The Resurgent Mate (Shifters of the Three Rivers #7)

1. Annabella

Chapter one

Annabella

Two days in Adarcan Prison felt like two decades.

The Kennel. That’s what they called it in whispers—the Wolf Council’s most secure facility, buried deep in the northern Maine wilderness where no one came back from. I’d heard the stories my whole life. Tales used to frighten young Shifters into obedience: Behave, or they’ll send you to the Kennel.

Fur and flames, I wished I’d been more scared.

I’d walked through those gates two days ago with fire in my veins and a plan taking shape.

Break Adarcan from the inside out. Find out who ran this place, who gave the orders, who decided that half-breeds and inconvenient witnesses should disappear into this frozen hellhole.

I was going to tear the whole rotten system down.

Instead, I paced. Eight feet one direction. Ten feet the other. Turn. Repeat. The silver bars of my cell had no door—just a gap wide enough for guards to watch me use the toilet.

Fang-tastic.

They’d put me in a special cell. One designed for someone like me—a half-breed who had neither Pack nor coven.

The silver was everywhere, burning against my skin with every breath, every movement.

Woven into the bars, the restraints, paint on the walls, even particles of it in the air.

My wolf had stopped howling on day one. Now she just whimpered somewhere deep inside me, muffled and distant like I was hearing her through water.

I’d been watching the guards. Old habit—know your enemy, map their weaknesses. The human wardens were easy to spot; slower reflexes, heavier footsteps, the faint sourness of fear-sweat whenever they got too close to the werewolf prisoners. They carried silver-loaded weapons and kept their distance.

But the werewolf guards—the Ironhides, they called themselves—moved through all that silver like it was nothing.

Walked corridors lined with it, touched bars woven with it, breathed air thick with silver particles from the mist dispensers.

The official story was exceptional control.

Elite wolves with iron discipline who’d trained themselves to ignore the burn.

I’d heard rumors in Kanas City, though, of witches on the Wolf Council’s payroll, who were paid an exorbitant sum to make protection tonics.

Witch-brewed resistance against the very silver this place was soaked in.

The Wolf Council had publicly banned witches from the north fifteen years ago.

Declared us dangerous, untrustworthy, a threat to Shifter society.

Hunted us down, drove us underground, made it illegal to practice magic anywhere in their territory.

But privately? Privately, they couldn’t run their most secure prison without us.

Yet the silver was only half of it.

The walls of my cell were lined with nullstone.

Pale gray rock that seemed to leach color from everything it touched—lifeless, chalky, wrong.

I’d felt it the moment they’d shoved me inside—a suffocating emptiness that pressed against my witch side like a pillow over the face.

When I reached for my magic, it just…slipped away. Smothered before it could even spark.

The food tasted wrong too. Bitter herbs underneath the bland oatmeal.

I’d recognized some of them—mugwort, valerian, something that might have been crushed moonflower seed.

All of them known to cloud a witch’s concentration, to make spellwork fuzzy and unreliable.

They weren’t taking any chances with me.

Half-breed gets double the torture. How thoughtful.

I pressed my palm flat against the nullstone wall.

Cold. Dead. The Alpha wing sat deep in the mountain’s gut, carved from granite that had never known sunlight.

The cold here was not the sharp cold of a winter night, the kind you could brace against. This was slower.

Patient. It seeped through the concrete floor, through the thin jumpsuit, through skin and muscle until it settled into my bones.

There was no blanket. No heating vent. Just the mountain, breathing its dead air sprinkled with silver into my lungs, with its gray nullstone that didn’t pulse or hunger—it simply erased, like pressing your hand into nothing and feeling nothing press back.

Between the silver stealing my wolf and the nullstone smothering my witch, I was hollowed out.

Empty. Just a woman in a cage, stripped of everything that made her dangerous.

Which was ironic as hell. I’d spent most of my life suppressing both sides of myself—shoving my wolf down, hiding my magic, pretending I could be something acceptable to someone, anyone. And now? Now that I’d finally accepted what I was, finally integrated both halves into something whole?

Someone else had locked them both away.

I dropped onto the thin mattress bolted to its metal frame and stared at the ceiling.

The metal frame conducted the cold straight up through the mattress.

I curled onto my side, tucking my hands between my thighs for warmth.

So far my two days here had been twenty-three hours of lockdown and one hour of “recreation” that meant pacing alone in a yard covered with silver gravel that bit into bare feet.

You’re not breaking anything. You’re just sitting in a cage like a good little half-breed abomination.

The thought made me want to scream and let my silver-green fire loose to burn the whole fucking place down.

Except I couldn’t. The nullstone drank every spark before I could fan it into flame.

The silver kept my wolf locked away. I was trapped in my own skin with nothing but my thoughts for company.

And my thoughts kept circling back to him.

Sam Shaw. Council member. Spy. The man who’d infiltrated my crew, made me feel things I’d sworn never to feel, then revealed himself as everything I’d been fighting against.

The man I’d saved anyway. I’d stopped my crew mid-spell, then reversed the memory wipe.

And the worst part? I’d do it again.

That certainty sat in my chest like a stone. I was furious at him. Furious at myself. But when I’d walked through his past, seen the man beneath the mission…

The feeling of his lips on mine flashed through my mind. His tongue circling my clit. My back arching as I came apart with his fingers deep inside me.

Stop it.

He’d been doing his job. Using all available means to complete his mission, just like any good spy would. The fact that I’d been stupid enough to feel something—that was on me.

But his eyes when he’d pulled away. The way his hands had felt on my bare skin.

The raw want I’d scented on him that he couldn’t fake, couldn’t manufacture for the mission.

I didn’t know which version was real—Felix or Sam, the playful crewmate who made my heart race whenever he was near, or the Council’s weapon.

His memories showed me he was both, but I couldn’t trust either.

Besides, it wasn’t like I was ever going to see him again.

Not after his best friend, Gideon Calloway, threw me in here.

I was running low on people I could trust these days.

Not Duke, who I’d always thought would have my back, not Lydia, who had been secretly reporting my every move to Simon, and maybe not even Simon.

I’d been so certain that his mission, his vision was right.

But now, doubts were creeping in and I hated it, hated not being sure anymore.

I had to stop thinking like this. Had to stop the downward spiral of my thoughts.

I rolled onto my side, facing the nullstone wall. The pale gray surface reflected nothing. Just emptiness staring back at emptiness.

Two days down.

I was going to find a way out of here. Going to tear this system down from the inside. Going to make every single person who’d built cages for Shifters and witches regret the day they’d been born.

Of course, I needed to survive long enough to do it.

I shifted on the thin mattress and immediately regretted it.

Pain radiated from my ribs, courtesy of the guards yesterday, when I’d asked where Mina and Zeke were.

They really didn’t like us asking questions here, and they hated witches.

Especially half-witches who’d mind-wiped five of their Council members.

My left side was a tapestry of bruises—purple and yellow and sick green. They’d been quick, efficient, brutal when they’d attacked me, making it clear I could expect this treatment daily.

I closed my eyes and tried to find sleep.

The prison never went quiet. Not really.

There was always something—distant whimpers, the hum of fluorescent lights, the unhurried footsteps of guards making their rounds.

I’d started cataloging the sounds, sorting them into patterns.

Shift changes every four hours. So far meal deliveries had been at six, noon, and five—though I’d been told I’d be allowed into the cafeteria today.

Random “inspections” that were really just excuses to remind us who held the power.

The rattle of a baton against silver bars echoed down the corridor.

My eyes flicked opened.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

Getting closer. The rhythm was deliberate—someone who enjoyed the way prisoners flinched at the sound.

I tracked the progress by the reactions rippling through Alpha level.

A curse from three cells down. The scrape of someone scrambling off their bed two cells over.

A small, muffled cry from somewhere to my left.

Clang. Clang.

Closer now. I could hear boots on concrete. Daniels. I recognized the cadence before I saw him—he always dragged his left foot slightly, some old injury he tried to hide.

Clang.

The cell next to mine.

I didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. Just kept staring at the ceiling, letting my breathing stay slow and even. Predators responded to fear. I’d learned that lesson long before I ended up in here.