-9-

|ASTRAEA|

The blinding lights hit my eyelids as my eyes fluttered open. I adjusted myself to take in my surroundings.

The smell of rusted metal and the stench of dried blood filled my nostrils. I gasped, standing on my feet. Long metal bars surrounded me, and then it hit me.

I was in a cage.

A fucking cage.

I ran to the bars trying to use my werewolf strength to pull them apart as my hands sizzled at the contact of the bars.

They were laced with silver.

The only thing in the cage was the bed and the little flickering light. My head throbbed from the hit earlier and I held my head, sitting on the cold floor.

I should have never returned. As I sat there, the weight of my situation crashing down on me, a sense of despair threatened to consume me whole. How had everything gone so wrong? One moment, I had been on the brink of freedom, and the next, I found myself trapped in a cage, surrounded by silver bars that sapped my strength and left me powerless.

I closed my eyes, trying to push ba