CHAPTER 4

KAYE'S POV

Three days. Seventy-two hours. Four thousand three hundred and twenty minutes, not that I am counting except I absolutely am because counting is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind completely.

My wrists look like something from a horror movie. The silver burns should have healed by now, would have healed by now if I were a normal werewolf with normal access to her wolf. But I have not shifted in six years and the silver poisoning is spreading through my system like rust in water, slowing everything down. The burns are still raw and weeping, the skin around them an angry purple-black that smells faintly of infection.

I tried to hide them yesterday during kitchen work but Miriam noticed and laughed. Actually laughed. Told me it was justice, that I should hurt the way her sons hurt when they burned. One of the other kitchen workers, a young woman named Petra, looked uncomfortable but said nothing. No one ever says anything.

Five AM comes too early, the way it does every morning. My body does not want to move. Every muscle aches from eighteen-hour shifts and a mattress that might as well be concrete. The ankle cuff has rubbed the skin raw where it sits, another wound that will not heal properly. I can feel the silver's presence like a constant low-grade poison, my wolf whimpering somewhere deep inside me where she has retreated to hide from the pain.

The mate bond pulses as I drag myself out of bed. Ethan is awake already, I can feel him, probably in his office doing whatever Alphas do at five in the morning. The bond has been getting stronger each day whether we want it to or not, like a rope pulling tighter, forcing us to be aware of each other constantly. I feel his emotions bleeding through at random moments. Anger mostly, and guilt he tries to suppress, and underneath it all a bone-deep exhaustion that matches my own.

I wonder if he feels what I feel. If he knows how much pain I am in. If he cares.

Stop it. Of course he does not care. You are the daughter of a monster. You deserve this in his mind. The bond does not change that.

The kitchen is already warm when I arrive, ovens heating for breakfast service. Miriam stands by the prep counter with her arms crossed, and the expression on her face tells me today is going to be worse than usual.

"You are late," she says, even though I am not. I checked the clock three times before leaving my room.

"I am sorry," I say quietly, keeping my eyes down the way she likes.

"Sorry does not feed two hundred wolves." She walks toward me and I force myself not to flinch. "The walk-in freezer needs scrubbing. Top to bottom. Every surface. It has not been done since before the fire and it is disgusting. You will do it alone."

My stomach drops. The walk-in freezer is massive, designed to hold enough food for an army. Scrubbing it will take hours and the cold will be brutal, especially with my wolf barely functioning and my body already running on empty.

"Yes, ma'am," I say, because what else can I say.

Miriam's smile is all teeth and no warmth. "Good. Get to work. And do not come out until it is finished. I do not care if it takes all day."

She hands me a bucket of industrial cleaner and a scrub brush that has seen better decades. The chemical smell makes my eyes water. I take them and head toward the freezer, feeling the stares of the other kitchen workers on my back. No one offers to help. No one ever offers to help.

The freezer door is heavy, the kind that requires real effort to pull open. Cold air rushes out when I do, carrying the smell of frozen meat and frost and something else underneath. Something that makes my wolf stir uneasily. I step inside and the temperature immediately drops twenty degrees. My breath fogs in front of my face. The door swings shut behind me but does not latch, staying open a crack the way these doors are designed to, preventing people from getting locked inside.

I set down the bucket and look around. The freezer is huge, maybe twenty feet by thirty feet, with industrial shelving units lining the walls and pallets of frozen food stacked in neat rows. Frost covers everything in a thick white layer. This is going to take forever.

I start in the far corner, scrubbing frost and grime from the floor with hands that are already going numb from the cold. The cleaner burns where it touches my damaged wrists, making me bite down on my lip to keep from crying out. I work methodically, trying not to think about how cold I am, how much I hurt, how badly I want to just lie down and stop existing for a while.

That is when I notice the stains.

They are old, barely visible under the frost, but once I start scrubbing them they become obvious. Dark reddish-brown marks splattered across the concrete floor in patterns that are horribly familiar. I have seen blood spatter before. Everyone in the supernatural world has. These are definitely blood stains.

I lean down and smell them, and my wolf goes completely still.

Blackwater wolves. Multiple Blackwater wolves. The scents are old, six years old, layered on top of each other in a way that suggests violence. A lot of violence. My damaged wrists shake as I scrub harder, revealing more stains, more scents. Men, women, wolves I do not know but my wolf recognizes on some instinctive level as pack, as family, as people who died here.

This packhouse was built on the site where wolves died.

I sit back on my heels, trying to process what this means. The fire happened six years ago. This packhouse is new, rebuilt. But they built it on the exact same location. On ground that is soaked with the blood of their dead. That is either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid or maybe both at once.

My hands are shaking. The cold is seeping into my bones now, making my fingers stiff and clumsy. I should keep working, should finish this so I can get out of here, but I cannot stop staring at the bloodstains and thinking about the wolves who died here. Were they afraid? Did they know what was happening? Did they call for help that never came?

Did my father really do this?

The thought makes me sick. I have spent six years telling myself he could not have, would not have, that someone framed him. But what if I am wrong? What if I have been running from the truth instead of toward it?

No. No, I knew my father. He was strict and sometimes cold but he was not a monster. He did not burn children alive. He did not.

The freezer door slams shut behind me.

The sound is impossibly loud in the enclosed space, echoing off metal and concrete. I spin around, my heart suddenly racing, and stare at the door that should not have closed on its own. These doors are designed with safety mechanisms. They do not just close.

I drop the scrub brush and run to the door, grabbing the handle and pulling. It does not move. I pull harder, putting my whole body into it, but the door stays firmly shut. Locked.

No. No no no.

I pound on the door with my fists, ignoring the pain in my wrists. "Hey! Hey, someone let me out! The door is stuck!" My voice sounds thin and scared even to my own ears. I pound harder. "Miriam! Petra! Anyone!"

No one answers.

The temperature is already dropping. I can feel it, the cold turning vicious, aggressive. My breath comes in visible puffs that hang in the air. My fingers are going numb. I pound on the door again and again until my fists are bruised and aching but no one comes.

They locked me in here on purpose.

The realization hits like a physical blow. Miriam sent me in here alone, told me not to come out until it was finished, made sure no one else was around. This is not an accident. This is murder dressed up as negligence, and if I die in here it will be written off as a tragic mistake. Poor prisoner girl, locked herself in the freezer, such a shame.

My wolf surges forward suddenly, panicked and desperate. We need to shift, she screams at me. Shift and break the door down. Shift and survive.

I cannot. I have not shifted in six years. My wolf is too weak, and the silver poisoning from the ankle cuff will make any transformation agony. We might not survive the shift itself, let alone have the strength to break through a reinforced door.

The cold is getting worse. I wrap my arms around myself but it does not help. My teeth are chattering so hard I bite my tongue and taste blood. I need to stay warm. I need to keep moving. I start pacing, small tight circles in the limited space, trying to keep my blood flowing.

How long before someone notices I am missing? Hours probably. And when they do notice, will they care? Will they come looking or will they just assume I ran away somehow, got past the ankle cuff and the boundary line?

The mate bond pulses suddenly, sharp and insistent. Ethan. I can feel him somewhere in the packhouse, feel his attention suddenly snap toward me like he heard me scream even though I did not. His emotions flood through the connection: alarm, confusion, then rapidly building panic as he realizes something is wrong.

He felt it. He felt my terror through the bond.

I do not know if that makes things better or worse. Will he come? Will he care enough to investigate or will he decide this is justice, that I deserve whatever is happening to me?

Please, I think at him, not sure if he can hear my thoughts but desperate enough to try. Please, I am trapped. I am in the freezer. Please.

The bond thrums with his response, wordless but intense. He is moving. I can feel him moving through the packhouse, feel his wolf pushing at his control, demanding he find his mate.

But will he get here in time?

The temperature drops again. I can feel it happening, the cold turning deadly. My body is starting to shut down, my wolf making the calculation that we cannot survive this and beginning the process of hibernation that sometimes saves wolves in extreme cold. My heartbeat slows. My breathing shallows. The shivering stops, which is somehow worse than when it was happening because I know what that means.

I am dying.

My legs give out and I slide down the wall to sit on the frozen floor. The cold does not even hurt anymore. Nothing hurts. I feel distant from my body, like I am floating somewhere above it, watching this happen to someone else.

The mate bond screams. Ethan's panic is visceral now, overwhelming, bleeding into me so strongly that I cannot tell whose fear I am feeling anymore. He is close. I can sense him getting closer. But the cold is so heavy and my eyes do not want to stay open.

Just for a minute. I will rest for just a minute and then I will get up and pound on the door again. Just a minute.

The darkness at the edges of my vision spreads inward. The last thing I feel before everything goes black is the mate bond blazing like fire, Ethan's wolf howling in rage and terror, and the frozen floor against my cheek that feels almost warm now.

Almost comfortable.

Almost like dying.