The icy cold on my skin.

That was all I could feel. No – was it the heat from some fire that was burning around me? A river of blood filled the cell, and then dissipated, leaving me coated from top to bottom in gore. My father was there, and then he wasn’t. He had been replaced by Rickland MacLaren and I knew that my entire life was in his hands-

I woke with a start, fresh from a night full of fever dreams that had left me feeling certifiably insane. But when I opened my eyes, I felt better than I had the day before. There was still a twinge in my ribcage and I still found myself a little blurry around the edges, but otherwise I was alright. My shifter healing powers were still in place. Thank God.

I got to my feet and paced around the cell, clutching the clothes that I had stolen from the guys around me. They were the only things connecting me to them any longer, maybe the only connection I’d ever have to them again, and I didn’t want to let them go, not for anything. My footsteps echoed loudly around the cell and I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

Did my father know that I was in here? Maybe. He had a lot of scouts who kept an eye on these areas, made sure the MacLarens were sticking to their end of the forest, and I had no doubt that at least one of them would have either seen the chase, or the aftermath of it, that had landed me in here. They could have tracked my scent down here for all I knew, to confirm that I was truly trapped in this place.

But that didn’t mean that they were going to send someone down here to help me. I had been cast out of the pack, and if he hadn’t intervened to help me before, I didn’t see why my father would start now. I closed my eyes, feeling a clench deep in my stomach at the thought. That had always been one of the only things I actually liked about being part of the Kellums, the knowledge that we would protect each other no matter what. But now, I was out here on my own, and crazy to think that my father would step in to help me again.

What about the guys? I knew I shouldn’t have let my mind wander there, since it physically hurt me to even think of them, but I couldn’t help it. They must have known I was gone by now, along with the snowmobile. No doubt they had traced its tracks down to the lake where it had plunged through. Maybe they thought I was still in there, frozen to death in that awful place? It would have been a safe bet, considering how close I was to dying down there. The chances of them coming after me were slim – after all, I had been nothing but trouble since I arrived. I would have understood it – hell, I would have encouraged it. I didn’t want them in this place, putting themselves in danger on my account. The thought of them getting hurt or killed trying to get into this place made my stomach twist up in a panic.

I drew myself up to my full height and took a deep breath. No point in stressing about stuff that I couldn’t control. No, for the time being, I had to keep myself focused on the stuff that I did actually have a say over. I looked around the small cell again, this time with more purpose than before. I noted that the bucket had been emptied and cleaned, so that meant that someone had at least been in here since when I’d passed out at Rickland’s feet a day before.

Was it a day?

Could it have been more? He said they’d had me here for a few days when I’d first woken up, but I wasn’t sure if that was an attempt to get me in a panic about no one coming to save me. I shuddered at the thought. I could have been here a full week for all I knew, or less than ten hours. Without sight of the outside world, I couldn’t possibly tell, and I guessed that was precisely the way they wanted to keep me. I clenched my fists at my sides. This was monstrous. Despite myself, I let out a growl of dissatisfaction, and it felt good to express how I was feeling in more concrete terms, even if yelling into the void wasn’t going to do anything to help.

“Hello?”

A voice came from somewhere I couldn’t see and I practically jumped out of my skin. It didn’t sound like Rickland’s voice – no, in fact, it sounded distinctly like a woman. I looked around, wondering if this was some kind of trick, or maybe my mind playing games with me.

“Hello?” I answered back, cautiously, praying that I hadn’t just walked head-first into one of their awful traps. But, to my surprise, the voice came again. This time it almost sounded a little relieved.

“Over here,” it replied once more. “There’s a slot at the top of your cell, do you see it?”

I frowned and looked around, and eventually my eyes fell on a small slit in the stone that looked out onto an equally dark room – I made my way over to it, trying to wrench the bench across so I could peer through, but finding it nailed to the ground.

“Yeah, I see it,” I replied. “Are you in there by yourself?”

“Yep,” the voice replied. “I’m Rissa, by the way.”

“Arianna,” I offered in return. I knew I was probably being stupid, actually responding to this voice, but there was no harm in it. Either it was in my head or it was another prisoner. That was it.

“How long have you been in there?” I asked, testing out to see just how far the depths of my delusion would go, and there was a moment of silence, and for a second I thought she wasn’t going to reply at all.

“A long time,” she responded after a pause. I felt a chill deep in my soul at the sound of that. How long? How long had she been trapped there?

“I’m so glad there’s someone else in here with me,” she went on. “Well, not glad, but I haven’t spoken to someone who isn’t part of the MacLarens for the longest time.”

“Where do you come from?” I pressed. I was pretty certain by now that this wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, that this woman was actually real. And she might have the information I needed to get myself out of here, considering that I’d accepted the fact that no one was coming to rescue me.

“I used to remember,” she remarked wistfully and my stomach dropped once more. My entire identity had, for a long time, been built around the pack that had raised me, and now this woman was telling me that she didn’t even remember where she came from? Shifters had a longer lifespan than humans, but I had never heard of one forgetting fundamental stuff like that. That was terrifying. The thought of having my past ripped away from me like that, whether I liked it or not…

“Rissa,” I stood on tiptoes in an attempt to see through the bars, “do you want to get out of here?”

“You sound like you’re trying to pick me up at a bar,” she shot back playfully – I wanted to laugh, but I was too scared by what she’d just said to muster up anything more than a chuckle. I wondered how long she must have been in here that she was able to crack jokes like that, to make as though none of this was as scary as it clearly was.

“I promise I’m not,” I replied. “I’m going to try and get out of here.”

I knew that I was risking a lot by telling her this, but then, even if she was a spy for the MacLarens, surely it wouldn’t come as a surprise that I wanted to get the hell out of this place. Even being trapped in this cell was hellish enough for me, and the thought of being in here so long that I lost all sense of my identity was enough to make my escape seem a whole lot more urgent.

“You need to,” she urged me, and the sudden conviction in her voice sent another flood of panic through my system. She sounded as though she had seen some shit, like she was telling me this from the bottom of her heart.

“What have they done to you?” I asked, as gently as I could, but I needed to know what I was dealing with here and I wasn’t going to get that by leaning back and letting her set the pace of the conversation.

“You…” She trailed off, like she had never been asked to put it into words before and was now struggling to come up with the descriptors required. “You need to get out of here. That’s all I know for sure.”

“Please tell me,” I begged. “I need to know what I’m up against here.”

“You’re up against a lot,” she explained, her voice suddenly hardening. “Trust me. You need to get out of here.”

“Rissa, what did they do to you?” I asked, as gently as I could, and I heard her take a long, deep breath from the cell. It felt like a gust of air, like a hurricane – like it was going to change everything.

“Genetic testing,” she explained. “Experimentation.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, doing my best to keep my voice steady.

“They’ve been experimenting on me for…I don’t know how long,” she replied. She sounded distant, as though trying to remove herself from what she was describing to me – as though trying to put distance between herself and the truth.

“What have they done to you?”

“I don’t know all of it,” she admitted. “I can’t even remember what I was like before…all of this.”

“What?”

“I know I was a shifter, once, I know I used to be like all of them,” she went on, and I wondered if anyone had ever asked her this before. It sounded as though this was the first time she’d been asked to explain herself and her predicament, as though she was just trying to hold herself together long enough to get the words out.

“And now?”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she replied, a hardness to her tone. “I haven’t seen myself in years. I just know I’m not…right anymore.”

“Not right?”

“Not right,” she replied firmly. “And I don’t want anyone else suffering the way I have. Please, if you can – get out of here, Arianna. You don’t deserve this.”

“No one does,” I assured her. “You don’t deserve this, Rissa. You could come with me-”

“There’s no life for me outside here,” she replied, her voice edged with bitterness. “I’d rather they concentrated their efforts on me than ruined someone new…”

Before she could continue, the sound of footsteps came echoing towards us.

“One of the guards is coming,” she muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. “Pretend like you didn’t say a word to me, alright?”

“Alright,” I replied, wishing I could comfort her some more. My mind was racing as I started pacing the cell again. What did she mean, ruined? How long had she been trapped in there? And what the hell had they done to her that had her so convinced that she should never be out of this place again? If she was a shifter, like she said she was, I couldn’t imagine what in the hell must have gone down for her to actually want to stay trapped in this terrible place for a moment longer. I think I would have lost my mind. Maybe she already had.

The door to my cell opened, and a guard was waiting for me on the other side – a youngish kid, he looked nervous as I stepped out of the cell to join him. He grabbed my arm, thrust my hands into cuffs, and yanked them behind my back, and then started up the corridor with me, towards the outside world. I knew whatever was out there waiting for me wasn’t going to be good, but the thought of spending another second locked up in that place made me want to scream.

I glanced into the cell next to mine – it had large bars instead of a door, as though they didn’t care who saw in or out. I squinted into the darkness, trying to make Rissa out. And then, all at once, she stepped into the light and I had to keep myself from screaming.

To say I had never seen it before would have been wrong. I had seen something like this plenty of times – she was stuck in that moment between wolf and human, the one we all passed through on our way in or out of shifting. Her muzzle was long and whiskered and her ears drawn painfully back, a few fingernails extending to claws on her hands. Her legs were bent and buckled between beast and woman, her pelt half-hanging off to reveal what looked like raw, scraped-down skin. I had seen a lot of shit in my time, but all of it paled in comparison to Rissa. She half-turned away from me, as though sensing my disgust, and I saw bony knobs webbed together by impotent husks of what looked like wings protruding from her bloodied shoulder blades.

What the fuck had they done to her?

She met my gaze steadily and I did my best to look back at her. To let her know that I saw her. Even though all I wanted to do was look away. The guard tugged me down the corridor and I felt another wave of nausea hit as I realized that the creature I had just seen was what was in store for me if I didn’t get out of here in time. No wonder she wanted me to go. And no wonder she thought there was no place for her anywhere but in those four walls. Panic and grief surged through me at the thought of the life she had lived, of the one that was in store for me if I didn’t escape.

My resolve hardened.

I could do this. Looking at Rissa, I didn’t think I had much of a choice, and I had even less time…