The King's Prey (Unedited Edition)

Chapter 35 : Superhuman

Drapetomania • [drape-toe-mania]
An overwhelming urge to run away.

🖤

~+~

The abrupt sounds of clanking metal send me out of my coma as I wake, gasping for air. But my breathing calms the more I take in my surroundings and remember how I got here. The dim space doesn't provide much light for me to see, but I manage to make out the thick stone walls of the freezing room and the single, small, barred window near the ceiling as slivers of light peek through it. Daytime.

I slump against the wall as if I slept sitting up this entire time. A shiver runs through me when my palms press against the cold floor, making sure that this reality is real. I glance to my right and make out a heavy metal door. This has to be a cell of some sort.

When my arms shift, the clanking sound returns. I lift my hands to observe the chains that shackle me to the wall and suddenly feel light-headed. With the twist of my wrists, the metal bites at my skin, nearly like a burn. I wince with every movement, being careful to not excessively enhance the pain.

But then a similar clanking noise sounds from across the room and I freeze. Squinting to get a better look, I make out a tall, shadowy figure—a woman by the looks of it. She sits chained to the wall as I do. With the tilt of her head, her hair catches a sliver of the light coming through the tiny window and ignites her flaming hair. My heart races at the sight of it.

I lunge at her to make sure she's still in one piece, but the length of my shackles cut me short as the metal lights my skin on fire. I hiss at the feeling, relaxing my tug on the chains to settle in the middle of the room—the closest I can get to her without any pain.

"Sterling," I whisper, carefully watching her silhouette. A groan escapes her lips a few seconds later, echoing off of the walls as a feeling of relief runs through me. She's still alive.

"Are you injured?" I ask a bit louder. She shifts, stifling a whimper as she turns to directly face me.

"Kind of..." she croaks. Struggling to lift her wrists as if the metal weighs more than herself, she displays the raw skin around the chains to me and nausea sweeps through my body at the sight of it. Oh my god... "Silver."

"Silver?" I question as she sets her arms back down.

She nods slowly. "A weakness of werewolves, like poison," she explains weakly. The air in my throat catches at the realization. We need to get out of here. I gaze down at my own restraints to see if they're removable; the burning feeling persists and I wonder for a moment why the hell the metal has an effect on me too.

I look back at her. "Do you remember anything?" I ask.

She sits up a bit straighter. "The crash..." she begins. "It knocked you out but I managed to stay conscious for a while. The car completely flipped over and there was so much blood." She chokes on her own words as silent tears run down her cheeks. "I tried getting you out of there. I grabbed your body and bolted into the woods but I was already so weak..."

She takes heavy breaths in between her words as the pieces of the accident hit her like a freight train.

"And then they darted me with what I'm guessing was wolfsbane—another venomous drug of our kind that weakens our ability to shift to our wolf form. I tried so hard to stop them, Ana."

"None of this is your fault," I say softly. We need to stay sane enough to get ourselves out of this hell. Even if that ends up being just me, I'll carry the burden for both of us.