Chapter 180

Amelia

I didn’t know how long I had been there. Time didn’t work the same way anymore. There were no windows, no clocks, no rhythm to the light. Only the sound of whispers and the slow, ever-present pulse of my heartbeat.

Sometimes they strapped me to a table, and sometimes they let me walk in circles around a featureless stone room. Sometimes I dreamed I was back in the Pack House, lying beside Richard, and when I opened my eyes, I realized the dream had been part of the cage too. It hadn’t come from me. It had been constructed, too sweet and too gentle. A memory I was meant to miss, long for, ache over. I woke confused, empty, and colder than before.

They didn’t always speak aloud. The voices came in layers, like threads winding through my mind. Some were gentle, almost maternal. Others were cruel, sneering, drilling holes into my certainty.

Most of them sounded like Serena. Not the real Serena, not the woman I had pieced together from scattered stories, but some distorted version of her. Smooth, commanding, unshakable. She told me to survive, not to fight, not to resist, just endure. It would end more quickly that way. But it never ended.

Sometimes I heard chanting. Low, rhythmic syllables that curled around my thoughts like smoke, sticking to the walls of my mind. Vasha’s voice was sometimes among them, sharp and saccharine, whispering about blood and destiny. Sometimes I saw flashes of red in the corner of my eye, or symbols that pulsed beneath my eyelids when I blinked. Sometimes I woke up crying and didn’t know why. I couldn’t even remember what I had lost.

My stomach cramped with hunger, and I couldn’t tell how much of it was real. Vasha kept me locked in a trance state, one designed to deprive and confuse. Starve the body, blur the memory, weaken the will. Sensation warped. Cold no longer felt cold. Pain registered strangely, arriving too late or not at all. I clung to my sense of self like it was a thread in a storm.

I whispered my name constantly, softly, so they wouldn’t hear. I was Amelia. I had been born in a hospital. I didn’t know which one, but I remembered white walls. I remembered warm light on my face. I remembered Jenny’s perfume. I remembered Richard’s hands cupping my jaw. I remembered how sunlight used to feel.

But the voices said Richard was gone. That he had never really cared. That I had been a well-timed prop in a public relations campaign. That the bond had been synthetic. That he had known the truth about me for years and had hidden it, calculated how best to use me. That I had never mattered.

They showed me images. Serena, running barefoot through a burning hallway, hair singed and dress in tatters, a baby in her arms. A werewolf lunging, only to be felled by her fangs. Blood pooling on marble. A man who looked too much like Richard dropping to his knees, eyes full of betrayal. They said that man had been my father. They said I would inherit her path. They said it was in my blood, and blood always wins.

I said they were wrong. I said it over and over until my voice broke. They didn’t argue. They only smiled.

Then they brought in the captive. A boy, barely older than me, trembling and feverish. He was dying. They said nothing. They didn’t need to. They tied him upright to a wooden post in the center of the room like some twisted altar piece. His breath rattled in his chest. His skin was ash-gray. I could hear his heartbeat in my throat, syncing with the ache in my gums.

They wanted me to feed. I said no. My voice cracked. My hands shook. My fangs throbbed in my mouth. My throat burned so deeply I could hardly swallow. But they didn’t drag me forward. They didn’t push. They simply waited. Their silence was predatory, and it made my skin crawl.

He cried out once, a weak and pitiful sound that sliced cleanly through the fog in my brain. I took a step toward him before horror seized my spine and yanked me backward. I collapsed to my knees and clawed at my arms until blood welled beneath my fingernails.

My body swayed with the motion of panic, shoulders convulsing with sobs I couldn't suppress. I begged them to stop. I hurled curses at them, then at myself. I folded in on myself, every muscle taut with dread. I repeated over and over that I wouldn’t do it, that I wouldn’t become the monster they wanted to mold from my skin and blood.

But the smell of his blood was unbearable. It wasn’t just enticing. It was magnetic. It called to me with a pitch my body couldn’t ignore. I could smell the fear in him, feel his pulse in the air. My tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, and every cell in me screamed to taste him.

And then I gave in.

I didn’t remember lunging. One second I was on the floor, the next my body was wrapped around his, mouth at his neck, and the sound he made was barely human. My teeth pierced, and the blood hit my tongue in a rush so hot and thick it made me moan.

It was obscene how good it felt. It wasn’t metallic. It wasn’t bitter. It was heady and decadent, like heat and light and lust rolled into one. It shot through me in waves, curling my toes and dragging a low sound from the back of my throat that didn’t sound like mine. I drank deeply, eyes fluttering closed. I wanted more. I wanted everything. I wanted to drain him dry and still not be done.

I had never wanted anything this badly in my life. It wasn’t just about hunger. It was about power. Control. It tasted like memory and sex and lightning. It tasted like clarity and revenge and victory. My whole body sang with it. My thighs clenched. My hips rolled forward involuntarily. I could feel myself unraveling from the inside out.

I finally ripped myself away, gasping, blood smeared across my mouth. I collapsed backward, panting and dazed. Horror bloomed in my gut too late to stop any of it. Something had awakened, and I didn’t know how to put it back.

Everything around me was sharper. The air buzzed against my skin, and the colors pulsed in patterns I hadn’t seen before. I could hear the thoughts of others. Not the fake whispers Vasha implanted, but real people with real minds and real fear.

There was a woman thinking of her daughter and a boy praying to a god he didn’t believe was listening. A man was trying not to scream. Their thoughts pressed in around me until I could barely breathe.

And then something else cut through it all. Distant, frantic, unmistakably real.

Where are you?

It tore the trance wide open. The voice split through the haze, sharp and familiar. It was Richard.

It disappeared almost as quickly as it had come, but I knew it was him. I knew the texture of his voice, the strain buried in it, the way it always reached me no matter how far apart we were.

He was looking for me. He hadn’t given up.

I dropped to the floor, chest heaving as I pressed my hands flat to the stone. I whispered his name, and for a moment, the bond flickered like a match struck in the dark. Then it vanished. I bit the inside of my cheek again, the copper tang of blood rushing over my tongue. I needed the pain to believe I was still real.

I crawled to the wall and stared at my reflection in the warped silver panel. My eyes glowed red, my canines were sharp and wet, and my lips were stained with someone else’s life.

I looked beautiful and terrible all at once. I looked like something I didn’t recognize, something I wasn’t sure I wanted to stop becoming.

When I leaned into the trance again, the glyphs on the walls responded to me. They shimmered as I passed, pulsing like veins. My blood recognized them. My body answered. I felt like a weapon being forged and sharpened with every second I remained here.

If I surrendered, I could be everything they promised. I could be powerful, unbreakable, and revered. I could have peace. I could make them fear me. I could let go.

But Richard was still out there, and I still loved him.

I pressed my palm to the wall and felt it vibrate beneath my touch, humming with something old and alive.