Chapter 6
Six
Anna
I was alone.
Isolation was emptiness, but it closed in around me like a tight box, crushing me into an ever-tighter corner of the cage.
My mate hated me and wanted nothing to do with me. There was no denying that. His rejection was clear-cut.
I shouldn’t miss something I’d never thought possible and never truly achieved, but each moment without him was a blade shoved into my skin. Turning me into one vast aching abyss. I teetered on the edge of it. Letting go would be incredibly easy. I had nothing. Even my friends couldn’t help me now.
Milly had been there with me for as long as I could remember.
She’d taken me under her wing the day I woke up in a ditch with no memories and helped me to my feet—physically and emotionally.
There wasn’t a better, more stalwart friend in all of Hollow Earth.
Now she was gone. Torn from my side like she had been from the cage.
I missed her confident, uncaring attitude.
That unwavering belief that things would work out, that we would escape one problem or another, had kept us going many a time when there was no hope.
I didn’t need any hope if I had Milly. She would make it for us, bulldozing through every obstacle to create it.
I could use some of that right then because I was feeling utterly hopeless.
If I couldn’t have that, though, I would take Ella’s logic and rationale.
She rarely was perturbed, keeping her cool in almost any situation.
Always thinking ahead, planning. We’d crossed paths with her a year or so after I had woken up while still searching for anyone who knew me or anything about my past.
Hunters had been after her, and her efforts to avoid them had dumped her in our lap.
It hadn’t taken long for the three of us to realize we worked well together.
It had been even less time than that for us to become friends.
Since then, we’d spent years running from the hunters out in the wilds, living free as best we could.
Until now.
I tried not to let my thoughts go down that route. Things hadn’t changed. They were still my best friends. We were all still clippys, weakest of the dragon shifters, hunted and sold to the elites. I still didn’t have a mate.
My dragon bared its teeth. It didn’t like being confronted with the truth. We were mateless and would always be so. Whoever Emerald-Eyes was, he was never coming back. Why would he? Who would want a clippy for a mate? That was just asking for ridicule.
Nobody wanted me. And now I didn’t even have my friends.
They were gone, taken somewhere else in the market.
If they were even still here. After all the commotion of earlier, many of the hunters had begun packing up their “wares” and moving out.
They didn’t want to risk being there when the authorities came. But none of them had come for me.
Nobody was coming for me.
So do it your orb-damned self.
I sat up as Milly’s voice filled my head, her biting words clear enough to be coming from right there next to me.
She was right. Nobody was going to do this for me. Nobody was going to help me, and they certainly weren’t going to do it if I wasn’t willing to help myself. It was time to stop the brooding and start taking action.
My dragon was awake. Things had changed.
Maybe I had changed with it. I started fiddling with the strips of wood tied around the cage bars to secure them together, filing away with my nails as before.
The hardwood resisted the same as before, slowly wearing away my nails until I had to pause.
Prying at the bars themselves was useless.
The faerie-enhanced wood would hold all but one of the elite.
But I tried it anyway, just in case. The wood laughed off my attempts, not even budging a tiny bit.
“Come on, think,” I urged myself out loud, growing impatient. There had to be something I could do besides simply sitting around and waiting to be sold to some abusive elite for amusement and servitude. But what?
My eyes settled on the latch to the door itself.
It too was made of brellwood. Metal and faerie magic did not mix, so it wasn’t used.
But unlike the bars, the latch on the door would be used a great many times.
I moved slowly to the other side of the cage, taking my time so it didn’t start swinging and alert anyone nearby that I was moving around.
The less attention, the better. I examined the latch and immediately discarded it.
The thing looked brand new. Of course they would replace it often.
But what about the hinges of the door?
Curious, I began to examine them. Simply more brellwood strips wound around the bars.
They weren’t complex. I eyed one and grinned.
They were worn, probably an afterthought.
It still took hours of work, bending and pushing, scraping tiny fibers away with my nails as they regrew, and waiting out the regrowth period once more.
Thank goodness for shifter healing. But finally they began to give way.
First one and then the other. The door was still held in place by the latch, however, and didn’t fall away as I expected.
Frowning, I grabbed the door, braced myself against one of the bars, and pushed.
The wood bent outward, and elation filled me until I realized it wasn’t bending far enough.
I had to push harder. Gripping both pieces of wood again, I pressed my strength against the door, forcing it outward inch by inch.
It still wasn’t enough. I needed to be stronger, or I was never going to escape.
If we’re ever going to get out of here to find our mate, I’m going to need your help, I barked at my dragon, trying to get it to help.
The surge of icy anger that responded to my taunt was far more than I was ready for. My biceps swelled and flexed, and the door began to give way.
Snap!
Something in the latch gave way, and the door flew open, my momentum taking me with it.
I tumbled free of the cage, which swung wildly from the ceiling now, creaking loudly.
Not that it mattered. Anyone awake nearby would have heard the noise.
I scrambled to my feet and ran from the room, trying to put distance between myself and any hunters who came looking.
Much to my surprise, I heard no immediate shouts, no feet pounding after me in pursuit. Nothing. Only silence. Was I really going to get that lucky?
Shoving that thought aside, I slowed my pace, walking through the dark corridors with a purpose. I belonged here. I had a reason to be moving about. Of course, one look at the drab slave uniform the hunters had tossed me in would be more than enough to reveal the truth.
But I had to try. My friends were counting on me. They needed me to come save them. Together we would leave the market and flee back to the wilds, to freedom.
Or perhaps we would stay in the city? There was no outward way to tell a clippy from other dragons. As long as we avoided upsetting anyone, we could move about the streets undetected.
I shot that idea down almost as fast as it came up.
It was a fantasy, nothing more. Our weakness would be discovered quickly.
Without a dragon to shift into, we would never be able to take to the air.
We would struggle with the simplest of tasks that other dragons took for granted.
No, living among our people in disguise would never be an option. Not for us.
Peering into one room after another, a new worry grew.
I couldn’t find my friends. That wasn’t a good sign.
I was already pushing the limits of how long I could move around the market undetected.
Eventually, someone would find me and toss me back into a new cage.
If they were here, I had to find them, and soon.
I tried not to dwell on the idea that they might not be there anymore.
That they may have been sold to an elite already.
I would never find them then. Doing so would require getting a hunter to give up their client.
They would sooner die than reveal who paid them.
Secrecy of their clientele was how the hunters stayed in business.
Everyone knew what they did was illegal.
But if nobody talked about it openly, the elites could pretend like they were innocent.
Even if every one of them was actually a cruel bastard who delighted in tormenting us.
“Milly! Ella!”
I was growing desperate. They had to be here. I had to find them. I couldn’t do this without them. I needed them to keep me …
“Oof.”
I recoiled as I rounded a corner and slammed headfirst into a shifter I hadn’t heard coming.
“Sorry about that,” I muttered, rubbing at my sore nose and looking down to avoid confrontation while trying to go around them.
A snarl preceded hands grabbing my shoulders and pinning me to the wall. “What do we have here? A clippy slave out of her cage?” the hunter growled. He gripped my chin and forced me to look up at him so he could see my face.
His thick, sausage-like lips peeled back into a wicked smile that died an inch from his mouth. The widening of his giant black pupils shrank the deep hazel irises to nearly nothing. I cursed silently. The man was up to the orb on electro-crystals.
“I know you,” he said slowly, blinking rapidly as he focused on me. “Yeah. You’re the one from earlier. The one who put on a show for the rest of us.”
I swallowed back vomit at the wicked laughter that filled his throat and the heat that entered those drug-addled eyes. The eyes of a killer, one who didn’t see me as a person, simply as meat. As prey.
“Tell ya what,” he purred, looking me over with sickening slowness like I was on a display rack. “You give me a private little show like you did earlier, and I’ll put you back where you belong, nice and gentle like. No bruises, no punishment for damaging our property. Got it?”