7. Annabella
Chapter seven
Annabella
Five days. I’d survived five days in this silver-lined tomb, and the one thing I knew for certain was this: they wanted me to break.
I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.
I sat on the edge of my bunk, every muscle screaming in protest, and pushed against the suppression again.
Testing. Searching. The nullstone walls pressed against my magic, smothering any whisper of magic before it could catch.
The silver burned my wolf into silence. But even the best-designed cages had flaws. I just had to keep looking.
My wolf was so distant now that I could barely hear her. A ghost of a ghost. I wondered if the other wolves in here felt this hollow. This scraped-out emptiness where their other half should be.
Still here, I told her. I’m still fighting.
No answer. But I hadn’t expected one.
The clang of metal on metal echoed down the corridor. Morning inspection. Right on time.
I stood, shoving the pain somewhere deep where it couldn’t touch me. Hands behind my back. Chin up. The guards always looked for signs of weakness, for cracks they could exploit.
Martinez appeared outside my cell; her fingers tapping that irregular rhythm against her baton. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
I’d memorized her patterns. The way she always went for the kidney first, then the ribs. Knowledge was armor, even when everything else had been stripped away.
She unlocked my cell and stepped inside. “McGrath.”
“Martinez.” I kept my voice pleasant, conversational. “Another beautiful morning in paradise. The décor really grows on you. Very Soviet gulag chic. Have you considered adding a plant?”
She walked a slow circle around me. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
The baton caught me in the kidney and pain, bright and vicious, exploding through my side.
I gasped, stumbling forward.
“Up.” Her voice was flat. Bored.
“I am up. Hence the standing. It’s this thing people do when they’re not horizontal.”
She hit me again, this time in the ribs. Not hard enough to break anything new—just hard enough to remind me that she could.
Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Breakfast. Ten minutes.”
She walked out, slamming the bars behind her. No acknowledgment that anything had happened. Just routine. Just another morning in Adarcan.
I waited until her footsteps faded before letting myself sink onto the bunk, one hand pressed against my side. The pain layered on top of pain on top of pain, until I couldn’t remember what it felt like to move without hurting.
But pain was just information. It told me what was damaged, what needed protection, what could still be pushed.
I had days before Kane returned and made me into his pet guinea pig. I had no idea how long before Lucas gave up waiting for payment and did whatever he wanted with my mom and Ellie. I had to find a way out of this place and soon.
That was fine. I’d always worked better with a deadline.
The cafeteria line moved slowly. I kept my eyes up, scanning the room.
The guards were different this morning. New faces mixed in with the regular guards.
The new ones were human, all of them. Military bearing, smelling of underlying nerves, aggression, and that sour tang that I associated with a deep hatred of something.
I grabbed my tray—gray protein mash, rock-hard bread, coffee that smelled like it had been filtered through a dirty sock—and scanned for somewhere to sit.
Near the coffee station, Martinez was refilling her mug while Daniels checked his watch. Their voices carried just enough for me to catch fragments.
“How long are they staying?” Daniels kept his tone low.
“Kane’s new guards? Don’t know. Command says they’re here to ‘assist with security concerns.’ Load of shit, if you ask me.”
“Can’t trust them. They don’t understand—”
Daniels’ eyes flicked to me. His frown deepened.
I moved away before he could decide whether to make something of it, but I’d heard enough.
Kane had somehow gotten his people inside Adarcan.
It explained why these new guards had that hatred radiating off them.
They were anti-Shifter zealots working inside a supernatural prison alongside Shifter guards.
Fur and flames. That was a powder keg sitting on a lit fuse.
I spotted the older woman from a couple of days ago and headed that direction. I was halfway there when one of the new guards stepped directly into my path.
Brennan. His name tag caught the fluorescent light. Late twenties, buzz cut, bulbous nose.
“Well, well. If it isn’t the half-breed terrorist.” His smile was all teeth, no warmth. “Heard a lot about you.”
“That’s nice. I haven’t heard anything about you.” I kept my tone conversational.
“No?” He shifted to block me when I tried to step around him. “I’d think someone in your position would want to know who holds your leash.”
He moved to block me again. “I asked you a question, dog.”
“You didn’t ask me anything,” I said. “You made a statement. If you’d like to ask a question, I’m happy to help. Grammar lessons are free on Tuesdays.”
His hand shot out and knocked the tray from my hands. It clattered to the floor, metal ringing against concrete. Gray mash splattered across my feet.
“Clean it up, dog.”
The cafeteria went quiet. Every prisoner within earshot turned to watch.
I looked at the mess on the floor. Then at him. Every instinct I’d spent years honing told me to pick my battles. To swallow the words. To survive.
But I was so fucking tired of swallowing.
“Clean it up yourself, asshole.”
Something shifted in his expression. Surprise, maybe. Or anticipation.
Brennan’s smile widened. “What did you just say to me?”
“I said clean it up your fucking self. You knocked it over. You clean it. Or did Kane not teach his little attack dogs to wipe up their own messes?”
The punch came fast—a sharp two-jab that caught me across the jaw and sent me sprawling. I hit the ground hard, my damaged ribs shrieking in protest.
But even through the pain and the stars bursting across my vision, I felt something fierce and satisfied curl in my chest. Because I’d said it. I’d looked him in the eye and told him to fuck off. And nothing—not the pain, not the consequences—could take that back.
Brennan crouched beside me. “I’m going to enjoy making you regret that, half-breed.”
I spat blood at his boots. “Get in line.”
He kicked me in the ribs—right where Martinez had hit me this morning—and the world went white with pain. I heard the sound I made but couldn’t stop it, couldn’t control it, couldn’t do anything but curl around the damage.
He drew his leg back for another kick.
“Brennan!” Reid’s voice cut across the cafeteria. “They want you in the med ward. Prisoner escort. Now.”
Brennan straightened slowly, his eyes still fixed on me. “I’m not finished here.”
“Yeah, you are.” Reid’s tone left no room for argument. “Med ward. That’s an order.”
For a long moment, nobody moved. Old guard versus new. Council authority versus Kane’s infiltrators. I could feel the tension humming through the room, every prisoner watching to see who would break first.
Finally, Brennan smiled at me. “I’ll see you around, half-breed.” He straightened his uniform with deliberate slowness, making sure everyone knew he was leaving on his own terms. Then he stalked toward the exit.
Reid hauled me up by my collar. “Think you’re clever?
Think mouthing off makes you tough? No food for you today.
Now be a good prisoner; sit down, shut the fuck up, and try not to get yourself killed before lunch.
” He pushed me into the stool opposite the older woman I’d sat with the other day.
She looked thinner than before, pushing food around her tray.
Hunger gnawed at my stomach immediately. I hated how fast I’d started craving the prison slop. Hated how my body bent toward that tray like it was salvation.
You know this hunger, something whispered in the back of my mind. You’ve always known it.
Growing up in Ashridge, it had been the same.
Mom couldn’t get work; no one wanted to hire the woman who’d betrayed her kind and birthed an abomination.
I’d hunt in the woods when I was old enough, trying to catch rabbits or squirrels, anything to fill the aching hollow in our bellies.
But if I crossed into the Alpha’s hunting grounds, Lucas made sure I paid for it.
A broken arm. A dislocated shoulder. Public humiliation to remind everyone what happened to half-breed trash who forgot their place.
I’d sworn, back then, that when I was older, I would never feel that kind of helpless hunger again. That I’d make a life where I didn’t have to beg, or steal, or starve.
And yet here I was. Right back where I started.
The familiarity of it made my stomach twist tighter. Not just from lack of food, but from shame. Because no matter how hard I’d fought to escape that life, it always found a way to drag me back.
I blinked and realized the woman was staring at me, her eyes sharp and assessing. “The odds on you surviving the week just got worse, and they weren’t great to begin with. But I guess you’re stubborn, I’ll give you that. You find your friends yet?”
I shook my head, eyes on the food she wasn’t eating. “Not yet.”
“You want this?”
My gaze snapped up to hers, and I studied her drawn, gaunt face. I was hungry, but she needed it more than I did. “No. It’s your food. You eat it.”
Before she could answer, a shadow fell across the table.
“You’re the half-breed who hit the Council.”
I looked up. The Shifter standing over me was in his late twenties, muscular in a way that said he spent a lot of time in the yard doing push-ups. Tattoos snaked down his arms and across the backs of his hands. His eyes were hard, calculating.
The woman went still beside me.
“Annabella McGrath,” I said.
“I know who you are.” He sat down uninvited, taking up space like he owned it. “Name’s Maddog Sullivan. I run with the wolves.”
“Maddog.” I kept my tone neutral. “Creative.”
His smile was thin. “Heard about your work. Memory wiping Council members. Takes skill. Takes balls.”
“Thanks.” I kept my voice noncommittal, not sure where this was going.
He leaned forward, elbows on the table, positioning himself to block my exit. “I wanted to give you some advice. You need to pick a side in here. Shifters, witches, humans—everyone’s got their corner. Everyone’s got their protection.”
I let my senses expand, pushing against the silver suppression.
The cafeteria smelled like fear and grease and too many bodies, but beneath that, I started to sift through the sharper notes, like unpeeling layers of scent.
Wolves—muskier, wild. Bears—earthy, heavier.
Witches—clove and ozone, magic dampened but still present.
Humans—sharper, acidic, edged with aggression or fear.
The room wasn’t just divided by species. It was tribal. Territorial. Each cluster claimed its stretch of tables like Pack land.
And they were all watching us, waiting to see how I responded. If I flinched. If I groveled. If I aligned.
“You sitting with Cara here?” Maddog’s lip curled as he glanced at her. “Bad choice. Cara doesn’t have friends. Doesn’t have protection. She’s just waiting to die.”
Cara didn’t react. But I saw her fingers tighten on her tray, just for a second.
Something sharp and feral stirred in my chest.
“I run with the wolves,” Maddog continued, turning his attention back to me.
“Could use someone with your skills. Your… unique heritage.” He smiled, showing teeth.
“You join us, you get protection. Respect. Better food when shit like today happens. You get to survive this place instead of just existing in it.”
He paused, let the silence stretch.
“You stay solo? Things happen to loners in here. Bad things.”
I studied him. He was offering survival. Security. Everything I needed.
But I’d spent my whole life being told to pick a side. Witch or wolf. Powerful or powerless. With them or against them.
I was done letting other people define me.
Besides, the way he’d looked at Cara reminded me of Lucas. The casual contempt for anyone he considered weak. The expectation that strength meant you could bully whoever you wanted.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said. “But I’m fine where I am.”
Maddog’s expression darkened. The friendly mask dropped, showing something uglier underneath, as he stood up. “Bad choice, half-breed. Real bad choice.”
We both watched him stalk away. Cara waited until he was out of earshot before speaking.
“That wasn’t smart. You just made an enemy.”
“I don’t take orders from dickheads.”
“In here, you take orders from whoever can keep you alive. Or you die. Your choice.” She winced, and I wondered if what Maddog said was true, that she was just waiting to die.
“Maddog ran ripple on the outside. Got caught, got sentenced, but in here he’s got power.
All the wolves look to him. That makes him dangerous. ”
“So he’s a parasite who destroyed people’s lives for profit. And now he runs a gang. Noted.”
“And you’re a terrorist who wiped Council members’ memories. We’re all monsters in here, McGrath. The question is whether you want to be a live monster or a dead one.”
She stood up and walked away, leaving her tray behind.
I sat alone in the buzzing cafeteria, surrounded by enemies and strangers and the ever-present burn of silver against my senses.
Two enemies in one morning. Brennan and Maddog. Probably not my brightest move.
But I couldn’t bring myself to regret it. If I was going to break out, it wouldn’t matter, and if not, if I had to survive this place, I was going to do it on my terms.
I thought of Ellie. Of the promise I’d made her.
By starlight and shadow, and by silver streaks and moonspell.
I pulled Cara’s abandoned tray toward me and started eating.