CH.3

Lightning flashed across the windows and for one stark second, the bedroom appeared in silver fragments, revealing the black silk sheets tangled around a small, restless figure with dark hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink.

Then thunder rolled over the city.

Rory didn’t wake.

Her eyes moved frantically beneath her lids, fingers twitching against the sheets as if searching for something to hold, something to fight or something to kill.

But there was nothing in the dark room except the storm, the sleeping city beyond the glass, and the nightmare dragging her under.

Rory dreamed in white.

White walls.

White lights.

White coats.

The kind of white that wasn’t clean, no matter how hard they scrubbed it. The kind that smelled like bleach, silver, blood, and fear soaked too deep into tile to ever come out.

Her wrists were strapped down and so were her ankles.

Cold metal kissed the base of her skull, and something sharp slid beneath her skin with a wet, surgical pressure that made her wolf slam herself at the inside of Rory’s ribs.

“Subject Seventeen is resisting,” a man said somewhere above her.

His voice blurred at the edges. Clinical, bored. Like she wasn’t a girl. Like she wasn’t thirteen and choking on her own screams.

A woman leaned over her. Red mouth. Pale hair. Eyes too calm to belong to anyone with a soul.

She smiled down at her through the glare of the operating lights.

“Don’t fight it, Aurora,” her voice sounded so gentle. “Pain means you’re still useful.”

Rory tried to shift but nothing happened.

Her wolf howled, trapped beneath layers of chemicals and silver, clawing at the cage of Rory’s bones until every nerve in her body lit up.

A needle sank into her throat, then fire tore through her veins.

Rory screamed, but the sound came out wrong. It sounded small, broken and childish.

The woman brushed a tear from Rory’s temple with a gloved finger.

“There,” she murmured. “That’s better. Let’s see what survives this time.”

The lights flickered, making the white room bend and the restraints tightened.

Someone whispered her number again.

Subject Seventeen.

Subject Seventeen.

Subject Seventeen.

--

Rory woke up choking.

Air tore into her lungs in ragged, useless pieces as she lurched upright in bed with one hand clawing at her throat and the other already reaching for the nightstand.

Darkness pressed around her bedroom.

Not white walls, surgical lights or familiar voices. Still, her body didn’t believe it.

Her heart slammed hard enough to hurt. Sweat slicked her skin beneath the thin black tank she’d slept in, and her ribs screamed from the cage fight the night before.

Her wolf thrashed, panicked and furious, then disappeared beneath the chemical fog Rory kept waiting beside her bed like a loyal little executioner.

Her fingers fumbled with the drawer but the first pull jammed.

“Come on,” Roey rasped.

The second yank sent the drawer flying open. Inside, three slim metal cases gleamed beneath the moonlight.

Blue.

Red.

Purple.

Rory grabbed the blue one first. Her hands were trembling so badly she nearly dropped it.

She popped it open, shook three pills into her palm, then hesitated for half a second.

‘Too many, Rory. Your body can’t keep processing this.’ Kira’s voice crawled through her memory.

Still, Rory shoved the pills into her mouth dry. They scraped down her throat like tiny stones but wasn’t enough.

Her breath was still coming too fast and her hands still weren’t hers. The nightmare still clung to her skin with cruel voices threaded through the dark like a scalpel.

Pain means you’re still useful.

Rory snatched the purple case next and swallowed two more. Then one red.

Her wolf recoiled in agony but Rory was far too gone to care.

She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed both shaking hands against the edge of the nightstand until the wood bit into her palms.

Slowly, the room returned in pieces.

Black silk sheets twisted around her hips. The half-open balcony doors. The lightning beyond the glass. The silver bracelets lined up on the nightstand like little sins.

Not the facility.

Rory dragged in one breath.

Then another.

When her hands finally stopped shaking enough to move, she reached for the last thing on the nightstand.

The embossed black envelope.

The Elder Council’s seal glared up at her in silver wax, as if wax had ever stopped anyone from being a useless parasite in formal robes.

Rory stared at it and she laughed.

It sounded awful.

Of course she’d survive a nightmare about government-funded torture only to wake up to government proceedings.