Feral for her freedom

F O U R

Time was a funny thing. My entire life I'd always thought I'd have more time. I'd had years before I reached my first season. I'd had time to formulate a plan to avoid Zeta. Then I'd had time to figure out an escape. After that I always had more time until Zeta caught me. I had time to figure out what the hell I'd do if I ever found my consort.

Now I was out of time.

I could not escape like I had planned. I didn't have a damn clue as to what I would do if my consort claimed me. Worse, what I'd do if he declared me feral. I wasn't ready to die yet. I had a life to live, but a life in a cage and under the thumb of a male seemed worse than death.

The blue eyed wight, who seemed to be in charge, pulled me to my feet, but I fell right back to the ground as my legs gave out. "No," I breathed, "no." My words were muffled by the muzzle.

The male went to pick me up, but I scrambled back, my eyes flooding with tears. They weren't tears of sorrow but of fury. I screamed as loud as I could with the muzzle and swung my restricted arms around wildly. He ducked to avoid my cuffed hands and pulled a syringe from his pocket. Uncapping it he advanced towards me.

"This will not hurt you," he told me and darted forward. He moved faster than any wight I'd ever seen. It was like I had blinked. He was several paces away from me one second and the next his face was directly in front of mine, the syringe buried in my neck.

His grayish blue eyes stared directly into mine, reminding me of the sky before a storm. They were the last thing I saw before my head lolled back and my eyes shut, drowning me in the dark oblivion.

When I came too, I immediately wished I'd stayed unconscious. The first thing I saw were bars, slanted at an angle.

The bastards had shoved me in a cage.

With a soft grunt, I pushed myself up and sat cross legged. My head felt much too heavy from my neck, but I forced it up and sat straight.

The muzzle had been removed as had the handcuffs, a mistake on their part if they thought a cage would be enough to keep me contained and them away from danger. Always being underestimated had its advantages.

A sharp pain shot through my entire body, from my toes up to my skull. "Fuck," I muttered holding a hand to my head. I stretched out my limbs and let out a huge yawn. I scratched my neck that was stinging slightly from where I'd been injected. The familiar feel of my claws was absent. Looking down at my hand I saw that my claws were completely gone, and human fingernails were all that remained. My tongue darted to my teeth and only felt smooth rounded edges rather than my pointed incisors. My senses were dulled as well, I was completely and utterly human.

I tried to activate my pure state, but nothing happened. I stared at my fingers, willing my claws to form but they didn't even twitch. I growled out of habit in frustration and choked when my tongue got in the way.

After a small fit of coughing, I tried growling again. It felt all wrong, not natural like it did in my pure state. I'd always sounded just like a wild beast, not like I was drowning. My low rumble had been reduced to a pitiful spluttering.

I went to stand and stumbled into the bars, catching myself before falling to the floor. My legs were numb but as I forced my weight upon them, they began to tingle with feeling. The pain in my feet was sharp, as if I was standing on glass but a little pain had never stopped me before.

A loud creak had my head whipping to the left. I couldn't see very far down the aisle without squeezing my face between the bars and because I didn't want my head to get stuck, I simply waited for them to approach me. I was the only one down here in these empty cells, I wondered why there were so many when there was hardly ever any disturbance or situation in which a wight needed to be contained.