Chapter 25
Chapter 25
Rane
I wake choking on the taste of metal. My arms won’t move. Legs won’t move. Something cold and tight binds them — not rope, not chain. Steel. Rubber. Sedation still bleeds through me, thick as oil. My eyes blink open, but the light floods in too harsh, too white, burning against my retinas. I flinch. Or try to. I can’t tell if I’m standing or hanging. Everything smells wrong. Not the forest. Not pack. Not rain. Chemicals. Plastic. Bleach. Sterile. I jerk again. My wrists strain. My ankles don’t budge. Pain shoots up my arms where the cuffs bite too tight. There’s a sound — a mechanical hiss, followed by footsteps. I bare my teeth, or I think I do. Even my lips feel heavy. Voices. Muffled through the fog.
“He’s conscious.”
“Higher resistance than the others. We’ll need a stronger sedative cocktail.”
I snarl. Or try to. My throat won’t obey. All I manage is a groan. They move closer. I catch a scent. Not one of them. Not wolf either. I don’t know it, but it cuts through the chemicals like a flare. My heart kicks harder, wild and desperate. I thrash — manage an inch — and the restraints tighten instantly, a hydraulic hiss and click. My breath stops short.
“He can still respond to external cues.”
“Good. We need the base reactions intact.”
I want to speak. I want to demand. But my mouth won’t shape the words.
A needle slides into my arm. I feel it. Cold rush follows. Then dark.
—
I wake again on a table. Cold metal beneath my spine. Unbound, this time. But there’s something over my face — a mask, fixed in place, pumping something sharp and sterile into my lungs. I rip it off before they can stop me. Sit up fast. Too fast. The world tips. Alarms blare. Hands on me. Too many. I punch one. Crack an elbow into another. I get as far as the door before something pierces my neck — a dart, maybe. My knees buckle instantly. I collapse hard.
Still reaching.
Still snarling.
Still trying.
The floor rushes up and swallows me again.
—
Third time, I wake to soft beeping. Cold wires pressed to my skin. I’m strapped down by the chest now, wrists and ankles spread on something padded but firm. I can smell them before I see them —the humans. Their plastic gloves. Their latex breath.
“Heart rate spikes when provoked. No verbal function yet.”
“Try the stimulant again.”
The lights flicker. My eyes slam shut against them. Something about this place is wrong. I’ve been here days. Or hours. Or lifetimes. Time stretches like sinew between teeth — pulled, chewed, swallowed. I don’t speak because I can’t. But the rage is intact. I carry it like a flame beneath my ribs. Banked. Seething. They ask things. Press buttons. Insert probes. Record data. I don’t answer. Can’t. But they talk like I’m not there. Like I’m a specimen. A failed one.
“Still no heat response?”
“No. Not even base-level swelling.”
“He should be reacting by now. The dose was four times the control.”
“Maybe he’s broken.”
“No,” one says. “Just different.”
The way he says it makes my skin crawl.
—
I see no sky. Only walls.
No trees. Only steel.
No pack. Only silence.
They bring others sometimes. I smell them in the distance. Not alphas. Never alphas. They smell low-rank. Fearful. Some howl. Some cry. Some growl until they’re beaten down. I stay silent. Once, I see a reflection — just a flash in a dark panel. I look like death. Eyes too wild. Hair soaked in sweat. Mouth pulled tight like I’m holding back something that wants to tear through me. They keep testing me. For days. Weeks? Time is a knife. They keep twisting it.
—
One day, the doors open too loud. Two men step in, but this time, they don’t smell clinical. They smell like money. Suits. Colognes. They don't belong here.
“He’s still unresponsive?”
“He's responsive. But he doesn't rut. Not with the injections. Not with the triggers. Nothing.”
“Disappointing. Do you know how much a real alpha in rut would sell for?”
The other sighs. “We’ve tried. Every formula. Nothing works. He’s not broken. He’s immune.”
They pause near me. I open my eyes and stare at them both. One of them flinches. The other smiles. “Well. At least the intimidation factor’s still alive.”
“Barely. We had to double the sedatives after the last episode.”
“Any sign of mating instincts? Pair bonding?”
“None.”
“Then bury him. Move him. He’s not an asset. He’s a liability.”
“Sublevel 2?”
A nod. “Let him rot.”
—
I wake hours later in motion. Wheeled on a gurney through long, quiet halls. No voices. No white light anymore — just red. Dull. Blood-warm. We descend. Level after level. The air grows heavier. Colder. I can’t speak. But I know this is exile. Not containment. Elimination.
But I’m still alive.
Still burning.
Still aware.
And when the wheels stop, when they lock me into the cage that smells like rust and rot and old dust, I open my eyes fully. I don’t give them the silence anymore. I give them a promise. A low, guttural growl that rips from deep in my chest.
Not loud.
Not a threat.
A vow.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here.
But I will remember every second.
—
Nyra
I wake with my hands clenched into fists. The sheets are twisted around my legs. My chest is heaving. I can feel the scream stuck in my throat like a swallowed knife, the pressure of it refusing to come up or dissolve. My heart pounds as if I’ve run miles, but I haven't moved. I’ve been here the whole time.
In this bed.
In this room.
Alone.
But I wasn’t alone a second ago.
I was with him.
No—I was him.
I felt the bite of the restraints. The drugged heat in my veins. The lights. The sounds. That mask. The way his mind reeled inside his own skin. Like drowning with no water. Like burning without fire. It wasn’t fantasy. It was a memory. His memory. I sit up too fast. The room spins and rights itself, and I realize I’ve been crying. My face is wet. My hair clings to my temples. My throat is raw, like I had screamed. Maybe I did. Maybe I dreamed that, too. I clutch the sheets. Try to catch my breath.
What they did to him—
No wonder he’s silent.
No wonder his rage feels so thick it bleeds through walls.
No wonder he doesn’t trust. Doesn’t speak.
They buried him because they couldn’t use him.
Sixty years of this.
I cover my mouth with my palm and close my eyes.
It’s too much.
And still—
somehow—
not enough to make me stop wanting to reach him.