Rachel stalked down the stairs back into the room, a rge duffel bag tucked under her arm. Dropping it at entrance to the area Asher was being kept in, she smiled down at him and bent over. She noted how he flinched back from her initial closeness, patting him on the head.

  "Aw! What a good pet! Look at you, finally starting to obey! You'll understand eventually." She ughed and grabbed his hair suddenly, forcing his face into the bowl, using his sudden surprise to unhook his wrists from the floor, instead fastening them to each other behind his back. She moved closer and straddled his head, forcing it down with her whole body weight as she wrestled a thick, bck, pin, leather colr around his neck, tightening it a cruel amount and linking a short but very thick chain between it and the shackle driven into the basement floor. Asher barked and struggled as Rachel made her adjustments to his restraints, his heart pounding with renewed fear. After she stood up, he quickly discovered that the length is such that he has enough room to almost get into a comfortable kneeling position, about two feet.

  "Now now pet, I just needed to make sure you were well restrained. No worries. Keep eating." The colr nearly choked him, and he could feel his blood pulsing through his neck. As soon as she got up off of him, Asher rushed to try and sit up, only to be caught by the chain. Still high from the night prior, he ended up falling right back down, his head spinning enough to make it unpleasant to move at all whatsoever.

  "I — I'm not your pet," he groaned, forcing himself to gre up at the other despite how unpleasant it was. "You — you told me you'd answer my questions, why are you doing this?!" Rachel sighed and turned to the bag. In the low light it wasn't entirely clear what she'd pulled out, but it was metal, and pointed. She crouched down in front of him and took his chin in her hand again.

  "Because I feel like being incredibly generous, I'm going to respond to those statements separately, and in reverse order. Why am I doing this? Because your life was forfeit. You've been sloppy. You stopped caring about this life; you were starting to move on already, weren't you?" She stared him down, gring deep into his eyes. "You're wasting your life, pissing it away. I see that, and, what am I supposed to do, let you waste everything away? As for your other statement..." A pinprick in his side blossomed into a fiery line of red-hot pain as the tip of a knife dragged between two of his ribs.

  "I wont allow you to be that insolent again. Say 'I am your pet, sir'. Every time you get it wrong?" the knife finds footing. It was small, just a fruit knife. It burned the whole way in. "Another wound like that. How many times before I reach something important?" She pressed down on it, scraping it around inside him and forcing another wave of horrible pain through his chest. Asher gasped and let out a sharp yell, desperately trying to pull away only to be stopped dead in his tracks by the chain. It dug painfully into his neck, making each breath sound almost like a wheeze.

  "No no no stop, stop!" There was no way the high could cut through that much pain. It only seemed to intensify it, in fact. Every sensation was overwhelming in that moment. The bde in his ribs burned more than he thought was possible, and every movement made it worse — staying still was no better, so what was he to do? "Stop, stop, just let me go!" He pleaded, eyes squeezing shut as he tried to hold back tears. "It's my fucking life, let me handle it how I want to! You don't own me!"

  Rachel sighed, slowly, excruciatingly as she pulled the knife out, letting his blood pour out onto the basement floor. She pulled the sharp tip across his lower chest slowly, sinking it an inch at a time between the same pair of ribs on the other side of his fnk, not slowing, not hesitating, not even reveling in it. She simply knew that he was wrong, and moved consistently, inch by inch towards correction.

  "Still wrong. Sorry pet that was very very bad. You made at least four errors there. Do you want me to tell you what they were?" Her other hand closed like a vice around his jaw, forcing him to nod. “Good! Firstly, don’t say no to your owner, pet." Yank. The knife tore towards his fnk by an inch. "Secondly, don't pretend that you're ever leaving here for even a second without my express permission." Another inch across. So much blood pooling on the floor beneath him he could feel it running across the floor from the heat it gave off. "Thirdly, you have no such thing as a life beyond here anymore." Yank. "And finally, yes, pet. I do own you. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. There’s nobody coming to save you." The knife came out with a sickening pop, and swiftly pressed up against his upper chest, right over his heart.

  "You only get one st chance before we start testing how unkilble a werewolf is. Say that you are my pet. Don't make me kill you. I'll do it as many times as it takes to hear what I want. So fucking do it," her hand finally released from his face — he's sure her fingers left bruises.

  Asher gritted his teeth, breathing heavily through them with each cut. It was all agony — each forced movement of his head, the bde cutting deep into him, and, god, the way his vision seemed to pulse with every beat of his heart. Immediately, he saw an out. From everything. An escape from the deer's bullshit, an escape from whatever his ex would do were she to find him — he wouldn't have to deal with any of it anymore. Breathing heavily, he leaned forward, feeling the knife dig into his skin.

  "No," he growled, tail shing. "Fuck you."