The Last Sanctuary (The Last Sanctuary #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Silence could drown a person.

At least, that’s what Raven Nakamura’s mother had said three years ago, the day she left home for good.

Raven’s mother hadn’t been correct, though. It wasn’t silence.

There were more sounds than Raven could count—the whirring of insects, the breeze rustling the elm and maple trees lining the flagstone paths, the constant calls, screeches, hoots, bellows, grunts, and growls of the numerous and varied exotic animals that lived here in the wildlife sanctuary Raven called home.

It was isolation that could drown a person. Solitary confinement. Loneliness like a great bottomless ocean, sucking you under.

Her mom had been full of crap. She’d told herself whatever would justify abandoning her husband and her home, leaving her whole life behind, including her daughter, discarded like a grubby candy wrapper, a piece of trash to sweep away, to ignore and forget.

Raven rubbed her eyes with the back of her arm and forced herself to focus on the swishing tail of the enormous cat sprawled in the enclosure a mere twenty feet below her.

The Siberian tiger tilted his great head and blinked lazily up at her, yellow eyes shining with a vicious, uncanny intelligence. A seven-year-old male, Vlad weighed over five hundred pounds and stretched nine feet from nose to tail.

A creature of incredible power and beauty, his thick orange fur, was stippled with inky-black and rippled across his muscular torso and powerful forelegs.

His majestic head was larger than a basketball and ringed with a thick white ruff. Sharp fangs glinted from impressive jaws. He flexed enormous paws that could rip off a man’s face.

Every inch of him was formidable, exquisite, and lethal. Raven utterly adored him.

The tiger was just fine with isolation. They were solitary creatures by nature, nomads of the jungle. Or, in this case, of Haven Wildlife Refuge, the family zoo Raven’s father had owned and operated for over a decade.

The private zoo was nestled along the perimeter of the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, a 35,000-acre nature preserve located twenty-five miles north of Macon and about sixty miles southeast of downtown Atlanta.

Not too far from civilization, but the nearby sanctuary of the Piedmont wilderness made it feel isolated, remote, a million miles from the loudness and chaos of the cities. That, and her father barely allowed her to leave the grounds.

Raven wasn’t afraid of being alone. She vastly preferred solitude to any kind of human contact. She’d inherited that trait from her father.

Her mother had been the one who couldn’t stand the loneliness, the isolation, the long hours with wolves, bears, and a tiger for company. Her mother had loathed this place so much she’d chosen her freedom over her daughter.

Raven gritted her teeth at the swell of uncomfortable emotions squeezing her chest: anger, shame, and loss. Too many emotions to count or name.

Usually, she was successful at keeping thoughts of her mother buried in a dark corner of her brain, shoved somewhere down deep, so deep she couldn’t feel the sting of betrayal, the grief of rejection.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Except for today. October sixteenth. Raven’s eighteenth birthday.

It was a beautiful fall day—too lovely for the dark tangle of emotions knotted inside her, for the awful things happening outside the safety of the fenced walls of the sanctuary, the disturbing reports coming from the nearby towns and cities of Georgia and beyond.

Scraps of clouds drifted across the sun, shining brilliantly in the cobalt sky. It was a pleasant sixty-five degrees. Nature hadn’t changed. The sun still shone. The breeze still kissed her cheeks and ruffled her ink-black hair.

Raven wore her usual cargo pants, scuffed work boots, and a loose Nirvana T-shirt. Her N95 mask was stuffed into the cargo pocket of her pants, just in case.

Not that there were many visitors left to worry about. Or any. Not anymore.

Her fingers tightened around the small parcel she held in her lap. Her mother had sent her something, after all. It had arrived two weeks ago, the day before the postal service had stopped delivering the mail. A hiatus, they’d called it.

She didn’t want to know what was inside the box. At the same time, she did. She considered chucking it into the tiger enclosure so Vlad could rip it to shreds as part of his daily enrichment activities.

And yet, if she threw it away unopened, that niggle of curiosity tugging at the back of her mind would remain unassuaged.

This was the last birthday she’d have here. Which meant this was the last present from her mother she’d ever receive, whether the mail came back or not. Likely, not.

Raven shifted her weight, stretched out her legs, and leaned over the edge of the tiger house roof to catch a glimpse of her hiking backpack slumped against the outer wall of the enclosure.

She’d spent the last week stealthily scrounging supplies: binoculars, fishing wire and lure, snare wire for small animal traps, a single-person tent, a sleeping bag, a LifeStraw and water filtration tablets, a tin cup, plate, and pan, flint and spare lighter, compass, toiletries, granola bars, dried venison strips, and several self-heating meal pouches.

She’d packed in secret, but she needn’t have worried. Her father noticed little unless it had to do with the exotic animals, the maintenance of the refuge, or instructing her in one of his favorite subjects: survival skills, zoology, and how to scrub bear urine from concrete.

And now, with the keepers failing to show for the third week in a row, her father had to pull sixteen-hour shifts to keep the place running.

She was right there with him, working from dawn to dusk to feed the animals and clean out the cages until her fingers blistered, until her bones ached with exhaustion.

Even after weeks of working nonstop side by side, they were like strangers. He’d shut down after her mother left—hell, he’d been a stranger for years, if she were honest.

An aching pang stabbed between her ribs. A person could be loneliest around other people. Living, working, and breathing right next to someone else—a stranger who wasn’t supposed to be a stranger. That’s what hurt the most.

It was a loneliness that hurt more than actually being alone. Maybe her mother had been talking about that.

She pushed the ache down somewhere deep. It was just as well. It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. She was leaving.

She’d had enough. Enough of people who only hurt her. Enough of this place that had once seemed magical but now only held dark memories of disappointment, pain, and regret.

Her grandfather owned a hunting cabin one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Haven Wildlife Refuge. It was remote, fully stocked, and off the grid, with a hand-pumped well and solar power.

Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, deep within the Chattahoochee National Forest, it was far from humans and the besieged cities, accessible only by an unmarked trail barely wide enough for an ATV.

The map detailing the directions and specific location of the cabin was tucked into her backpack. She didn’t remember its exact location, only that it was somewhere north of a tiny town called Scorpion Hollow.

The cabin was far from here, from her dad, and the bitter memories of her mother. Far from the distressing news reports, the alarming death tolls, the itchy masks, the constant, unrelenting fear.

It was time to strike out on her own.

It would take a few weeks to get there. She knew how to survive in the woods. Knew what berries were poisonous, which plants and nuts and mushrooms were edible, how to track game and set snares, how to construct a shelter and start a fire in the rain.

Beneath her perch on the tiger house roof, Vlad grunted and stretched his big paws, flexing his claws into the red rubber ball that served as one of his enrichment toys.

Almost against her will, her gaze was drawn back to the box in her hands. No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t leave the gift unopened. She had to know.

Raven set aside the attached letter and slid her fingernails between the cardboard flaps of the box, slicing through the tape. She dug through the balls of Styrofoam and pulled out a small knife.

The off-white handle was made of polymer, an imitation of ivory, and carved in the shape of a wolf, its tiny mouth opened in a snarl.

The blade was short, slightly curved, and sharp.

It was a whittling knife, like the one Raven used to carve the animals she displayed on her bedroom windowsill, back when she was a kid.

She hadn’t carved anything in three years. Not since the day her mother left.

Raven sighed, disappointed despite herself. What had she expected? Last year, her mother had sent a ridiculous hoverboard as a gift. As if she’d forgotten Raven was no longer ten. She’d stuffed it into her closet and forgotten about it.

Her mother didn’t know her anymore.

Raven flicked the blade closed and shoved the whittling knife into her pocket. She didn’t want it, but she couldn’t leave it on top of the tiger house. A strong wind might blow it into the enclosure, and Vlad, who ate everything, would swallow it whole.

Her gaze landed on the white square of the envelope. Only her mother wrote physical letters by hand instead of messaging on WhatsApp, Snapchat, or social media.

However, the internet had gone sketchy a couple of weeks ago. Same with cell service. Nothing was working anymore, and hadn’t for awhile.

The lack of communication was disconcerting, amplifying her sense of isolation. Even doomscrolling or watching hours of mind-numbing fake videos of dancing kittens was better than the nothingness, of being completely cut off from whatever horrors were taking place outside these walls.

Maybe her mother was smarter than Raven gave her credit for.