Chapter 130

Mira

I woke up in a cave, the air thick and wet around me.

Somewhere, in some direction in the darkness, a voice is hollering for help. It is Dominic’s voice, a vibration that my body would recognize anywhere. With my hands out in front of me, I started to walk forwards with shuffling feet hoping not to trip or step off a precipice into some unknown abyss.

“Hello!”

My voice is loud in my head but gets caught in the air the second it leaves my mouth, like a fly stuck in a web. And yet the echoing voice of my Fated Mate continued, warping and bouncing around me as if he were actually a ventriloquist trying to play a trick on me.

And all the while, I was being pursued by… something. It didn’t feel like one animal in one body. It felt like the cave itself was after me, trying to enclose me and suffocate me and absorb me into its walls.

I had no way of knowing where I was going, or how far I was able to travel. My feet felt heavier and heavier with each step. Dominic’s voice felt more pained with each passing second.

My front foot stumbled, and I realized I had found an edge of something. The air was a bit cooler, but not enough to be an open room. A staircase?

And then I felt hands on my back, and I was thrown down into darkness.

—

I woke up in a cold sweat in a hospital bed, at first thinking I was trapped there. My limbs were twisted in the soft linen sheets of the bed, and I had to breathe calmly to get myself out. My heart was thudding loudly but slowly, like a far off drum.

“Dominic.”

My mouth exhaled his name as I lay my head back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling. I closed my eyes again, hoping I could conjure that happy image of him on the morning I left. It had been… how long since Lucian left me here?

Several, I guessed, though when I thought back on them I could not easily distinguish one from the other. And yet, that didn’t really bother me. But dreaming of Dominic, being unable to get to him, that was the nightmare.

I dressed to go for a run, knowing I had not done that since I’d arrived here. I knew my area of the building well enough to follow the hallways to a side door that led to a yard. I had never used the door, but there were no signs warning of alarms or triggering defense systems.

I didn’t see a soul on the way from my room to the door, in all the fifteen minutes I was walking.

The morning air was so crisp that I fully gasped as it hit my face and my lungs. Had I been outside since I’d arrived? I couldn’t be sure.

My legs were stiff but thankful to be moving, and I lengthened my stride to stretch as much of my limbs as I could. I went off trail and over roots, feeling more like an animal scampering through than the human form I was in.

I longed to transform into my wolf, butI knew it was too risky at the moment. Malachi knew a lot about me when I was wolfless, but I didn’t need him to know everything about me now. I treasured my secrets now, having to lie about my outer motives in order to blend into Malachi’s plan.

Fifteen minutes had passed since I left the Main House, and up ahead of me I saw a chain-link fence. It was about ten feet high, barbed wire wound around the top. I slowed down as I approached it, wondering if it was meant to keep us out or in.

I took off my hat and tied it to the fence. Then I turned to my right, the sun at my back, and ran along the fence to see where it went. After a while noticing that it was curving slightly as it went, mostly likely forming a circle around the entire complex.

Time was lost to me as I continued mapping the circumference of the circle until I saw a gate and the road that led into the facility. I sprinted like a gazelle across the road and kept going, guessing that I was probably caught on camera as I ran by.

Suddenly my legs stopped underneath me, my body recognizing the ground under my feet. I was back where I started, I could tell by a few plant markers. But my hat was gone.

I turned around and found my way back to the road, then followed it at an easy jogging pace until the buildings appeared through the trees. A figure was standing in the center of the large courtyard between the three structures.

It was Malachi, and he was wearing my hat.

I walked the last one hundred yards, giving myself time to steady my breath and prepare myself for whatever he might have to lecture me about today. He had taken to inviting me for walks, during which he would muse about his alternative future and I would try not to reveal my inner thoughts.

“Good morning, Doctor,” he said, same as he greeted me every morning. I appreciated the honorifics. “You should’ve told someone you were going out. The security team was not aware of this habit of yours— they wondered if you might be having some kind of psychotic episode.”

“I hope I didn’t alarm them.”

“They are prepared for such occurrences, should they ever happen,” he said casually. “We must have a response team that can handle anything. Our work can of course be intense and demanding on the human psyche.”

“Of course.”

He stood watching me catch my breath, observing the lifting of my chest as I inhaled as much oxygen as I could. I felt him looking at the tips of my ears, guessing that they were turning red as they often did when I exercised.

Whenever he took to staring at me in this way, I did my best to remain neutral, to meet his eye when it passed over. I would not shy away from whatever mind game he was trying to play, I would stand up to it.

But I could never tell, exactly, the intention behind his gaze. Did he want to study me, or did he feel something else? When his eyes lingered on my lips, what thoughts crossed his mind? Was he trying to seduce me or sedate and experiment on me?

“There’s something I’d like to show you.”

Malachi handed me my hat from off his head, then turned and walked away without waiting. He was heading towards the western building, and I hurried to follow him as he headed through the front door. I had never been there before.

“Where are we going?”

“To see the test subjects.”

My mind made an immediate association, and I wondered if we were going to look at a box of mice in mazes. If only it had been mice in mazes, instead of what I saw.

Malachi took me down to a basement, to a long hallway lined with a dozen or so doors on alternating sides. There was a small window in each door, and a number outside.

More than half of the rooms turned out to be empty, but five were occupied.

The test subjects were teenagers.