LOGINThor's POVDry mouth, I lick lips, jaw cracking. Face hurts. Body hurts. I try to move, but I can’t. I try again. My body is bound. I struggle, legs pulling, pain biting through them. I put strength into it, muscles surging, but the confining feeling is awful, frightening. I growl with effort and feel the slightest give, but nothing comes of it except more pain in my legs.I open senses.Head hurts, ache pounding inside skull. Bright white room. Bars, and a glass wall. I sniff. Sharp metallic smell, painful... silver. Antiseptic. Blood.A cell then.The light is bright and hurts my eyes. Red blinking light in the corner.I roll and manage to lie on my stomach. Legs are chained together, not silver, but strong... too strong for me. Throat dry. Mouth feels foul. Headache. Stomach rumbles.Hungry.How long have I been here? Where am I?Did I lose time again? Or something else?Memory feels blank. I close eyes and think.Something stirs where Tobias used to be.Is that him?I feel somethin
Max's POVBut she’s different.She’s not the Zahra I’ve kept alive in my head, not the untouched version of her I’ve been clinging to in dreams, memory, and desperation. She isn’t the girl I’ve been picturing every night just to survive the next morning. This Zahra is filthy and small. She’s skin and bone, and the sight of her hits me so hard it feels like someone’s driven a fist straight through my ribs.Fuck.Could this actually be her?Her lip trembles, and tears stream down her face, carving streaks through the dirt on her skin. When she smiles through it, and that small sob breaks out of her, I stop for half a second, because some part of me is terrified that if I touch her, she’ll vanish, that she’ll dissolve back into air and grief and I’ll be left standing here with nothing but the memory of almost having her.But a split second later I’m moving, before conscious thought, before anything in me has properly caught up to what’s happening. Because it’s not really a choice.I’m o
Max's POV:It’s so fucking bright in here. Why? Why is this place burning my retinas?!I stare around blindly, but I can’t make sense of my surroundings. Everything is white and blurry, though the smell hits me before anything else does. Disinfectant, with sickness and death lurking underneath it. I think hard, trying to force my brain to work through the haze, and the only place I know that smells like this is the hospital.But why are we at the hospital?“Alpha, Deltas, Gammas, second floor,” a voice says.I try to work out who it belongs to, but my eyes won’t focus and my head’s not helping by looking in the right direction. We’re moving again, and the brightness is making my head pound even harder. I hear a pinging sound, and the floor wobbles beneath me. I stumble, and hands steady me.Fuck.Why is the floor moving?The ping comes again, and I’m pushed forwards, lurching as my legs resist the movement.That’s when I catch it.The faint, tantalising whiff of jasmine.My whole body
Max's POVAs the car starts moving, nausea rolls through me again, slower this time but meaner, coiling low and hot in my gut before climbing. The world begins to spin with it, the motion outside the window smearing into long ribbons of light that don’t look real. I breathe hard through my nose and swallow the bile back down.I still don’t know where we’re going or why.I rest my head against the cool glass of the window, and it helps a little. The cold eases some of the pounding in my skull, and the hard, steady surface gives my body something to believe in while everything else slides in and out of focus.I close my eyes.For a second, with the glass against my temple and the engine humming under me, it almost feels like I could disappear back into the dark and let all of this happen without me.I blink and stare out at the blurred world beyond the glass, trying to make sense of the smeared lights and shifting shapes outside, but nothing settles long enough to become real. For a mom
Max's POV:I don’t really know what’s happening.At first there’s only heat, steam, and the dull roar of water hitting tile, and for a few long, useless seconds I can’t work out why I’m wet, or why I’m upright, or why my skin feels raw. Then something moves over me again, brisk and impersonal, and the truth of it catches up slowly enough to make me want to laugh and die at the same time.I’m standing in a shower while someone washes me.Fuck.Maybe this is a new low. Maybe I’m already past lows and this is just where I live now.My head is still thick with drink, my thoughts sliding away from me as fast as they form. I’m vaguely aware of retching again, one hand braced against the wall while bright green bile burns its way up my throat and into the spray. The water beats over me while I’m sick, washing it away before I can really look at it, and for a second, I just stand there panting with my forehead against the tile, trying to remember how breathing works.Then the water shifts.Th
Max's POVI drift back to consciousness like I’m coming up from deep water, the sound around me muffled as the ringing in my ears overrides everything else. My head is screaming, and I groan.Fuck, I feel like shit.I think I can hear a voice. It’s pulling me out like a lighthouse beacon in a storm, and I try to move towards it.There’s a sudden loud noise and a sharp movement in my periphery. I may be blurry, but I’m aware enough of that. I spin too fast and roll off whatever I’m lying on. Pain explodes up my side as I land hard on what I think is the floor, and there’s a clink and crunch as debris goes flying. I blink rapidly, the pain having shocked me awake effectively.There’s a pizza box on the floor, the red smear of pizza sauce and cheese spread beneath it. Plates and bottles are everywhere.Fuck.I hate this place.My head feels like it’s full of cotton wool. My ears still feel thick and my head is pounding. Not like a little bit, but like the entire philharmonic orchestra ar
Edwardo's POV“We have eleven warriors who have been unable to complete stage one, and the captains feel they won’t this time round, if ever,” Blake says as we run through the early morning mist rising off the ground through the woods.I grunt in reply. The course results have been mixed this year.
Lincoln's POVI try very hard to keep my mouth closed as the royal butler leads me through the castle. I’ve been here before, but never to the private residences upstairs. The opulence is staggering. The luxurious rug I’m walking on is so plush, and exquisitely embroidered. The tapestries on the wal
Max's POVMy feet pound in rhythm with the rest of our pack. Xander is leading us on the trail this morning, Lincoln beside me, Brant and Zach behind us, with the others running in pairs behind them.The trail winds up through the trees and into the mountains. Xander doesn’t slow on the ascent. I b
Lincoln's POVWe chatter some more, keeping things light, drinking more beer. The tension in my chest eases bit by bit. The warmth isn’t just the alcohol. It’s being here. With him. The quiet. The lack of expectation.There’s a knock on the door I entered through, and Tobias calls for them to come







