The underground basement cell beneath Dawnoro's Iondora capital residence was engulfed in darkness.
Shadows pooled in corners like spilled ink. The only light came from a single torch mounted high on the far wall, quite a dim, sickly glow that did little more than illuminate the misery it couldn't dispel.
In the center of the cell, behind a set of metal bars that had been bent, wrenched out of shape by a force that shouldn't have been possible for human hands, sat Roarke Raul.
Even though he could get out of the metal bars with his strength, he would be swarmed by the elite wolves from the pack immediately. So, he stayed.
His ruined face showed everything that had happened. Bruises in every shade of purple and black. Swelling that distorted his features into something almost unrecognizable. Dried blood caked at the corner of his mouth, on his chin, in the lines of his neck.
His clothes were the same he had worn when Arkai had beaten him, now days old, stained, torn.
