Chapter 9 THE WEIGHT OF CHAINS

~Jenna~

The bars taunted me.

I'd been staring at them so long they'd become a kind of companion — cold, indifferent, permanent. I growled once, low and hollow, then tucked my snout beneath my tail and let my eyes fall shut. Sleep was a mercy, but the chain never granted mercy. It dug in the moment my body went slack, as if it knew when I'd forgotten to brace for it.

Nine days.

A week and two days since Alcander had locked me in here like a feral thing, because maybe that's what I'd become. The spoiled meat in the corner announced itself constantly — rancid and sweet in a way that turned even my wolf's stomach. I sneezed, scratched my snout, and curled tighter. The blood had long dried in my fur, matting it into something heavy and foreign. My own neck felt like a stranger's — thick with crusted wound, hot where the chain had carved itself in.

Audrey hadn't spoken. Not once. She'd gone somewhere deep and dark inside me and pulled the door shut, and I didn't blame her.

I'd howled. The first three days I'd howled until my voice came out broken and thin. I'm willing to obey, I'd wanted to tell him. But I will never submit. There was a difference — one he hadn't bothered to understand.

The bars rattled.

My ears twitched, but I didn't move. I kept my tail over my eyes, kept my breathing measured, kept every muscle deliberately still.

"Are you going to behave now," Alcander's voice cut through the silence, "or are we doing the brat routine again?"

The door swung open. His footsteps were unhurried — the walk of a man who has never once had to rush for anything. They stopped directly in front of me. I felt the shadow before I saw it.

He tapped his foot. Once. Twice.

Slowly, my tail slid free.

I looked up.

His hazel eyes were already on my neck — not my face, my neck — and something moved through his expression so quickly I almost missed it. Disgust. Then something rawer than that. Something he didn't want me to see.

He crouched. Reached toward the chain. Then stopped, dug into the pocket of his jeans, and pulled out gloves. Pulled them on carefully. Deliberately. As if touching the evidence of what he'd done required protection — from me, or from himself, I couldn't tell.

His fingers found the chain and I growled, soft and warning.

He didn't stop.

He worked slowly, following the metal where it had settled into the wound, easing it loose with a precision that almost felt like tenderness. Almost. I whimpered when he lifted one side; he slowed, jaw tightening. My claws dragged against the floor in short, helpless strokes. A low howl climbed out of me before I could stop it.

Then he reached the underside of my neck.

He paused.

I growled at him, watching his face. For a moment, something unreadable settled over his features — and then he pulled the last length free.

The pain hit white and total. I was on my feet before I knew it, moving, howling, circling the cell in blind instinct while blood tracked across the cement. I couldn't stop. My whole body shook with it.

"Jenna." His voice was quiet now. He'd stood up, peeled off one glove, let it drop to the floor. He was watching me with an expression I didn't have a name for. "Don't. I will put you back."

The threat landed. But it was the quietness of it that stopped me.

I lay down. Let out one long, shaking breath.

"Shift."

I tried. I closed my eyes and reached for it — and the moment the change began, the fur shifting, the bones starting their quiet rearrangement — agony. I stopped. Shook my head slowly at him, once, side to side.

I can't.

His face did something complicated. He smoothed it over quickly, but not quickly enough.

"Come," he said, and walked out.

I followed.

The stairs felt longer than I remembered. But it was the door at the top that undid me — the light. Nine days and I'd forgotten what sunlight felt like. It hit my eyes like a white flame and I stopped, frozen on the threshold, eyes clenched shut, just breathing.

Grass. Real grass under my paws. Green and cool and alive, nothing like blood-damp cement. I stood there and shook — just a little — before I remembered my neck and went still again.

When I opened my eyes, Alcander was watching me from a few feet ahead. Something in his posture had shifted, though I couldn't name it. He turned without a word.

The pack house fell silent the moment I crossed the threshold. Conversations died. Somewhere, a mother pressed her pup's face into her side. Eyes moved over my matted fur, my blood-stiffened neck, my slow and careful steps — and the looks I received were the kind reserved for things that have stopped being worth looking at.

I snapped my jaw at the nearest set of staring eyes. They looked away.

Alcander took a left down a corridor and pushed through a door without knocking. I followed him into a pale blue room that smelled of antiseptic and old pain. Medical cots. IV lines. A wolf on the far cot biting down on a rag while someone worked at his shoulder — bone, socket, the awful intimate wrongness of a joint being forced back into place. He growled. The nurse didn't flinch.

"Dr. Vivens." Alcander's voice carried over the room. "My Luna needs your attention."

The old man straightened from his patient, turned, and smiled — until he saw me. The smile dissolved into something more careful. He looked like a man revising several assumptions at once.

He took a step toward me, hand outstretched, and I curled my lip.

He glanced at Alcander. A small, knowing smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Feisty. Just the ones you like."

I growled at that.

He approached slowly, palms raised. "Luna, I won't hurt you. You have my word."

His word. I'd been given words before.

I felt the prick in my flank before I understood what was happening. I spun — a nurse, needle already withdrawn, expression perfectly neutral. I growled, but the sound came out soft and wrong. My legs understood what was happening before my mind did.

The room tilted.

I met the floor gently, like something being set down.

The last thing I saw was Alcander — crouching, reaching for me — before the dark swallowed everything whole.