I didn't want to think about Platinum dangling from Gabel's arm. My body filled with a jealousy that had been forced upon me.

I wasn't going to be so childish to say "this isn't fair" but... it wasn't fair.

Gabel had turned his rage on the wolves, and the currents pulled me out of my thoughts. "You fled! You fled like hairless cowards!"

Fled? I couldn't help but think about the wolves that had fled their brothers not long before. My interest sharpened. That explained at least some of Gabel's anger. His warriors had fled from a mission.

Many of the IronMoon members weren't excessively smart, and many were pig-headed violent louts, but they understood things like following orders. I couldn't imagine any members of Iron Moon being so stupid they to think they could flee back home.

No, just keep on running and don't come back.

I had been worried Gabel would be too harsh, but now I wasn't.

None of the six wolves tried to argue, or defend their actions. The smell of fear, however, doubled. Now it was laced with shame.

"A simple task!" Gabel growled. "And you fled! What does that say for this pack!? That my warriors are cowards?!"

Indeed. One of the things about IronMoon being IronMoon was everyone was scared to death of Gabel. Alphas just rolled over. It was fear that kept the violence low. If they saw there was nothing to be afraid of, there would be even more violence!

There might even be war.

"A-Alpha," the one closest to me stammered, "We were spotted! They confronted us and they outnumbered us."

"You fled." Gabel bit out the word. "Look at you! Six I sent, six returned. You're not hurt. You didn't retreat from a good fight. You just turned and ran."

His tone pulled the blood from my cheeks and strummed fear within me. He was also right: from their lack of any real injuries, it was easy to see they had outrun the danger, and had only been scraped up in the process of escaping.

I still couldn't imagine any IronMoon warriors fleeing. They were a violent group. I'd have thought they would all stand and fight and charge right into the face of an oncoming train like a bunch of stupid bulls. But instead these six had just turned and ran for home.

I didn't want to harden my heart, but I had watched RedWater warriors flee, and leave packmates behind. To think my own packmates--because, like it or not, I was IronMoon now-- had done anything even remotely similar made me very angry.

I longed for when my father had shielded me from these matters. Being a ranked adult was overrated.

It felt like so, so, so long ago.

A wave of homesickness hit me.

Gabel shifted as if he had felt it too. I don't think he understood the sensation.

"Where did you send them?" I asked. I couldn't stand not knowing anymore.

"To the border of Sablefur." he answered, "And they let the Sablefur scouts run them off!"

Sablefur! Gabel had not even brought RedWater to heel and already he turned his attention to Sablefur!

It explained Gabel's fury. It had been a simple (if daring and probably stupid) mission, and the wolves had fled when confronted. Fleeing was bad enough. Fleeing like this. I was impressed Gabel had not ripped all their heads off.

But Gabel wasn't known for brutal violence. He was famous for his cruelty.

Oh, I knew that cruelty well, and everyday I seemed to learn more about it.

I crept back a step. Gabel smoldered after naming their crimes. His pulse visibly throbbed in the large artery of his neck.

The lead warrior whined his apology.

"Be silent!" Gabel's voice snapped across the room, and his rage struck within me. I cringed and clutched an arm across my belly. The sharp pain hit the inside of my flesh. I managed to suppress a whimper of pain.

Gabel did not notice.

The Sablefur wouldn't talk this lightly. The IronMoon had, technically, done nothing wrong. The SableFur were not fools. They would see it for what it was: antagonizing. What they did about it, if anything...

My shoulders hunched forward as I tried not to hug myself in pain. A great pressure built behind Gabel's emotions, a great pressure built all around me. A wall of water bore down all around me, the white caps about to crash onto me...

"Take them to the basement." Gabel ordered Hix. "I will decide their punishment later."

He meant he wanted time to conjure some horrible torment. Because death was too good for these wolves.

Even I agreed to that. But I was Bound to Gabel, and I didn't want to know or see this.

But the basement? There was nothing in the basement except an old broken grandfather clock and boxes of holiday decorations. It was dusty and musty and dark, but devoid of all the usual clutter and certainly didn't have anything in it suitable to confine wolves.

"Alpha." Hix saluted him with a crisp snap of his arm.

"Gianna."

Gabel's low, slow growl crept towards me like something from a nightmare.

My insides hurt and felt bruised. I licked my lips, and my voice shook. "Gabel."

I invoked his name to bring him back to this world and to me, to pull him back from the chasm of his temper and rage.

But I don't think it worked. "Tomorrow, you will ask the Moon the same question before. Is Alpha Anders working against me."

"Yes, Alpha." I murmured. I took that as a dismissal and fled to the hallway.

The air in the hallway felt cool and clear. I gasped several deep breaths. Gabel's anger was stifling.

Why Alpha Anders? Why not the Sablefur? It was his question, not mine, but I still-

Something large slammed against something immovable. A shudder moved over the wall. I jumped, shaking, heard more thuds, the scrambling of claws on tile and floor, growls and snarls, an agonized yip and then a hair raising howl.

Hix. That was Hix's voice.

Gabel stormed out of the drawing room and nearly trampled me. I fell back against the wall, frozen, then my wits returned. I ran after him.

Glass shattered. More howls. Splashing water.

I rounded the corner just into the foyer just in time to see Gabel leap through the splintered, smashed front doors. The pond's surface churned, watery prints splattered the marble floor, there was a trail of blood and blood smeared the walls. One of the vases had been shattered and now lay strewn about.

Just as fast as he had started, Gabel pulled up just outside the door. I thoughtlessly moved after him, stepping around the splinters and wood, and gasped. "What--"

Streaming from each side of the house the wolves came, the pack of IronMoon warriors in full cry. Their howls struck the sky itself, as they poured in two lines towards a single point. That point was Hix's dark form in pursuit of two other wolves.

"They ran!" I couldn't believe it. Running hadn't worked the first time, what fool would run again!

Gabel snarled.

Hix's dark form leaped, shifted into his massive war-form, and crushed one of the fleeing wolves. Screams, yelps, yips, snarls. They tumbled over and over again, and the IronMoon pack converged on the other wolf, swarming over him so I could not see him.

I steeled myself for the scene. I fully expected the enraged IronMoon to rip them apart like dog toys. Not that I would have tried to stop them. Attacking a Beta, trying to escape? They deserved it. But that didn't mean I wanted to watch it.

But the sea of warriors dragged the wolves up before Gabel and I. Master-At-Arms Flint, who was a glorious tawny gold wolf with his hair balded in the pattern of his tattoos, shifted back to human form and knelt. He crushed the ruff of the first wolf traitor into the dirt with one huge arm.

His tattoos shone as he bent over one knee and kept his head low.

Next to him, Hix, now back in his night-black wolf form, stood with one paw on the other wolf's tender throat. That wolf bled from a wound somewhere.

Nobody moved. The other warriors waited in a semi-circle of wolves and humans, breathing in one rhythm.

Their eyes were on us.

Gabel had had Platinum on his arm for Anders, but where was the little would-be Queen now? Where were any of them?! Here I was, not by choice, forced to stand at his shoulder as if I mattered to him, as his Luna, as their Queen.

All the obligation and Gabel wouldn't even acknowledge me publicly.

And Gabel was surprised when his re-purposed exiles no other pack wanted acted like fools?

I didn't have to work hard to conjure feelings of contempt, even in this situation. My shock melted to disgust.

Cowards, traitors, they deserved to die as such.

Gabel was just not having a good day.

Poor baby. His mongrels were acting like... mongrels.

Gabel snarled. His eyes sank into Hix, than Flint. He was trying to figure out who to blame.

He growled. "Oso! Bring me the collars!"

The wolves shifted, the pulse of their combined breathing twitched. Collars were insulting enough, but the cruel lance of Gabel's focus prodded me.

Oso, one of the higher placed unranked wolves, broke from the circle. He darted off to the side of the house.

"Take them." Gabel directed Hix and Flint.

Everyone but me seemed to know what that meant. Hix and Flint hauled their wolves to their feet. Hix's foreleg was broken, white bone poking through the skin, and it was all he could do to limp along. Flint's was so cowed and panicked that he whined and whimpered as Flint dragged him through the dirt by his ruff.

The pack headed back off the way the wolves had fled.

Gabel seemed to remember I was there.

He offered me his elbow in a grotesque parody of gallantry. I paled, my insides squirmed, and his smile was too genuine for me to feel safe. "Come, Lady Gianna."

"Where?" I faltered.

He seized my hand and yanked it to his lips. I whimpered. He pressed the flat of my palm to his lips. My skin and the Bond surged with pleasure, I stumbled towards him, and I wanted to weep.

He ten, oh so gently, placed my hand on his forearm. He patted my fingers.

I struggled for something to say, to do. The pack still headed down the path, but now I saw they had bent off to the right across the grass, heading down the hillside. I didn't want to.

"I should get Gardenia." I tugged my hand, he held it onto his wrist. "She attends all these official functions with you!"

"Why, buttercup, are you jealous?"

"No!" tears burned on my eyelids. I was jealous and I hated it, and I didn't want to be, and he had forced me to be, he had forced me to care about any of this, and he had ruined me so I could never go back and look upon my father or Alpha Jermain or any other Alpha I had ever met with respect again. "But I don't want to do all the dirty work. I guess you think she's too pretty and gutless to go hunting or watch you dole out punishment!"

"You are jealous, buttercup, How adorable."

Adorable! That word at a time like this! The Bond lashed me and my tears built, but I wasn't weeping for the wolves that would wear those collars. They had earned their punishment. They deserved whatever they were about to get.

The Bond lashed me. It hurt, I groaned, and Gabel's eyes twinkled. "Come, buttercup. Gardenia isn't around, so you will have to do."

The Bond lashed both of us, it clenched my throat with a ghostly hand and I groaned, and he shuddered in pain but laughed at it, as if oh so amused that it still fought him.

It would fight him until we both were dead.

Gabel pulled me after him and we followed the pack down the path, the incline and into the woods.

We arrived in a large, open dirt circle cut into the forest. Sunlight shone through the trees, the birds chirped, and it was a beautiful day. In the center of this extremely large circle were four thick iron posts twice my height, like re purposed street lights, driven into the dirt. Various iron rings were attached at intervals along their length, and thick chains hung from each ring.

I realized these were not MayPoles for pretty dances involving chains. These were for suffering.

The two criminal wolves cowered in the center of the ring, the rest of the pack spread around the ring's perimeter. They parted for Gabel and I.

Flint bowed to me. "Lady Gianna. Your presence reminds us males must always be courageous in the face of difficult circumstances, as females do not question their own lives being imperiled to give birth to the next generation."

Flint spoke like I was already Queen! Puppies! No!

Hix, at least, scowled at Flint's statement. Hix had frightened me at first, but I had started to appreciate his dark form of honor and duty. He would never have pulled the wings off flies and laughed at their pain. He would have done it, and felt no guilt, but he wouldn't have thought it was entertainment.

Oso returned with a large knapsack that jangled in time to his gait. He presented it to Gabel.

I smelled silver.

Gabel pulled a heavy leather and metal collar from the bag. The leather was thick and stiff, and had steel prongs placed along its length. The prongs were double ended and long enough so that two inches of each end extended beyond the collar's leather. The tip of the prongs were not sharp, but instead pea-sized metal balls. The buckle loop was placed on the inside of the collar, and could be drawn tight by a little strip of leather. This was so that the prongs would not be disrupted by the buckle itself.

The only other part of the collar were metal rings between the prongs, presumably for chains and ropes.

Gabel turned and extended it towards me so I could get a good look at the strange device. This was the implement of torture that had the other wolves so nervous? I didn't see anything barbaric about it, but I could smell silver.

Gabel grinned at my confusion. I glared at him.

It was just... sordid... that he'd enjoy confusing me and punishing his wolves at the same time.

Usually enforcing torture or punishment fell to the Beta, under the Alpha's direction. But Gabel meted out his own punishments. This wasn't any sort of sense of nobility or Alpha obligation or vengeance or justice. He just liked it.

He took the first collar to the wolf with the broken leg. He slipped the loop of leather over the wolf's head. The wolf whimpered and whined and pleaded. Gabel situated the collar at the middle point of the neck, then tightened it with the leather tug.

The true horror of the collar became apparent: the prongs prevented the head from dropping forward or to the side. The balls were silver. The wolf could lower his head to sleep, but the silver balls would press into his skin top and bottom. Silver was a soft metal, so the balls would deform to the shape of the body and it didn't matter if they lost their point or shape or not: they'd still press into the body.

It would burn and sting, and the flesh would start to die, his skin would start to slough off, and the wolf would die a slow, horrible death from exhaustion and necrosis.

If the Moon had more pity on him than IronMoon did, the compound leg fracture would finish him first.

Gabel fitted a second collar to the other wolf.

"Chain them." Gabel gestured to the posts.

The wolves were chained by the collars between posts, so that they could move neither left, nor right, and they were also chained up high so they could not lay down. They could only sit or stand. They twisted and yelped and pled with their packmates to aid them.

Then they yowled at me. "Lady Gianna!" the one with the four good legs pled with me, "Pity! Mercy!"

"You do not deserve mercy!" I snapped, thinking of the wolves I had put down because they had been abandoned by everyone, including Gabel. Those wolves had deserved pity. These wolves did not. "You had four good legs and you used them to flee, not fight! Enjoy this time, dog. Because what the Moon will do to you for your sins is far worse than this."

Rage clouded my mind. Fires licked at my brain. I shouted, "You joined IronMoon knowing the standards and how things are done! You joined knowing what your Alpha demands of his warriors! You knew and you joined and you pledged yourself and you think you can flee his orders? You think you can beg for mercy? This was the choice you made! This is what you wanted!

"Why should I help you? You were garbage no other pack wanted, and this pack gave you a chance to prove you had some value. And you proved you have no value. You got what you wanted, so now you get what you deserve!"

My heart swelled, cracked on bitterness and sadness and despair and fury. Before my tears erupted I spun, dropped to wolf form and bolted back to the house.

/******

Oh haiiiiii

See? I'm making it up to you with a DOUBLE UPDATE.

****/