So where the fuck was I now? I blinked a couple of times and tried to focus my vision, but it was difficult because I was shivering so hard that my head wasn’t staying straight. It wasn’t too cold in here but the cold from that lake had made its way deep into my bones and I knew there would be no getting rid of it now that it was there. I closed my eyes and tried to still my frozen body, but it didn’t work.
They must have pulled me out of the lake. That was the only explanation. I wasn’t sure how they’d done it without getting killed themselves, but there was no way anyone else would have had time to notice the hole in the ice and come running in after me before I was completely gone for good. I lifted my head and tried to look around again, and this time my eyes actually focused in on my surroundings.
It was a cell. My heart sank when I realized where I was – a cell, just like the one I had been in back home before the trial that had cast me out of my pack for good. I knew letting my memories get the best of me wasn’t going to do me any good, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the swell of memories that were threatening to overwhelm me in that moment. I felt as though I would have cried if I had any energy left, but as it was, I felt as though someone had peeled me open and left me raw for all the world to see.
I must have been in a MacLaren prison. As I came to, their scents filled my nose – choking, stinking, crushing my skull. I had been taught my entire life that this scent meant death and destruction and all kinds of bad things for me and the people I held most dear, and I knew for sure that this hadn’t changed just because I was out of the pack now. My new pack – if I could call it that – they were in as much danger as my old one had been. Maybe even more. They didn’t have the fortifications or the numbers to take on the MacLarens if the situation called for it. I shuddered at the thought.
Please don’t let them have gone to the cabin. Please let my Robicheaux brothers still be safe.
I threw a prayer out to the world, even though the last few weeks had all but stripped me of whatever faith I might have had. It was hard to see much good left in the world when the good you had found was so far away, so distant, and probably had no idea where you were or what you were doing.
Maybe this had always been my fate. My heart sank at the thought. A cell in my old home, and a cell in this one – maybe this had always been how it was meant to end for me. Because, make no mistake, this felt like the end. I was shivering so hard I could hear my teeth chattering and yet I was dealing with flushes of burning heat. I had a fever, no doubt from falling into the filthy, frigid water of that lake, and this damp-ass cell with a tiny trickle of fresh light and air pouring in from a window too high for me to reach right now wasn’t helping. I hated being enclosed like this, in this place with the stale air. I suddenly felt a craving – or it might have been a fever dream, it was hard to tell in my current state – to be out in the woods with the Robicheaux brothers, the snow under my feet and the ice gone from my veins. I smiled at the thought – it was so vivid in my head, despite everything, and the image brought me some comfort. But then, I came crashing back down to reality and felt my mouth take a downward turn once more. There would be no getting out of this. Not this time. There would be no trial that cast me out into the cold. That would have been too easy. No, I had a feeling that the MacLarens had a whole different set of tricks up their sleeve for me.
The door to the cell opened and forced me back to reality; I tried to pull myself upright but a wave of nausea passed over me and I had to lie down again, even though the floor was disgusting and damp. I could see the place a little better now that there was some light allowed in – it was maybe ten feet by four feet, with a small bucket in the corner and a bench that I managed to pull myself up onto to face whoever it was who had just entered the room.
“Oh, you’re awake,” a male voice greeted me, and I forced myself to look up – and found myself faced with the last person on Earth that I wanted to see right then. Rickland MacLaren.
Shit. I felt a rush of terror flood through my system at the sight of him. I knew that was what he was relying on, panicking me deeply enough that I would spill whatever secrets he intended to draw out of me, but I had to keep my cool. How much did he know? Did he know that I’d been cast from the pack and out into the snow? Did he know that I’d found a new one? Had he found them? Had he tracked them down? I tried to keep the rushing thoughts in my head to a minimum but it was hard, my fevered brain latching on to every possibility, every bad thought that passed through.
“How long have I been here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, but it was weak and thin and wavering thanks to my pathetically shivering self. He shrugged.
“A few days,” he replied. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness but this is the first time we’ve had any words out of you.”
He pushed the door shut again, casting us both into relative blackness, and I forced myself to look up at him. He was tall, taller than my father, and lean and long, each one of his limbs seeming to take up just a few inches too much space. I couldn’t make out much about his face but I didn’t need to – I knew whatever I saw there I would translate into some evil demon, that I would project all the nightmare stories I had been told about him over the years onto him once and for all. He grinned widely, and his teeth flashed in the sallow light from the high window. My heart looped in my chest, fear pulsing through my veins. I had heard so much tell of his cruelty, of his evilness, and now here he was, standing in front of me, while I was trapped in this cell so far from anyone who gave a damn about me. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for me.
“What do you want?” I demanded, my voice still lacking conviction thanks to the cold.
“I wanted to check that you were doing okay,” he replied, a note of faux-concern in his voice. “You took a nasty fall there. All of us were surprised you made it at all.”
“Why didn’t you just leave me in there to die?” I spat back at him, surprised by how strongly I meant those words. He raised his eyebrows.
“Calm down,” he snapped in my direction, obviously irritated by my anger. “Still plenty of time for that yet.”
I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say.
“We just need you to answer a few questions for us,” he went on, crouching down so that he was looking at me dead in the eye. His eyes were blank and almost black in the light, and I twisted my head away so I didn’t have to look into them. They made me uncomfortable, the nausea I had done so well to fight off rising in my system once more.
“What do you need to know?” I asked, defeated. I just wanted to get this over with so he could either put me out of my misery or leave me alone once more. I didn’t want to have to deal with him for a moment longer.
“Your pack,” he got back to his feet, beginning to pace up and down the enclosed space of the cell, “how many healthy males are there in that fortress of yours?”
I stayed silent. He was talking about the Kellum compound and I would be damned if I was going to give away the secrets that my family had spent so long protecting.
“I don’t know,” I replied firmly, even though that was a lie. I knew I could have come up with a reasonable guess to sate him, but I wasn’t going to allow him that satisfaction.
“You sure?” He crouched down once more, his face suddenly close to mine, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was a threat, that he was attempting to threaten me into giving him what I knew. But I had lost my pack back home, as well as the four of them in the forest – I had nothing left to lose. He had nothing to hold over me. The thought was, all at once, liberating. I had some kind of power here, at least.
“I’m certain,” I replied, and I saw a flash of irritation pass across his face.
“We know who you are,” he snarled. “We know you know more than you’re telling us.”
“You must be mistaken,” I replied, playing dumb, knowing it would infuriate him even more than he had already been. “Sorry to have w
asted your time.”
“What about those men in the forest, then, huh?” he demanded, and my heart dropped at the mention of them.
Please, leave them out of this.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, but my voice lacked conviction once more. He seized on that, diving in.
“How long have you known them for?” he demanded. “We saw you with them, you can’t deny that…”
“I haven’t known them for long at all,” I shot back firmly. “I just…we ran into each other, that’s all.”
“What kind of weaponry do they have?” he went on.
“I don’t know,” I replied, and this time I was telling the truth – I had no idea what they had back at that house and I had no intention of telling him even if I did. But God knew the kind of stuff Anton had stockpiled in case of something like this. If I were their enemies, I’d be scared shitless.
“God damn it!” Rickland snapped, mostly to himself, and began pacing more rapidly, as though trying to burn off the excess energy pulsing around his body.
I knew how he felt. Part of me felt as though I needed nothing more than to sleep for at least a week, and the rest of me wanted to spring up and take off into the woods once more. But his frustration was too amusing not to goad a little further, even though I knew I was pushing my luck and would likely just land myself in trouble.
“I know as much about them as you do,” I lied. “That is, fuck all.”
He cast a foul look down at me, and for my troubles, I felt a wave of nausea overtake me. I had to hurry to the bucket, groping for it in the dark, and my stomach was racked with convulsions as I tried to bring up whatever was left down there, which wasn’t a lot at this point. As I coughed up the foul-tasting bile, it hit me – if he was asking questions about their defenses, then they hadn’t captured them yet. Despite myself, I felt a twist of triumph.
I heard his footsteps heading towards the door, a mutter of disgust the only thing letting me know he was still in the room, and relief hit me as I realized I had survived this one. Or, at least, I thought I had. But as it turned out, my thinking was a little premature.
When I had finished throwing up, I went to drag myself back towards the bench – but before I could get there, something came at me in the dark and sent me sprawling across the floor once more. Pain exploded out over my ribs and Rickland rounded on me once more, leveling up for another kick.
“You stupid little bitch,” he snarled, and I tried to roll out of the way in time but failed. “Tell me what you know!”
He landed another kick, and another, and another one after that, and before I knew it, blood was oozing from between my lips, dripping in heavy drops onto the floor in front of me. I didn’t care. I couldn’t. All I could focus on was the pain.
“I’ll be back,” Rickland snapped down at me as he went for the door – when he pulled it open, it cast me into a blinding ray of light for a split second, and then left me in darkness once more. I let my head sink down as the tears leaked from my eyes. I wasn’t sure I could heal from this one. I wasn’t sure I could heal from any of this.
Chapter 18
The icy cold on my skin.
That was all I could feel. No – was it the heat from some fire that was burning around me? A river of blood filled the cell, and then dissipated, leaving me coated from top to bottom in gore. My father was there, and then he wasn’t. He had been replaced by Rickland MacLaren and I knew that my entire life was in his hands-
I woke with a start, fresh from a night full of fever dreams that had left me feeling certifiably insane. But when I opened my eyes, I felt better than I had the day before. There was still a twinge in my ribcage and I still found myself a little blurry around the edges, but otherwise I was alright. My shifter healing powers were still in place. Thank God.
I got to my feet and paced around the cell, clutching the clothes that I had stolen from the guys around me. They were the only things connecting me to them any longer, maybe the only connection I’d ever have to them again, and I didn’t want to let them go, not for anything. My footsteps echoed loudly around the cell and I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.
Did my father know that I was in here? Maybe. He had a lot of scouts who kept an eye on these areas, made sure the MacLarens were sticking to their end of the forest, and I had no doubt that at least one of them would have either seen the chase, or the aftermath of it, that had landed me in here. They could have tracked my scent down here for all I knew, to confirm that I was truly trapped in this place.
But that didn’t mean that they were going to send someone down here to help me. I had been cast out of the pack, and if he hadn’t intervened to help me before, I didn’t see why my father would start now. I closed my eyes, feeling a clench deep in my stomach at the thought. That had always been one of the only things I actually liked about being part of the Kellums, the knowledge that we would protect each other no matter what. But now, I was out here on my own, and crazy to think that my father would step in to help me again.
What about the guys? I knew I shouldn’t have let my mind wander there, since it physically hurt me to even think of them, but I couldn’t help it. They must have known I was gone by now, along with the snowmobile. No doubt they had traced its tracks down to the lake where it had plunged through. Maybe they thought I was still in there, frozen to death in that awful place? It would have been a safe bet, considering how close I was to dying down there. The chances of them coming after me were slim – after all, I had been nothing but trouble since I arrived. I would have understood it – hell, I would have encouraged it. I didn’t want them in this place, putting themselves in danger on my account. The thought of them getting hurt or killed trying to get into this place made my stomach twist up in a panic.
I drew myself up to my full height and took a deep breath. No point in stressing about stuff that I couldn’t control. No, for the time being, I had to keep myself focused on the stuff that I did actually have a say over. I looked around the small cell again, this time with more purpose than before. I noted that the bucket had been emptied and cleaned, so that meant that someone had at least been in here since when I’d passed out at Rickland’s feet a day before.
Was it a day?
Could it have been more? He said they’d had me here for a few days when I’d first woken up, but I wasn’t sure if that was an attempt to get me in a panic about no one coming to save me. I shuddered at the thought. I could have been here a full week for all I knew, or less than ten hours. Without sight of the outside world, I couldn’t possibly tell, and I guessed that was precisely the way they wanted to keep me. I clenched my fists at my sides. This was monstrous. Despite myself, I let out a growl of dissatisfaction, and it felt good to express how I was feeling in more concrete terms, even if yelling into the void wasn’t going to do anything to help.
“Hello?”
A voice came from somewhere I couldn’t see and I practically jumped out of my skin. It didn’t sound like Rickland’s voice – no, in fact, it sounded distinctly like a woman. I looked around, wondering if this was some kind of trick, or maybe my mind playing games with me.
“Hello?” I answered back, cautiously, praying that I hadn’t just walked head-first into one of their awful traps. But, to my surprise, the voice came again. This time it almost sounded a little relieved.
“Over here,” it replied once more. “There’s a slot at the top of your cell, do you see it?”
I frowned and looked around, and eventually my eyes fell on a small slit in the stone that looked out onto an equally dark room – I made my way over to it, trying to wrench the bench across so I could peer through, but finding it nailed to the ground.
“Yeah, I see it,” I replied. “Are you in there by yourself?”
“Yep,” the voice replied. “I’m Rissa, by the way.”
“Arianna,” I offered in return. I knew I was probably being stupid, actually responding to this voice, but
there was no harm in it. Either it was in my head or it was another prisoner. That was it.
“How long have you been in there?” I asked, testing out to see just how far the depths of my delusion would go, and there was a moment of silence, and for a second I thought she wasn’t going to reply at all.
“A long time,” she responded after a pause. I felt a chill deep in my soul at the sound of that. How long? How long had she been trapped there?
“I’m so glad there’s someone else in here with me,” she went on. “Well, not glad, but I haven’t spoken to someone who isn’t part of the MacLarens for the longest time.”
“Where do you come from?” I pressed. I was pretty certain by now that this wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, that this woman was actually real. And she might have the information I needed to get myself out of here, considering that I’d accepted the fact that no one was coming to rescue me.
“I used to remember,” she remarked wistfully and my stomach dropped once more. My entire identity had, for a long time, been built around the pack that had raised me, and now this woman was telling me that she didn’t even remember where she came from? Shifters had a longer lifespan than humans, but I had never heard of one forgetting fundamental stuff like that. That was terrifying. The thought of having my past ripped away from me like that, whether I liked it or not…
“Rissa,” I stood on tiptoes in an attempt to see through the bars, “do you want to get out of here?”
“You sound like you’re trying to pick me up at a bar,” she shot back playfully – I wanted to laugh, but I was too scared by what she’d just said to muster up anything more than a chuckle. I wondered how long she must have been in here that she was able to crack jokes like that, to make as though none of this was as scary as it clearly was.
“I promise I’m not,” I replied. “I’m going to try and get out of here.”
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