Strays

Chapter 41

Chapter Forty One

I knew where I was before I woke up.

I lingered between sleeping and waking, my head spinning as heat rolled through my body in slow, pulsing waves. At first, I thought it was the argentiserum sedative they'd used on me, burning its way out. I thought about how Sophia used to curl into a ball or withdraw into a catatonic state as she came down, remembered the silent screams in her eyes.

But no, that doesn't seem right...

It wasn't a painful kind of fire. It reminded me of something else, something different. A wave of dizziness hit me as I struggled to place the sensation – but it wasn't until a memory of Michael's hands on me – of his teeth sinking deep into my lip and his earthy, metal scent invading my nostrils – rose in the back of my mind that I began to comprehend.

My skin prickled and I ached low in my belly, a familiar kind of need piercing through me.

It was nowhere near as strong or as potent as it had been when I went into heat... but that kind of energy affected everyone in the general vicinity. It was overpowering, enough to make anyone lose their damn minds with desire – and it was with that thought that it began to dawn on me.

They'd taken me to the heathouse.

The realisation sent a shiver of fear down my spine but it wasn't enough to wake me. I was still caught beneath a blanket of drugged lethargy, more asleep than awake. Unaware of anything but every dull pulse of heat that rolled through me every few seconds.

A sense of urgency pervaded my senses. A swirl of panic and fear that tried to pierce through the weight on my consciousness. I struggled to swim for the surface, to force my eyes open, to wake up, but the drugs were too strong.

I was too weak.

All I could do was wait.

______________

It was the itching that finally woke me up.

I peeled my eyelids open but my vision was so blurry that it took me a long moment to make sense of the shapes in front of me. The room seemed to sway around me, blurring in and out of focus. I don't know how long I squinted and frowned, struggling to see, before I realised it wasn't the room swaying – it was me.

I was swaying.

My hands were locked above my head by what I guessed were silver-coated manacles. The skin on my wrists had begun to chafe and burn, pain pulsing through me in slow, drugging waves. The manacles had been attached to two short, thick chains that hung from the ceiling like some sort of medieval instrument of torture, leaving me hanging suspended a few inches from the ground. Pins and needles pricked at my fingers and my shoulders ached fiercely, the stretch of my limbs making my wound pull.

I could feel fresh scabs coating my back and I knew it must have re-opened – again.

I winced, trying to ignore the pain that rippled through my torso as I attempted grasp exactly what kind of trouble I was in. And how to get out of it... My legs had been pulled apart by another set of manacles, which had been attached to posts on either side of me. Spreading me out like some live imitation of da Vinci's Vitruvian Man.

At least you're not naked like he was...

The thought didn't do much to bolster my confidence as I glanced around. While I was firmly trussed up by something taken right out of the middle ages, the room around me was warmly furnished and beautifully turned out, like the living room of someone's palace. A set of chaise longues lined the room, framed in gold with soft, blood red embroidery on the cushions. Though I was placed on a raised metal platform, the rest of the floor was covered in a plush, wine carpet. The walls were a deep gold and red.