He had been trying to fight it with his whole being, he gave it his all, but it didn't matter. He needed her like he needed air. She was his gravity. She was his everything.

I had thought the worst out of torture would be the pain. The everlasting, excruciating pain that burned through my arteries, into capillaries, into my veins. I thought the worst would be the crippling fear that came with the pain. The panic, the agony.
I was wrong.
It was the waiting that was worst. Waiting to see when my enemy would torture me. Waiting to see if they would even attack at all. My own mind proved to be the most scary. What would he do next? What would be his plan? What would he do to me?
Yes, I had always been a visual person. I could very well imagine what my life could be like until I died. I didn't like it one bit, I must say. My thoughts led me into a hell I wasn't sure I could ever escape from. I was afraid. I was terrified. I was a mess.
Yes, I was a mess.
The funny thing? What they did to me wasn't even that bad if I thought about it. They hadn't pulled my nails out, they hadn't spooned my eyes out of their sockets. They never broke bones, I doubted if they even broke my skin.
It wasn't necessary.
I was scared enough without it. I was slowly going mad with fear, and I knew I was close to giving up, even though I had only been here for how long? A week?
Why did this have to happen to me? First this whole mess with Aericon, now this... Around me, everything went from bad to worse.
I was terrible at being tortured. I was a joke. And what was even better, everyone knew it, and liked to remind me of it. Leader was one of them.
"You know," he said, I think it was yesterday. "I was prepared for the worst kind of torture to break you. I was prepared for months and months of endless pain. But guess what, I won't have to! You already beg for me to stop after one lash with a whip. Most wolves at least have the dignity to wait until the twentieth lash. You are quite disappointing, really. I had hoped for some more fun." Then he had stopped talking and walked around the room some more, because yes, I was still kept in the same bedroom. They'd just cuffed my hands to the bedposts in a different way. A more embarrassing way, so to say. In such a way that would suggest something else than what they did to me. Which also led my mind to frightening ends, making me even more scared than I already was. Then Leader had caressed my face, and smiled that creepy evil smile of his. "Maybe I'll just take what I prepared for you and send your darling mate some presents from you. A finger, maybe? Or a toe?"
Francis piped up from behind. "Or an ear, maybe Aericon can appreciate van Gogh's art." Leader had just smiled deviously at me, but did nothing to show me exactly how much he liked the idea.

I guess that my terrible ability at resisting pain did have some positive consequences. While they hadn't pushed me towards making a phone call with Aericon yet, they knew I was close to my breaking point, where I would agree to anything. And as I had never been this afraid of someone in my whole life, Leader always uncuffed me when he came to visit. Of course he did bring his whip, but he told me he liked seeing me cower away from him. He loved watching me scramble backwards each time he came closer to me. He said he enjoyed smelling my anxiousness, my fear.
At least him uncuffing me felt heavenly to my wrists. The tie rips were pulled on way too tight each time, so besides the red welts on my skin, my fingers were sickly pale and always cold. It was only after an hour of Leader scaring me, that the blood flowed properly through the arteries in my hands again.
"Today we are going to do what you have been waiting for, darling." Leader said. Involuntarily, I started shivering in anguish. I knew what he was talking about. The phone call. He had told me about it probably a gazillion times. During the phone call, which would actually be a video call, he would whip me, while dialling one of the phone numbers in the Castle of Sensus. To whoever would pick up, he would make threats what he would do if he or she didn't get their alpha on the phone. While I was screaming in pain, he would make his demands once more, hoping for a different answer.
"You know what will happen if you don't scream hard enough, right darling?" He cocked his head innocently. "If you don't scream hard enough, I will only induce more agony. Not that I am afraid you won't yell out loud of course."
I tried protecting my body as I scrambled backwards on the bed, trying to think of things to make him stop, or at least procrastinate his torture.
"Why do you do this? Why do you even want the Pack Quarter system to be abolished?" My voice sounded weak, it cracked and it stuttered.
Leader stopped and thought about the idea of him telling me his reasons. He clearly hesitated and mumbled something along the lines of "She won't get out anyway, making the phone call a couple minutes later won't matter."
"Alright," he said then, his voice dripping with menace. "Story time."
He walked around the room, not even paying attention to me as he took his phone out of his pockets. Seeing as his keys and wallet were in the way, he took them out too, and put them neatly organised on the desk.
"As you know, we all have a mate out there," he said while starting to record everything he said, the camera pointed at me so you could only hear his voice. "I do too. Alessia, she is called. A beautiful woman I met during the Ceremony sixteen years ago. You know how many times I have seen her since then? Exactly 4 times. Only during the ceremony I get to see her. Not before, not after, never. I have requested to transfer to her pack quarter precisely thirty-two times. Each time, my request was denied." He turned around abruptly once he had reached the other side of the room, and started pacing very slowly towards me again. "The Pack Quarter system is ruthless to soulmates. It separates them forever, curses them to live without the other half of their soul for eternity. It is worse than any kind of torture, knowing you will never feel whole. And no one in the world can change the system. No one, but your darling little mate, Alpha Aericon. So do you understand now, why I will make the phone call? I just want to give you two the same torture as I have been going through for the past sixteen years. Of course, my pain is emotional, but I presume that with enough physical pain, your mate will start feeling the connection waver. Excruciating. Lovely."
He came closer to me once more, the whip in his hand sliding over the floor smoothly. "So, Micara, what do you say about two lashes for each time my request was denied?"