Chapter 8: I didn’t create this

Helena’s POV

The cold was the first thing I noticed when I regained my senses. Stone pressed against my exposed back, damp from the dungeon air, while the iron cuffs around my wrists scraped against skin already rubbed raw. I shifted to relieve the strain on my shoulders, and an awful ache between my thighs made me stop.

Fuck. That hurt.

Valdman had left me in his chamber after what he did, but the soreness had been so crazy that I fainted. 

I had no idea who had chained us to the dungeon wall or how much time had passed. The slightest movement aggravated the injury, and Azalea’s legs shook until the links scraped the stone.

‘It hurts,’ she whispered inside our head. ‘It hurts so terribly.’

‘I’m hurting too,’ I told her, shutting my eyes. I wanted to comfort her, but what comfort was there? The man who had destroyed her family had put his hands on her, and I had been trapped inside her body through the entire ordeal. I couldn't undo a single part of it.

Her shaking grew worse. I tried to move our legs into a position that might help, but the cuffs pulled at my wrists and another ache made me recoil.

‘Azalea, please. Try to keep your legs steady. Moving them is making it hurt more.’

‘I cannot help it.’ Her reply was barely audible. ‘My body will not obey me.’

That frightened me almost as much as the pain. She was a werewolf, for God's sake. She ought to have healed injuries that would put a human in bed for days, but Aza had barely managed to help us since I arrived. I was the one interfering with that, and now Azalea was suffering for it.

I stared into the dungeon, sick at the thought of everything I had written for her. An innocent princess. A cruel king. An enemies-to-lovers romance that was supposed to make readers clutch their pillows and beg for another chapter. At my desk in Los Angeles, I had thought the contrast was irresistible.

What an absolute idiot.

I had designed her innocence down to the smallest detail. She had never seen a naked man, never experienced intimacy, never even stolen a kiss from her betrothed. Then I had placed her in the hands of Valdman Wolverton and called the result an exciting romance.

I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. Unfortunately, the skin wasn't even mine.

‘Why are you speaking to me?’ Azalea asked suddenly.

I blinked. ‘What?’

‘You have spoken of my suffering ever since he left. I wish you would be silent.’

Her words stung, although I could hardly blame her. ‘I'm trying to help. We can't spend the rest of the night fighting each other.’

‘We?’ Her anger struck with startling force. ‘There is no we. This is my body, and I cannot even hear my own thoughts because you are always there. You are a strange creature with no wolf, and you will not leave me in peace.’

I stared at the wall opposite us. Right. Fantastic. Somehow I had managed to become the second most hated person in a dungeon containing Valdman's prisoners.

‘Do you seriously think I enjoy being trapped in here?’ I snapped. ‘If I could return to my apartment, I would be halfway home already. I had a job, a life, people who...’

I stopped. My fiancé was dead. My best friend had betrayed me, and I had run straight into the road after killing the man I once intended to marry. There wasn't much of a life waiting for me in Los Angeles, assuming my body was alive at all.

‘Then go,’ Azalea said. ‘I have suffered more since your arrival than I have in all my eighteen years. I want my thoughts to myself.’

I didn't answer. She withdrew from our conversation, leaving me with the rattle of the restraints and the slow passage of time. We were both frightened, but trying to tell her how frightened I was wouldn't give her back the privacy she had lost.

I rested my head against the stone. She had lost her family and her kingdom, and now even the place inside her own mind belonged partly to a stranger. A stranger who had authored the nightmare.

I couldn't argue with her hatred.

After a while I tried again, because sitting here in misery wasn't going to rescue either of us.

‘Azalea. Listen, we need to cooperate. I have some idea how this world works. We might find a way out, but I need your help.’

She laughed.

The sound startled me so badly I jerked against the cuffs. It was a soft, breathy laugh, a little disbelieving, and I recognised it with a sick jolt.

Avi.

My best friend had laughed exactly that way. The same woman I'd caught with Titus in a bar restroom on my birthday. I remembered all those nights when we drank cheap wine, traded gossip and laughed until we could barely speak. I'd liked that laugh so much that I had borrowed it for Azalea while writing her character.

Oh, Helena. You really had to steal that detail too?

‘Please don't laugh like that,’ I said.

‘Like what?’

‘Like her.’ My voice shook with anger I had no right to direct at Azalea. ‘I gave you my best friend's laugh. She betrayed me, and every time you do that, I hear her again.’

Azalea said nothing. Perhaps she didn't understand. How could she? She had spent her entire life in this realm, and I was rambling about a woman from a world she could scarcely imagine.

I pressed my forehead to my wrist until the metal dug into the skin. I had poured pieces of my life into this book for fun. Now even a harmless laugh could drag me back to the worst night of my life.

‘Forget it,’ I muttered. ‘You didn't do anything wrong.’

I tried to concentrate on something useful. I knew the Iron Bloodline was a powerful kingdom, ruled by a king who conquered other packs and ruled his subjects with fear. I had written his fortress, his warriors and the terrain surrounding his stronghold. If I could remember the layout, perhaps I could find an escape route.

‘We need to get beyond the fortress,’ I told her. ‘There must be roads out of the kingdom. A passage, a gate, anything the guards don't watch all day.’

‘You speak of roads as though we may walk freely upon them,’ Azalea replied, her anger giving way to disbelief. ‘Have you no understanding of where we are?’

‘Well, excuse me for not receiving the royal tour. I've spent most of my visit being dragged around or chained to walls.’

‘The Iron Bloodline lies upon an island,’ she said. ‘Great rocks guard its shores, and beyond them is the ocean. Even those who survive the sea must pass through desert lands. No one who ventures there returns.’

I lifted my head.

‘An island?’

‘You didn't hear a thing I told you?’ she snapped.

An island surrounded by rocks, with ocean and desert beyond? I searched through the details of my manuscript. Valdman's fortress, yes. Mountains, forests and difficult roads, absolutely. But this elaborate geographical prison? I had never written it.

‘I didn't create that,’ I said, more to myself than to her. ‘There was no island in my notes.’

Why was everything becoming more of a mess? And how did Valdman’s fortress settings change?