I could tell the man standing on the other side of the door was still there. I held a shaky breath and twisted on the narrow bunk of the prisoner's bed to look at the imposing frame of the door.

I hadn’t heard his footsteps receding, was he waiting to hear what I’d do? I cleared my throat, but the lump was still there.

“Hey beast, say, won’t be bad to get a couple more furniture in here ya know?” I croaked, fiddling with the frayed ends of the linen blanket and craning my neck.

Silence.

Great, what did I have to lose? Besides my head and a few choice limbs? 

Nothing but a farthing child.

“Reckon I could use a restroom too, getting kinda cramped in my bladder you see, wouldn’t want to piss on your highness’ bed and all.” I finished, hesitating. He couldn’t have known I’d seen the tin bucket with the broken lid he’d kept under the bed. 

I was a pure breed wolf, we did not piss in buckets.

There was shuffling on the other side of the door and the sounds of footsteps fading. I sagged visibly, letting my shoulders drop as I released the breath I’d been holding.

 

Uncle Ben had said one day, in the middle of his mad musings, that living on the edge was good for the system. Kept a wolf honest and the ears sharp. My ears were ringing, and I had never felt more disingenuous. 

Here I was, cowering in the presence of the Lycan I’d only just two days before, boasted to the wolf village would never bend me.

 Uncle Ben you lying prick!

“You’re really in the thick of it now Nola, shark turf.” I sighed, pressing myself from the foam when a note fell out the pillowcase and I froze momentarily, a feeling of misplaced Deja vú flooding over me as I gingerly lifted the white note from the clean, copper cement of the cave room floor.

Could it get more ominous than getting a letter in a strange cave from your predecessor?

I pulled out the faintly perfumed corpse of the letter and let the thin pack fall through my fingers before taking all but two steps to peer at it under the light.

Beware the Beast, all is not as it seems. 

“Man, don’t ya just hate cliffhangers.” I huffed, pretending to be unimpressed, but my armpits pinched where the sweat was knocking like an old woman with obnoxiously loud male neighbours.

 

What in tarnation was I supposed to do with this? All is not as it seems. 

“Could it- could it be saying what I thought it was?” I fisted the note in my hands as my heart knocked so loudly against my ribs that I was afraid the Lycan would hear it and come barreling back.

Then there was a secret passage? I looked about the room now with widened orbs, my green eyes shifting in their sockets.

How many secret passages could be in a cave? The Lycan already went through one when he brought me here.

I hadn’t heard a word from the other girls for a longest time.

There was crying once, sometime during the night, but you can never trust everything you hear in the highlands. Some of them were hungry, and they weren’t human.

“Fucking hell, that’s it!” I gasped when I stared at the uneven burgundy walls of the cave room.

The lights! Wide concave rims are big enough to fit a hand through! What was behind it? 

I tossed the letter to the floor frantically and hurried to put my hands on it. I could see tiny screws that I felt out with one long claw, shifting to a changeling so my hands were covered in brown fur and wolf claws and the rest of my body remained human.

My aunt Rosalia would have gasped if she’d seen me now, talking about how it was improper, for a lady to shift halfway like a barbarian. But she wasn’t the one in a cell about to be served as lamb chops to the ancient Lycan beast, and I’d be damned if I hung my head and waited for The Reaper like a good little village girl.

I had loosened the first rim, almost jerking it out when my ears picked up on footsteps approaching the door. They’d been quiet, almost imperceptible, and I hurried back to bed, diving for the covers like it was the last piece of meat on a tray and squeezing my eyes shut pretending to be asleep as whoever it was- Lycan beast- listened wordlessly on the other side, before the footsteps receded. I didn’t know who I was fooling, I was sure Hector, could tell whether I was sleeping or not from a mile away, 

“Godammit.” I hissed, drawing the blue linen of the blankets that smelt faintly of the Lycan over my face, inhaling way too long in a perverted fashion.

I must have slept through the day because when I opened my eyes, the sky outside the glass roof was only just freshly rescinding it’s azure colour, as orange streaks crisscrossed over it.

“Ugh! Feel like I was knocked the fuck out.” I groaned, stretching out my sore shoulders and aged back when the sound of a knock rattled me and for a moment I didn’t know where I was.

“C-come in “ I squeaked, but the door had already flown halfway open and my heart skipped several beats as the tall man with platinum blonde hair stood regarding me with a bronze tray in his hand, before his eyes moved to the still full tray on the bedside drawer.

Welp, it’s the effort that counts innit?

“Shit!” I cursed quietly. I must have forgotten to eat, given how my stomach was now playing funeral music, I didn’t think it had been the brightest idea.

The Lycan might have agreed with me, because he strode into the room with thunder brewing on his yellow brow and swapped the trays wordlessly before turning to leave, huffing as I’d disappointed him.

“Excuse me? Sir Hector? Are you planning to eat me? Is that what this is?” I yelled crudely like he wasn’t two steps away from me. 

Best to ask and get it over with so I could start prepping my will. Not that I had anything to give save for my favourite green beanie and a suspicious undead teddy bear.

I reckoned if I stretched my leg, it would brush against the blue denim of his jeans. 

I did not stretch my leg. Crutches were hard to come by.

“I’m not eating you…yet. Don’t test my patience, Nola.” Hector’s honeyed baritone was surprisingly calm. But so were the true-blood werewolves that ate my parents.

“Where are the girls?” I whispered hoarsely, suddenly tired. He seemed to be deliberating it a moment before the full line of his lips pursed and I struggled to hold in a moan. He’d have been beautiful if he smiled, I could see it. He was beautiful now, in the same way, you’d hear death was beautiful.

“Safe.” The Lycan chewed, and I waited for more info that never came.

“What that’s it? I’m just supposed to trust that they’re safe?” I quipped, a note of panic rising in my voice. 

What did he think this was? Baby’s first day at school?

I sighed, then noticed for the first time, the hint of a jagged silver scar that ran down through one eye, stopping just above his high, strong cheekbones.

Beware the beast, all is not as it seems. 

The notes' content whirled in my head just as the Lycan’s mist-grey eyes settled on it, where I’d roughly disposed it on the floor.

“Double shit!” I screeched, scrambling to get out of bed on waterlogged legs and watching in horror as he slowly, tentatively, scooped it up and stretched it cleanly in his hands.

My eyes moved to the open door behind him for a split second and they were back on him.

The way I saw it, I had only two options, and both of them involved moving right the fuck NOW!