I peeled my eyes open and instantly wished that I hadn’t. I groaned and lifted my head from the damp ground, looking around and trying to figure out where the hell I was. What was this place?

Was I even still alive?

I tried to cast my mind back to the last thing I could recall – I had been on the ice, on that snowmobile, trying to keep away from the thing before it plunged into the icy-cold water below. And then, they’d all come thundering towards me and the ice had split and dragged me down into the frigid depths underneath me. I had blacked out, that much was for certain, and now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember being pulled loose of the water. I just recalled the frozen cold seeping in my veins, into my bones, consuming me as the blackness wrapped itself around me once and for all. I remembered thinking about the guys, back at that cabin, and praying to all things good and pure that they would get away without being hurt.

So where the fuck was I now? I blinked a couple of times and tried to focus my vision, but it was difficult because I was shivering so hard that my head wasn’t staying straight. It wasn’t too cold in here but the cold from that lake had made its way deep into my bones and I knew there would be no getting rid of it now that it was there. I closed my eyes and tried to still my frozen body, but it didn’t work.

They must have pulled me out of the lake. That was the only explanation. I wasn’t sure how they’d done it without getting killed themselves, but there was no way anyone else would have had time to notice the hole in the ice and come running in after me before I was completely gone for good. I lifted my head and tried to look around again, and this time my eyes actually focused in on my surroundings.

It was a cell. My heart sank when I realized where I was – a cell, just like the one I had been in back home before the trial that had cast me out of my pack for good. I knew letting my memories get the best of me wasn’t going to do me any good, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with the swell of memories that were threatening to overwhelm me in that moment. I felt as though I would have cried if I had any energy left, but as it was, I felt as though someone had peeled me open and left me raw for all the world to see.

I must have been in a MacLaren prison. As I came to, their scents filled my nose – choking, stinking, crushing my skull. I had been taught my entire life that this scent meant death and destruction and all kinds of bad things for me and the people I held most dear, and I knew for sure that this hadn’t changed just because I was out of the pack now. My new pack – if I could call it that – they were in as much danger as my old one had been. Maybe even more. They didn’t have the fortifications or the numbers to take on the MacLarens if the situation called for it. I shuddered at the thought.

Please don’t let them have gone to the cabin. Please let my Robicheaux brothers still be safe.

I threw a prayer out to the world, even though the last few weeks had all but stripped me of whatever faith I might have had. It was hard to see much good left in the world when the good you had found was so far away, so distant, and probably had no idea where you were or what you were doing.

Maybe this had always been my fate. My heart sank at the thought. A cell in my old home, and a cell in this one – maybe this had always been how it was meant to end for me. Because, make no mistake, this felt like the end. I was shivering so hard I could hear my teeth chattering and yet I was dealing with flushes of burning heat. I had a fever, no doubt from falling into the filthy, frigid water of that lake, and this damp-ass cell with a tiny trickle of fresh light and air pouring in from a window too high for me to reach right now wasn’t helping. I hated being enclosed like this, in this place with the stale air. I suddenly felt a craving – or it might have been a fever dream, it was hard to tell in my current state – to be out in the woods with the Robicheaux brothers, the snow under my feet and the ice gone from my veins. I smiled at the thought – it was so vivid in my head, despite everything, and the image brought me some comfort. But then, I came crashing back down to reality and felt my mouth take a downward turn once more. There would be no getting out of this. Not this time. There would be no trial that cast me out into the cold. That would have been too easy. No, I had a feeling that the MacLarens had a whole different set of tricks up their sleeve for me.

The door to the cell opened and forced me back to reality; I tried to pull myself upright but a wave of nausea passed over me and I had to lie down again, even though the floor was disgusting and damp. I could see the place a little better now that there was some light allowed in – it was maybe ten feet by four feet, with a small bucket in the corner and a bench that I managed to pull myself up onto to face whoever it was who had just entered the room.

“Oh, you’re awake,” a male voice greeted me, and I forced myself to look up – and found myself faced with the last person on Earth that I wanted to see right then. Rickland MacLaren.

Shit. I felt a rush of terror flood through my system at the sight of him. I knew that was what he was relying on, panicking me deeply enough that I would spill whatever secrets he intended to draw out of me, but I had to keep my cool. How much did he know? Did he know that I’d been cast from the pack and out into the snow? Did he know that I’d found a new one? Had he found them? Had he tracked them down? I tried to keep the rushing thoughts in my head to a minimum but it was hard, my fevered brain latching on to every possibility, every bad thought that passed through.

“How long have I been here?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady, but it was weak and thin and wavering thanks to my pathetically shivering self. He shrugged.

“A few days,” he replied. “You’ve been in and out of consciousness but this is the first time we’ve had any words out of you.”

He pushed the door shut again, casting us both into relative blackness, and I forced myself to look up at him. He was tall, taller than my father, and lean and long, each one of his limbs seeming to take up just a few inches too much space. I couldn’t make out much about his face but I didn’t need to – I knew whatever I saw there I would translate into some evil demon, that I would project all the nightmare stories I had been told about him over the years onto him once and for all. He grinned widely, and his teeth flashed in the sallow light from the high window. My heart looped in my chest, fear pulsing through my veins. I had heard so much tell of his cruelty, of his evilness, and now here he was, standing in front of me, while I was trapped in this cell so far from anyone who gave a damn about me. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well for me.

“What do you want?” I demanded, my voice still lacking conviction thanks to the cold.

“I wanted to check that you were doing okay,” he replied, a note of faux-concern in his voice. “You took a nasty fall there. All of us were surprised you made it at all.”

“Why didn’t you just leave me in there to die?” I spat back at him, surprised by how strongly I meant those words. He raised his eyebrows.

“Calm down,” he snapped in my direction, obviously irritated by my anger. “Still plenty of time for that yet.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t know what to say.

“We just need you to answer a few questions for us,” he went on, crouching down so that he was looking at me dead in the eye. His eyes were blank and almost black in the light, and I twisted my head away so I didn’t have to look into them. They made me uncomfortable, the nausea I had done so well to fight off rising in my system once more.

“What do you need to know?” I asked, defeated. I just wanted to get this over with so he could either put me out of my misery or leave me alone once more. I didn’t want to have to deal with him for a moment longer.

“Your pack,” he got back to his feet, beginning to pace up and down the enclosed space of the cell, “how many healthy males are there in that fortress of yours?”

I stayed silent. He was talking about the Kellum compound and I would be damned if I was going to give away the secrets that my family had spent so long protecting.

“I don’t know,” I replied firmly, even though that was a lie. I knew I could have come up with a reasonable guess to sate him, but I wasn’t going to allow him that satisfaction.

“You sure?” He crouched down once more, his face suddenly close to mine, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt that this was a threat, that he was attempting to threaten me into giving him what I knew. But I had lost my pack back home, as well as the four of them in the forest – I had nothing left to lose. He had nothing to hold over me. The thought was, all at once, liberating. I had some kind of power here, at least.

“I’m certain,” I replied, and I saw a flash of irritation pass across his face.

“We know who you are,” he snarled. “We know you know more than you’re telling us.”

“You must be mistaken,” I replied, playing dumb, knowing it would infuriate him even more than he had already been. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

“What about those men in the forest, then, huh?” he demanded, and my heart dropped at the mention of them.

Please, leave them out of this.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied, but my voice lacked conviction once more. He seized on that, diving in.

“How long have you known them for?” he demanded. “We saw you with them, you can’t deny that…”

“I haven’t known them for long at all,” I shot back firmly. “I just…we ran into each other, that’s all.”

“What kind of weaponry do they have?” he went on.

“I don’t know,” I replied, and this time I was telling the truth – I had no idea what they had back at that house and I had no intention of telling him even if I did. But God knew the kind of stuff Anton had stockpiled in case of something like this. If I were their enemies, I’d be scared shitless.

“God damn it!” Rickland snapped, mostly to himself, and began pacing more rapidly, as though trying to burn off the excess energy pulsing around his body.

I knew how he felt. Part of me felt as though I needed nothing more than to sleep for at least a week, and the rest of me wanted to spring up and take off into the woods once more. But his frustration was too amusing not to goad a little further, even though I knew I was pushing my luck and would likely just land myself in trouble.

“I know as much about them as you do,” I lied. “That is, fuck all.”

He cast a foul look down at me, and for my troubles, I felt a wave of nausea overtake me. I had to hurry to the bucket, groping for it in the dark, and my stomach was racked with convulsions as I tried to bring up whatever was left down there, which wasn’t a lot at this point. As I coughed up the foul-tasting bile, it hit me – if he was asking questions about their defenses, then they hadn’t captured them yet. Despite myself, I felt a twist of triumph.

I heard his footsteps heading towards the door, a mutter of disgust the only thing letting me know he was still in the room, and relief hit me as I realized I had survived this one. Or, at least, I thought I had. But as it turned out, my thinking was a little premature.

When I had finished throwing up, I went to drag myself back towards the bench – but before I could get there, something came at me in the dark and sent me sprawling across the floor once more. Pain exploded out over my ribs and Rickland rounded on me once more, leveling up for another kick.

“You stupid little bitch,” he snarled, and I tried to roll out of the way in time but failed. “Tell me what you know!”

He landed another kick, and another, and another one after that, and before I knew it, blood was oozing from between my lips, dripping in heavy drops onto the floor in front of me. I didn’t care. I couldn’t. All I could focus on was the pain.

“I’ll be back,” Rickland snapped down at me as he went for the door – when he pulled it open, it cast me into a blinding ray of light for a split second, and then left me in darkness once more. I let my head sink down as the tears leaked from my eyes. I wasn’t sure I could heal from this one. I wasn’t sure I could heal from any of this.