4. Annabella
Chapter four
Annabella
Victor Kane stood on the other side of my cell bars like he belonged there.
He didn’t. A human in Adarcan Prison was wrong in a way that went beyond politics. Like finding a mouse strolling through a snake pit, completely unafraid of the coils around it. Either stupid or dangerous. Looking at the confidence and intelligence behind his pale eyes, I was betting on dangerous.
I knew who he was. Had seen his face on the news, watched him talk about “the Shifter problem” with the kind of calm that made my skin crawl. The Wolf Council’s token human. Their peace offering to governments demanding blood.
Kane studied me through the bars. I let him look. Bruises, silver burns, the way I held my ribs—he could catalog all of it. I had nothing to hide and nothing to lose by letting him see exactly what his Council’s hospitality looked like.
“You’re smaller than your file suggested,” he said finally. No greeting. No introduction. Just that—clipped, efficient, like he was filing a report. “I expected someone more…imposing.”
I almost laughed. Almost. My ribs warned me against it. “Sorry to disappoint. If you’d like to file a complaint, I’m sure there’s a form somewhere.”
His expression didn’t shift. Most people, you could read something in their face when you pushed back—annoyance, amusement, the little tells that said you’d gotten under their skin. Kane gave me nothing.
“Humor,” he said. “Your file noted a tendency toward deflection under stress. I had assumed three days in Adarcan would dull that particular edge.”
Your file.
The words landed harder than they should have. Someone had been watching. Documenting. Building a profile while the guards worked me over. How does she respond to isolation? To pain? To sleep deprivation? The beatings weren’t random cruelty—they were also data collection.
“Thorough,” I said. “Do you have my shoe size in there, too, or just my coping mechanisms?”
“Both, as it happens.” He clasped his hands behind his back—parade rest, I realized.
The posture drilled into soldiers until it became as natural as breathing.
“The sarcasm is a defense mechanism. You deploy it when threatened. The more threatened you feel, the sharper it becomes.” Those pale eyes tracked across my face like he was reading a targeting display.
“Are you feeling threatened right now, Miss McGrath?”
Fuck, yes, I felt threatened. Had done since Gideon Calloway had crashed into our warehouse.
But I’d spent years learning to lie with my body, my voice, my face.
Learning to survive people who wanted to break me.
This man in his tailored suit wasn’t the first predator who’d tried to take me apart, and he wouldn’t be the last.
“Absolutely terrified,” I said, letting my voice go flat. “Can’t you tell? I’m shaking.”
Something shifted behind his eyes. Not amusement. Kane didn’t strike me as a man who found much amusing. More like…recognition. A chess player acknowledging a decent countermove.
“So, you are aware of the pattern,” he said. “Yet you refuse to deviate from it. That requires either remarkable stupidity or remarkable pride.” He paused. “In my experience, they are often the same thing.”
He stepped closer to the bars. Not touching them—too smart for that—but close enough that I could see the scar running along his jawline. Old. Ragged. The kind of mark Shifters left behind, which would go some way to explain why he hated them so much.
“My name is Victor Kane. I represent human interests on the Wolf Council. I have to say, I’ve been curious about you for some time, Miss McGrath.”
“Kane. The human who thinks Shifters are a disease. Brave of you, getting this close without a muzzle on me.”
He ignored my jab. “I am here because you present an interesting question.”
I twirled my finger in a get-on-with-it gesture. “I’m not really a riddle kind of girl. More of a ‘punch first, ask questions never’ type.”
“Your hybrid nature.” He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Half-witch, half-wolf. Two bloodlines that should not coexist, yet here you are. Functional. Powerful, according to some reports. A theoretical impossibility walking around in a five-foot-four frame.”
Five-foot-five, actually. But I wasn’t about to correct him.
“Webster believes you are a weapon,” Kane continued. “Something to be aimed and fired at his convenience. I suspect he has underestimated what he created. Or overestimated his ability to control it.
“Regardless, your physiology raises questions I intend to answer. The staff here are efficient at what they do—breaking down resistance. But their methods are crude. Unfocused.” His head tilted slightly. “They soften the subject without understanding what they are softening it for.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
Subject. Not prisoner. Not inmate.
Subject.
“And if I’m not interested in being your science project?”
Kane raised his eyebrows. “Your interest is not a factor I need to consider. I have business elsewhere for the next couple of days. Council matters. But I will return before the week is out.”
He was giving me a countdown, but kept it vague enough that every footstep in the corridor could be him coming back. Every guard shift change could be the one that ended with me being dragged somewhere worse than this cell.
“And then what?” I asked.
“Controlled testing under different conditions. Observation. Documentation. Your hybrid physiology is unprecedented. If I can isolate what allows your two natures to coexist—the specific magical or biological mechanisms—that knowledge has applications. Practical ones. Perhaps even ways for us to level the playing field in the coming war.”
His voice was steady, sure. His scent didn’t change; he was confident that there would be a war between humans and Shifters.
“And when you’ve got what you need? When you’ve mapped out all the interesting bits?” I kept my voice light, but my stomach had turned to ice. “What happens to the specimen then?”
“That depends entirely on what we discover.” His tone didn’t change. Didn’t harden or soften. Just stayed that same flat, factual calm. “Some subjects yield ongoing value. Others…” He shrugged. A small movement, almost apologetic. “Science requires sacrifice. Surely you understand that.”
Sacrifice. Such a clean word for what he meant.
“The Shifter who gave you that scar,” I said, nodding toward his jaw. “Is that when you decided we were all monsters? One bad experience and suddenly every Shifter needs to be put down or strapped to a table?”
His hand didn’t move toward the scar. Didn’t twitch. But something shifted in those pale eyes—not pain, not the expected flash of old trauma. Something colder.
“I was young. Arrogant. I thought humans could hunt Shifters the way we hunted anything else. Track them, corner them, put a bullet in them.” His jaw tightened. “I was wrong. This,” he touched the scar briefly, almost absently, “was my tuition.”
“So you learned Shifters weren’t easy prey. And that made you hate us more?”
“Hate?” He seemed genuinely puzzled by the word.
“I do not hate Shifters, Miss McGrath. I can simply see what happens if we do nothing. Fifty years ago, humans dominated this continent. Our governments, our economies, our cities. Now?” He spread his hands slightly.
“Witches hold seats of power. Shifters carve out territories where human law does not apply. Your kind breed faster, live longer, heal from wounds that would kill us. And every year, the balance tips further.”
He leaned closer to the bars, and his voice dropped—not threatening, but earnest. Almost confiding.
“I have a daughter. Twelve years old. When she was younger, she walked to school, sand he passed through a neighborhood that used to be human. Now it is Pack territory. She had to learn to keep her eyes down, to not make eye contact, to move quickly and quietly so she did not attract attention.” His expression didn’t change, but something in his voice did.
“She was afraid in her own city. In the country her grandparents built. And I am supposed to accept that as progress?”
For a moment—just a moment—I almost understood him. The fear of being displaced. Of watching your world change into something you didn’t recognize. Then I remembered he dealt with it by putting us in cages and cutting us open.
“Sounds rough,” I said. “Maybe she should try being a half-breed for a day. See how that stacks up.”
The flicker of humanity vanished from his face like it had never been there. “I will return soon. The guards have been instructed to continue your… orientation.”
“Orientation. Is that what we’re calling it?”
“You have spirit. That is useful under the right circumstances. But spirit can be refined. Focused.” He straightened his cuffs. “By the time I return, I expect you will be more… receptive to cooperation.”
He meant softened, broken. Worn down enough that when he started asking questions, started running his tests, I wouldn’t have enough fight left to resist.
“And if I’m not? Receptive?”
“Then we will proceed regardless. Your cooperation is preferred, not required.” He turned to leave. “The human body can tell us a great deal even when the mind refuses to. I simply prefer cleaner data.”
He walked away without looking back. No dramatic pause, no lingering threat. Just a man who had assessed a situation, delivered his terms, and moved on to the next item on his agenda.
I listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor. Measured. Unhurried. The footsteps of someone who had already won and knew it.
When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I let myself sink against the wall. My legs were shaking. My ribs throbbed with every breath. And somewhere deep in my chest, in the place where my wolf should have been, there was nothing but cold, silver-soaked silence.
Soon. That was all he’d given me. It could be tomorrow. Could be six days from now. I’d have no warning, no way to prepare. Just endless waiting, the not-knowing, while the guards worked me over and Kane’s deadline crept closer.
I pressed my palms flat against the rough concrete, letting the texture ground me. Counted my breaths the way I’d learned to do when everything was falling apart. Four counts in. Seven counts hold. Eight counts out.
Kane thought he knew what I was. A specimen. A puzzle to be solved and then discarded when it stopped being useful. He’d mapped out my responses, calculated my breaking points, scheduled my destruction as if it was line item in his calendar.
If I was going to survive, I needed to figure out how to get out of here before he came back.
The clock was ticking.