Chapter 115: I’m going to murder you

"NO!" Melinda screamed, her voice cracking in pure terror as Jake stepped toward her. "No! Please! I don’t know anything! I swear I don’t!"

Her desperate cries barely registered on Dorian, nor did they draw a single shred of sympathy from him.

"Keep lying, and a shock collar will be the least of your concerns," he warned, his voice flat and dead.

Melinda thrashed against her restraints, her screaming turning shrill and chaotic. But the Conclave was a heavily padded, sound-isolated vault. No one heard her.

Without a trace of hesitation, Jake clamped the collar around her neck. It snapped shut with a metallic click, the metal pins on the inner lining biting deeply into her flesh.

Melinda let out a piercing scream as the silver instantly seared into her skin, sizzling against her neck. She thrashed hysterically against the cuffs binding her wrists to the railings, but her struggles were utterly useless.

Dorian casually leaned back against the edge of the table, crossing his legs. He reached into the box and picked up a device, a small remote fitted with a single red button, and held it up for her to see.

"I am going to ask you a second time," he stated. "Lie to me again, and you will suffer agony beyond your comprehension."

Melinda’s hysterical shrieks died down into ragged, wet sobs as she nodded frantically. The skin around her neck where the silver collar bit into her flesh was already blistering and turning a bruised, angry red.

"I’ll tell you the truth!" she choked out, tears pouring down her face. "I swear... I’ll tell you everything!"

"Good," Dorian nodded once. "Now, let us try this again. Why is Alyssa unable to remember her childhood?"

"Because my mother had her memories forcibly erased!" Melinda blurted out in a single, breathless gasp.

A stunned silence fell over the room. Both Dorian and Jake froze, caught off guard by her response.

Dorian had anticipated a different response. Perhaps a severe head injury or an accident that had damaged Alyssa’s mind. But erasing her memories? That was pure evil.

"Explain yourself!" he ordered.

Melinda raised her head, her entire frame shaking violently from the searing heat of the collar. The pain was becoming unbearable, but she knew remaining silent would mean something far worse.

"Something happened," she began in an unstable voice. "A year after my mother married Alyssa’s father, Nolan Storm, they got into an argument over Alyssa. My mother wanted Nolan to kill her."

"What?" Dorian barked, stepping forward.

"She claimed Alyssa was a monster!" Melinda rushed on, terror driving her words. "That she was dangerous. Nolan rejected the idea, because he couldn’t murder his own daughter. During the argument, a fight broke out between them. My mother shoved Nolan, and he fell and cracked his skull. While he lay bleeding, she finished him off with a knife to the heart."

Dorian closed his eyes as Shadow surged violently within his chest, roaring for blood. He turned his back on Melinda, his grip loosening as the remote clattered onto the table.

He had believed himself mentally prepared to unearth the shadows of Alyssa’s past, but nothing could have braced him for a truth so utterly monstrous.

"Go on," he commanded, his back still turned, his posture rigid.

Melinda gulped, her trembling, cuffed hands reaching futilely toward her burning throat.

"Alyssa witnessed her father’s murder," she continued. "She was only nine years old. She flew into a blind, hysterical rage. When she screamed, she almost brought the house down on us. My mother struck her over the head and knocked her unconscious, but when she tried to kill her, it backfired."

Dorian whipped around, his golden eyes narrowing into slits. "What do you mean, it backfired?"

"I don’t know how to describe it!" Melinda sobbed, shaking her head frantically. "But when my mother plunged a blade into her, Alyssa didn’t suffer a single scratch. Instead, the stab wound appeared on my mother’s body. Something was protecting Alyssa, something unknown."

Dorian was on the edge of losing his composure. He couldn’t begin to imagine the psychological and physical horror Alyssa had gone through.

The trauma must have been so brutal that her mind had locked the memories away behind an impenetrable wall of amnesia just for her to survive.

"In order to keep the secret hidden, my mother took Alyssa to the caves of the dark witches," Melinda continued hoarsely. "Every memory prior to her father’s marriage, and every memory of the murder, was wiped clean. When she woke up, my mother fed her a lie that her father had died of a heart attack. And Alyssa believed every word."

"What about her powers?" Dorian demanded in an eerily calm voice. "How did she suppress them?"

Melinda hesitated, panic paralyzing her tongue. She had already spilled the secrets that she swore never to reveal.

Suddenly, a violent surge of electricity erupted through the collar. She choked on a scream, her body convulsing against the wall as the current fried her nerve endings.

It took several agonizing seconds of thrashing before she realized Dorian had snatched up the remote and pressed the red button.

"What did you do to her powers?" Dorian snarled, slamming his hand onto the table.

"She was injected with aconite for years," Melinda blurted out in a loud gasp, her body twitching from the residual shock. "And I secretly added silver into every meal she ate. The aconite paralyzed her wolf, while the silver poisoned her blood, dulling whatever unnatural powers she possessed."

A savage roar suddenly erupted from Dorian’s throat. He charged forward, his hand morphing into razor-sharp claws aimed directly for her throat.

Melinda shrieked in terror, slamming her eyes shut as she braced for death. She tried to open the mind-link to scream for Fabian, but the collar had entirely severed her connection to her wolf.

Before Dorian’s claws could tear through her neck, Jake hurled his body between the Alpha King and the bound girl, catching Dorian’s wrists in time.

"Alpha, please! Control your beast!" he pleaded desperately, holding his ground despite the violent Alpha aura crushing his mind. "You cannot kill her! You know Luna Alyssa would never forgive this!"

In a blind, explosive fury, Dorian shoved his beta away, sending Jake skidding across the floor. He turned away, his breath coming in ragged, heavy heaves as Shadow fought to breach the surface and claim total control.

His heart bled with unbearable agony for everything his sweet, gentle wife had endured; living for years under the cruel stigma of being a wolfless outcast, entirely ignorant of the fact that the monstrous step-family raising her were responsible for everything.

"I never wanted to do any of it!" Melinda wept uncontrollably, her face flushed and tear-stained. "My mother forced me! She brainwashed me from childhood, convincing me that Alyssa was a dangerous threat! I... I was just obeying her commands!"

Dorian slowly turned his head back toward her, staring over his massive shoulder. His irises had morphed, completely consumed by pitch-black, soulless voids.

"What exactly is Alyssa?" he grounded out, his voice an eerie fusion of his beast and demon side. "She carries Lycan blood. What is her other half?"

Melinda shook her head hysterically. "I don’t know! I swear on my life, on my dead mother’s soul, I don’t know what she is!"

"Oh, I am going to murder you," Dorian growled.

He strode over to the metal box and retrieved a pair of thick silver pincers.

"I SWEAR, I DON’T KNOW!" Melinda shrieked, her voice pitching into a deafening, desperate wail as he advanced on her like the grim reaper. "MY MOTHER NEVER TOLD ME! SHE TOOK THAT SECRET TO HER GRAVE!"

"I am going to rip out every single one of your fingers until you give me the answer," Dorian vowed, his black eyes devoid of an ounce of humanity. "And for every minute you spend weeping instead of talking, I will tear out one of your organs."

"Alpha," Jake cut in tentatively, taking a few steps forward. "Perhaps we should..."

"Stay out of this, Jake!" Dorian snapped, turning a lethal glare toward his beta. "Do not fucking test me right now!"

Without a second’s hesitation, he clamped the pincers onto Melinda’s right thumb and brutally ripped it clean off her hand.

She screamed, the blood-curdling sound tearing from her lungs as spurts of blood sprayed across the floor. A shockwave of agony exploded through every inch of her body.

"Tell me what her other half is!" Dorian commanded, stepping closer as he raised the bloodied pincers menacingly.

He was just about to clamp the metal onto her second digit when the door of the Conclave forcefully slammed open behind him.

He froze the moment he heard the sharp, horrified gasp that echoed through the silent room. A second later, Alyssa’s trembling voice followed, making his blood run cold.

"Dorian!" she cried out, her voice laced with absolute terror. "What are you doing?"