BULLIED FOR BEING WOLFLESS, UNTIL SHE TRANSFORMED AND ALL ALPHAS BOWED

We’re told that everyone has a wolf inside them.

That when the moon calls, your soul splits open and something wild and magnificent emerges.

They say it’s your birthright written into your bones before you even take your first breath.

The elders whisper that finding your wolf is like coming home to yourself, that the transformation is painful but beautiful, a right of passage that makes you complete.

But when you’re 23 years old and you’ve bled through a hundred full moons without so much as a whisper from the beast that’s supposed to live inside you, you learn the devastating truth.

Some of us are born hollow.

Some of us are just empty.

And in a world where your wolf defines your worth, being wolfless doesn’t just make you weak, it makes you nothing.

Before we begin today’s story, I want to share something special with you.

If you’ve ever struggled with betrayal or wondered how to reclaim your power after being hurt, this book is just for you.

It’s called How to Find Peace After Being Betrayed by Someone You Trusted: A Woman’s Path to Letting Go and Reclaiming Her Power.

You’ll find the link in the description below.

Now, let’s dive into today’s emotional journey.

Chapter 1, The Empty Vessel.

The scent of my own blood had become familiar.

I pressed the torn fabric of my shirt against the gash above my eyebrow, watching the crimson bloom across the cotton like a sick flower.

Around me, the training grounds had gone silent.

That particular kind of silence that feels like a held breath, like everyone’s waiting to see if you’ll finally break.

Get up, wolfless.

Carara’s voice dripped with boredom, as if tormenting me had become just another tedious chore.

She stood 5t away, her claws already retracted, her wolf barely even stirred by our sparring session.

That’s what they called it, sparring.

As if there was any question of who would win, I pushed myself to my knees, then my feet.

The world tilted slightly, but I’d learned to hide the dizzy spells, show weakness, and they’d only hit harder.

I’m up, I said quietly.

Then shift.

Carara’s lips curved into something that might have been a smile on anyone else.

On her.

It looked like a predator bearing its teeth.

Oh, wait.

I forgot.

You can’t.

Laughter rippled through the crowd.

43 wolves all watching, all waiting for the daily humiliation of Vera Ashwood, the alpha’s daughter who couldn’t shift.

The irony wasn’t lost on anyone.

My father, Donovan Ashwood, could trace his bloodline back seven generations of alphas.

Pure, powerful, unbroken.

My mother had been a beta’s daughter.

Strong, fertile, capable.

They’d had my sister first.

Sage shifted at 13.

Right on schedule, a gorgeous silver wolf with my mother’s eyes and my father’s raw strength.

Then they had me.

And the Ashwood legacy stopped dead.

Maybe she’s not actually his daughter.

Someone murmured from the crowd.

I didn’t look to see who.

It didn’t matter.

They all thought it.

They’d all said it at one point or another.

My father had never demanded a paternity test.

I didn’t know if that was mercy or if he simply didn’t want confirmation of what he already suspected, that his mate had betrayed him.

And the evidence of that betrayal was me.

Again, Cara said, cracking her knuckles.

Her wolf gleamed behind her eyes, golden, hungry.

Let’s see if pain can bring out what the moon couldn’t.

She moved fast.

Even expecting it, I couldn’t dodge.

Her fist connected with my ribs, and something cracked.

I went down hard, tasting dirt and copper.

That’s enough.

The voice cut through the training grounds like a blade through silk.

Every head turned, every spine straightened.

Thorn blackwater stood at the edge of the ring.

his expression unreadable.

He was beautiful in the way that dangerous things are beautiful.

All sharp edges and controlled violence.

Black hair that looked like he dragged his hands through it too many times.

Eyes so dark they appeared black until the light hit them right.

And you caught hints of deep amber.

He moved like water, like shadow, like something that had never questioned its right to exist.

The alpha’s son from the Northern Territory.

28.

Unmated.

visiting our pack for the annual summit where alphas gathered to discuss territories, treaties, and bloodlines.

And because I was cursed by the universe itself, he was also my sister’s intended mate.

Lord Blackwater.

Cara immediately dropped into a bow, her earlier cruelty evaporating into respect.

We were just training.

That’s not training.

His voice was soft.

Somehow that made it worse.

Thorne walked forward and the crowd parted like water around stone.

He stopped beside me, looking down at where I was still sprawled in the dirt.

That’s just cruelty pretending to have a purpose.

I waited for him to offer his hand, to help me up, to do any of the things that would make this moment into a story.

I could tell myself later that someone had seen me, that someone had cared.

He didn’t.

Instead, he turned to Carara.

If you want to fight something weaker than yourself, there’s a rabbit war in 2 mi south.

Should be about your speed.

Then he walked away.

The crowd erupted into barely contained laughter, but this time it wasn’t directed at me.

Carara’s face flushed red, her wolf rising in her eyes, but she couldn’t do anything.

You didn’t challenge a visiting Alpha’s son.

Not unless you wanted your entire pack to suffer the consequences.

I pulled myself to my feet alone.

Always alone, Vera.

I turned.

My sister Sage stood at the edge of the training grounds, her silver wolf practically glowing beneath her skin.

She was everything I wasn’t.

Tall, strong, confident, beautiful in that effortless way that made people want to follow her, to please her, to die for her.

Father wants to see you, she said, not unkindly.

Sage was never unkind to me.

That would require acknowledging I existed enough to warrant kindness.

Now, now I followed her through the packgrounds, very aware of the blood still trickling down my face.

The way my ribs screamed with every breath.

The other wolves watched us pass the golden daughter and the broken one, the air and the mistake.

The Ashwood estate sat at the heart of our territory, a sprawling compound of wood and stone that had housed seven generations of alphas.

I’d grown up here, but I’d never felt like it was home.

Home was supposed to be a place where you belonged.

My father’s office smelled like leather and pine and old paper.

He sat behind his massive oak desk, looking every inch the alpha.

He was broad-shouldered.

Gray streaking through his dark hair, eyes that could strip you bare with a glance.

He didn’t look up when I entered.

Sage, wait outside, he said.

My sister hesitated just for a moment, then left, closing the door softly behind her.

The silence stretched.

I stood there bleeding, waiting for whatever fresh humiliation he’d summoned me for.

Finally, he looked up.

The Crimson Moon Pack has made an offer, he said.

I blinked.

The Crimson Moon Pac was three territories away, brutal and insular.

Their alpha Victor Thornacclaw was known for his viciousness and his collection of rare wolves.

An offer I repeated slowly for you.

My father’s expression didn’t change.

Victor collects oddities.

Wolves with unusual traits.

He’s heard about your condition.

My condition.

As if being wolfless was something that could be cured with the right medicine.

He’s offering a substantial alliance.

protection, trade routes, access to their hunting grounds.

My father leaned back in his chair.

In exchange, you’ll go to his pack, be part of his collection.

The words landed like stones in still water, each one sending ripples of understanding through me.

You’re selling me, I said quietly.

I’m securing my packs future.

His voice was flat.

Final.

Victor wants you by the new moon.

That gives you three days to prepare.

And if I refuse now, he looked at me, really looked at me, and for just a moment, I saw something that might have been regret flicker across his face.

Then I’ll have you exiled as wolfless.

You’ll be packless, which means you’ll be fair game for any wolf who wants to claim you.

At least with Victor, you’ll have protection of a sort.

What kind of protection? The kind that comes from being valuable property.

Um, the word property hung in the air between us.

I wanted to scream, to rage, to demand why I wasn’t worth fighting for, why my sister got a powerful mate and I got sold to a collector of freaks.

But I’d learned years ago that screaming changed nothing.

3 days, I said.

3 days, he confirmed.

Then he looked back down at his papers, dismissing me as thoroughly as if I’d never existed at all.

I walked out of his office, passed my sister, who tried to catch my eye through the compound, and kept walking until I reached the only place that had ever felt like mine, the library.

It was a small building at the edge of the estate, built by my great-g grandandmother, who’d been an archavist before she was a Luna.

Most wolves didn’t care about books.

They preferred the hunt, the fight, the visceral truth of Tooth and Claw.

But I’d always been different.

I’d always been broken.

I pushed open the heavy wooden door and breathed in the scent of old paper and dust and stories.

Hundreds of them.

Thousands.

All these lives lived and recorded.

Proof that you didn’t need to be powerful to matter.

You just needed someone to remember you existed.

I pulled a book off the shelf at random.

Didn’t even look at the title and sank into the worn leather chair by the window.

The sun was setting, painting everything gold and crimson.

3 days until I became property.

Three days until whatever small life I’d managed to carve out here disappeared completely.

I opened the book and started reading, letting someone else’s story drown out my own because that was the only escape I’d ever had.

Chapter 2.

The transaction.

The Crimson Moon Packs representative arrived 2 days early.

I was in the library when I heard the commotion wolves gathering in the main courtyard.

The sharp bark of orders.

my father’s voice cutting through the noise with that particular tone he used when politics required a performance.

I didn’t move from my chair.

Let them come to me.

I had one day left of pretending I had any choice in what happened next.

The library door opened without a knock.

The man who entered wasn’t what I expected.

Victor Thornclaw’s beta was small for a wolf compact.

Neat with wire rimmed glasses that seemed absurdly delicate on someone who could probably tear out a throat with his bare hands.

He wore a tailored suit, the color of dried blood, and when he smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Miss Ashwood,” he said, his voice soft and precise.

“I’m Silus Greythorne.

I’ve come to collect you.

The new moon isn’t until tomorrow.

Plans changed.

” He tilted his head, studying me like I was a specimen under glass.

“Alpha Victor is eager to add you to his collection.

He sent me ahead to ensure the transaction is completed smoothly.

Transaction, not adoption, not rescue.

Transaction.

I need to pack, I said.

Already handled.

Your father has prepared your belongings.

Silas adjusted his glasses.

You’re permitted one personal item.

Choose wisely.

I looked around the library at the hundreds of books that had been my only companions, my only escape.

Choose one.

as if any single story could substitute for all of them.

My eyes landed on a small leather journal on the side table.

My mother’s journal.

She’d died when I was 12.

A hunting accident, they’d said, though no one ever explained why she’d been hunting alone, or why her wolf had been found 3 mi from her body.

I’d kept the journal hidden here.

My father didn’t know I had it.

Sage didn’t know.

It was the only piece of my mother that was just mine.

That I said, pointing to it.

Silas picked it up, flipped through the pages covered in my mother’s elegant handwriting, then nodded.

Acceptable.

Come, can I say goodbye to my sister? No.

Just like that.

No explanation, no negotiation.

I stood slowly, my ribs still aching from Cara’s fists two days ago.

I’d wrapped them myself.

No one had offered to help, and I’d learned not to ask.

Silas led me out of the library through the compound toward the main courtyard where a sleek black car waited.

Wolves lined the path my pack.

The people I’d grown up with, trained with, bled beside.

Not one of them met my eyes.

My father stood by the car, speaking in low tones with another man who must have been part of Victor’s entourage.

When he saw me approaching, he straightened his alpha mask firmly in place.

Vera, he said as if this was just another morning, as if he wasn’t handing his daughter over to a collector of oddities.

Silas will ensure your safe passage.

You’ll be treated well if you follow their rules.

What rules? I asked.

Alpha Victor will explain.

He paused, and for a moment, just a moment, something flickered in his expression.

Regret, guilt.

It was gone before I could name it.

You’ll always have Ashwood blood in your veins.

Try not to disgrace it.

The words landed like a slap.

Try not to disgrace it.

As if I’d done anything but disgrace it simply by existing.

Goodbye, father, I said quietly.

He nodded once, then turned and walked away.

No hug, no final words of comfort, no acknowledgement that he was sending his daughter into the unknown with a man who collected broken wolves like trophies.

Miss Ashwood.

Silas opened the car door, gesturing for me to enter.

I slid into the back seat, clutching my mother’s journal against my chest.

The leather was warm from Silas’s hands, and I held it tighter, needing something, anything that felt like home.

The door closed, the engine started, and just like that, I was leaving the only life I’d ever known.

We drove in silence for the first hour.

I watched the ashwood territory disappear behind us.

The forests I’d walked through as a child.

The streams where Sage and I used to catch fish before she shifted and I didn’t.

The training grounds where I’d learned that pain was just another constant.

“You’re very quiet,” Silas said eventually.

“Most wolves in your position are either crying or raging by now.

Would either of those things change where we’re going?” I asked.

“No, then what’s the point?” He made a small sound that might have been approval.

Alpha Victor will appreciate your practicality.

He has little patience for hysterics.

What exactly does he want with me, to study you, to understand you, to add you to his collection of rare specimens? Silus glanced at me in the rear view mirror.

You’re not the only wolfless wolf he’s acquired, but you’re the first from an alpha bloodline.

That makes you particularly valuable.

Valuable? The word tasted bitter.

What happened to the others? I asked the other wolfless wolves.

They’re alive if that’s what you’re asking.

Alpha Victor doesn’t damage his collection.

He preserves it.

Preserves.

Like I was something dead that needed to be kept from rotting.

The sun was setting when we crossed into Crimson Moon territory.

I felt it the moment we passed the border.

That strange pressure in the air that came from entering another pack’s domain.

My wolf should have responded.

should have either bristled with challenge or submitted to the dominant pack.

But I felt nothing.

Just the same hollow emptiness I’d felt my entire life.

The Crimson Moon compound was nothing like the Ashwood estate, where my father’s territory had been all wood and warmth.

This place was stone and steel.

The main building rose up like a fortress, all sharp angles and narrow windows that looked less like invitations and more like watchful eyes.

Silas parked in an underground garage that smelled like oil and ozone and something else I couldn’t quite identify.

Something chemical.

Wrong.

This way, he said, leading me to an elevator.

We descended down, down, down much farther than any normal basement should go.

My ears popped from the pressure change.

The fluorescent lights flickered occasionally, casting everything in harsh white light, punctuated by moments of darkness.

When the doors finally opened, I stepped out into a hallway that looked more like a hospital than a pack house.

White walls, white floors, the sterile smell of disinfectant, barely covering something organic and unsettling beneath it.

Doors lined both sides of the hallway.

Each one had a small window and a number.

Through the windows, I caught glimpses of people.

Wolves, I assumed, though none of them were shifted.

They sat in small rooms furnished with a bed, a desk, a chair, nothing else.

Cells? These were cells.

Welcome to the collection, Silus said.

You’ll be housed in room 17.

Alpha Victor will see you after you’ve been processed.

Processed, cleaned, examined, documented.

He stopped in front of a door marked with a 17.

Standard procedure for all new acquisitions.

The door opened and two women in white uniforms stepped out.

They weren’t wolves.

Their scent was human, flat, and uninteresting.

One of them held what looked like a medical kit.

“Strip,” the first woman said, her voice bored.

“Excuse me, your clothes off.

We need to document any existing injuries, parasites, or abnormalities.

I looked at Silas.

Is this necessary? If you want to eat tonight, yes.

He adjusted his glasses.

Resistance only makes the process longer.

I suggest you cooperate.

The weight of my situation settled over me like a physical thing.

I wasn’t a person here.

I wasn’t even a wolf.

I was a specimen, property, something to be cataloged and stored.

I thought about refusing, about fighting, about making them force me.

But I’d learned years ago that pride was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

I set my mother’s journal carefully on the small table inside the room, then began unbuttoning my shirt.

The women worked efficiently.

No kindness, but no cruelty either.

They documented every scar, every bruise, every old injury that had healed wrong.

They took measurements, drew blood, scraped cells from the inside of my cheek, photographed me from every angle like I was evidence at a crime scene.

Through it all, I stared at a spot on the wall and let my mind drift away.

It was a skill I’d perfected over the years, the ability to be present in body, but absent in spirit, to let things happen to me without them happening to the core of who I was.

When they finally finished, they gave me clothes, gray pants, and a gray shirt.

Both soft but shapeless, institutional, anonymous.

Dinner is at 6:00.

One of them said, “Shower is through that door.

You’ll meet with Alpha Victor tomorrow morning at 9:00.

Don’t be late.

” Then they left and I was alone.

I walked slowly around the room taking inventory.

The bed had clean sheets, but no blanket.

The desk had nothing on it.

No paper, no pen, nothing that could be used as a weapon or a tool.

The single window looked out onto the hallway, giving everyone who passed a clear view inside.

No privacy, no autonomy, no escaping.

I sat on the bed and picked up my mother’s journal, running my fingers over the worn leather cover.

Inside, her handwriting flowed across the pages.

observations about pack politics, notes about herbs and remedies, small stories about her daily life, and there near the end, an entry dated 3 weeks before she died.

I’ve been dreaming about the castle again, the one made of white marble with the beast in the basement.

Sage keeps asking me to tell her that story, but I can’t.

How do you explain to your daughter that some prisons are beautiful, that some monsters can be gentle, that the most dangerous thing isn’t the beast itself? But the moment you realize you’d rather stay with the monster than return to the world that made you, Vera doesn’t ask for stories yet.

She just sits in my lap and listens to my heartbeat.

Sometimes I think she’s the only one who sees me, really sees me.

Not the Luna, not Donovan’s mate, not Sage’s mother, just me.

I wonder what will happen to her when I’m gone.

Who will see her then? My hands were shaking.

I closed the journal carefully, pressing it against my chest.

I see you, mama, I whispered to the empty room.

I still see you.

A soft chime sounded some kind of announcement system.

A voice crackled through a speaker I couldn’t see.

Dinner is served in the common area.

All specimens report to the common area.

Specimens, not wolves, not people.

Specimens.

I stood slowly, tucking the journal under my pillow, and walked to the door.

It opened automatically as I approached.

Apparently, I wasn’t locked in.

I could leave my cell.

I just couldn’t leave the collection.

The common area was a large room with several tables and a serving counter.

About 15 wolves sat scattered around, eating in silence.

They all wore the same gray clothes.

They all had the same defeated posture, shoulders curved inward, eyes down, moving through the motions of existing without really living.

I got in line, was handed a tray of food that looked nutritious but completely flavorless, and found an empty table in the corner.

You’re new.

I looked up.

A girl around my age sat down across from me.

She had red hair that fell in tangled waves around her face and green eyes that held more life than anyone else in this place.

Yes, I said wolfless.

Yes, me too.

She stabbed at something on her tray that might have been chicken.

I’m Rowan.

Been here 8 months.

You’ll get used to it.

I don’t want to get used to it.

None of us did.

She leaned forward slightly.

But here’s the thing about this place.

It’s not the worst prison.

Victor’s cruel, but he’s consistently cruel.

Follow the rules.

Attend the examinations.

Don’t try to escape and you’ll be fed, housed, and left mostly alone.

And if I do try to escape? Rowan’s expression darkened.

See that guy over there? She nodded toward a man sitting alone, his shoulders hunched.

That’s Thomas.

He tried to run 3 months ago.

They caught him before he made it past the first fence.

Now he spends 2 hours a day in the therapy room.

What’s the therapy room? You don’t want to know.

Rowan took a bite of food, chewing slowly.

Look, I know this is terrifying.

I know you’re thinking about how to get out.

Everyone does at first, but the truth is this is survivable if you don’t fight it.

And fighting it only makes Victor more interested in you.

I looked around the common area at all these broken wolves, trapped in their gray clothes and gray rooms, eating their gray food in silence.

This was my future.

This was what my father had sold me into.

A life of being studied, documented, preserved like a specimen in formaldahhide.

I can’t do this, I said quietly.

You can, Rowan said.

You will, because the alternative is worse.

And deep down, you know it.

She was wrong.

She had to be wrong.

But as I looked around the room, as I saw the empty eyes and defeated postures and the absolute absence of hope, I felt something inside me crack.

Not break, not yet, but crack.

And I wondered how long it would take before that crack widened into a chasm before I became just another gray ghost shuffling through the motions of survival.

I wondered if my mother had felt this way in the moments before she died.

If she’d looked at her life at her powerful mate who never really saw her, at her golden daughter who was everything expected, at her broken daughter who was everything wrong, and thought, “This is not enough.

This cannot be all there is.

” I pushed my tray away, the food untouched.

I need to go back to my room, I said.

Rowan nodded, understanding in her eyes.

It gets easier.

Not better, but easier.

I walked back through the white hallways, past the numbered doors and the watchful windows, back to room 17.

Inside, I lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

Tomorrow, I’d meet Victor Thornclaw.

Tomorrow, I’d learn exactly what he wanted from me.

Tonight, I’d let myself grieve for the life I’d never have.

for the wolf that would never come.

For the girl who’d spent 23 years being told she was broken and had finally been sold to someone who agreed.

Outside my window, I could see other specimens moving through the hallways, living their careful, controlled lives.

And I thought, “Not me.

I won’t become this.

” But I didn’t know yet how to become anything else.

Chapter 3.

The collector.

I didn’t sleep.

How could I? Knowing that tomorrow I’d meet the man who’d bought me like livestock.

I lay in that narrow bed, staring at the ceiling tiles, counting them over and over until the numbers lost meaning.

At 8:45 a.

m.

, my door opened without warning.

Silas stood in the hallway, impeccable in another tailored suit.

This one charcoal gray.

Alpha Victor will see you now.

I followed him through a different section of the compound, away from the sterile white hallways of the collection.

Here the floors were polished marble.

Art hung on the walls, paintings of wolves in various forms, some beautiful, some grotesque, a gallery of the powerful and the broken.

We stopped in front of massive double doors made of dark wood.

Silas knocked twice, then pushed them open.

The office beyond was enormous cathedral ceilings, floor toseeiling windows overlooking a forest I couldn’t escape into.

But what dominated the space was the wall behind the desk.

It was covered in photographs, hundreds of them.

Wolves in human form.

Each picture labeled with a name, a date, and a single word describing their abnormality.

Albino, mute, three-legged, blind, hermaphrodite.

And there in the center, a new section with empty frames waiting to be filled.

Victor Thornclaw sat behind his desk.

And my first thought was, “He looks normal.

He was perhaps 50 with silver threading through dark hair, sharp features, calculating eyes.

He wore an expensive suit, and exuded the casual confidence of someone who’d never been told no.

” “Vera Ashwood,” he said, his voice smooth.

cultured.

“Please sit.

” I sat in the chair across from his desk, very aware of Silus standing behind me, blocking the exit.

“I’ve been looking forward to meeting you,” Victor continued.

“An alpha’s daughter who never shifted.

” “A wolf without a wolf.

Do you know how rare that is? I know what I am,” I said quietly.

“Do you?” He leaned forward, studying me like I was a particularly interesting puzzle.

because I’m not certain you do.

You see, I’ve collected 17 wolfless individuals over the past decade.

Most come from weak bloodlines, omegas, low-ranking families.

Their absence of a wolf could be explained by genetic weakness, he stood, walking around the desk to lean against it, “Closer to me now.

But you,” he continued, “you’re different.

Your father’s bloodline is pure alpha going back seven generations.

Your mother was a strong beta.

Your sister shifted perfectly on schedule.

So why didn’t you? I don’t know.

Neither do I yet.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

That’s what makes you so valuable.

You’re an anomaly.

A glitch in the system.

And I collect anomalies.

He walked to the wall of photographs, gesturing at them like they were his children.

Each of these wolves represents a question about our nature.

What makes us shift? What happens when that process breaks? Can it be fixed? Can it be replicated? He turned back to me.

You’re going to help me answer those questions.

I’m not a science experiment.

On the contrary, Victor’s voice hardened.

That’s exactly what you are.

Your father sold you to me with full knowledge of my intentions.

You belong to me now, Vera.

Your body, your blood, your genetic code, all mine to study.

The casual cruelty of it took my breath away.

At least with Carara’s fists, I’d known the violence was coming.

This was worse this clinical dissection of my humanity.

This reduction of my entire existence to data points and test results.

What do you want from me? I asked.

Cooperation.

He returned to his desk, pulling out a file folder.

You’ll undergo daily examinations, blood work, scans, stress tests to see if we can trigger a latent shift.

You’ll keep a journal documenting any unusual sensations, dreams, or physical changes.

And once a month, you’ll participate in a more intensive evaluation.

What does that mean? It means I’ll push your body to its absolute limits to see what happens.

Pain, pleasure, fear, rage, every extreme emotion, every physical stressor to see if your wolf is hiding or if it simply doesn’t exist.

He closed the folder.

Most subjects find these sessions challenging.

Most subjects, I repeated, you mean the other wolves you’ve tortured.

Torture implies pointless cruelty.

Victor’s expression remained neutral.

Everything I do has purpose.

I’m advancing our understanding of shifter biology.

The discomfort is merely a necessary component of scientific inquiry.

I thought about Rowan’s warning, about Thomas and the therapy room, about spending my entire life in this place being systematically broken down and studied like a lab rat.

And if I refuse, then I’ll contact your father and inform him that you’re being uncooperative.

He’ll declare you exiled, packless.

Do you know what happens to packless wolves, Vera? Victor’s voice dropped.

They’re considered rogues.

Fair game.

Any wolf can claim you, use you, kill you, and it’s perfectly legal.

No one will defend you.

No one will avenge you.

You’ll simply disappear.

He let that sink in before continuing.

Or you can cooperate.

Follow the rules, participate in my research, and in exchange, you’ll be fed, housed, and protected.

You’ll have access to books, to basic comforts.

You’ll even have a small amount of freedom within the compound.

It’s not a terrible life if you’re smart about it.

It’s a cage.

We’re all in cages, Vera.

Mine is just more honest about its bars.

Silas stepped forward, placing a document on the desk in front of me.

A contract.

Pages and pages of legal text.

Sign, Victor said.

acknowledge that you understand the terms of your residency here, that you consent to participate in my research, that you wave all rights to legal recourse for any procedures performed.

I stared at the document, at the word consent, printed in bold letters.

This wasn’t consent.

This was coercion dressed up in legal language.

But what choice did I have? I picked up the pen.

My hand shook slightly as I signed my name at the bottom of each page.

When I finished, Victor smiled genuinely pleased, like I just given him a gift.

Excellent.

Your first examination is scheduled for this afternoon at 2.

Silus will escort you.

He returned his attention to paperwork on his desk, dismissing me as thoroughly as my father had.

Welcome to the collection, Vera.

I look forward to discovering what secrets you’re hiding.

Silas led me back through the marble halls, but instead of returning to my cell, he took me to a different wing.

We stopped in front of a door labeled examination room 3 2:00.

He reminded me, “Don’t be late.

Victor doesn’t tolerate tardiness.

” Then he left me standing alone in the hallway.

I had 4 hours until my first examination.

4 hours to exist in this liinal space between my old life and whatever fresh hell awaited me.

I walked slowly, purposefully mapping the compound in my mind, the collection wing where the cells were, the administrative wing where Victor’s office Saturday, the examination rooms, the common area, and there at the far end of the compound, a library.

It was smaller than the one at home, if I could even call the Ashwood Estate home anymore.

But it had books, hundreds of them, lining shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling.

I stepped inside, breathing in that familiar scent of old paper and dust.

You’re not supposed to be here.

I spun around.

A man stood in the corner, partially hidden in shadow.

He was tall, lean, with dark hair that fell across his forehead and eyes that gleamed amber in the dim light.

Not human, not quite wolf, either.

Something else.

The library is not off limits, I said, defensive.

No one told me I couldn’t.

Relax.

He stepped into the light and I got a better look at him.

Mid-30s, maybe.

Handsome in a rough-edged way, but it was his scent that made me pause wild and sharp like pine trees and winter air.

Nothing like the flat, sterile smell of the compound.

I’m not going to report you.

Just surprised to see another reader.

Most specimens avoid this place.

Why? Because books remind them of freedom.

He pulled a volume off the shelf.

Something old, leatherbound.

Freedom is the most painful thing to remember when you’re trapped.

Who are you? I asked.

Does it matter? Yes.

He studied me for a long moment.

Those amber eyes seeing more than I wanted them to see.

My name is Dante.

I’m one of Victor’s acquisitions.

though I suspect my circumstances are somewhat different from yours.

You’re wolfless.

No.

Something flickered across his expression.

Amusement.

Bitterness.

I’m something worse.

I’m a wolf who can’t stop shifting.

I blinked.

What does that mean? It means I change forms involuntarily.

Stress, strong emotions.

Sometimes for no reason at all, my wolf takes over without permission.

It’s unstable.

Dangerous.

He set the book back on the shelf.

Victor is trying to figure out why I can’t control it.

Whether it’s psychological or physiological, whether it can be fixed, can it? I don’t know.

I’ve been here 3 years, and he’s no closer to answers than when I arrived.

Dante moved toward the door, then paused.

A word of advice.

Since you’re new, don’t give Victor hope.

The moment he thinks you might be fixable, he’ll never let you go.

Better to be a dead-end mystery than a promising experiment.

Why are you telling me this? Because you still have fight in your eyes.

Most wolves lose that within a few weeks.

He looked back at me and for a moment I saw something achingly familiar in his expression.

Loneliness, the bone deep kind that came from being surrounded by people but truly seen by no one.

Don’t lose it, Vera.

Whatever Victor does to you, don’t let him take that.

Then he was gone, leaving me alone in the library with nothing but books and the weight of his warning.

I pulled a volume off the shelf at random.

Collected fairy tales.

I sat in a worn armchair by the window and opened to a random page.

Beauty and the Beast, of course.

I read the familiar story.

The merchant’s daughter who sacrifices herself to save her father.

The beast who holds her captive.

The gradual transformation of fear into something deeper.

Love that transcends appearance.

The breaking of curses.

Fairy tales always promised that love was enough.

That if you were good and kind and patient, the monster would become a prince and you’d live happily ever after.

But this wasn’t a fairy tale.

Victor wasn’t a beast waiting to be loved back to humanity.

He was a man who collected broken things and studied them until they shattered completely.

And I wasn’t beauty, noble, and self-sacrificing.

I was just broken, empty, a wolf without a wolf.

The clock on the wall ticked toward 2:00.

Each second felt like a countdown to something I couldn’t take back.

At 1:55, I closed the book and walked to examination room 3.

Silas was already waiting.

Right on time.

Good.

Victor appreciates punctuality.

He opened the door and I stepped inside.

The room was pristine white, dominated by an examination table in the center.

Medical equipment lined the walls, machines I didn’t recognize, screens displaying readouts I couldn’t interpret.

Two assistants in lab coats stood ready, their expressions professionally blank.

And there, pulling on surgical gloves, was Victor.

Vera, he said warmly, as if we were old friends.

Thank you for being prompt.

Please remove your clothes and lie on the table.

My body locked.

What? Your clothes? Remove them.

I need to perform a baseline physical examination.

He spoke slowly, patiently, like I was a child who needed simple instructions.

This is standard procedure for all new acquisitions.

You want me to now, please? We have a schedule to keep.

I looked at the assistance at Silas standing by the door.

at Victor waiting with clinical detachment.

This was it.

The moment where I either complied and became just another specimen or I fought and suffered whatever consequences came.

I thought about Dante’s warning, about not giving Victor hope, about not losing the fight in my eyes.

No, I said quietly.

Victor’s expression didn’t change, but something shifted in the air.

A pressure, a weight, like storm clouds gathering.

I’m sorry, he said.

No, I won’t do this.

My voice was shaking, but I kept going.

You can take my blood.

You can run your tests, but I won’t strip naked and lie down like livestock.

Not for you.

Not for anyone.

The silence that followed felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.

Then Victor smiled.

Silas, he said softly.

Take her to the therapy room.

Chapter 4.

The beast in the basement.

The therapy room was in the lowest level of the compound, deeper than the collection, deeper than the examination rooms, deep enough that no one would hear you scream.

Silas didn’t speak as he led me down.

The elevator descended for what felt like forever, my ears popping twice from the pressure change.

When the doors finally opened, the air smelled different.

Damp stone and old metal and something else, something primal that made every instinct I had scream danger.

The hallway was carved from rock, not built carved.

Like we descended into a natural cave system that had been repurposed.

Torches lined the walls, casting flickering shadows that made everything feel alive and threatening.

Victor is giving you one chance to reconsider.

Silus said, his voice echoing off stone.

Cooperate with the examination, and I’ll take you back upstairs.

Continue to refuse, and you’ll spend the night here.

Here? Where? He stopped in front of a massive iron door, medieval looking.

The kind of door designed to keep something in, not just keep people out.

With the beast, Silas said simply.

He pulled the door open.

The chamber beyond was enormous, a cavern that stretched back into darkness.

The floor was smooth stone.

The walls were bare rock.

And in the center, chained to a post by heavy iron shackles, was a creature.

Not a man, not a wolf.

something in between.

It stood on two legs but hunched forward.

Muscles rippling beneath fur that was matted and dark.

Its face was wrong, too elongated to be human, too human to be animal.

Claws scraped against stone as it shifted.

And when it turned toward the door, I saw its eyes.

Amber, intelligent, furious, and achingly familiar.

“Dante,” I whispered.

The creature’s lips pulled back, revealing teeth that could tear through bone.

A low growl rumbled from its chest.

“This is what happens when his control slips,” Silas explained, completely calm despite standing 5 ft from something that could kill us both.

The shift takes over, and this is what remains.

Not quite wolf, not quite man, trapped between forms, trapped between identities.

You keep him chained like an animal because in this form, that’s what he is.

Silus pushed me forward toward the threshold.

Victor discovered something interesting about Dante’s condition.

When he’s in this state, he responds to stimuli.

Fear makes him more aggressive.

Calm makes him more docile.

And companionship.

Silas smiled slightly.

Well, we haven’t tested that thoroughly.

You’ll be the experiment.

You can’t.

I can.

And I am.

He pulled the door closed behind me.

the sound of it slamming shut, echoing through the cavern.

You have 12 hours to reconsider your refusal.

In the morning, if you agree to cooperate with Victor’s examinations, I’ll let you out.

If not, the lock clicked into place.

Well see how long you last.

His footsteps retreated.

The elevator hummed.

And then there was silence.

I pressed my back against the iron door, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat.

The creature Dante watched me from across the cavern.

His breathing was harsh, labored.

The chains clinkedked softly as he shifted his weight.

“Dante,” I said quietly.

“Can you understand me?” The growl deepened.

He took a step toward me, the chain pulling taut, testing its limits.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” I continued, keeping my voice steady.

Even though terror was crawling up my spine, “Victor sent me down here to punish me, to break me.

But I’m not your enemy.

Another step closer now.

I could see the details of his transformation.

The way his spine curved wrong.

The joints that bent at unnatural angles.

This wasn’t a smooth shift like normal wolves experienced.

This was forced, painful, trapped between forms.

Silas had said this was Victor’s therapy room.

This was the punishment for disobedience.

Spend 12 hours with something that could kill you.

something in constant agony and see if you still had the strength to refuse.

I slid down the door until I was sitting, my knees pulled to my chest.

If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to do it standing.

I read about you earlier, I said, just to fill the silence.

Beauty and the Beast.

Funny timing, really.

The merchant’s daughter gets held captive by a monster and she’s supposed to look past his appearance to see his soul.

And then he transforms into a prince and everything’s perfect.

Dante moved closer, the chain scraped against stone, but the story never talks about what happens if the beast can’t transform back.

What if there is no prince underneath? What if the monster is all that’s left? I hugged my knees tighter.

What if the merchant’s daughter is just as broken as the beast, and there’s no magic to fix either of them? He was 10 ft away now.

Close enough that I could see his chest heaving with each breath.

Close enough that if he lunged, the chain might give him just enough slack to reach me.

I’m wolfless, I told him.

23 years old, and I’ve never shifted, never felt my wolf stir.

It’s like there’s just emptiness where something should be.

My father sold me to Victor because I’m defective, broken.

An anomaly worth studying.

A sound came from Dante’s throat.

Not quite a growl.

Not quite a whimper.

You’re trapped between forms.

I continued.

I’m trapped with no form at all.

Maybe that makes us the same.

Maybe that’s why Victor put us together.

Two broken things in a room, seeing which one breaks first.

I stood slowly, my legs shaking.

I’m not going to run, I said.

And I’m not going to beg.

If you’re going to kill me, then kill me.

At least it’ll be over.

Dante stared at me.

Those amber eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that made my breath catch.

Then slowly he Saturday just sat down still in that horrifying between form still chained and monstrous but no longer aggressive just watching me with those two intelligent eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

The hours crawled by.

I talked to fill the silence about my childhood, about Sage and how perfect she was.

about my mother’s journal and the stories she used to tell, about the library at home and how books were the only place I’d ever felt safe.

Dante listened.

Sometimes he’d shift position, the chains clinking.

Sometimes that low rumble would start in his chest, but it never escalated into aggression.

And slowly, impossibly, I stopped being afraid.

This thing, this creature trapped between forms, wasn’t trying to hurt me.

It was just existing, suffering, enduring, just like me.

Can I come closer? I asked after what felt like hours.

I won’t touch you.

I just I’m tired of being afraid.

He didn’t move.

Didn’t growl.

I took that as permission.

I walked slowly across the cavern, very aware that every step was a choice to trust something I had no reason to trust.

When I was close enough to see the individual hairs of his fur, close enough to smell the wild scent of him, I sat down.

You saved me, you know, I said quietly.

When you told me not to give Victor hope, when you warned me not to lose my fight, you were trying to protect me.

Even though you barely knew me, Dante’s head tilted slightly.

Listening.

Why did you do that? I asked.

Why help me? He couldn’t answer.

Not in this form, but he moved slowly, carefully until he was lying down beside me.

Not touching, but close.

Close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his transformed body.

Close enough that I wasn’t alone.

I leaned back against the stone wall, exhausted.

Fear had drained me.

The day had drained me.

Everything had drained me.

I’m not going to cooperate, I said into the darkness.

Tomorrow when Silas comes, I’ll still refuse.

Victor can do whatever he wants to me, but I won’t let him take the last thing I have.

I won’t let him strip away my dignity.

A sound soft, almost approving.

They’ll probably send me back down here, I continued.

And the next time, you might not be so gentle.

This form might take over completely, and you might kill me.

I know that.

The amber eyes watched me steadily, but I’d rather die being myself than live as Victor’s obedient specimen.

The silence that followed felt different, felt like understanding.

I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I woke to something warm pressed against my side.

Dante, still in his between form, positioned like a guard dog, protecting me even while trapped in his own nightmare.

The sound of the door opening jolted us both awake.

Silas stood in the entrance, backlit by torch light.

12 hours, he said.

Have you reconsidered? I stood slowly, my body aching from sleeping on stone.

Dante remained beside me.

A low growl building in his chest.

No, I said clearly.

I won’t cooperate with Victor’s examination.

Silus’s expression remained neutral, but something flickered in his eyes.

Surprise, respect.

Then you’ll return to your cell until Victor decides on alternative measures.

He stepped aside, gesturing for me to exit.

The beast will be sedated and return to his quarters.

I looked at Dante at this creature who could have killed me but chose to protect me instead.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

Then I walked past Silas, out of the cavern, into the elevator that would carry me back to my cage.

But something had shifted during those 12 hours in the dark.

I’d expected to be broken, expected to emerge traumatized and compliant.

Instead, I felt stronger, clearer.

Victor wanted to study me, to understand what made me different, to reduce my existence to data and test results.

But he’d made a mistake.

He’d put me in a room with another broken thing and expected us to destroy each other.

Instead, we’d recognized each other.

and recognition.

True recognition, not the kind that came from usefulness or power or status, was the most dangerous thing you could give someone with nothing left to lose.

When I reached my cell, I pulled my mother’s journal from under my pillow and opened it to that entry about the beast in the basement.

The most dangerous thing isn’t the beast itself.

she’d written.

But the moment you realize you’d rather stay with the monster than return to the world that made you, I understood now what she meant.

The world above with its hierarchies and judgments, with fathers who sold daughters and packs that measured worth by power, that was the real monster.

The beast in the basement was just honest about what it was and honestly, I realized was something I could work with.

I picked up my pen and began writing my own entry in the margins of my mother’s words.

Day one in the collection.

Victor Thornclaw thinks he’s captured something to study, but you can’t capture what’s already empty.

You can’t break what’s already broken.

And you can’t take freedom from someone who’s never had it.

I met the beast today.

He didn’t kill me.

That seems like a good place to start.

Chapter 5.

The slow unraveling.

3 weeks in the collection, and I’d learned its rhythms.

6:00 a.

m.

Wake to the automated voice announcing breakfast.

7 a.

m.

blood draw.

8:00 a.

m.

physical assessment, weight, temperature, heart rate, all recorded in Victor’s Endless Files.

9:00 a.

m.

to noon, free time, which really meant supervised time to exist in the common area or library.

1:00 p.

m.

lunch 2 p.

m.

Whatever fresh torture Victor had designed for the day, 6:00 p.

m.

Dinner, 8:00 p.

m.

, lockdown.

Repeat.

repeat, repeat until the days blurred together.

I refused every examination that required me to undress, every scan that involved being strapped down, every procedure that took away my choice.

And every time I refused, Silas escorted me back to the therapy room, back to Dante.

The fourth night, he was in human form when I arrived, naked, chained, covered in sweat, like the transformation back had cost him everything.

He looked up when the door opened, those amber eyes still wild but recognizably his.

“You’re an idiot,” he said, his voice.

“Hello to you, too.

Victor will break you eventually.

Everyone breaks, then I’ll break.

” I sat down against the wall in what had become my usual spot.

“But I won’t bend first.

” He laughed a bitter, exhausted sound.

“You know what the definition of insanity is? doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Then I’m insane.

I pulled my knees to my chest.

At least I’m consistently insane.

Over the following nights, we talked, really talked about his life before Victor, a soldier who’d been injured in combat, whose wolf had been damaged by the trauma and never healed right.

About how he’d volunteered for Victor’s research initially, thinking the man could help him.

about how he’d realized too late that Victor didn’t want to help anyone.

He wanted to understand, to catalog, to preserve broken things in their broken state.

“You could have killed me that first night,” I said during our sixth session together.

“Why didn’t you?” Dante was in his between form again.

It seemed to cycle unpredictably.

Sometimes human, sometimes wolf, sometimes that agonizing space in between.

He made a sound that might have been a laugh.

Then he did something that shocked me.

He picked up a stick of charcoal from the corner of the cavern where it came from.

I didn’t know.

And scratched words into the stone floor.

Recognized you.

Recognized me how? I leaned closer, reading the crude letters.

More scratching.

Same eyes.

Empty.

Broken.

Real.

My throat tightened.

I’m not.

Don’t lie.

Not here.

He was right.

down here in the dark with a creature who was more honest about his monstrousness than any human I’d ever met.

Lying felt obscene.

“Okay,” I whispered.

“Yes, I’m empty.

I’m broken.

I don’t know how to be anything else.

” He erased the words with one massive paw, then wrote.

“Good.

Empty things can’t be filled with poison.

” I stared at those words for a long time.

“Is that what Victor did to you?” I asked.

“Filled you with poison?” filled me with hope.

Worse, how is hope worse than poison? He looked at me with those two knowing eyes.

And even in his monstrous form, I saw the answer clearly.

Because poison killed you quickly.

Hope killed you slowly, one disappointment at a time.

Until you were a hollow shell, still technically breathing.

I won’t hope then, I said.

I’ll just exist one day at a time, one night at a time.

He moved closer, settling beside me in that protective position he’d taken that first night.

And despite everything, despite his claws and fangs, and the wrongness of his between form, I felt safer here than I ever had in my cell.

The pattern continued.

“Refuse examination.

Spend night with Dante.

Return to cell.

Repeat.

” Rowan cornered me in the library on day 22.

“You’re different,” she said, studying me with those sharp green eyes.

When you first arrived, you looked terrified.

Now you look, I don’t know, calm.

I’m not calm.

I’m just tired of being afraid.

They’re sending you to the therapy room almost every night.

Thomas spent three nights there and came back shattered.

You’ve been going for weeks.

She leaned closer, lowering her voice.

What’s down there, Vera? What are they doing to you? I thought about Dante.

about those hours in the dark where we existed outside Victor’s experiments, outside the collection’s rules, where I was just Vera and he was just Dante and we were both broken but somehow less broken together.

Nothing.

I said they’re doing nothing.

That’s the point.

It was the truth in a way.

Victor thought he was punishing me.

He thought isolation with a dangerous creature would break my will.

He didn’t realize he’d given me the only thing that could strengthen it.

someone who saw me and didn’t look away.

Week five, Victor changed tactics.

Instead of Silus escorting me to the therapy room, I was taken to a different examination room.

This one had a table with restraints machines that hummed with electricity and Victor wearing an expression of clinical disappointment.

Your resistance is admirable but ultimately pointless.

He said, “I’ve been patient.

I’ve given you time to adjust, but my research has a schedule and you’re causing delays.

Two assistants stood on either side of me.

Large men, wolf shifters by their scent.

You have a choice, Victor continued.

Cooperate with today’s examination voluntarily, or my assistance will restrain you and will proceed anyway.

Either way, the examination happens.

The only variable is whether you maintain a shred of dignity in the process.

My pulse hammered.

This was different.

This wasn’t a test of will.

This was inevitability.

What’s the examination? I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.

Full body scan.

I need detailed images of your skeletal structure, musculature, and organ placement to compare with normal shifter anatomy.

He gestured to a machine that looked like a narrow tube.

You’ll need to remove your clothing and lie still for approximately 30 minutes.

That’s all.

That’s all,” I repeated.

“Yes, no pain, no invasive procedures, just imaging.

” He folded his arms.

“This is the most basic, non-threatening examination possible.

Vera, if you can’t cooperate with this, then we have a much more serious problem.

” I looked at the restraints, at the assistance, at the machine that would see through my skin to the bones beneath.

I thought about Dante’s words scratched in stone.

Don’t give hope.

But I also thought about survival, about choosing which battles to fight and which to concede.

Everyone leaves the room.

I said, “Except you.

No assistance, no observers, and I put on the medical gown myself.

You don’t touch me.

” Victor considered this.

Acceptable.

Gentlemen, wait outside.

The assistants left, the door closed, and I was alone with the man who’ bought me.

The gown is there.

Victor pointed to a folded garment on the counter, then turned his back.

I’ll give you privacy to change.

Tell me when you’re ready.

I changed quickly, my hands shaking.

The gown was thin paper, barely covering anything, but it was still more than being completely naked.

“Ready,” I said.

Victor turned, his expression professional.

“Lie down in the scanner.

Try not to move.

” I did as instructed.

The machine hummed to life, sliding me into its narrow confines.

The space was claustrophobic, pressing in from all sides.

Close your eyes, I told myself.

Breathe.

This will be over soon.

But 30 minutes felt like hours.

When it finally ended, Victor helped me out of the machine.

Good.

That wasn’t so difficult, was it? I didn’t answer.

just grabbed my clothes and changed with my back to him, my hands still trembling from adrenaline and shame.

You’ll return to your cell, Victor said, making notes on his tablet.

No therapy room tonight.

Consider this a reward for cooperation.

A reward.

He was conditioning me like an animal, punishment for resistance, rewards for compliance.

But as I walked back to my cell, I realized something.

I’d cooperated.

I’d given in.

And the worst part was it had been easy that night.

I couldn’t sleep.

I kept thinking about how quickly I’d folded, how little it had taken for me to surrender that piece of myself.

At midnight, my door opened.

Silus stood in the hallway.

Come with me.

I cooperated today.

Victor said, “This isn’t punishment.

” His expression was unreadable.

Someone requested to see you.

He led me down to the lowest level to the therapy room.

But when he opened the door, Dante was in human form, sitting against the far wall, still chained but himself.

His eyes met mine across the cavern.

You have 1 hour, Silas said, then closed the door behind me.

I walked slowly toward Dante, sat down beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched.

You cooperated today, he said.

It wasn’t a question.

Yes.

Why? Because I was tired.

Because it seemed easier than fighting.

Because I swallowed hard.

Because maybe you were right.

Maybe everyone breaks eventually.

No.

His voice was firm.

Everyone bends.

There’s a difference.

What difference? When you bend, you can still straighten back up.

When you break, you stay broken.

He turned to look at me.

And there was something fierce in his expression.

You bent today.

You made a strategic choice.

That’s not the same as breaking.

It feels the same.

It’s not.

He shifted and I heard the chains clink.

I broke three years ago.

I let Victor convince me that understanding my condition was more important than maintaining my dignity.

I let him fill me with hope that he could fix me.

And when that hope died, there was nothing left.

Just this.

He gestured at his chained body.

just a creature that shifts uncontrollably and gets studied like a specimen.

You’re not just that, I said quietly.

No, he laughed bitterly.

What else am I, Vera? What else is there? I thought about the past 5 weeks, about the words scratched in stone, about the protective way he positioned himself beside me, even when his wolf was in control.

You’re someone who understands, I said.

You’re someone who doesn’t look away from broken things.

You’re someone who warned a stranger not to give up her fight, even though you’d given up your own silence.

Then I didn’t give up my fight.

I just ran out of things to fight for.

Then fight for this.

I turn to face him fully.

Fight for these hours we get.

Fight for the fact that Victor thinks he’s punishing us.

But really, he’s giving us the only honest thing in this place.

What’s that? Each other.

The words hung in the air between us.

Dante stared at me, something shifting in his amber eyes.

Surprise, maybe.

Or recognition of a different kind.

You’re dangerous, he said softly.

Why? Because you make me think maybe breaking wasn’t the end.

He leaned his head back against the stone wall.

And thinking that way is how Victor wins.

Or, I said, thinking that way is how we win.

There is no winning here, Vera.

There’s only surviving.

Then we survive together.

He closed his eyes.

You should go back upstairs, back to your cell.

Stop refusing examinations.

Stop getting sent down here.

Make your life easier.

No.

Why not? Because if I do that, I’ll lose the only real thing I have in this place.

I stood, preparing to leave, and I’d rather be punished with honesty than rewarded with lies.

Silas opened the door right on Q.

1 hour, not a minute more.

As I walked away, I heard Dante’s voice, barely above a whisper.

“Same time tomorrow,” I looked back.

He was smiling, a real smile, small and fragile, but genuine.

“Same time tomorrow,” I confirmed.

And for the first time since arriving at the collection, I went to sleep almost hopeful.

Almost.

We’ll continue in just a moment.

But I need to say something.

Thousands of you listen to these stories every week to escape, to heal, to feel understood.

Yet, most of you don’t subscribe.

If these stories matter to you, if they’ve helped you through dark times, show it.

Subscribe.

Because without your support, stories like this disappear.

Let’s continue.

Chapter 6.

The riddle.

Week 8.

Victor called me to his office.

I went with Silus, my stomach tight with anticipation.

Two months of examinations, refusals, punishments, and small compromises.

Two months of nights with Dante, learning the language of two broken things, trying to be less broken together.

What fresh torture had Victor designed now? But when I entered his office, he wasn’t alone.

A woman sat across from his desk, mid-40s, elegant in a tailored suit with silver hair pulled back in a severe bun.

Her scent was pure wolf, strong and dominant.

an alpha or close to it.

Vera, Victor said, gesturing to an empty chair.

This is Dr.

Helena Frost.

She’s a specialist in shifter genetics from the European Consortium.

I’ve asked her to consult on your case.

Dr.

Frost studied me with cool gray eyes.

Miss Ashwood, I’ve reviewed your files.

Your bloodline is remarkable.

Seven generations of pure alpha genetics on your father’s side.

Strong beta lineage from your mother.

And yet, no wolf.

If you’re here to tell me I’m defective, I already know, I said flatly.

On the contrary, she opened a folder, pulling out what looked like genetic charts.

I’m here to tell you that you’re not defective.

You’re dormant.

The word hit me like a physical blow.

What? Dormant? She repeated.

Your wolf exists, Miss Ashwood.

But it’s sleeping.

buried so deeply in your genetic code that it might as well not exist, but it’s there.

” I stared at her, unable to process what she was saying.

“That’s not possible.

I’m 23.

If I had a wolf, it would have emerged by now.

Under normal circumstances, yes, but your circumstances aren’t normal.

” Dr.

Frost stood, walking to Victor’s wall of photographs.

I’ve spent 15 years studying wolves who present as dormant.

It’s extraordinarily rare.

less than 1 in 10,000.

And in every case, the dormcancy is caused by severe psychological trauma during the critical developmental period.

I wasn’t traumatized, I said.

Weren’t you? Her eyes pinned me.

Your sister shifted at 13.

Perfectly beautifully.

And you felt what? Pride.

Happiness.

The memory came back sharp and clear.

Sage’s first transformation.

Everyone celebrating.

my father’s face glowing with satisfaction and me standing at the edge of the gathering feeling something inside me shrivel and die shame pure absolute shame you felt inadequate doctor Frost continued you internalized the message that you were broken wrong unworthy and your wolf sensing that rejection that self-hatred buried itself to protect you from further pain that’s not how it works I whispered, “That’s exactly how it works.

The wolf is not separate from the human, Miss Ashwood.

It’s an extension of your consciousness, your soul.

When you rejected yourself, your wolf went dormant rather than emerge into a host that didn’t want it.

” The room tilted.

“I gripped the arms of my chair, trying to breathe.

So, I did this to myself,” I said numbly.

“I broke my own wolf.

” “You survived,” Dr.

Frost corrected.

Your psyche protected itself the only way it knew how.

But survival mechanisms that work at 13 become prisons at 23.

Your wolf is still there, Vera.

It’s just waiting for you to be ready.

Victor leaned forward, his expression intense.

Dr.

Frost believes she can trigger your wolf’s emergence.

With the right combination of psychological therapy and controlled stressors, we can wake sleeping.

Why? I looked between them.

Why do you care if I shift or not? Because if we can document the process of awakening a dormant wolf, we can help thousands of others trapped in similar circumstances.

Doctor Frost said, “This is groundbreaking research, Miss Ashwood.

You could be the key to understanding something we’ve barely begun to comprehend.

And if I refuse, Victor’s smile was thin.

Then you remain in the collection indefinitely, serving no purpose except as another specimen in my catalog.

But if you cooperate with Dr.

Frost’s protocol, if you allow us to attempt to wake your wolf and it succeeds, he paused, then you’ll be free to leave.

The words hung in the air like a promise and a trap.

Free? I repeated completely.

Your contract nullified your father’s debt to me satisfied.

You’d be packless, yes, but you’d be a shifter.

You could find a new pack, start a new life, or go rogue.

It would be your choice, Dr.

Frost pulled out another document.

The protocol would take approximately 3 months.

Intensive therapy sessions, controlled emotional stressors, meditation, and visualization techniques.

It won’t be easy, Miss Ashwood.

You’ll have to confront every piece of trauma, every moment of shame, every belief that tells you you’re not worthy.

But if you’re willing to do the work, I want to think about it, I interrupted.

Victor’s expression hardened.

You have 24 hours.

Dr.

Her frost schedule is limited.

If you refuse, she returns to Europe and this opportunity disappears.

That night, Silas took me to the therapy room without me having to refuse an examination first.

Dante was in human form waiting.

He looked up when I entered.

Immediately, reading my expression.

What happened? I told him everything about Dr.

Frost, about dormant wolves, about the possibility that I wasn’t broken, just buried.

When I finished, he was quiet for a long time.

Do you believe her? He finally asked.

I don’t know.

Maybe.

It makes a horrible kind of sense.

I felt it happened that moment when Sage shifted and something inside me just gave up, closed down.

I thought it was confirmation that I was defective.

But what if it was just my wolf protecting me and Victor’s offering freedom if you cooperate? Yes, don’t do it.

I blinked.

What? Don’t do it, Vera.

It’s a trap.

Dante shifted positions, his chains clinking.

Think about what he’s offering.

Three months of intensive therapy, controlled stressors, emotional manipulation, all documented, all studied, all added to his research.

And at the end, if it works, you get to leave.

But if it doesn’t work, I stay here.

I finished quietly.

Exactly.

And now Victor has three months of data on attempting to trigger a dormant wolf.

He wins either way.

But what if it does work? What if I could actually shift? Then you’d be giving Victor the most valuable data he’s ever collected.

You’d be making him rich and famous.

His name would be attached to the breakthrough discovery of how to wake dormant wolves.

Dante’s voice was bitter.

And you’d have helped him do it.

I sat down heavily.

So I’m trapped either way.

stay here as a specimen who serves no purpose.

Or cooperate and potentially give Victor exactly what he wants.

Yes, that’s a terrible set of options.

Welcome to the collection.

He looked at me with those amber eyes.

But there’s a third option.

You’re not considering.

What’s that? Play the game differently.

Cooperate with Dr.

Frost, but don’t actually try to wake your wolf.

Go through the motions.

Look like you’re making progress.

String them along for three months, then claim it didn’t work.

Victor gets nothing.

And you’ve bought yourself time.

Time for what? Time to plan an actual escape.

Time to map this compound.

Time to find weaknesses.

He leaned forward as much as his chains allowed.

I’ve been here 3 years, Vera.

I know things.

Patrol schedules, guard rotations, points where the security is thin.

I could help you.

Why would you help me escape when you can’t escape yourself? The question hung between us because Dante said slowly, “Someone should get out.

Someone should make it.

And if it can’t be me, then I want it to be you.

” My throat tightened.

“I can’t just leave you here.

You can.

You will.

Because that’s what survival looks like.

” His voice was firm.

Promise me, Vera.

Promise that you’ll take the opportunity if it comes.

Don’t let this place consume you the way it consumed me.

Before I could answer, he did something unexpected.

He asked a question that sounded like a riddle.

What weighs nothing but becomes heavier the longer you carry it.

I blinked at the sudden shift.

What? It’s a riddle.

Answer it.

I I don’t know.

Guilt, grief, close, but not quite.

He smiled slightly.

Think about it.

You have 24 hours to give Victor your answer.

Take that time to figure out the riddle, too.

The answer matters more than you think.

Why? Because riddles teach us to look at things differently, to see past the obvious answer to the truth underneath.

And right now, you need to see past Victor’s obvious trap to the truth underneath it.

Silus opened the door.

Times up, I stood reluctantly.

I’ll think about the riddle and the decision.

Good.

Dante’s eyes held mine.

and Vera.

Whatever you decide tomorrow, don’t decide out of hope.

Decide out of strategy.

Hope is what got me chained here.

Strategy is what might get you out.

I didn’t sleep that night.

I lay in my cell, turning both riddles over in my mind.

What weighs nothing but becomes heavier the longer you carry it? And the larger question, what was the right choice? Cooperate genuinely and risk giving Victor everything while potentially freeing my wolf.

cooperate falsely and buy time while learning escape routes.

Refuse entirely and remain a useless specimen forever.

I pulled out my mother’s journal, flipping through her entries, searching for wisdom in her words.

One passage caught my eye.

The beast asked Beauty a question every night.

Will you marry me? And every night she said no, not because she didn’t care for him, but because she knew the question was really asking.

Will you give up who you are to become what I need? When she finally said yes, it wasn’t to the question he asked.

It was to the question underneath.

Can you love something that the world calls monstrous? Her yes wasn’t surrender.

It was recognition.

And that made all the difference.

I read it three times.

Look past the obvious question to the real question underneath.

Victor was asking, “Will you cooperate with my research?” But the real question was, “Will you give up who you are to become what I need?” And suddenly, I understood Dante’s riddle.

What weighs nothing but becomes heavier the longer you carry it? The answer wasn’t guilt or grief.

It was other people’s expectations, other people’s needs, other people’s definitions of what you should be.

My father expected me to be a shifter.

I failed.

Victor expected me to be a useful specimen.

I refused.

Dr.

Frost expected me to want my wolf awakened.

Did I? Or did I just want to want it because everyone told me I should.

I picked up my pen and wrote in the margin of my mother’s journal.

What if I don’t want my wolf? What if being wolfless isn’t a failure? It’s just who I am? What if the real trap isn’t staying in the collection, but spending my life trying to become something I’m not? The words stared back at me.

Revolutionary and terrifying.

I thought about Dante, trapped between forms, neither fully human nor fully wolf, always searching for the balance, always failing.

I thought about Sage, perfectly shifted, perfectly accepted, perfectly miserable in a life chosen for her by others.

I thought about my mother, who wrote about beasts in basement, and seemed to understand that sometimes the cage wasn’t the room, it was the expectations.

And I thought about myself.

Vera Ashwood, wolfless, broken, empty, or maybe just different.

When morning came, Silas escorted me to Victor’s office.

Dr.

Frost was there waiting.

Both of them looked at me expectantly.

I’ve made my decision, I said.

And Victor leaned forward.

I’ll cooperate with Dr.

Frost’s protocol on one condition, which is I took a deep breath.

After each therapy session, I spend one hour in the therapy room with Dante.

Victor frowned.

Why? Because if you’re going to dig into my trauma, if you’re going to make me confront everything that buried my wolf, then I need grounding.

Someone who understands what it means to be trapped between what you are and what everyone expects you to be.

It was a gamble.

Victor could refuse.

could see through to my real motivation using those hours to plan an escape.

But Dr.

Frost nodded slowly.

Actually, that’s not a bad idea.

Having emotional support during intensive therapy could improve outcomes.

As long as the subject remains chained and supervised, he stays chained, I said quickly.

I don’t need him freed.

I just need him there.

Victor studied me for a long moment.

Then he smiled.

Acceptable.

One hour after each therapy session, Silas will supervise.

He stood, extending his hand.

“Welcome to the breakthrough protocol, Miss Ashwood.

Let’s wake your wolf.

” I shook his hand, my palm sweating.

I’d just bought myself 3 months.

3 months of therapy sessions and time with Dante.

3 months to figure out if I actually wanted my wolf awakened or if I wanted something else entirely.

Chapter 7.

The awakening that wasn’t.

Dr.

Frost’s therapy wasn’t what I expected.

There were no comfortable couches or gentle questions about my feelings.

Instead, she led me to a specialized chamber on the third level.

A circular room with white walls and a chair in the center that looked more like a throne than furniture.

Sit, she instructed.

I Saturday.

Immediately, restraints clicked into place around my wrists and ankles.

What? Relax.

They’re just to keep you grounded during the process.

Dr.

Frost wheeled over a cart of equipment, electrodes, monitors, syringes filled with clear liquid.

Awakening a dormant wolf requires accessing your subconscious.

We’ll use a combination of guided meditation, sensory deprivation, and mild pharmaceutical assistance.

Pharmaceutical assistance? Nothing dangerous, just something to lower your psychological barriers, make you more receptive to suggestion.

She began attaching electrodes to my temples.

The wolf is buried deep in your psyche, Vera.

We need to dig.

Over the next hour, she injected me with something that made the room blur and soften.

Her voice became a distant echo, guiding me through visualizations.

Imagine your wolf.

What does she look like? I tried, pictured fur and fangs and power, but the image kept slipping away, replaced by emptiness.

Go back to the moment you lost her.

The moment she went dormant.

Can you see it? Sage’s first transformation.

The crowd celebrating my father’s pride and me feeling something inside curl up and die.

Why did she leave Vera? What did you do? I failed.

I whispered.

I wasn’t good enough.

Wasn’t strong enough.

Wasn’t Wasn’t worthy.

Dr.

Frost finished.

You believed you didn’t deserve your wolf.

So she left to protect you from that belief.

But Vera, what if you were worthy all along? The drugs made everything feel distant, like I was watching someone else’s life.

But underneath the haze, a small part of me stayed sharp, analytical.

This was manipulation.

Beautiful, elegant manipulation designed to rewrite my memories, to convince me that my wolf was just waiting for me to believe in myself.

It would be so easy to believe it.

So easy to surrender to the narrative Dr.

Frost was building.

But Dante’s warning echoed in my mind.

Don’t decide out of hope.

Decide out of strategy.

When the session ended, Dr.

Frost helped me out of the chair.

My legs were unsteady, my mind foggy.

Good work today, she said, making notes on her tablet.

We made contact with some deep trauma.

Tomorrow we’ll go deeper.

By the end of the week, I expect we’ll start seeing physiological responses.

Temperature spikes, muscle tension, hormonal changes, all indicators that your wolf is beginning to wake.

Silus appeared at the door.

Time for your hour in the therapy room.

I followed him down to the lowest level, still dizzy from whatever Dr.

Frost had given me.

When the iron door opened, Dante was waiting in human form, his expression immediately concerned.

You look terrible, he said as soon as Silus closed the door behind me.

Thanks.

I stumbled to our usual spot against the wall and slid down.

Dr.

Frost’s therapy is intense.

What did she do? I told him everything.

The restraints, the drugs, the guided meditation designed to convince me my wolf was just buried trauma away from emerging.

Dante listened, his jaw tight.

She’s gaslighting you.

making you believe the narrative that serves Victor’s research.

I know.

I rubbed my temples, trying to clear the fog.

But what if she’s right? What if my wolf really is there and I’m just too broken to find her? Stop.

His voice was sharp.

This is exactly what they want for you to question yourself, to doubt your reality.

You’ve lived 23 years in your body.

Vera, you know yourself better than any researcher with a theory.

Do I? The drugs were making me emotional, vulnerable.

Maybe I don’t know anything.

Maybe I’ve been lying to myself this whole time.

Maybe.

Hey.

Dante shifted as close as his chains allowed.

Look at me.

I met his amber eyes.

Your worth isn’t determined by whether you can shift, he said quietly.

Not by whether you have a wolf.

Not by what your father wanted or your pack expected or Victor needs for his research.

You are enough exactly as you are.

How can you say that? You don’t even know me.

I know you refused to be stripped of your dignity even when it meant punishment.

I know you chose to spend nights with a monster rather than comply with cruelty.

I know you asked for these hours together, not because you needed protection, but because you saw me as worth knowing.

His voice softened.

I know you, Vera.

maybe better than anyone else in this place.

And what I know is that you’re not broken.

You’re just different.

Tears burned behind my eyes.

What if different isn’t enough? Different is everything.

Different is how things change.

We sat in silence for a while, the weight of his words settling over me.

I figured out your riddle, I said eventually.

What weighs nothing but becomes heavier the longer you carry it.

and and other people’s expectations, their needs, their definitions of who I should be.

Dante smiled that rare, genuine smile that transformed his face.

Correct.

And do you understand why I asked you? To remind me that I have a choice.

To cooperate with Victor’s version of who I am or to define myself.

Exactly.

He paused.

So, I have another riddle for you.

something to think about during your next three months here.

What is it? What binds you but cannot hold you? What traps you but offers escape? What defines you but has no truth? I turned the words over in my mind.

I don’t know.

Good.

It should take time.

Real riddles don’t have easy answers.

He glanced toward the door.

Your hour is almost up.

Before you go, have you been mapping the compound like I suggested? Yes.

Three main levels, plus this basement, four guard stations, patrol rotation every 6 hours.

The fence is electrified, but there’s a maintenance gate on the east side that’s only monitored by camera.

And the cameras on a loop system, 16-minute cycle, Dante’s eyebrows rose.

How did you figure that out? I watch.

People think because I’m quiet that I’m not paying attention, but I’m always paying attention.

I met his eyes.

I’ve been trapped my whole life, Dante.

First by my father’s disappointment.

Then by the pack’s judgment, now by Victor’s research.

I know how to survive in cages, and I know how to look for the cracks.

Then keep looking, keep mapping, keep surviving.

He hesitated, then added softly.

And Vera, don’t let Dr.

Frost convince you that you need fixing.

There’s nothing wrong with you.

Silus opened the door.

Time.

I stood slowly, my head still fuzzy.

Same time tomorrow.

Same time tomorrow.

The therapy sessions continued.

Each one more intense than the last.

Dr.

Frost used hypnosis, sensory deprivation, even mild electric shocks to trigger a response.

She showed me videos of wolves transforming, played recordings of howls, surrounded me with the scent of other shifters.

Nothing worked.

Your resistance is remarkable, she said.

After week two, most dormant wolves show some physiological response by now.

But your readings remain completely flat.

Maybe there’s no wolf to wake, I suggested.

Impossible.

Your genetic markers are clear.

The wolf exists.

She made more notes.

We’ll try a different approach next week.

Something more aggressive.

That night with Dante, I told him about Dr.

Frost’s frustration.

She’s running out of time.

He said 3 months seemed long at the beginning, but we’re already one-third through.

If she can’t produce results soon, Victor will lose faith in the protocol.

And then what? Then you go back to being a useless specimen.

But without Dr.

Frost’s presence, without the therapy sessions, he trailed off meaningfully without my excuse to see you every night.

Yes, the thought hit harder than it should have.

These hours had become the only real part of my day, the only time I felt like myself, rather than a specimen being studied or a patient being fixed.

I don’t want to lose this, I admitted quietly.

Neither do I.

Dante’s voice was rough.

Which is why you need to give Dr.

Frost something, some small response.

Enough to keep the protocol going, but not enough to actually succeed.

How? Lie.

Tell her you felt something during meditation.

that you sensed your wolf stirring.

Give her hope without giving her results.

That’s dangerous.

If I make her think it’s working, she’ll push harder.

And if you make her think it’s not working, she’ll leave.

Then you’re back in your cell 23 hours a day with nothing but Victor’s regular examinations.

His eyes met mine.

At least this way.

We have time.

Time for what? I’ve been mapping the compound, learning the schedules, but I still don’t see how I could actually escape.

The fence is electrified.

The guards are wolves.

Even if I made it past the first barrier, I’m human.

I can’t outrun shifters.

Not alone.

You can’t.

The implication hung between us.

You can’t shift at will, I said slowly.

Your transformations are involuntary.

How would you? I’ve been learning triggers, things that force the change, extreme stress, extreme emotion, extreme pain.

He looked down at his chains.

If I had a reason to shift, I could make it happen.

And once I’m in wolf form, even that in between form, I’m strong enough to break these chains.

But then you’d be a rogue, packless, hunted.

I’m already hunted.

At least I’d be free.

I stared at him, understanding blooming.

You’re planning to escape with me.

I’m planning possibilities.

The east maintenance gate you mentioned.

It’s our best option.

16-minute camera loop.

Minimal guards if we time it right.

If we move during shift change when everyone’s distracted.

That’s insane.

Probably.

But staying here forever is also insane.

At least this way we choose our insanity.

Week four.

Dr.

Frost introduced a new element to the therapy.

“We’re going to try something radical,” she said, wheeling in a large cage.

“Inside was a wolf.

A real wolf fully shifted, snarling through the bars.

Proximity to another wolf sometimes triggers dormant ones.

The presence of a potential mate, arrival, a pack member.

Any strong wolfish instinct can wake sleeping.

” She positioned the cage 3 ft from my chair, then restrained me in place.

Now, she said, I want you to breathe.

Focus on the wolf.

Let your instincts respond.

The wolf snarled, throwing itself against the bars.

Foam dripped from its jaws.

Its eyes were wild, feral, and I felt nothing.

No answering call, no stirring of my own wolf.

Just fear, plain human fear of a dangerous animal.

Interesting, doctor.

Frost murmured, watching her monitors.

Your heart rate is elevated, but there’s no transformation response, no hormone spike, no muscle tension, just normal human fear.

She moved the cage closer.

The wolf snapped, teeth gleaming.

Perhaps a different trigger.

Dr.

Frost mused.

Not threat response connection.

Silas, bring in the other subject.

The door opened.

Silas entered, leading another restrained figure, Dante.

They’d put him in human form for this, but barely his skin seemed to shimmer like his wolf was fighting to surface.

His eyes were wild, amber bleeding into black.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Testing connection theory,” Dr.

Frost said calmly.

“You formed a bond with Dante over these weeks.

Let’s see if proximity to him triggers your wolf.

She positioned him in a chair across from mine.

Close enough that our knees almost touched.

Then she injected him with something.

Dante convulsed, a scream tearing from his throat.

“Stop!” I shouted.

“What did you give him?” “A shift accelerant.

It forces transformation whether he wants it or not.

” “Doctor Frost watched her monitors.

If you care about him, if there’s any connection between you, your wolf should respond to his distress.

Dante’s body began to change.

Not the smooth shift of a normal wolf, but that agonizing in between transformation.

His bones cracked and reformed.

Fur erupted through skin.

His screams turned to howls.

Please, I begged, straining against my restraints.

Please stop this.

Feel it, Vera.

Feel your response.

Is your wolf stirring? Do you want to protect him? To fight for him, to transform and break these chains? I did want to protect him desperately.

But I felt no wolf rising to answer that call.

Just my own helpless rage and fear.

Dante’s transformation completed that horrible between state.

Caught in the agony of both forms.

He thrashed against his restraints, eyes unfocused, lost to the animal.

And I realized I’d been lying to Dr.

Frost telling her I felt small responses to keep the protocol going.

But Dr.

Frost had been lying too.

This wasn’t therapy.

This was torture.

And she’d used Dante would keep hurting him until I gave her what she wanted.

I feel it, I said suddenly.

The wolf.

She’s there.

I feel her.

Dr.

Frost’s head snap toward me.

You do? Yes.

When you heard him, I felt her stir.

Angry.

Protective.

It’s faint, but it’s there.

The lies came easily now, fueled by desperation.

I think I think you’re right.

The connection matters.

He matters.

Fascinating.

Dr.

Frost made rapid notes.

Silus, administer the sedative to Dante.

We don’t need him in distress anymore.

We got our response.

Silas injected something else.

Slowly, painfully, Dante’s transformation reversed.

He collapsed in his chair, gasping, trembling.

His eyes met mine across the space between us.

In them, I saw understanding.

I’d just bought us more time.

But I’d also given Dr.

Frost something far more dangerous than hope.

I’d given her a weapon.

That night, when Silas brought me to the therapy room, Dante was still recovering.

He lay against the wall, exhausted, his body covered in the aftermath of forced transformation.

I’m sorry, I whispered, sitting beside him.

I didn’t know she’d do that.

I didn’t know.

It’s okay.

His voice was horse.

You made the right call.

Did I? She’ll use you now.

Every time she needs a response from me, she’ll hurt you.

Then you’ll have to keep lying convincingly enough that she doesn’t need to.

He turned his head to look at me.

We’re running out of time.

Vera, Dr.

Frost has 2 months left.

In two months, she’ll either succeed in waking your wolf or she’ll give up and leave.

And when she leaves, we lose our excuse to be together.

Yes, which means we have two months to escape.

Not maybe, not possibly.

We have to, I looked at his exhausted, battered body, at the chains that held him.

At the impossible situation we were in.

I have another riddle answer, I said quietly.

Which one? What binds you but cannot hold you? What traps you but offers escape? What defines you but has no truth? Tell me a story.

The story people tell about you.

The story you tell about yourself.

It binds you, traps you, defines you, but it’s not real.

It’s just a story.

And stories can be rewritten.

Dante’s eyes held mine.

And what’s our new story? Two broken things that refused to stay broken.

Two specimens that became people.

two prisoners that became free.

I took his hand the first time I touched him deliberately fully.

His fingers were warm, calloused, real.

Whatever it takes, Dante.

Whatever we have to do, we’re getting out of here.

He squeezed my hand.

Together.

Together.

And in that moment, I understood something Dr.

Frost could never measure on her monitors.

My wolf might be dormant, but I wasn’t.

Chapter 8.

The breaking point.

Week 11.

Dr.

Frost’s frustration had transformed into something darker.

“6 weeks left,” she said, reviewing her monitors with cold precision.

“6 weeks to produce results or admit failure.

And I don’t fail, Miss Ashwood.

” I sat in the therapy chair, electrodes attached to my temples, restraints around my wrists.

This had become routine, the weekly escalation of her protocols, each one more invasive than the last.

We’re going to try something different today, Dr.

Frost continued.

Not pharmaceutical intervention, not sensory deprivation, something more primal.

She wheeled over a cart covered with a white cloth.

When she pulled it away, I saw syringes filled with dark red liquid.

What is that blood? Specifically, alpha blood from three different powerful bloodlines.

When injected into a dormant wolf, it sometimes triggers a territorial response, a need to assert dominance, to prove worthiness.

Your wolf, sensing the presence of other alphas in your system, may finally emerge to defend her claim.

That’s insane.

That’s science.

Doctor Frost prepared the first injection.

Your body will metabolize the foreign blood within hours.

But in those hours, if your wolf exists, she’ll fight.

She’ll have no choice.

And if she doesn’t exist, then your body will simply process and eliminate the foreign blood.

Mild discomfort, nothing more.

She met my eyes.

Unless you’re lying about feeling her stir.

Unless these past weeks of claimed responses have all been manipulation, in which case this will prove it definitively.

My heart hammered.

This was at the moment where my lies would be exposed or I’d have to find a way to fake a response convincing enough to satisfy her.

I’m not lying, I said.

Good.

Then you have nothing to fear.

She injected the first syringe.

The blood burned going in.

Foreign and wrong.

My body immediately rejected it.

Nausea, dizziness, a sensation like my veins were on fire.

Interesting.

Doctor, Frost murmured, watching her monitors.

Elevated heart rate, blood pressure spiking, but no transformation markers, no hormone response consistent with wolf emergence.

She injected the second syringe.

The pain intensified.

I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Trying not to scream.

Every cell in my body was screaming that something was wrong, that I was being poisoned, that I needed to fight or flee.

But no wolf rose to answer that primal call because there was no wolf.

“Still nothing,” Dr.

Frost said, disappointed.

“One more, please,” I gasped.

“No more.

I can’t.

You can, and you will.

” She prepared the third injection.

Because if this doesn’t work, Victor has authorized me to move to the final protocol, the one neither of us wants.

“What final protocol?” She didn’t answer.

just injected the third syringe.

This time, my body convulsed.

The restraints were the only thing keeping me in the chair as every muscle seized.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but endure the agony of three alpha bloodlines warring inside my human body.

And through it all, Dr.

Frost watched her monitors, hoping for transformation markers that never came.

When it finally ended, I was barely conscious.

Silas had to carry me to the therapy room again.

Dante took one look at me and roared a sound so full of rage that Silas actually stepped back.

What did she do? Dante demanded.

Alpha blood injections.

Silas said quietly.

Three different bloodlines.

The girl’s lucky to be alive.

Lucky? Dante’s eyes were wild.

His transformation threatening to break through.

Get out.

Get out before I break these chains and tear you apart.

Silus left quickly, the door slamming shut behind him.

Dante pulled me close, his whole body shaking with fury.

This has to stop.

She’s going to kill you.

I know, I whispered.

Then we move the timeline.

We escape tomorrow night.

Not 2 weeks from now, tomorrow.

I can barely stand, Dante.

How am I supposed to run? You’ll have tonight to recover.

I’ll carry you if I have to, but we’re not waiting for Dr.

Frost’s final protocol, whatever fresh hell that is.

I wanted to argue, wanted to say we needed more time, more planning, more certainty, but he was right.

Dr.

Frost was running out of patience and options.

Whatever came next would be worse than anything before.

Okay, I said.

Tomorrow night, we go tomorrow night.

Promise me something, Dante said, his voice rough.

What if something goes wrong? If I can’t control my shift, if the guards catch us, if we get separated, promise me you’ll keep running.

Don’t come back for me.

Don’t sacrifice yourself.

Just run.

I can’t promise that.

You have to.

One of us has to make it out.

Vera, one of us has to survive to tell what Victor does here.

To expose the collection, to save the others.

His amber eyes held mine.

If it can’t be both of us, then let it be you.

Tears burned behind my eyes.

I don’t want to survive without you, and I don’t want you to die with me.

So, promise.

I promise, I whispered, even though we both knew it was a lie.

We spent that night going over every detail of the escape plan one final time.

The power box, the false alarm, the east maintenance gate, the 16-minute window where everything had to go perfectly.

It was a terrible plan with a dozen ways to fail, but it was all we had.

The next morning, Victor summoned me to his office.

I went, my body still aching from yesterday’s injections, wondering if this was the final protocol Dr.

Frost had mentioned.

But when I entered, Victor was alone.

No Dr.

Frost, no assistance, just him sitting behind his desk with an expression I’d never seen before.

Uncertainty.

Sit, he said.

I sat wary.

Dr.

Frost contacted me this morning.

She’s recommending we terminate the protocol.

My heart stuttered.

What? Her exact words were.

The subject shows no viable transformation potential.

Continuing treatment poses significant health risks without corresponding research benefit.

She’s returning to Europe tomorrow.

Victor leaned back in his chair.

Which means you’ve wasted 3 months of my time and considerable resources.

I didn’t ask for the protocol.

No, but you participated.

You claimed to feel your wolf stirring.

You gave us hope that this might work.

His eyes narrowed.

Were you lying, Vera? Manipulating us to extend your time with Dante.

The question hung between us.

I could lie again.

Could claim I genuinely believed my wolf was there.

But what was the point now? Yes, I said simply.

I lied.

Victor’s expression didn’t change.

Why? Because the alternative was going back to being a useless specimen in a cell 23 hours a day.

Because those hours with Dante were the only time I felt human instead of like property.

Because I needed time to figure out how to survive this place.

I met his eyes.

And because you deserve to be lied to.

You bought me like livestock, Victor.

You studied me like an experiment.

You hurt me and called it science.

So yes, I lied.

and I’d do it again.

Silence.

Then Victor did something unexpected.

He laughed.

You’re remarkable.

You know that most specimens break within weeks.

But you, you’ve been playing a long game this entire time, using the system against itself, using my own protocols to carve out moments of humanity.

He stood, walking to his wall of photographs.

I almost admire it.

Almost.

Almost.

But admiration doesn’t change the fact that you’re now completely worthless to my research.

A specimen with no unique traits, no transformation potential, no data value whatsoever.

He pulled down my photograph, the one he’d taken my first day here, and tore it in half, which means I have two options.

Keep you here indefinitely as punishment for wasting my time, or sell you to someone who might find another use for you.

My blood went cold.

Sell me to who? There’s a pack in the western territories.

Their alpha collects humans, uses them for labor, entertainment, breeding stock.

He’s offered a reasonable price for healthy human females with wolf genetics.

Even if they can’t shift, their children might.

Victor smiled.

You leave tomorrow.

Same time, doctor.

Frost returns to Europe.

Two problems solved at once.

You can’t.

I can.

Your father sold you to me.

remember? Which means I own you and I can dispose of my property however I see fit.

He returned to his desk.

Silas will prepare you for transport.

I suggest you cooperate.

The western territories are far less civilized than my collection.

You’ll want to arrive in good condition.

He dismissed me with a wave of his hand.

I walked back to my cell in a days.

Everything had accelerated.

No more time.

No more planning.

We had to escape tonight, not tomorrow night during the shift change.

We’d been counting on tonight.

Now, with no preparation and no margin for error, when Silas came to escort me to the therapy room for what he thought was my regular hour with Dante, I was ready.

I’d stolen a scalpel weeks ago, hidden it in the seam of my shirt, waiting for the right moment.

This was the moment.

I’m sorry, I told Silas as we walked down the corridor.

You’ve been kinder than most.

But I can’t go to the Western territories.

I can’t be breeding stock.

His hand moved to his weapon.

But I was faster.

The scalpel flashed.

Not to kill just to incapacitate.

He went down, cursing, and I grabbed his key card.

Alarm started immediately.

I’d known they would.

The moment Silus’s vitals spiked, the system would alert everyone, which meant I had minutes, not hours.

I ran to the therapy room.

My hands shaking as I swiped the key card.

The door opened.

Dante looked up immediately.

Understanding.

Now it’s happening now.

Victor’s selling me to another pack.

Tomorrow we run tonight or never.

The plan.

Forget the plan.

We improvise.

I could see him processing, calculating.

The timing was all wrong.

The guards would be alert, not distracted by shift change.

The power box strategy wouldn’t work if everyone was already looking for us.

But his eyes met mine and I saw his decision.

Then we fight our way out.

You’ll have to transform, lose control, become the monster they think you are.

I know people will get hurt, guards.

Maybe worse.

I know.

He stood, chains clinking.

But Vera, I need my trigger.

The one that lets me control it enough to not hurt you.

I understood what he was asking.

I crossed the space between us, cupped his face in my hands, and kissed him.

Not desperate this time, not fierce, tender, real, full of everything we’d never had time to say.

When I pulled back, his transformation was already beginning.

But his eyes, those amber eyes that had seen me when no one else would remained clear.

“Break the chains,” I whispered.

“Take us home,” he smiled.

Still human enough for that.

Then he let the monster out.

Chapter nine.

The hunt.

The sound of Dante’s chains breaking was like thunder in the enclosed space.

His transformation completed in seconds.

That powerful between form that was neither fully human nor fully wolf.

But something caught in the savage space between.

Muscles rippled beneath fur covered skin.

Claws extended from fingers that were too long, too sharp.

His face elongated into something that could bite through bone.

But his eyes remained amber.

Remained aware.

Remain Dante.

The power box, he growled, his voice distorted but intelligible.

We still need the diversion.

No time.

They know we’re escaping.

The alarms.

Then we go loud.

He moved to the door, testing his new strength against the iron.

It groaned but held.

Stand back.

I pressed myself against the far wall.

Dante backed up, then charged.

His shoulder hit the door with devastating force.

Once, twice, on the third impact, the hinges shattered and the door crashed outward into the hallway.

Immediately, guards appeared, three of them, already shifted into full wolf form.

They snarled, positioning themselves to attack.

Dante didn’t hesitate.

He launched himself at the nearest guard, and what followed was brutal.

Efficient.

The wolf tried to dodge, but Dante was faster.

His claws found throat.

The wolf went down.

The other two attacked simultaneously.

Dante caught one mid leap, using its momentum to slam it against the stone wall.

The crack of breaking bones echoed through the corridor.

The third wolf bit down on Dante’s arm, teeth sinking deep.

He didn’t even flinch.

just reached with his free hand, grabbed the wolf by its scruff, and threw it 20 ft down the hallway where it hit the wall and didn’t get up.

“Move!” Dante shouted to me.

I ran over the fallen guards down the corridor toward the stairs that would take us up from this basement hell.

“Bind us, more guards were coming.

I could hear their howls, their running footsteps, their shouted commands to contain the breach.

We reached the stairs.

Dante went first, his between form filling the narrow space, becoming a living barrier between me and anyone who might follow.

East gate, I gasped.

Still our best shot.

Agreed.

But they’ll expect that now.

They’ll have it covered.

So, we make them think we’re going somewhere else first.

We emerged onto the main level, the collection wing, where all the specimens were housed.

Through the windows of their cells, I could see faces pressed to the glass.

Rowan, Thomas, 15 others whose names I’d learned over the past months.

All watching, all hoping.

The cells, I said suddenly.

If we open the cells, chaos, Dante finished, they’ll have to choose between chasing us and containing a mass breach.

Can you break the locks? Give me Silus’s key card.

I handed it over.

Dante swiped it at the main control panel, but the system beeped negative.

The card had been deactivated the moment I’d attacked Silas.

Backup plan, Dante said.

He drove his clawed fist through the control panel.

Sparks flew.

The lights flickered and every cell door in the collection wing clicked open simultaneously.

For a moment, nothing happened.

The specimens just stood in their doorways, uncertain, afraid to believe freedom was real.

Then Rowan stepped out of her cell, looked at me, smiled.

Run, she said to the others.

Run and don’t stop.

Chaos erupted.

15 specimens fled in every direction, some toward the exits, some just away from their cells, all of them suddenly becoming problems Victor’s guards had to manage.

Dante and I used the confusion to reach the east corridor.

But just as we rounded the corner, we came face to face with Dr.

Frost.

She stood in the hallway, perfectly calm despite the alarms and chaos.

In her hand was a syringe filled with clear liquid.

“I can’t let you leave,” she said.

“You represent too much data, too many questions unanswered.

Get out of our way,” Dante growled.

“That form is fascinating.

You’ve managed to maintain cognitive function while fully transformed.

” “Do you know how rare that is? How valuable?” She took a step closer.

“Dante, listen to me.

If you come back voluntarily, if you let me study how you’ve achieved this control, I can help you.

I can stabilize your condition, make it so you never lose yourself to the wolf again.

For a moment, just a moment, I saw temptation flicker in Dante’s eyes.

3 years, he’d been trapped.

Three years of involuntary transformations and lost time and waking up not knowing what his wolf had done.

Dr.

Frost was offering him exactly what he’d wanted when he’d first come to the collection.

Hope.

Don’t listen to her, I said quietly.

She’s filling you with poison, remember? Hope is just another trap.

Smart girl, Dr.

Frost said.

But Dante, you know I’m right.

Out there, you’re a rogue.

Packless, unstable.

Hunters will track you.

Packs will kill you.

You’ll spend every day running, never safe, never able to trust your own body.

Is that freedom or just a different cage? It’s a cage we choose, Dante said.

That’s the difference.

Dr.

Frost’s expression hardened.

Then I’m sorry, but I can’t let years of research walk away.

She moved fast, faster than a human should be able to move.

The syringe flashed toward Dante’s neck.

I didn’t think, just reacted.

Threw myself between them.

The needle bit into my shoulder instead of his throat.

No.

Dante roared.

The drug hit my system immediately.

My legs went numb.

I collapsed, the world tilting sideways.

Seditive, Dr.

Frost said calmly, already preparing another syringe.

She’ll sleep for hours.

And Dante, if you run now, she’ll be recovered and relocated before you could possibly mount a rescue.

But if you surrender, if you come back peacefully, I’ll ensure she’s treated well, kept comfortable, perhaps even freed eventually.

Lies.

They were all lies.

But the drug was pulling me under, making it hard to think, hard to speak.

Run.

I managed to say, “Dante, run.

Keep your promise.

I’m not leaving you.

You have to.

” No.

He knelt beside me.

his transformed face close to mine.

I told you once that I’d given up everything worth fighting for.

But that was before you.

Before I remembered what it felt like to be seen, to be known, to be worth something to someone.

Dante, I’m not running without you.

He looked up at Dr.

Frost, but I’m not surrendering either.

What happened next happened so fast I barely processed it.

Dante grabbed me, pulling me against his chest.

Then he turned and ran not toward the east gate, but toward the windows.

The reinforced windows that should have been unbreakable.

“Stop him!” Dr.

Frost shouted.

But it was too late.

Dante hit the window at full force.

Glass shattered.

Alarm screamed.

And then we were falling three stories down toward the ground below.

“The impact should have killed us.

Would have killed me.

” But Dante twisted midair, positioning his body underneath mine.

He took the full force of the fall, his transformed body, absorbing damage that would have shattered human bones.

We hit the ground hard.

Dante grunted in pain, but didn’t stop moving.

He gathered me in his arms and ran.

The compound fence loomed ahead, 15 ft of electrified barrier topped with razor wire.

Through my fading consciousness, I saw guards converging on our position.

Saw Victor himself emerging from the main building, his expression furious.

You can’t climb it.

I slurred.

Dante, you can’t.

I’m not climbing it.

One.

He was going to try to break through to take the electrical shock and the razor wire and the full force of the barrier’s defenses because that was the only option left.

It would kill him.

Even in his between form, even with his enhanced strength, the voltage was too high, the barrier too strong.

Please, I whispered.

Please don’t die for me.

Not dying, he said.

Living.

For the first time in three years, I’m choosing to live.

He backed up 30 feet.

Adjusted his grip on me, making sure I was secure against his chest.

Then he ran at the fence with everything he had.

20 ft away, I felt his body gathering power.

10 ft away, I heard him roar, not in pain, but in defiance.

5t away, I closed my eyes.

And then nothing.

No impact, no electrical shock, no razor wire tearing through flesh, just the sound of metal groaning, tearing, collapsing.

I opened my eyes to see the impossible.

A section of the fence had simply fallen.

The posts had been cut cleanly at their base, the wiring severed, the whole structure collapsing inward as if someone had removed all its supports.

And standing beyond the gap, holding what looked like industrial bolt cutters, was Silas.

Go,” he said simply.

Blood still seeping from the wound I’d given him.

Before I changed my mind, Dante didn’t question it.

Didn’t stop to ask why.

Just ran through the gap in the fence, carrying me, racing toward the forest beyond.

Behind us, I heard Victor screaming orders.

Heard guards pouring through the collapsed section of fence.

Heard the beginning of a hunt, but Dante was fast.

Faster than normal wolves, faster than human guards, faster than anything except perhaps an alpha in full pursuit.

The forest swallowed us.

Trees became a blur.

The compound disappeared behind us.

The sedative was pulling me under completely now.

My vision was darkening at the edges.

Stay with me, Dante urged.

Just a little longer, Vera.

Stay with me.

Why did Silas help us? I managed to ask.

I don’t know.

Maybe even monsters get tired of serving bigger monsters.

Are we going to make it? Yes, I promise we’re going to make it.

His heartbeat was steady against my ear.

Strong, real, alive.

I let the darkness take me, trusting him to keep running, trusting that when I woke up, we’d be free.

I woke to sunlight and the smell of pine.

For a moment, I didn’t know where I was.

The ceiling was rough wood, not white institutional tiles.

The bed was soft, covered in quilts that smelled like cedar and wood smoke.

A window showed forest, not corridors.

I sat up slowly, my head pounding, my shoulder aching where Dr.

Frost had injected the seditive.

Hey.

Dante’s voice came from the corner.

He was human again, dressed in clothes I didn’t recognize, his face exhausted, but smiling.

Welcome back.

Where are we? Safe house.

About 40 mi from the compound.

It belongs to a rogue network wolves who’ve escaped various packs and help others do the same.

He moved to sit on the edge of the bed.

You’ve been out for 18 hours.

I was starting to worry the sedative dose was too high.

18 hours.

I looked at him.

Really looked.

His skin was covered in bruises and healing cuts.

His arm was bandaged where the wolf had bitten him.

His movements were careful like everything hurt.

You carried me for 18 hours? Not the whole time.

I found a car about 10 miles out.

Borrowed it.

At my look, he added.

Okay.

Stole it.

But the owner was a shifter who worked for Victor’s supply chain, so I’m calling it justified.

I laughed, couldn’t help it.

The sound was slightly hysterical, but genuine.

We escaped, I said.

We actually escaped.

We did.

He took my hand, his fingers warm and solid.

Dr.

Frost went back to Europe this morning.

Victor’s dealing with containing the other specimens who fled.

Only about half have been recaptured.

And we’re here, free, alive.

Silus, I don’t know why he helped us.

Maybe he’ll face consequences for it.

Maybe Victor already knows it was him, but whatever his reasons, he gave us the opening we needed.

Dante’s expression sobered.

We owe him our lives.

What do we do now? Now we recover.

Then we figure out our next move.

The rogue network can provide fake identities.

Safe passage to neutral territories.

We can disappear.

Start over somewhere.

Victor’s reach doesn’t extend.

And the others, Rowan, Thomas, all the specimens still trapped there.

We come back for them.

When we’re stronger, when we have resources, when we can actually help, instead of just dying heroically, we come back.

His amber eyes held mine.

But first, we survive.

First, we heal.

First, we learn how to be more than just escaped prisoners.

I nodded slowly.

He was right.

Rushing back now would be suicide.

We needed time, planning, help, but we would go back.

Someday there’s something else.

Dante said the rogue network gave me this.

Said it arrived last week.

Addressed to the wolfless girl and the broken shifter.

He handed me an envelope.

Expensive paper.

No return address.

Inside was a single photograph and a note.

The photograph showed a girl with three distinct faces somehow layered over each other.

One angry, one serene, one desperate.

below.

Written in elegant script.

Three souls in one body.

Three wolves in one girl.

The Obsidian Pack is killing her slowly.

If you understand what it means to be broken.

If you survived the impossible, she needs you.

North Territories.

Obsidian compound.

Time is running out.

She doesn’t know I’m sending this.

She thinks she’s alone.

Prove her wrong.

The note was unsigned.

I stared at it.

processing.

Someone knew about us, knew what we’d survived, and was asking for help.

“What do you think?” Dante asked.

“I think someone else is trapped.

Someone else is suffering.

” I looked at him.

“I think we’re not the only ones who need saving.

We just escaped, Vera.

We’re not ready.

No, but we will be.

And when we are,” I held up the photograph.

“We don’t turn away from broken things.

That’s not who we are.

Dante studied my face, then smiled that rare, genuine smile I’d fallen in love with somewhere in the dark of the therapy room.

Then we have a new mission.

Recover, prepare, save the girl with three faces, and eventually take down the collection.

And everyone like Victor who thinks broken things are just specimens to study.

That’s a long list.

Good thing we have time now.

He squeezed my hand.

and each other together, I said.

Always together.

I tucked the photograph carefully into my mother’s journal where it joined all her stories about beasts and beauty and transformations that weren’t physical.

Outside, the forest stretched endlessly, free, wild, waiting, and for the first time in my life, I felt ready to meet it.

Not as a wolfless failure, not as a specimen, not as someone broken who needed fixing, just as Vera, just as myself.

And that I was learning was more than enough.

If you felt something during that escape scene, if your heart was racing, if you were rooting for them, then you understand the power of these stories.

But here’s the truth.

I see the view count.

I see how few of you subscribe.

If this story gave you even five minutes of emotion, of escape, of hope, subscribe.

It costs you nothing but means everything.

Now, the conclusion.

Chapter 10.

The promise.

3 months after our escape, we stood at the edge of the Obsidian Pack territory.

The compound rose before us like a fortress, black stone walls, guard towers, spotlights that swept the perimeter in mechanical patterns.

It was larger than Victor’s collection, more militarized, more obviously a prison.

Last chance to turn back, Dante said beside me.

I adjusted the pack on my shoulders.

Supplies we’d gathered over the past months, tools we’d need for what came next.

Not turning back.

I know.

Just wanted to give you the option.

The past 3 months had been a blur of healing and planning.

The rogue network had given us identities, taught us how to move through shifter society without being noticed.

Dante had learned to control his transformations, not perfectly, but enough that he could shift at will without losing himself completely.

And I’d learned that being wolfless didn’t make me weak.

It made me invisible.

Humans were background noise in shifter society, easily dismissed, rarely watched.

That invisibility was about to become our greatest weapon.

We’d spent weeks researching the Obsidian Pack, gathering intelligence from rogues who’d escaped, bribing informants, piecing together the compound’s layout and security protocols, and we’d learned about her.

The girl with three faces, her name was Kira Nightshade, 21 years old, born to the Obsidian Pax Alpha, and his third wife.

At age 16, during her first transformation, something had gone catastrophically wrong.

Instead of one wolf emerging, three had tried to surface simultaneously.

Three distinct personalities, three different wolves, all fighting for dominance in one body.

The pack had called her broken, dangerous.

They’d locked her away, hidden her from other packs, kept her prisoner in her own home while they tried to fix what they saw as a defect.

5 years she’d been trapped.

5 years of three versions of herself waring for control.

And now, according to our sources, the alpha had decided she was too dangerous to keep alive.

She had 2 weeks before they put her down like a rabid animal.

Two guards at the north gate, Dante said, pulling me from my thoughts.

Three more on patrol.

Shift change in 15 minutes.

Then we wait for shift change.

Slip in during the confusion.

Find Kira’s cell.

Get her out.

I made it sound simple.

It wasn’t.

And if she doesn’t want to come, if she’s too far gone, if the three personalities can’t agree to escape, then we improvise like we always do.

Dante smiled slightly.

Fair enough.

But Vera, if this goes wrong, if we get caught, if it’s a trap, we run together.

I remember the promise.

I met his amber eyes.

No heroic sacrifices, no noble deaths.

We both make it out or neither of us do.

That’s not what I was going to say.

What then? I was going to say thank you for these three months.

For teaching me that life after the collection is possible.

For showing me that being broken is just the beginning, not the end.

He took my hand.

Whatever happens tonight, I want you to know that escaping with you was the best decision I ever made.

My throat tightened.

Don’t talk like we’re not going to make it.

I’m not.

I’m talking like someone who learned to say important things before it’s too late to say them.

He squeezed my hand.

I love you, Vera Ashwood.

Wolfless, impossible, stubborn, brilliant you, and I’m going to love you whether we succeed tonight or fail, whether we save Kira or can’t, whether we take down every compound like victors or die trying.

The words hit me like a physical thing.

In the chaos of escaping, of surviving, of planning this rescue, we’d never actually said it.

Never put words to what had grown between us in those dark hours of the therapy room.

“I love you, too,” I whispered.

“You’re my trigger, too.

You know, the thing that makes me brave when I should be terrified.

The reason I believe impossible things are possible.

” He kissed me soft, brief, perfect.

Then the moment passed and we were back to being soldiers planning an infiltration.

The shift change happened exactly on schedule.

Guards traded positions, attention divided, protocols relaxed for those crucial 5 minutes.

We moved.

Dante had scouted the route days ago.

A weak point in the north wall where the stone had cracked, creating handholds.

We climbed in silence, our movements practiced and efficient.

over the wall, down into the compound, into the shadows between buildings.

The Obsidian compound was different from Victor’s collection, where his had been sterile and clinical.

This was brutal and militaristic.

Guards everywhere, wolves on patrol, the constant sense of violence barely contained.

We made our way toward the central building, the Alpha’s residence, where Kira was reportedly being held in a reinforced cell in the basement.

There, Dante whispered, pointing to a guard station.

Two guards.

I can take them quietly, but we’ll need to be fast.

Wait, look.

I gestured to a woman approaching the guard station mid-30s, wearing the formal dress of the packs upper ranks.

That’s the alpha’s second wife, the one who supposedly argues for Kira’s life.

We watched as she spoke with the guards.

Money changed hands.

The guards nodded, then walked away from their posts.

She’s bribing them, Dante said.

But why? Maybe she’s the one who sent us the letter.

Maybe she’s trying to give us an opening.

The woman glanced around, then her eyes landed directly on our hiding spot.

She didn’t react, didn’t call for guards, just nodded once, an acknowledgement, and walked away.

“Definitely her,” I said.

“She’s helping.

” We moved to the now unguarded entrance.

The door was unlocked.

Inside stairs descended into darkness.

At the bottom was a corridor with a single cell at the end.

Reinforced steel.

Small window.

And from inside voices, multiple voices, all female, all the same voice speaking in three different tones.

Told you we should have killed them yesterday.

Can’t kill guards.

They’ll execute us immediately.

Should have been dead years ago anyway.

What difference? We approached carefully.

Through the window, I could see her.

Kira Nightshade sat in the center of the cell.

Her body rigid with tension.

Her face kept shifting, expressions changing every few seconds.

Rage, despair, cold calculation.

Three different people inhabiting one body, unable to agree on anything.

Kira, I said softly.

All three versions of her head snapped toward the window.

Three different expressions assessed us simultaneously.

“Who are you?” said the angry one.

“No one sent help.

This is a trick,” said the desparing one.

“Doesn’t matter.

We’re dead in 2 weeks anyway,” said the cold one.

“We’re here to get you out,” Dante said.

“If you want to leave, want?” The angry one laughed bitterly.

“Of course we want.

We’ve wanted nothing else for 5 years, but it’s impossible.

” The desparing one added.

Three wolves, one body.

We can’t even walk without fighting over which direction to go.

How could we possibly escape? We’re not asking you to escape alone, I said.

We’re asking you to trust us, to let us help.

Why? The cold one demanded.

What do you gain from this? Nothing, except knowing we didn’t leave another broken thing trapped when we could save her.

I pressed my hand against the window.

I’m wolfless, completely human in a world of shifters.

He transforms involuntarily, trapped between forms, unstable.

We’re both broken in ways that should have killed us.

But we survived.

We escaped.

And we came back to help others do the same.

The three versions of Kira stared at us.

For the first time since we’d arrived, all three expressions synchronized, showing the same emotion.

Hope, you’re serious.

They said in unison, three voices speaking as one for just a moment.

completely serious, but we need to move now.

Can you walk? If we agree on direction, the angry one said, “If we don’t panic,” the desparing one added.

“If we’re smart about this,” the cold one finished.

Dante pulled out the tools we’d brought, lockpicks, small explosives as a last resort.

“But when he tested the cell door, it swung open, unlocked.

” The alpha’s second wife had definitely cleared our path.

Kira stood slowly and I could see the effort it took.

Her body moved in, stuttering starts and stops.

Three different wheels fighting for control of limbs and balance.

We can help with that, I said.

Dante on her left.

I’ll take her right.

We stabilize her.

Guide her.

She just has to not fight us.

Can try.

No promises, but we want this together.

We moved back down the corridor, up the stairs, into the compound, and immediately alarms screamed.

They know, Dante said.

Someone talked or the guards came back or doesn’t matter.

We run now.

We ran through the compound.

Kira between us, her body jerking and uncoordinated, but moving.

Guards appeared.

Wolves shifted.

The hunt began.

Dante shifted mid-run.

that controlled transformation he’d mastered, becoming his between form while keeping his mind intact.

He turned, putting himself between us and the pursuing guards.

“Keep going,” he roared.

“I’ll hold them.

” “No, we don’t split up.

We don’t have a choice.

” He grabbed the nearest guard, throwing him into two others.

“Get her to the north wall.

I’ll find you.

” It went against every instinct, against our promise.

But Kira was stumbling.

the stress making her three personalities fight harder for control.

“Go,” said her cold voice.

“He’s buying time.

Don’t waste it.

” I ran, dragging Kira, half carrying her, racing toward the north wall where we’d entered.

Behind us, I heard fighting howls, Dante’s roar of defiance.

“He’s going to die.

We’re all going to die.

Focus on running.

” The wall loomed ahead.

I could see the crack we’d climbed, the handholds that would take us up and over.

But Kira couldn’t climb.

Not with three personalities fighting over every movement.

You have to work together, I said urgently.

Just for 2 minutes.

Agree to climb.

Agree to survive.

You can fight about everything else later.

I vote climb.

Climbing is death.

Will fall.

Staying is death for certain.

Climbing is chance.

Then it’s two against one.

Climb.

They climbed badly, awkwardly with me pushing from below and guiding their hands to holds, but they climbed.

We reached the top of the wall just as guards reached its base.

An arrow whistled past my head too close.

Another hit the stone beside Kira’s hand.

“Jump!” I shouted.

We jumped 15 ft down.

I hit the ground hard, rolled, came up running.

Kira landed worse, her three selves disagreeing even about how to fall.

She cried out in pain three different tones of agony.

But she got up.

We ran into the forest away from the compound, away from the guards and alarms and certain death.

We’d made it perhaps a mile when I heard the howl behind us.

Dante’s howl calling to me, saying he was coming.

I stopped, turned, waited.

He burst through the trees moments later, still in his between form, covered in blood.

He was limping but alive.

“Go!” he shouted.

Alpha’s mobilizing full hunting party.

“We have maybe 10 minutes.

” The crack of a gunshot cut him off.

Dante stumbled.

“Fell.

” Red bloomed across his shoulder.

“No!” I screamed.

More guards emerged from the trees.

Six of them, all armed, all positioned to cut off our escape.

The alpha himself stepped forward, massive, even in human form, radiating power and rage.

“You dare steal from me?” he said, his voice like gravel.

“You dare take what’s mine? She’s not yours,” I said, positioning myself in front of Dante.

“She’s not property.

She’s my daughter, my blood, my right to handle as I see fit.

and you,” he gestured to his guards.

“Kill the male, bring the females back, alive if possible, dead if necessary.

” The guards raised their weapons.

This was it.

This was where our story ended.

Except the forest exploded with howls, not from the obsidian guards, from somewhere else.

Wolves burst through the trees, dozens of them.

Rogues, I realized members of the network that had helped us.

They’d followed us, provided backup, and at their head impossibly was Silus.

“You cut me down for leaving,” he said to the alpha, his voice cold.

“You think I don’t know what you do to broken things? What you plan for your own daughter?” He shifted a smooth, powerful transformation into a wolf three times normal size.

“I’m done serving monsters.

” The clearing erupted into chaos.

Wolves fighting wolves, guards firing weapons, trees splintering under the impact of bodies.

I grabbed Dante, pulling him to his feet.

Can you run? Can I breathe? Then I can run.

We ran again.

Always running.

But this time, we had help.

This time, we weren’t alone.

Kira ran beside us, her three voices screaming in fear and defiance and cold calculation.

But she ran.

We made it to the extraction point of van waiting with three other rogues who’d volunteered for this insanity.

They pulled us inside.

The engine roared.

We sped away from the obsidian territory.

Behind us, the battle continued.

Silas and his rogues buying us time.

Buying us escape.

buying us the chance to save one more broken thing.

In the van, a medic worked on Dante’s shoulder.

The bullet had gone clean through, painful, but survivable.

Kira sat in the corner, her body finally still.

All three versions of her watching us with exhausted gratitude.

“Thank you,” they said in unison.

“For not leaving us.

We don’t leave broken things behind,” I said.

“Not anymore.

What happens now?” she asked cold voice.

Practical even in trauma.

Now we recover, Dante said through gritted teeth as the medic stitched his wound.

Then we figure out how to help you, how to get your three wolves to work together instead of fighting.

How to make you whole.

And if that’s not possible, the desparing voice asked, then we teach you how to survive anyway.

How to be powerful even when you’re fragmented.

How to live despite what everyone says should kill you.

I met all three sets of eyes in her face.

You’re not broken, Kira.

You’re just different, and different is everything.

6 months later, we received another letter.

It came through the rogue network addressed to the collectors of broken things.

Inside was a list of names.

37 of them.

All specimens from various compounds across the territories.

all trapped, studied, tortured in the name of science or power or simple cruelty.

And at the bottom, a single line, “How many can you save?” I looked at Dante, at Kira, who’d learned to coordinate her three selves enough to fight alongside us.

At Silas, who’d become an unlikely ally and friend.

At the network of rogues and outcasts who’d gathered around our impossible mission.

“All of them,” I said.

“We save all of them.

That’s ambitious, Silas said dryly.

Possibly suicidal.

Probably, Dante agreed.

But when has that stopped us? Kira’s three faces smiled.

Three different expressions that somehow harmonized.

Never.

It’s never stopped us.

I pulled out my mother’s journal, adding this new letter to the collection of impossible things we’d accomplished.

And I wrote, “My name is Vera Ashwood.

I’m wolfless.

I’m broken.

I’m everything the world said shouldn’t survive.

But I did survive.

And now I collect others like me.

The specimens, the experiments, the broken things that everyone else gave up on.

We find them.

We free them.

We teach them that being broken is just the beginning.

Because the greatest transformation isn’t human to wolf.

It’s victim to survivor, specimen to person, broken to whole.

And that transformation, that one’s available to everyone.

You just have to choose it again and again and again until the day you look in the mirror and recognize the person staring back not as what you should have been but as exactly who you are.

And that I’ve learned is more powerful than any wolf could ever be.

Outside the safe house, the moon rose full and bright.

Somewhere out there, 37 broken things waited to be found, to be saved, to be shown that their brokenness was just a different kind of strength.

Where do we start? Dainty asked.

I looked at the list at the names and locations and types of compounds.

At the impossible task ahead of us, and I smiled.

At the beginning, I said, we start at the beginning and we don’t stop until every cage is empty.

Together, Kira asked, all three voices speaking as one.

Always together, we answered.

And somewhere in the North Territories, in a compound we’d never seen in a cell we’d never entered.

Another broken thing heard a howl in the distance and knew somehow that help was coming.

That the collectors of broken things were on their way.

That being broken wasn’t the end of the story.

It was just the beginning.

Epilogue.

The next broken thing.

The letter arrived on a Tuesday.

Dear collectors, there’s a girl in the Crimson Fang pack who shifts into three different forms.

Wolf, bear, and something no one can identify.

The pack calls her an abomination.

They’re planning to execute her at the next full moon.

Her name is Arya.

She’s 17 and she’s running out of time.

Can you help a friend? I folded the letterfully, tucking it into my mother’s journal where it joined all the others.

Crimson Fang territory, I told the others.

Two weeks until full moon.

17-year-old girl who shifts into three forms.

Three forms.

Kira’s analytical voice sounded interested.

That’s even rarer than three personalities.

The genetic mutation required is irrelevant.

Her compassionate voice interrupted.

She’s trapped.

She’s dying.

She needs us.

Then we go, her fierce voice concluded.

Dante was already pulling out maps, marking routes, calculating guard stations and patrol patterns.

Silas was contacting the rogue network, gathering intelligence, preparing resources, and I sat with my mother’s journal, reading her words one more time.

The most dangerous thing isn’t the beast itself, but the moment you realize you’d rather stay with the monster than return to the world that made you.

But we’d learned something my mother hadn’t lived to discover.

Sometimes the monster isn’t what you become.

Sometimes the monster is what you refuse to be.

And sometimes the greatest rebellion is simply surviving when the world wants you dead.

Two weeks, I said, closing the journal.

We can do a lot in 2 weeks.

We can save a life.

Dante said, we can free another broken thing, Kira added.

We can remind the packs that broken things bite back.

Silas finished.

I looked at my family not by blood or pack or law, but by choice, by shared trauma and impossible survival, and the decision to turn our pain into purpose.

Then let’s go collect another one, I said.

And in the Crimson Fang territory, a girl named Arya, who shifted into three impossible forms, looked up at the moon and wondered if she’d live to see another one.

She would, because the collectors were coming, and we didn’t leave broken things behind.

Not anymore.

Not ever again.

If you made it to the end, this story touched you.

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Thank you for joining me on Ver’s journey from brokenness to power.

If this story resonated with you, if you’ve ever felt broken, betrayed, or like you weren’t enough, my book, How to Find Peace After being Betrayed by Someone You Trusted, offers practical guidance for your own healing journey.

It’s about transforming pain into purpose, just like Vera did.

The link is in the description below.

Remember, being broken doesn’t make you worthless.

Being different doesn’t make you less.

You are enough, exactly as you are.

Until next time, stay strong, stay true, and keep collecting your own