All Chapters of CAGED BY THE LYON: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

The blood never really washed off. Three years working in this underground clinic had taught me that lesson the hard way, the copper scent clinging to everything, my clothes, my hair, my skin, no matter how raw I scrubbed my hands or how long I let the water run pink down the drain of a sink that had seen more blood than most hospitals ever would."Hold still," I said, and Marcus grunted on the table in front of me, a gash splitting his forearm deep enough to show bone, the kind of wound that would have sent anyone else straight to an ER with a story about a car accident or a dog attack. He'd lost a lot of blood, and his eyes kept flickering gold, his wolf clawing to take over, fighting the pain the same way every wolf did when the damage got bad enough."If you shift, you'll tear the stitches. Don't do it."He growled, but he held still, and I worked fast, the needle going in and pulling through and tying off, my hands moving on autopilot while my mind drifted somewhere else. I'd bee

Nobody moved, the words hanging in the air between us like smoke.Return what's ours."What does that even mean?" I asked, but the guard only looked at Kael, waiting on him instead of answering me, and something about being talked over in my own clinic, about my own life, made my hands curl into fists at my sides."Clear the area," Kael ordered, voice flat and controlled in a way that told me he'd given orders like this a thousand times before. "No one goes near the bodies until my Beta gets there.""Yes, Alpha," the guard said, and left without another glance in my direction, and I turned back to Kael, done waiting for permission to be part of my own crisis."Start talking.""It's not the time.""It's exactly the time." You walk into my clinic bleeding, you tell me I'm yours, some man named Silas shows up talking about me like I'm a prize to be claimed, and now there are bodies outside my door with my name basically written on the wall in blood. I think it's well past time".He sighe

"They've seen enough.""What does that mean?" I stared at him, my voice cracking slightly on the last word, adrenaline still burning through my system with nowhere to go."It means we can't stay here.""That's not an answer.""It'll have to do for now," he said, and I folded my arms across my chest, too exhausted and too wired at the same time to keep fighting for answers he clearly wasn't going to give me."You keep expecting me to trust you.""I expect you to stay alive.""By doing whatever you say?""If that's what it takes," he said, flat and certain, like the matter had already been settled somewhere in his head and I just hadn't caught up yet.Rowan cut in before I could argue further, stepping over an overturned chair on his way to the door. "We're wasting time," and Kael nodded once, some silent understanding passing between them."Get the car."Rowan disappeared into the dark hallway, and I looked around the ruined clinic properly for the first time since the attack ended, re