"You left the gala early," Thessian interrupted with prosecutorial precision. "You disappeared for six hours. Plenty of time to commit murder and return."
"I didn't....." Liora swayed dangerously on her feet, her vision blurring at the edges. "I went to my room. I had a headache. I....." She couldn't remember clearly. The memory was fuzzy and indistinct, like trying to see through murky water or thick fog.
"You can't even remember," Thessian said, and there was something almost triumphant in his voice, as if her inability to recall proved his point. "You can't remember that night because you know what you did. You're just trying to hide from the truth."
"No," Liora whispered, shaking her head weakly. "No, I....."
Her legs finally gave out completely. She collapsed, hitting the cage floor hard enough that pain exploded in her shoulder where she landed, but she barely felt it through the overwhelming exhaustion that had consumed her entire being. She heard Thessian move, heard the metallic sound of the cage door being unlocked with deliberate slowness.
He's coming in, she thought distantly, her mind oddly calm in the face of what seemed like imminent death. He's going to kill me now.
But when she forced her eyes open with tremendous effort, he wasn't moving toward her to deliver a killing blow. He was standing just inside the cage door, staring down at her with an expression she couldn't read through her compromised perception, something complex that might have been contemplation or calculation or something else entirely.
"Twenty-five hours," he said quietly, as if making an observation about a laboratory experiment. "Your body is already breaking down. Another forty-seven hours of this treatment, and you'll be hallucinating constantly, unable to distinguish reality from delusion. Sixty hours, and your cognitive function will be severely impaired, possibly permanently. Seventy-two hours, and there's a significant chance of permanent psychological damage that will never heal."
He crouched down with fluid grace, bringing himself to her eye level but maintaining his distance, not touching her or coming too close. "I could stop this right now," Thessian said, his voice taking on an almost reasonable tone that was somehow more terrifying than his anger. "All you have to do is confess. Admit what you did. Tell me why you killed my mate, give me that much truth, and I'll let you sleep. I'll give you food, water, comfort, and everything you need. All you have to do is tell the truth."
It would be so easy, Liora's exhausted mind whispered seductively. She should just say yes, just confess to something she didn't do if it meant she could finally sleep and escape this waking nightmare. What did it matter in the end? He was going to kill her anyway when the full moon came. Why not take the mercy he was offering?
But somewhere beneath the exhaustion, beneath the pain and fear and desperate need for rest, a spark of something stubborn flickered to life in her chest, something that refused to be extinguished no matter how much pressure was applied.
"No," Liora said, the word emerging as barely more than a breath.
Thessian's eyes narrowed dangerously. "No?"
"I won't confess to something I didn't do." Liora pushed herself up on trembling arms until she was sitting upright rather than collapsed on the floor. "You can torture me for the full three weeks. You can kill me slowly and painfully when the time comes. But I won't lie and say I murdered your mate when I didn't, when I've never killed anyone, when I don't even know how to fire a gun."
"You're choosing to suffer rather than accept mercy."
"I'm choosing the truth," Liora said with more strength than she felt, meeting his burning amber eyes with her own bloodshot gaze. "Even if no one believes me. Even if I die for it."
For a long moment that seemed to stretch into eternity, Thessian just stared at her with an intensity that made her feel exposed and vulnerable. Something shifted in his expression, confusion perhaps, or anger that she wasn't breaking the way he had clearly expected her to break, the way most people probably would have broken by now.
Then he stood abruptly, turned his back on her, and walked out of the cage without another word. The door clanged shut behind him with a finality that echoed through the space.
"Continue the protocol," he said to Darius and Kira without looking at them, his voice flat and emotionless. "No sleep. No rest. I want her broken by hour forty-eight."
"Yes, Alpha," they said in perfect unison, their voices carrying notes of anticipation.