Ruptured: The Cantati Chronicles by Maggie Mae Gallagher Read Free Book Online

my lip during the worst of the electrically induced tremors.
    I had had no visitors, no food, no water, no bloody warmth in this hovel since Cade had dumped my body here. One would think that they would at least give a prisoner a blanket or a fire. Although, I think they did that on purpose. This way, when a person went before the Counci, they were willing to agree to anything as long as they did not have to journey back to their cell.
    Footsteps stomped against stone, and I knew my time in this place was finished. Where would the Council send me? To Cade or the Desert?
    My prison bars swung inward, and Cade’s men surrounded me. No Cade. So the sadistic bastard didn’t have the balls to face me himself. He sent ten armed men to escort me to the Council, I presumed, but couldn’t be bothered with me himself. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy that he thought it would take that many men to keep little me in line. As for Cade, that man would rue today’s transgressions, make no mistake. I would never allow him anywhere near my body, at least not willingly. The Council might disagree on that matter.
    Walking to a Council hearing with armed guards was never a good sign. If this was how it would be? Then my actions, regardless that they were made for the greater good of the Compound, had made me an enemy of the Council.
    Figures. Bloody hell, if I survived this one intact it would be a wonder.
    “Move.” Rick Sloan nudged me forward at gun point. If my fate didn’t dangle precariously over the edge of no return, I would show this idiot how we did things in my squad. He jabbed me again. Either I moved or the man would put a crater in my back and end my apparent futile rebellion. How the hell had my life barreled so far out of hand? I was not attempting to start a revolution. I just wanted to live on my terms, not the Council’s.
    A third, firmer nudge against my already bruised ribs and I picked up my feet.
    Better to get the bloody inquisition over with than stoke the Council’s ire even more than I had already. Would they make an example out of me, punish me more fiercely than most to serve as a warning to the rest of what happened when a person resisted their system? I blinked as the light in the hallway battered my gaze. We marched onward through the familiar twists and turns of the underground Compound, past the half-expectant faces of residents who waited with bated breath to see what the general’s disobedient offspring would conspire to do next. I took none of it in. I let their rapt gazes fall upon me like leaves in a stern wind.
    The soldiers led me to the Council chambers. The guards standing watch opened the double steel doors at my approach.
    “Alana Devereaux, Your Grace.” One of the guards announced me at the threshold of the chamber.
    “Come forward,” Amelia demanded the silk of her voice encased in steel.
    Head held high, I ambled into the chamber. The door closed with a resounding thud behind me.
    “Ah yes, Miss Devereaux, we meet again so soon. Perhaps the last time you were here you misunderstood the Council’s directive.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Ah, so then you intentionally defied the Council and committed more than four acts of treason against your brethren.”
    I sucked in a swift breath. Treason. When had defying orders become treason? Would they imprison me for life, using me solely for breeding purposes, or exile me? I wondered why I had spent so much time in a cell when it seemed my fate and my acts had already been judged. This meeting appeared to be more of a formality, a way to assuage the masses the Council presided over to convince them that the stringent dictatorship of laws was just.
    “No, not intentionally.” I wanted to scream at them, rail against them for the unfairness of it all.
    “So you admit you defied the Council.” By the goddess . The Coven Mother clearly wanted to convict me. Why? Because I’d defied their edict?
    “Yes.” I hissed and felt the nails being