Chapter 2
Willow
Please, no. I’m sorry about the steak. I’ll be more careful. Please… just don’t do this to me.
Wait.
Where am I?
The moment I wake up, I know this is definitely not my bedroom, and something is very wrong. Without opening my eyes, I try to make sense of the unfamiliar scents and sounds.
I inhale deeply, but my senses are… off. I can still draw on the heightened senses of my wolf… but it’s slow and shallow, like breathing through a straw.
Bleach. Latex. The vinegar scent of painkillers.
The metallic stench of blood… and the acid whiff of cortisol in the air.
A loud electrical buzzing makes it hard for me to listen.
The sound is punctuated by the soft beep from some sort of monitor.
But I don’t hear anyone nearby. Am I in some sort of hospital?
Cautiously, I peel my eyes open to a blinding fluorescent light flickering above me. As my eyes fight to adjust, I notice how cold I feel, and how hard the surface beneath my body is—this isn’t a hospital bed…
This isn’t real. I must still be dreaming.
I blink several times, forcing my eyes to adjust to the light.
I’m in a small, windowless room. Everything is stainless steel, including the gurney I’m lying on.
Strewn about the countertops are glass bottles and vials, and various pieces of scientific equipment, including pages of hastily scribbled pieces of loose paper.
Nothing about this place seems at all familiar, but even with my weakened senses, there is one thing I know for sure; the scent of my father is nowhere to be found—not even the faintest trace of him is present.
Why does that make me feel both relieved and even more afraid?
But whatever this place is, I can tell that it is crawling with humans. The only scent I recognize here is my own, and it is weak at best..
I strain to focus as I scan my body—my wrists are burning! Why can’t I move? I turn my head, jerking around to peer at them. My wrists are handcuffed above my head to a gurney. I single out the scent of the toxic metal that’s binding me—silver.
It can’t be pure silver; exposure to that would have me writhing in agony until it knocked me unconscious and burned through my skin. But this silver alloy does have a high enough concentration of the toxic metal to chase my wolf away… somewhere so deep within me I can’t even feel her.
Instead of her presence, there is silence. An aching wound instead of silky fur and wild strength.
My wolf has always been there for me ever since she awoke within me at my coming of age ceremony. From the first moment I felt her stirring beneath my skin, under the soft rays of the full moon she has been my protector…
She is always watching from the corner of my consciousness, doing everything she can to keep me safe.
Even when she couldn’t do anything against a high-ranking wolf like my father, she was always there… lending me strength in her presence.
But now? I can’t feel her anywhere.
It is too quiet… I am alone inside my head. I feel like I am missing a piece of my soul.
Whoever is keeping me here and is doing this to me must know exactly what I am if they are using silver alloy in my shackles. At least they know enough to keep me from shifting.
But how?
It doesn’t make any sense. Who would bother to take me away from my pack? The Evenfall Ridge pack wasn’t the largest wolf pack in the area, or the most aggressive, but there’s still no way that a human could slip past our patrols.
I can’t imagine a human breaking into my home and taking me away—I am a shifter and my wolf is large for a female. Then there’s my father. Even I’m helpless against him; he would tear apart any human who posed a threat.
I try to think back to the last thing I can remember…
The sharp prick at my neck… the darkness clawing at me, pulling me under.
That’s it. Go to sleep, girl.
Wait… did my father do this?
But… he wouldn’t—
I want to think he would never go that far, but the little kernel of doubt that blooms within my chest won’t even let me finish the thought.
My father has always been disappointed in me… in the daughter who killed his mate with her birth. If I’d been a son, he might have been able to forgive me. A son’s dominance would bring him rank; a son would have been useful. He told me this a thousand times.
All a daughter could do for him was clean his dishes and mop his floors. Useless human shit.
How many times had he told me I was lucky he hadn’t kicked me out? How his protection kept me from the dangerous people out there who would love to get their hands on a shifter wolf?
Each time, I had put my head down and had done the best that I could. Working my fingers to the bone to please him.
Why wasn’t it enough?
Fighting every moment of my life to make up for my failure of being born a useless girl…
for the crime of killing my own mother. Trying to work hard enough to prove to him I am worthy.
Maybe if I’d just pushed myself harder… if I’d left everything more perfect…
I’ve always hoped that someday he’ll forgive me. Maybe he will even be proud of me.
But now…
I don’t even understand. Had I made one too many mistakes? Had my father given me to these humans? Had he… sold me? Did he know what they were doing to me here?
If I am really truly honest with myself… it’s not that my father couldn’t do this… I just thought that he wouldn’t.
Lying here with my arms bound and burning… I never thought that I would be so wrong.