Wolf's Bane (Monstrous Hearts #2)

Chapter Six

Strange, isn't it, being in a self-constructed cage? The girl constantly tests the bars in her mind in the way of a tongue poking at an aching tooth. Are they still there? Are they still too close together to slip free?

They are, and the girl doesn't know what to do. She recognizes the easiest key to use on the locked door—to give in to the wills of others, crawling or dancing or pretending as they wish. Give in and stay quiet. That is how she lived most of her life before the black wolf slipped in and showed her how to savage and howl. When one learns to bite, how can one then unlearn it?

Yet the girl has lost her fine pelt. While she can no longer pretend her old life fits, those nights of moon and fur remain far out of reach. What key can she find among ashes and scorched hide?

The key of resistance. Let them expose her vulnerabilities. Let them cut up her past and restitch it as they see fit. Let them test her family's patience and her lover's willingness to take her ugliness. But can she stand it? Can she risk losing everything to repulsion?

The girl crouches in her cage and shakes, watching the past bleed into the present. If she will not pick one or the other, then she must wait until a new key reveals itself. She must endure until, hopefully, it is not too late.

Alice knew it was impossible to remain furtive without Colton noticing. To stop eating and instead push at the food on her plate because her stomach churned. To go from gleefully cleaning him in the shower to pretending she had a headache and needed more sleep, arm curled against her body to make sure the bandaging stayed in place. Soon enough, his frustration thickened the air in the way of heavy clouds gathering into a thunderstorm, but he remained as silent as she.

Although no further burns appeared on any part of her body, Alice began to hear footsteps throughout the day, the same angry tread as when Magdalene had paced back and forth, frustrated by words that refused to leave her mind. Sometimes, Alice thought she smelled cigarette smoke, too, although the pack remained untouched in the cardboard box each time she looked. And once, while alone in the house and brewing a pot of mid-morning coffee, she even found a carton of cream waiting on the counter. She never took her coffee with anything, but Magdalene had always insisted on filling her cup half-full with it.

Alice began to pace, herself, waiting for Darby to call and give her one final chance to give in. Trying to decide what her answer would be when that ultimatum came. In the meantime, she read through the manuscript again and again, hands shaking while imagining her father's reaction to so much of her sordid history being revealed. Worse, she could see how her mother's early behavior now mimicked her own. Sleepless nights, paranoia clinging to her bones, hearing and seeing things... With Darby and Rob's threats hanging over heard, she even began to understand why the ticking of a clock had been such torment to her mother.

And of course, there were the nightmares. Magdalene always loomed in them, bearing down on Alice like a wrathful star, and one night it simply became too much for her to hide. She woke up clawing at the sheets, shrieking at the feeling of blood running down her hair and shoulders from where Magdalene had tried fitting a freshly-skinned pelt over her.

Then an arm hard with muscle caught her writhing body, and Colton's voice rumbled against her ear, thick with sleep yet steady. "Easy. Easy, you're safe."

She just whimpered, fumbling for the bedside lamp before he stretched over her to turn it on, himself. Light revealed her to be drenched in sweat instead of blood, and at that, she fell limp and shaking.

"What's wrong?" He pulled her close, and she wanted nothing more than to melt in him.

She ducked her head into the hollow his throat, unable to keep her voice steady. "Just a nightmare."