Kael POV
She woke up screaming.
Not the kind of scream that came from her mouth. She didn't remember how to use her voice for that anymore. This was the scream her wolf made, the one that lived in her chest and clawed at her ribs trying to get out.
Kael's eyes snapped open to darkness. Stone walls. A high window that let in gray light from somewhere far away. She was on something soft, a bed maybe, but it didn't matter because her body was already moving, already panicking.
She wasn't outside.
She wasn't free.
The walls closed in around her and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Twelve years. Twelve years of running through forests and mountains and wilderness. Twelve years with nothing above her head but sky. Twelve years of never being trapped, never being still, never being contained.
And now walls. Four of them. A locked door.
Kael's legs gave out and she crashed to the floor. The impact sent pain through her knees but she barely felt it. She crawled to the door and started hitting it with her fists. Not thinking. Just hitting. Just screaming that wordless scream that came from somewhere deep and animal inside her.
The door didn't break.
She clawed at it next, her nails splintering against the wood. Blood started running down her fingers but she kept going, kept screaming, kept trying to break through. Her wolf was going insane inside her skull, throwing itself against the walls of her mind over and over.
Escape. We need to escape. We need to run.
The door opened a crack and Kael lunged, thinking this was her chance. But the wolf on the other side wasn't attacking. He just pushed a tray of food through and closed the door again.
She didn't want food. She wanted out.
Hours passed or maybe minutes. Time didn't work right when you were trapped. The light coming through the window never changed. Kael threw herself at the door until her fists were raw. She clawed at the walls until her fingernails were gone and her fingers were bleeding. She found a window too high to reach and jumped, trying, failing, jumping again until her legs gave out.
Eventually her body just stopped working.
She collapsed in the corner of the room, back against the cold stone. Her chest was heaving. Her hands were covered in blood. She could smell the metallic scent of it, could taste it on her lips. The room smelled like dirt and fear and something else. Something that made her nose twitch.
Wolves.
Multiple wolves beyond the door. Their scent came through the cracks, and it carried something that made her wolf snap awake. Fear. They were afraid of her. The whole compound reeked of it.
Good. They should be afraid.
Kael started rocking back and forth, making sounds that weren't quite words. Her wolf was too loud in her head, too frantic. She couldn't think. Couldn't do anything but rock and make those broken animal noises and bleed onto the stone floor.
The mate.
That thought cut through everything else. The mate had brought her here. His scent was all over these walls. She could smell him in the stone, in the air, everywhere. Her wolf wanted to follow that scent, wanted to find him, wanted to do something Kael didn't have words for.
But the door was locked.
And the walls were everywhere.
Time moved in strange ways. Sometimes she thought hours had passed. Sometimes she thought it was seconds. She was exhausted and starving and her body hurt from throwing itself at the door over and over. She should eat the food they left but eating felt like giving up. Eating felt like accepting that she was going to stay here, locked in this box, forever.
Then she caught his scent again.
Stronger this time. Closer.
Kael's head snapped up. Her wolf was suddenly quiet, focused. The mate. He was near. Right on the other side of something. She could smell him, could almost taste him in the air.
She got up on shaky legs and turned in a slow circle, trying to figure out where the smell was coming from. There. The wall. There was something different about it. A slight darker patch that her eyes couldn't quite focus on. Kael walked toward it, her raw hands reaching out.
Glass. Her fingers found something smooth and hard. Glass.
He was watching her.
The realization hit her like a physical thing. The mate was on the other side of this. Watching. Seeing her like this. Dirty. Bleeding. Broken.
Kael should have cared about that. Some piece of her that remembered being human probably cared. But she was too far gone now, too much wolf, too much rage and pain and confusion.
She put her palm flat against the glass and stared into the darkness on the other side. She couldn't see him but she could feel him. Her wolf could feel him. Could feel that strange pulling sensation again, the one that made her want to hurt things and protect things at the same time.
Mate.
The word was there, sitting in her throat like a live coal. It had no sound, hadn't for so long. But the shape of it was clear in her mind. She'd heard it once, years ago, before the massacre. Before everything went dark.
Mate.
Kael opened her mouth and let the word form on her lips without sound. Just the shape. Just the shape of that one word, silent and desperate and meant for the wolf on the other side of the glass who was watching her suffer in this cage.
His wolf recognized it. She felt it like a vibration through the glass. Like something breaking.
Mate, she mouthed again, pressing her forehead against the cool surface.
And on the other side of that one-way mirror, Alpha Cassian Blackthorn watched his feral mate mouth the word that would change everything.
His entire world stopped.