CHAPTER 54

*I was trapped, splayed out on a cold table. The room was freezing, and bright, the lights so intense that all I could make out around them was shadows and shapes.*

*The only things I could smell was antiseptic and blood. My blood, I realized, my senses coming back from my stupor. They were at it again. Cutting, injecting, building me up and tearing me down. This time they'd tried to knock me out, but the anaesthetic had not worked long.*

*A deep incision along my thigh. I screamed and fought against the restraints, the metal bed around me rattled with the effort.*

*"She's awake." A head blocked some of the light, covered with surgical masks and a cap over the head, the only thing I could see uncovered was a pair of deep brown eyes behind a pair of glasses. I screamed again, this time in rage and fought harder. Somewhere a tray of metal objects fell to the floor.*

*"Relax," the face above me soothed, "I'll adjust the sedative."*

*I didn't hear. I didn't care. The pain was excruciating and there would be no end to it. Never. My life was a constant cycle of wary survival and pain. It was overwhelming and it was too much. Too much. In that moment I wanted nothing more that to turn that pain onto my tormentors. For them to know what it was like in my position instead of hiding behind their cold emotionless masks and equipment.*

*I latched onto the man's eyes, he'd looked away to something above my head. I focused on him, his eyes, forcing them, somehow to meet my own. The skin around his glasses paled as he froze, halfway through what he was doing. And I let it out. All the pain and fear and desperation I was feeling. The desire I had to murder each and every one of them, to watch them drown in puddles of their own blood.*

*A new scent joined the sterile surgical room, urine fresh and uncontrolled, and then it came. The fear. I could smell it.*

*The man screamed, the horror I was forcing on him taking hold. He panicked, breaking my hold on him and ran, still screaming, toward a destination I couldn't see.*

*I tried to force my head up, to find the others that were digging in my flesh, but it was bound too, a strap across my forehead.*

*"Now. That simply won't do," a voice said from above my head. One I couldn't see the owner of but one I hated, more than anything else in the world.*

*And then I was struck, something heavy and metal, just at my temple. And I rejoined the darkness.*


I bolted awake, silken sheets twisted around my arms and legs, giving me a panicked constricted feeling. I shoved them off and took a minute to just breathe. As usual when I woke from a nightmare, my body was covered in sweat, my pulse so rapid it was alarming. What was unusual was that I normally could never remember the dream itself, and I had plenty of them. This time though, I remembered with startling clarity. The smells, the pain, so very real. The desperation.

I held a palm to my chest willing my heart to slow, just a little.

It was probably a product of what the werejaguar had told me. Having a creator. It made it sound like I was some sort of experiment gone wrong, which was impossible.

Yet the dream had been so real, unnervingly so, almost like a memory....

I shoved that thought away. It couldn't be. I'd been with my parents for as long as I could remember, and while I was missing a good chunk of my early life I'd been eight when we moved to the valley. That would put anything like the dream happening to a child, and it just wasn't something a child would survive.

No, it must have been the production of an overly stimulated and disturbed mind. The werejaguar had really gotten to me.

I pressed a button on the bedside table and the blackout blinds on the windows hummed as they all opened to reveal a dusky landscape that surrounded the facility. I'd slept most of the day, and while I was feeling marginally better I was absolutely starving.

I padded to the apartment kitchen first. A little disturbed to find it changed. A large bowl of fruit sat on the once empty counter, along with a note.

*Raven,*

*There are several meal choices in the fridge with instructions on how to prepare them yourself, should you wish. Or you are always welcome to eat at the cafeteria. Let me know if you'd like company. When you are ready we should talk.
*
Aiden.

I snorted, because that was the understatement of a lifetime. Then I grabbed an apple and went rooting in the fridge. I settled on an entire tray of massively thick lasagna and followed the instructions written on the container's lid, popping it in the oven before snagging a second apple to tame down the hunger pains while I waited.

I took the time to run a sink of water and drop my phone inside, letting it fall into the drain and running the garburator for good measure.

I knew what Aiden wanted from me, and I was certain of Leanne's guilt, though he was right in that I didn't have any proof that wasn't circumstantial. But even so, what he was asking me to do; sneaking in and bugging members of my own pack so that another pack could spy on them...it felt like betrayal. I was many, many things, but a traitor?

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Somewhere in the organization's new alpha Anthony still existed, and I needed that man now. He would be able to talk me through this, to tell me what I should do. For the first time in a very long time I wished for my parents. I wasn't sure how they'd been caught up in this all, but I did know that above all else, they'd had my back without selfish reasoning. Something, I was realizing, I might never have again.

The smell of itallian spices floated around the room and I impatiently opened the oven, despite the timer still being thirty minutes out. Dammit. It hadn't magically cooked in a shorter time. I slammed the door closed again and grabbed a banana.

As far as I could tell I had two options. The first was to work with Aiden, go to the ranch and bug the shit out of everything Leanne owned. Escape, hopefully unnoticed, since I didn't want to have anyone else punished for my actions, and see what we could learn.

Or, I could contact Anthony and tell him everything. Hope he didn't go crazy with this new overprotective energy he'd been harnessing and listened to what I had to say without dismissing it immediately or killing Leanne on the spot.

Yeah, even I could see why option number two was out. Anthony was unpredictable, at the moment, like a powder keg ready to go off. I couldn't trust his reactions, and I sure wasn't ready to give up my chance at figuring out what the hell was going on.

So, there it was, I thought as I finally pulled the lasagna out and rapidly devoured the entire tray. I was forced into a corner and out of options. In order to figure out Thostchild and prove Leanne's guilt I had to do what, for a pack, would definitely be seen as the unthinkable. And I didn't think I'd be forgiven this time.