Beloved Freak

Lya

The first day here, I was left mostly alone. I had an open invitation. If I ever wanted out of the cell block, all I had to do was come clean about my transgressions. I hadn’t spoken a word since the late dinner with Alex Marsan, though.

Aside from myself, the cell block was empty other than a guard. I had kept insisting I was human, and tried to poke fun at the guard who had to watch over a little girl that was locked up as is the first couple days, but he was stone faced and never gave into a conversation. I didn’t even have Tala to talk to, and I was just starting to really enjoy her presence. The past month and a half at the pack had changed me, and I felt it was for the better. I could comfortably be myself, make friends, have relationships that didn’t require hiding a huge portion of who I was.

It took about two days for me to come to terms with the fact that I was getting lonely. Lonely was a feeling I was quite familiar with, but, apparently, quite resentful of. I guess sometimes you do really have to lose what you had to realize how important it was to you.

Don’t get me wrong, I knew this would be a difficult venture, but I hadn’t really thought of how it would impact me personally. My thoughts on it had been consumed by how it would hurt Oliver. Alone with my thoughts for twenty four hours a day, the only thing I had to do was admit to myself everything I had been avoiding thinking of.

That’s how I’d always been, though. Thinking of others, but forgetting myself. Maybe I was a luna.

My heart hurt, thinking of Oliver and how this must be eating him alive. At least I had the advantage of knowing he was physically safe. For now, at least. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to know your mate was risking themselves, and I hoped I would never have to. Every single day, I felt the probings at the edge of my mind, begging me to let him in. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t about to give him a little bit of hope when none of us knew how this would really end. It was cruel, but it was my last act of kindness.

Day two started with the interrogations. It started simple, just asking a question, and if I gave an answer I got food. It didn’t matter if the answer was what they felt was right or wrong. It only took two missed meals to catch onto that drift.

And yesterday? Yesterday, I cried. I hadn’t cried yet, and it was probably well overdue. It was cathartic and horrible. The guard stayed motionless, not reacting at all. I hadn’t met many people who could maintain a stone face when someone was ugly crying in front of them, but the ones I had, I was fairly certain were sociopaths.

But today was the fourth day. I sat quietly at the far corner, waiting patiently for whatever their question would be today. ‘Are you a wolf’ again? No - not quite a lie. ‘What does silver do to you’ maybe? Nothing, which is true. ‘What happened to Ted Marsan’ was also on the table, and I didn’t know what happened… to his corpse. Everything had been too ambiguous thus far.

Today, though, was different. The person that usually came with breakfast was running late. Not that that really was something for concern - I was certain maintaining my meal schedule was very low on their priority list - but the reasoning for being late was. Nearly an hour after I usually got fed, someone came storming in dragging a person that wreaked of wolf behind them.

I studied the newest prisoner carefully. This girl was practically a child still. She couldn’t have been any older than eighteen, and that made my heart sink. That was just so young to be experiencing a life changing ordeal. I tried to look past that, though, because Cody had promised me I would have someone on the inside looking out for me. I had specifically asked not to know who it was so I could keep my guard up more easily, but that only made me question the loyalty of every single person I encountered, a false sense of hope rising up with each new face.

This kid, though, she was a rogue. Rogues always had a very particular smell. The smell had been explained to me as the smell of the death of a bond. Old, decaying, rotting. Whether it was the bond and link to a pack, your mate, or even your own humanity. The smell of death followed you, alerting everyone that you had lost something.

When I asked why Thom didn’t smell like a rogue, Cody’s quick answer was because he never truly severed ties completely with either of the packs he was affiliated with. When I asked why I never smelled like a rogue, Cody thought it was because I was a Wulver through and through. Personally, I thought it was because I had never actually been in a pack, and a link that had never existed couldn’t die. Sure, by blood I was supposed to be a Wulver, but I had never joined them and the Wulvers were a pack based solely on honor, not right. The Wulver Pack chose you.

When the poor kid got dumped in the cell across from me, I got a chance to study her face. She was beaten up and bloody. I was a little disgusted that they hadn’t even done something for her broken face before casting her away, but at least werewolf healing should take care of it. I slid over to the cell door and leaned against it, trying to get as close to the girl as possible.

“Hey,” I whispered. Whispering was probably unnecessary, but feeling secretive wasn’t so bad. The girl looked up at me but didn’t respond.

“Hey,” I said again. “My name is Lya.”

“How are you touching that?” Her voice quivered, motioning toward the cell door.

I glanced down at it, realizing that it did, in fact, smell of silver. “Oh uh…” I thought fast. This kid was like me, but the ones who were inevitably listening didn’t know that. “Is it supposed to have a chemical on it or something? It just seems like a normal steel door.”

“It’s silver!” she insisted. “How are you not burning your skin off?”

“Huh…” I mumbled. “I guess I never really had a silver allergy or anything.”

The girl looked at me, confusion etched across her face. “Are you not a werewolf?” she asked. “Why would they have a human locked up in here?”

“No, not a werewolf,” I insisted. “I truly couldn’t tell you why I’m here, either.” That part wasn’t a lie, at least. I really didn’t know what they wanted with me so bad. It would have been so easy for them to just kill me, and I was still a little shocked they hadn’t. We had known that was one of the things we were gambling on.

This couldn’t have been my person on the inside to report back to the pack, could it? I had long ago learned to never judge a book by its cover - it wasn’t her abilities to do the job I was questioning. This was really truly genuinely a child, though, and if Cody had elected a child to be my outside world link while in here, I would never forgive him. That, and she was clearly a rogue. She wouldn’t be able to mind link with a pack to provide them updates.

“So what are you doing here?” I asked.

The girl shrugged. “Got caught hunting for food.”

I looked at her quizzically. “Were you eating humans or something?”

“No,” she laughed dryly. “I was just at the national forest and they found me.”

A fire burned in my gut. I could understand hunters patrolling for werewolves that posed a danger to society, but to take one that was peacefully minding its own business, trying to find its next meal? That wasn’t acceptable.

“My name’s Danica, by the way,” she whispered.

“Hi, Danica,” I said with a smile. “Where is this prison located, exactly?”

Danica looked up to the frosted glass window, not that she would be able to see anything out of it. “We can’t be too far outside of Cheyenne. It wasn’t that long of a drive from where they got me.”

I nodded slowly, turning away from Danica so she couldn’t see the look of disappointment on my face. Cheyenne, Wyoming was not one of the places Cody had targeted as a potential place they would take me. I truly hoped this didn’t alter the plan too much. I had been in here only four days, and I didn’t know how much longer I could take. But, Cheyenne wasn’t one of our targeted locations. It’d take at least a few extra days to move people here.

I took a deep breath, reminding myself that somehow, some way, things would work out for the best. Even if they weren’t the version of the best that I would have picked out.