Chapter 3
Three
It felt like a thousand needles were penetrating my skull and digging into my brain.
I groaned and squinted my eyes open, then immediately shut them against the bright light.
Everything hurt.
My shoulder, my chest, my arm, my ankle, my neck, my face…my entire body ached, like I’d been beaten to the edge of death and somehow managed to cling on.
Had I?
I tried to remember what happened, and…
Oh.
Oh, yeah.
Hadn’t I been in a pit?
My eyes flashed open. This definitely wasn’t a pit. What the fuck? Where was I?
Wait. Had Hunter caught me? But…I was running for days. Three days, I was pretty sure. I hadn’t seen any signs of being followed—by humans, at least. How did they catch me already? How long had I been unconscious?
My eyes darted around the room to see if I recognized anything, but none of it looked familiar.
It was a big open space with several pieces of furniture that were decorated in weird, mismatched patches, and along one wall, a wide wooden structure that had a bunch of…
little things in it. Some of them were colorful, and I had the urge to look closer at them.
Were those words?
I leaned forward, and my chain caught on something. I followed the links to where it was wrapped around a concrete pillar several feet away.
Why wasn’t I in a cage?
I reached up to touch my muzzle, and it was still there. Of course it was still there.
I touched the collar around my neck, wincing when a spot beneath my shoulder twinged with a sharp lick of pain.
I bit down on my lip to stifle the cry that tried to burst from my chest, then sat back when a wave of dizziness made the ground feel like it was tilting.
White spots danced in my vision, multiplying until I couldn’t see at all.
I groaned when my head started to pound on top of everything else.
I was about to fall off the world, and there was nothing to hold onto.
“Oh, you’re up. How’re you feeling? You hungry? How’s your head? How’s the pain?” Heavy boots sounded on the hard floor.
My eyes snapped open, and I tried to concentrate on who had spoken. A tall, blurry blob slowly came into focus, and I stared up at the giant in front of me.
I’d never seen someone as big as him, and…
Clean.
He was so clean.
His face was shaved down to the skin, and not a single smudge of dirt was anywhere to be found on him. His clothes were crisp and unsoiled, his short, dark hair shiny in the light.
I hadn’t known it was even possible to be that clean.
He took a step and I instinctively jerked backwards, then stood up. Pain shot through my left ankle and up my leg, and I started to fall over—except a huge hand snatched the front of my shirt and pulled me back upright.
“Whoa, careful, you—”
With an angry growl, I ducked and slipped out of the shirt, leaving him holding onto it while I backed away. The chain was still looped through it, and it rattled and tugged at my collar as he held onto the shirt.
That wasn’t the same one I’d been wearing for the past five years—it was huge and clean and the material was thick, not ratty and riddled with holes.
“You don’t like the shirt? I can get you a different one.” He held it up, inspecting it like he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it. “Yeah, I guess it’s a little boring. I’ve got one with a pineapple on the front. It’s clean, I promise. I washed it a few years ago.”
What the fuck was happening? And what was a pineapple?
When he finally looked my way again, he stared hard into my eyes. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to do. Intimidate me?
“I’ve never seen eyes like that,” he murmured. “They’re really beautiful.”
My mind went blank as his words burrowed into some unknown part of me.
Beautiful…?
I’d never seen my eyes but I knew from the way Hunter and Hayes insulted them that there was something wrong with them.
They definitely weren’t beautiful.
I glanced from the chain to him, wondering if I should just kill myself before he could get his hands on me. Break my own neck. I could do that, right? I’d just have to—
“Hey, you don’t have to be afraid, I’m not gonna hurt you.” He let go of the shirt and raised his hands up, palms out. “My name is Cain and this is my home. I just brought you here to help you, to stop the—the bleeding.”
He was standing about five feet away, not moving, but that could change in an instant. My gaze flitted down to the chain again.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry about that, I just didn’t want you to wander around and hurt yourself before I had a chance to get that off you.” He moved to the pillar, removed the padlock, and started unwinding the chain. “It was just a safety precaution, considering how banged up you are.”
What…? Was this a trick?
This was a trick. No, he was going to drag me somewhere else, but where—
“There you go.” He let the chain fall to the ground, his lips stretching wide across his face, showing his teeth. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and…was he smiling at me? Why?
Hunter and Hayes would often smile while doing something particularly cruel because it gave them endless joy to torment others.
I backed up and bared my teeth, growling at him like the animal I was.
I snatched the chain up, quickly pulling it in before he could get his hands on it again.
My ankle was throbbing, my chest on fire with the most excruciating pain.
It was like needles being drilled into my skin, and every movement, no matter how small, sent flames of agony licking through my chest and across my shoulder.
A wave of dizziness swept over me. I wobbled where I stood, but kept my eyes on the stranger, who was still standing beside the pillar. He’d raised his hands again, like that would somehow make me think he was harmless.
Yeah, right. A man that size was built to inflict harm. He was a walking weapon, and he couldn’t fool me.
“I can get that off you, if you want.” He gestured at his face, and then his dark eyes dropped to my neck. “And that. I don’t know what they’re for, but they don’t look very comfortable.”
My muzzle? And collar? Why was he offering to take them off? Was this another trick?
He moved to a table by the wall, opening a long metal box sitting atop it.
He pulled out some kind of tool—
Panic and dread rushed through me as he stepped toward me with the gigantic metal tool. I backed away, a small, frightened sound escaping from me before I could stop it.
The man paused, those dark eyes flitting over me, his lips pulling down in a frown. He glanced at the tool in his hand. “You don’t have to be afraid, I’m not gonna hurt you. I just want to help you.”
Before I could say or do anything, a flash of black flew into the room, hurtling toward me.
“Luna, no! Get—”
I jolted back, raising my arms when I couldn’t move out of the way in time. Something crashed into me, knocking me down, and I cried out as pain rocketed through my entire being. It paralyzed me, froze my lungs, filled my ears with static.
I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t—
“Luna! Down!”
That awful, crushing weight suddenly disappeared, but I still couldn’t breathe. Bursts of color were exploding behind my eyes, and when I finally gasped in a breath, the colors faded into reality.
“Damn it, you asshole—get out of here!”
A door slammed, and I tried to move, tried to roll onto my side so I could get to my hands and knees but the pain was too overwhelming and I just wanted to let it consume me. Wanted to give up and let it drag me down.
At least I’d had a taste of freedom. I would die free.
But…
I wasn’t free, was I?
I’d gotten away from one jailer only to be captured by another.
I hoped Hunter was dead, that those men in black had killed him.
And what about the other hounds? The ones that survived? Had they escaped, too? Or had the men in black taken them?
Guilt curdled in my gut when I remembered all the other hounds like me that had been locked up.
“Hey. Are you okay?” The voice was soft and deep, filled with a warmth that soothed my frazzled nerves.
I cracked my eyes open, and he was right there. I lashed out at the face hovering above mine, a guttural, angry noise erupting from my throat. He pulled back with a startled “Whoa!” when I kicked at him with my uninjured leg.
He stood up and backed away, raising his hands again.
“Sorry, I won’t touch you, you just—” He scratched the back of his head, then dropped his arms to his sides with a heavy sigh.
“I really didn’t expect you to be up and moving so soon.
Do you wanna take a bath? Well, not a real one, just a sponge bath for now.
You’re pretty dirty and I don’t want your wound to get infected. ”
His dark eyes trailed down my body, his brows drawing together as he studied me.
I didn’t want his eyes on me. His eyes or his hands. I wanted to rip them all from his body.
But…I couldn’t. I was severely injured. I had very few options here, and none of them were good ones.
I was drowning in confusion. I didn’t know what was happening and the pain was only getting worse.
Maybe this wasn’t real. Maybe I was already dead.
“Huh?” I croaked. I was so thirsty. My mouth and throat were dry as dust and my tongue just felt like a dead weight in my mouth.
“A sponge bath. I have some clean washcloths and I can heat up some water for you. I usually just bathe in the river, but that’s probably not such a great idea right now.
I’ve got distilled water, though. I won’t need to heat up a whole lot since you’re pretty small.
” Those eyes moved over me again, slower this time, studying me thoroughly.
He tilted his head and let his gaze travel down my body.
“When was the last time you took a bath or washed yourself?”
I didn’t know what a bath was or why he was talking about washing myself. Who cared? Nobody washed themselves. None of the hounds ever cleaned themselves.