Chapter 9

When Alessia woke, she was in another place entirely. She’d come to regard the dank and damp smell of her cell as her home. It had built up a familiarity she tried to avoid. She didn’t want that place to become her home. But she had no choice. After a certain amount of conditioning, the mind will do what it does. So, when she woke again, with only a vague and fuzzy memory of what transpired before she got out of the cell, without the familiar hard floor beneath her thin cot and the smells of a dungeon, she was alarmed.

She opened her eyes to night air and felt grass beneath her face, tickling her skin and providing a somewhat soft pillow for her to rest her head. But it was wrong. She wasn’t supposed to be outside. And why was her head throbbing? Had she hit it? Was she drugged so bad? Would the chemicals that knocked her out cause lasting damage to her neurons or brain? As these questions built up, so did the energy inside her.

She sprang up. That was a mistake. The headache doubled and her stomach turned over on itself.

“Whoa there, killer,” said a voice she knew but didn’t have the wherewithal to place. The owner placed her hands on her shoulders and suddenly, she was hit with a familiar smell. Lana. “Calm down there a bit.”

“You drugged me,” Alessia slurred out, falling back into Lana’s arms.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” she said back, holding tight to Alessia’s shoulders and helping to steady her. Lana came around to kneel in front of Alessia, giving her full view of the woman who seemed a bit disheveled, a few bruises forming here and there, but for the most part fine. “You just breathed in some night-night gas.”

“Said every kidnapper ever.”

“Hush.”

Alessia took in her surroundings. They were, in fact, on grass. They were out in some kind of wild. She’d hoped she’d wake in her apartment and find herself in the comfort of her own bed to the smell of coffee that had been magically set to brew. But instead, she was out in God knew where. Were they even still in California? Had she somehow been ferried away to some unknown part of the world? Was she ever going to see her friends or family again?

Speaking of them…

“Where is everyone?” Alessia asked, managing to shake off Lana’s guiding hands and sit of her own power.

Lana’s face went grim and Alessia knew she wouldn’t like whatever was about to come out of the woman’s mouth. “This is the rendezvous point. My partners, Jack and Asher, have your boys. They’re meant to meet us here.”

“‘Meant to’?”

“Well obviously, they’re not here yet.”

“And does that worry you?”

“It’s not late enough for it to worry me.”

Alessia looked around. She wanted to ask exactly how long ago they were supposed to have met up, but she decided it was best not to know exactly how late their companions were. Instead, she looked around. They were in a forested area and Lana had started a small fire. The familiar chill that came with California nights seeped into Alessia’s skin now that she was coming to completely. She shivered, slightly.

“Don’t be a baby,” Lana said.

“Easy for you to say when you are your own furnace,” Alessia snapped back.

She had cultivated an odd sort of friendship with Lana but now she found herself a little bit more irritated with the woman in every conversation they had. Her snark never seemed to disappear and she dealt only in sarcasm. They were in the middle of nowhere, on the run from a shifter cabal and Lana made jokes about how their partners and fellow escapees were somehow nowhere to be found.

“Do we have food at least?” Alessia asked, her stomach suddenly kicking up in the sounds of growls.

“Jack and Asher are bringing it,” she said.

“Of course they are.”

“I could have easily left you back there to be James’ scapegoat for the escape,” Lana said, for once sounding truly irritated. “I almost did.”

“Is that why it took so long?” Alessia snapped.

Lana glared at her before getting up in a huff and walking a few feet away. Alessia wouldn’t let her be the angry one here. She played her like a fiddle, forced her around the dungeon base and Alessia had played her games. She just admitted to nearly leaving her behind and then drugging her, and was still keeping secrets. She wasn’t the one who needed to be storming off to take walks to blow off steam.

She let Lana walk away and stared at the fire. She shuffled closer to it, wondering if Lana had breathed it into life. She had yet to truly see any of the shifters in action. She’d been witness to Drake’s transformation and flight as a dragon after they had sex. But the things they said dragons could do, breathe fire, have extreme strength. She had yet to see that.

Not that shifters were there to be her entertainment or personal zoo.

She shifted closer to the fire and stared at it, trying to find hints that it was somehow different from an ordinary fire, trying to find the signature that revealed it was Lana’s. There was nothing different about it. It burned at the wood all the same and put off waves of heat that Alessia just wanted to roll herself up in and sleep.

But she had to stay awake. Erik and Drake and even Diego were out there somewhere. She’d feel a lot better about the whole situation if she could somehow know they were okay. Lana seemed so nonchalant and unconcerned. Even if she didn’t care for her partners in the breakout, they were responsible for the safety of people that Alessia greatly cared about.

So she sat there, cold and shivering in the nighttime, glaring into the mirror of the fire in front of her while Lana stewed. The whole breakout from prison plan was less exciting than she thought. It was a lot more sitting and waiting than she expected and, when her adrenaline ran all over the place, it didn’t exactly make her feel any better.

**

Alessia hadn’t managed to fall asleep at all, which meant she was forced to endure the grueling hours of sitting and waiting for someone, or anyone to make their presence known and she wouldn’t feel so alone with nothing but Lana there and her foul mood. It made the waiting that much worse when she could feel the minutes into hours tick by.

“I can hear you thinking,” Lana said.

“At least one of us is.”

“You certainly know how to be grateful.”

“Grateful that you lied and drugged me and almost left me for dead?”

“Princess, you don’t even know what ‘dead’ means to James if I hadn’t risked my ass to get you out of there,” she said. “You’d wish you were mangled in a car accident by the time he was done with you.”

Alessia stayed quiet with her lips forced out into a pout. It seemed all she was lately was talked down to, whether it was from Drake or Lana or even the few times Erik decided to tell her his opinions. She’d sat around in her cell and waited to be rescued only to find she very nearly wasn’t rescued at all and left as a punching bag for her capture to occupy himself with. She was completely at the mercy of people around her.

And here she was again, sitting and waiting for someone to tell her what to do or give her some sort of orders.

Well fuck that.

“Where are you going?” Lana asked when she watched, with careful eyes, as Alessia stood up.

“To have a look around.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m sick of waiting around. Maybe I can meet them halfway.”

“Do you know which direction they’re coming from? Do you know how to find your way back? Do you even know where you are?”

But Alessia walked away, not interested in the frustrating things that Lana had to say. She could manage a bit of a hike in the woods without someone criticizing that as well. As Alessia moved closer to the edge of the forest, she could hear Lana calling after her, teasing her and calling her all sorts of names but she ignored her. She’d rather be attacked in the woods at this point than suffer having to watch Lana’s face do anymore smirks and sneers.