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Amora
Quinton called this place a “cage,”and that’s exactly what it feels like. I’m like a trapped animal, and I hate it.
The small jail building at one edge of the village houses three cells. I’m in the one farthest away from the entry door, my view of the doorway partially obscured by the thick metal bars that run from floor to the ceiling around my cramped cell.
I sit on a cot barely long enough for me to stretch out full-length. The only other object in my cell is a rusted metal bucket stained by ungodly fluids, and the two cells beside mine are empty, their tiny beds made up as if they’re shitty hotel rooms.
The emptiness of the place doesn’t bode well for my future. Quinton may take prisoners often enough that he needs a jail in his pack lands, but it appears he doesn’t keep them long.
At least the scratchy gray wool blanket from the cot is big enough to encompass my entire body. It chases away some of the cold, but for the most part, this stone cottage is as frigid as the world outside right now. A single window near the entry door casts ambient white light into the room, giving everything a surreal glow. A wood stove crouches dark and menacing in the corner, but it’s probably a good thing they didn’t bother to build me a fire. If something went wrong and the place burned to the ground, this cell would be my skillet.
Although maybe burning to death in a fire would be quicker and easier than what Quinton might have in store for me.
Except, if I die, Kian, Malix, and Frost will be free to complete their mission and unleash literal hell on earth. So maybe a little torture won’t be so bad if I can convince the alpha I’m not a threat. The one thing I have going for me is that I literally have nothing to do with Felicity, although how I’m going to convince him of that is beyond me.
Goddammit. I shouldn’t even be in here. None of this should’ve gone down the way it did.
My plan was foolproof. Sleeping potion. Stab. Three times over, and end of story.
How the fuck did it go so badly off the rails? And what the hell kind of shit are those shadows that exist in the feral shifters? Kian knew I was there before he opened his eyes. The potion didn’t do anything to keep him under, and I have a feeling it has to do with that shadow realm magic.
The wind whips around the cottage in a high-pitched whine as if a banshee is standing outside, crying for my impending death. It’s a lonesome sound. Something about it makes goosebumps rise on my skin and reminds me how very alone I am. How much danger I’m in.
Letting my head fall back against the wall, I close my eyes and try to come up with anything to take my mind off what may come in the morning.
Ridge. Sable. Trystan, Archer, and Dare. The babies I’ll never know. My little house with its flimsy doors and mismatched furniture. Card games in the backyard. An ice cold beer on a hot day. Hot dogs on the grill. The thrill of hunting with my pack beneath a Montana sky so big it seems impossible.
I’m lost in thoughts of home when I become aware of a presence outside my cell.
The prickle of awareness raises the hairs on the back of my neck, but I don’t need to open my eyes to know who it is. I can smell him, warm and spicy, which is so funny given his cold, remote personality and his name.
“You should stop being such a creeper,” I say, eyes still closed. “One day, you’ll sneak into the wrong room and get a one-way ticket to hell.”
He doesn’t respond.
I open my eyes and zero in on Frost standing beyond the thick metal bars. His eyes glitter in the ambient light coming from the window, but his body is nothing more than a shadow on a darker background. He’s still in his sweats, snowflakes coating his hoodie and his pale hair like tiny glistening stars.
The first time I ever saw him was just like this. A frozen statue in the corner of my motel room, more beautiful than any marble god.
I glare at him, my fingers digging angrily into the blanket. “What the fuck do you want? Come to gloat?”
His pale gaze clings to mine for several silent seconds, then he says, “You’re cold.”
“Nooo,” I say, drawing out the word in mock surprise. “It’s damn near tropical in here. All I’m missing is a mai tai and a cabana boy to rub coconut oil into my skin.”
Frost’s expression doesn’t change. He continues looking at me, and I’m dying to know what’s going through his head. The broken mate bond feels like a hole in my heart. His presence weighs heavily on me, making the void inside me scream. It aches more in his presence, which I don’t really understand, since the bond no longer exists.
The emptiness in his eyes pisses me off. I throw myself down to the cot and curl up on my side, facing the wall with my back to him. Lying this close to the cold stone wall gives me a claustrophobic, caged-in feeling, but at least I don’t have to look at him. I pull the blankets around me like a cocoon and ignore him, hoping he’ll go away.
Of course, I know him better than that, even if I might wish I didn’t. Frost could win a staring contest with a mannequin. My ignoring him won’t even register on his radar, and he’ll just stand there till the fucking end of time.
His steady presence remains just on the other side of the bars, silent and oddly soothing. Not even his clothes rustle, and if he’s breathing, I can’t hear it, not over the eerie howl of the storm outside.
Some time passes. Could be a minute. Could be ten. Could be an hour. Time stretches like the darkness around us, and all I can think of is Frost being so close and so far and so entirely out of reach in so many ways.
Finally, I can’t take it any longer. Still curled up like a shifter burrito, I ask the wall, “What are you doing here?”
He doesn’t hesitate to answer. “I wanted to see you.”
Warmth spreads through me, unfurling in my abdomen like a flower opening to the sun. It banishes the cold and the fear. There’s a straightforward kind of honesty in his voice, something I’ve heard before but which has never hit quite so poignantly as it does now. He doesn’t say anything else, just that one phrase, and the simplicity of it somehow makes it real. No excuses, no backtracking, no bitching at me for showing up here.
As much as my heart wants to hear it and cling to it, my anger has other ideas.
Wrapping the blanket tighter around me, I slide off the cot and stand, crossing the small cell to come face to face with him. Only the bars separate us now, plus the void I can’t ever get away from. A black hole in my chest that used to connect us.
“You shouldn’t have come,” I tell him coldly.
His long, lush eyelashes blink slowly, casting dark shadows on his golden skin. But nothing else changes about him, and he doesn’t make a move to leave.
Unlike Kian, Frost is easier to read, despite his tendency to be silent and ambivalent. He’s so expressionless, so closed off, yet he’s not hiding behind a mask like Kian. This is simply who he is—steadfast, honest, quiet, and pragmatic. Steered by his intellect and not his pride or anger.
Back in the cabin, I felt a strange, phantom pull toward Kian, and I feel that same pull now. It’s different from the mate bond, not quite as overwhelming and wild, but it’s there nonetheless. And I don’t get it. I felt the bonds break. I can still remember their faces, the pain of their souls ripping away from mine. Rejecting me. Hurting me.
