Dedicated to: ChiNyan for taking the time to write out such a sweet comment. Welcome aboard the bandwagon love~

as well as Bubble4every1221 for her lovely addition of 'Jungmi' to the potential Jungkook x Aaemi couple name list~ I'd like to welcome you all to vote for your preferred ship name at my poll at the end of the chapter!

Semi-important A/N below(I'm looking for editors):

Enjoy~ This is for you guys! 

S I X T E E N 

T O R M E N T: to afflict with great bodily or mental suffering (see: wolfsbane and the loss of a lover)

Kaiden was right. I shouldn't have run off to hunt down the Four pack members. Maybe then I wouldn't be chained to the wall of a metal holding cell with wolfsbane laced through my blood stream. With absolutely no recollection of how I got there.

“Seriously.” I mutter, swearing violently under breath as a tug at the pair of thick metal cuffs around my wrist, tailed by chains massive chains that keep me anchored to the wall. Chains that I would normally be able to break if it weren't for whatever they injected into my system. All of my senses had dulled, everything that was wolf about me was gone, replaced with a terrible feeling of unknown and vulnerability.

I felt unbelievably human. Even my wolf wasn't responding.

Shaking tendrils of my long hair out of my face, I wince at my stomach's empty growl and wonder how long I'd been knocked out. I'd woken up around dusk feeling like I was being burnt from the inside out and it took, at least, three hours had passed before my body finally built some sort of tolerance of the wolfsbane and I stopped screaming in pain. My voice was still rough.

I squinted, the last thing I remember was trading Jungkook's car in an old auto shop for a tiny silver BMW, waving goodbye to Jungkook's packmates as they shifted into their wolves and launched themselves into the forest to return home. I remember checking into a hotel with him.

I moan, grabbing my head as pain prickled uncomfortably at my skull, pushing nausea up my throat.

I remember yelling, arguing, screaming at each other and in a flurry of anger, storming out the door. And then I hit a block, my memories ending right there.

This . Majorly.

Not was I god knows where, knowing me I'd probably pissed Jungkook off beyond comprehension. He most likely thought I was taking a breather or something.

The likely hood of rescue plummeted.

I leaned against the cold wall, trying to cool down my heated skin and unscramble my thoughts. Escape ideas run though my head, but I can't even think straight, forget managing to get out of these chains. I'd just have to wait for an overly dramatic confrontation from one of the Four pack members that was, no doubt, on its way.

The Four pack consisted of a massive group of four types of shifters. While wolf shifters were the majority; panther, raven and falcon shifters were welcomed. They were legendary, the only pack that has ever accepted other shifters, and they used to have an Alpha whose moral compass was pointed in the right direction.

However, maybe a couple decades before I was born, a raven shifter took over after the death of their beloved Alpha. With a new leader, came a new way of doing things. It only took a couple years to completely corrupt the Four pack. They were quite literally the mama of all shifter cults, ever.

Of course, my father managed to piss their Alpha, Cade, off as well as all representatives of each shifter group so after I took over as my father they saw an opportunity to elicit revenge and claimed control over our territory, essentially making us 'spoils of war'.

As you can imagine, they weren't too happy when I finally got enough resources to up and move the entire pack overnight.

“Aaemi,” a soft, male, terribly familiar voice echoed through the room. I turned slowly, curious. He must have quietly slipped through the door and, without my enhanced senses, I'd not managed to hear him. Gabriel Lake stood in the center of the room, flanked by two Four fighters. They all wore dark clothes and I could spot the inked insignia of the Four pack on peeking out from the collars of their shirts.

With his platinum hair lit up in the early morning sun, he looked just as beautiful as the last time I'd seen him. His icy blue eyes were trained on me, slipping up and down my body before settling on my face. “You've changed since the last time I saw you.” A smile tugged at his normally unresponsive lips.

Gabriel was barely two years older than me, a raven shifter, and someone who had always been the center of my attention as I'd grown into my place as Alpha female. I was drawn to his seemingly quiet and reserved personality.

I knew back then that Gabriel wasn't my mate, but I'd convinced myself to break pack law for him.

Gabriel was working towards the succession of the raven beta shifter, but my eyes widened when I noticed the chain that hung around his neck. From the necklace, dangled a claw of the right paw from the first ever Four alpha. It marked all Alpha's who'd taken control after him. In a couple of months my pack went MIA, he manged to become not only the raven beta but alpha male? Damn.

“Well, holy .” I mutter, slamming my head back against the brick wall in annoyance. Of course, he was alpha male now. As if things weren't screwy enough between my pack and the Four's. “Ow.” I hissed, as a pain that I normally wouldn't have felt, raced through me at the impact of the wall. I reached a hand up and rubbed the back of my head.

Gabriel smiled again, looking exactly like the shy, blushing boy I'd known back when he was beta. But there was a darkness in his voice that I don't recognize, as he turns to the fighters beside him, “Leave. I'll take it from here.” His voice carries heavy authority and the two men nod respectfully before leaving. Gabriel waits a full minute after the door slams shut behind them, his eyes scanning the room and everything but me the entire time, as he waits for them to walk a distance that puts this room out of hearing range.

“What the hell are you doing here, Aaemi?” When he finally does speak, his voice has completely changed. The atmosphere swings into a complete 180 and the familiar, wide-eyed puppy from a month ago stares back at me.

I crack a smile, suddenly feeling in control of the situation.

“I don't know.” I shrug and lean back against the wall, “You kidnapped me.” I point out. [xx] growls in frustration, slinking closer to me.

“Don't play around.” He snorts, crossing his arms over his chest and looking kind of sulky. “My pack only kidnapped you because they found you. And you don't make those kinds of mistakes, Aaemi.”

I sigh, “If you think that I let myself get kidnapped, drugged, and put in a prison cell then you're mistaken.” I respond. Unless that was my plan. , I can't remember but for some reason, I'm resisting the urge to ask him how his mother is. That would definitely make the situation worse.

“Aaemi.” He warns.

“Gabriel,” I sing right back. He rolls his eyes.

Walking forward until he's flush in front of me, Gabriel crouches down to eye level. “Aaemi, they're going to make me kill you.” He looks troubled by the thought. I tip my head back and chuckle a little.

“You can try,” I welcome with a snicker. Gabriel closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Grateful that I've finally managed to gain back some of my usual bravado, I allow a smirk onto my mouth.

“I'm alpha male now, Aaemi-” He says. I grin.

“Congrats.”

“-but Cade appointed himself as my elder.”

I groan loudly, “Seriously? You didn't manage to kill him?”

Gabriel scowls at me, “There is no way that I could have killed him and gained the respect of the pack. That's not how Four's work. And that is so not the point.” He looks like he wants to eat his foot. Which I would pay to see. “The point is, he still has control over the pack and he's going to advise me to kill you.”

I shake my head, not surprised. Cade was never a huge fan of my father's, in fact, he was the alpha to order my pack taken under their control. Then again, no one was a huge fan of my father's. “He's always been one about the whole 'when the bearer of the debt passes, it's placed upon their child' thing, hasn't he?” I brandish an arm out for effect.

Gabriel blinks, “That isn't a thing.”

My brows rise, “And suddenly that's the point?” He opens his mouth to respond, but I don't allow him and instead raise my shackled wrists up to his line of vision. “So any idea when these come off?”

He actually winces, “Sorry. It's regulatory,