THE FREE FALL ⇘ Bellamy Blake. [1]

| xlv. THE APPLE AND THE TREE

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CHAPTER FOURTY FIVE;

THE APPLE AND THE TREE.

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        THE STENCH OF BLOOD HAD WOVEN ITSELF INTO THE VERY FABRIC OF HAVEN'S EXISTENCE, as indelible and familiar as the crescent moon scars that marred her palms. She knew the metallic, pungent scent of her own life force and, even more intimately, that of her friends. Amidst the frequent injuries their camp sustained, she had come to recognize their blood as distinctly as her own—each scent a heavy, lingering presence that saturated her senses.

        Now, the iron-laden aroma permeated everything, triggering an instinctive jolt of dread that tore through her slumber—a relentless siren call that rang clear and sharp in the stillness of her mind.

        Slowly, ever so slowly . . . Haven drifted back into the corporeal confines of her flesh and bone.

        Almost immediately, she recognized a peculiar heaviness in her limbs, as if gravity had conspired against her overnight, magnifying its pull. Merely lifting her fingers to rub away the remnants of sleep felt like hefting mountains. Her head was a cacophony of pain and fog, buzzing with such intensity that it seemed to warp the peripheral of her vision, forcing the world to bend and blur at the edges as she attempted to blink it into clarity.

A profound cold had infiltrated her bones; it prickled her skin as her bare feet made contact with a cold, metallic surface, the sound echoing oddly in the tight space around her. Her abdomen, exposed and vulnerable without its usual covering, tensed sharply—a physical flinch from the unaccustomed bareness and the biting, iron-scented air.

. . . Wait.

What the fuck?

        Haven recoiled sharply, a gasp slicing through the pungent air as her eyes snapped down to her near-naked state. Gone were her sweater and skirt, inexplicably replaced by mere fragments of fabric—a white tank top stretched taut across her chest, barely concealing anything, and a pair of briefshorts that offered no comfort or warmth. The rest of her body lay bare, her skin peppered with goosebumps, trembling from both cold and shock as it made contact with the icy, unfamiliar metal beneath her.

. . . She was in a cage.

She was in a fucking cage.

        A visceral, stomach-churning dread knotted itself tightly within Haven's lungs, forcefully crushing the air from her throat as she faced the morbid nightmare unfolding around her. This was not merely a cage—it was a prison for the damned, designed for a beast yet occupied by a human.