“Maybe.”
“Why?”
“Because silence is worse than your insults.”
That earns me a look, sharp and assessing, but not laced with venom.
I grin faintly. “You don’t laugh much, do you?”
Her eyes narrow. “Not at foxes in cages who think they’re clever.”
“Fair.” I nod. “But you didn’t snarl.”
“I’m conserving energy,” she replies.
“Sure you are.”
The corner of her mouth twitches again, and I take it as a win.
Later, when the compound is quieter and the guards thin out in the outer hall, I unlock her cuffs and gesture toward the corridor. “Walk,” I say.
Her eyes flash with suspicion. “Trying this again?”
“You need air.”
She doesn’t argue this time. She stands, the chain at her waist clinking softly, and follows me out into the narrow passage that leads to the old courtyard with the mesh roof. The sky above is dark, but the moon pushes pale light through the wires, just enough to bathe the floor in silver.
She steps forward, lifts her face, and breathes deep. For a moment, all the rage in her shoulders eases.
“You ever think about leaving?” she asks suddenly.
The question catches me off guard, but I answer anyway. “Every day.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“Because every time I tried, he found me. And every time I thought about trying again, I remembered what he’d do to the people left behind.”
She glances at me, eyes sharp. “You’re still his.”
I shake my head slowly. “Not for long.”
Her wolf stirs under her skin, I can feel it in the way the air shifts between us. She doesn’t believe me, not yet, but she’s listening.
And that’s enough for tonight.
9
MARY
Something is wrong with me.
It starts slow, in the quiet hours after Silas leads me back from the courtyard. I can’t sleep. My blood feels restless, like there’s too much of it, like it’s rushing through me faster than my heart can control. My hearing sharpens to the point where every hum in the walls, every drip in the pipes, every breath in the ventilation ducts feels like it’s inside me.
The chains bite into my wrists when I shift against the wall, but it isn’t the iron that keeps me awake. It’s the wolf. She’s pacing inside me, pressing harder than she ever has, snarling at things I can’t see, demanding I let her out when I know I can’t.
The dreams are worse. They don’t come soft or slow like ordinary dreams. They strike fast, full of teeth and howling. I see forests I’ve never walked, wolves I’ve never met, their fur painted with ash and blood, their voices blending with my mother’s, my grandmother’s, names stretching back so far they don’t belong to language anymore.
They circle me and push me forward, and every time I try to stop, they bite at my heels. When I wake, my throat is rawlike I’ve been howling all night, and the chains at my ankles are pulled so tight the skin is red and broken.
