. Most of the time he'd wake up in the early hours before dawn.
"Lym, what ye doin'?" Olympé just continued gazing out into the black abyss that always taunted her. Not saying a word, Olympé listened to Bracken. She always had. Though they didn't particularly like each other, they'd formed a strange bond over the years they shared the cell. Not quite trust, just something that allowed them to sleep peacefully at night while being together in close quarters.
"Nightdreamin' again, lass?" His thick Scottish accent made itself known in his morning voice. Olympé grunted in response, she heard the gentle patters of Bracken's footfalls come towards her. Even in the darkness that the night provided, they could both see each other, just, not outside.
Olympé's head turned towards Bracken, not surprised to find him less than a foot away from her. She could clearly make out his strawberry blonde hair and emerald eyes. His father was a true Scottish male that mated with a German lady, dulling his vibrant red locks in his whelps. Or so, Bracken says.
Bracken stared at his cellmate. Her platinum braids were matted and thick, gunmetal grey eyes glared back at him, he'd never admit it but he was terrified of the little lass. Never once in his long three hundred years had he seen eyes like those on a single wolf, hell, he had never seen them on a single soul, until three years ago. Her eyes were like magnesium, and not just in coloration, they were cold and hard. Behind those eyes, he knew, she was always plotting, calculating what to do next. She hadn't earned the title of being Everest's Queen for nothing.
Olympé waited until Bracken was done searching for some emotion in her, something that he'll never find while she's in the damned prison, to snarl at him. Her wolf paced restlessly in the back of her mind. She'd do that every so often, the lack of space provided for a run drove some wolves to insanity and multiple uncontrollable shifts and fights. Eating in the mess hall was only once a week, the rest of the days you and your cellmate were fed in your cell, for obvious reasons.
"Calm down lass, I'm just checkin' up on ye." Bracken went on the defense, not wanting to anger her. He was one of the few who had survived her temper tantrums.
Kill him.
Olympé's ears strained at the cruel whisper, her wolf hardly spoke, but for some reason she ,had always had it out for Bracken. But Olympé never killed until she deemed fit. She knew that the day will come when her and the elder wolf would fight to the death, it was just a matter of who'd come out on top.
Kill him, Lym.
She growled at the whisper. It was unsettling to know that your inner self liked to kill more than yourself. Lym blew out a long breath through her nose and closed her eyes, laying her head against the cold stone and willed herself into a slumber.
§
The darkness spread through her, seeped into her bones and burrowed into her marrow. She was only a child when it happened. The Taking, they called it. Young wolves were snatched from their packs, their homes, their families. Olympé was one of the first, they took her to him. She could still remember his golden eyes as they sparkled down at her from that damned chair that she learned to loathe, a throne that was not meant for him, her wolf had decided then and there that her human would sit upon it.
"Tell me, little girl," he had said to her. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you?" Golden honey hair fell over his brow as he leaned forward, never breaking eye contact with the pup before him.
"I'm not going to beg you to spare me, but it'd be in your best interest to kill me while you can." Her wolf whispered words into her young ear, knowing the man would brush off her threat.
"She's perfect." He breathed out as he leaned back in his 'throne'. "Take her to my chambers at once." The large men behind her hauled her to her feet and dragged her out of the damp room. Twists and turns were made, dozens of them. Before she knew it she was lost in the indifferent hell, but soon thrown into a lush room.
Her wolf urged her to get to her feet once the door had closed, and she did. Olympé came face to face with a large mirror that took up one wall, she never saw the room, just a soot cover nine year old girl with sticks and mud in her hair. She wasn't anything special, her ranking in her pack just a Gamma, she was normal by her standards. They had told her she was an adult in a child's body, she was an outspoken person who always seemed quiet and shy.
No one knew of her demon—like wolf, but she knew something was wrong, the wolf was scorned in her previous life. Now hungry for vengeance, no one would stop her.
Olympé recalled the memory in a nightmare, jolting awake from the banging on the doors. The morning light shone down on her, temporarily blinding her. Once her eyes adjusted she looked down on the buzzing city below her, so ignorant of the prison, right in the middle of the fucking city it stood, yet no one ever seemed to be worried.
Why? That was the question Olympé had tried to answer since she'd been captured. She'd figured out part of it; mundanes were oblivious, the few that knew of it, and unconcerned with what went on in a prison. Olympé scoffed at the thought, they actually thought that a few guards could keep thousands of prisoners in this hellhole, no, for most of them it was either Everest or death.
But what the guards and overseers never slipped out to the public, to the alphas, was that there was a new queen that sat upon the throne. And she was getting restless.