Karmella's P.O.V
The air smelled different.
Clean. Cold. Tinged with something sterile and sharp.
I blinked against the dim light, lashes heavy with sleep—or maybe unconsciousness. My body felt like it had been wrung out and left in the snow.
Why am I still here?
I tried to move. Everything ached. My throat was dry, and my head throbbed with a slow, pulsing pressure. The surface beneath me was soft. Too soft. This wasn't the same cell. I lifted my head slightly, vision swimming, and saw the walls—padded. Clean. Seamless. A new room. But still a prison. Still a cage.
A flicker of movement in the corner caught my attention.
My gaze landed on the guard. Not outside the door. Inside. Silent. Armed. Watching me with an unreadable expression.
I froze.
Why was he in the room? Why—And then it came back. In flashes.
The blade. The blood.
The King's hand slamming around my wrist.
The sound of the metal hitting the floor.
His arms—holding me.
Then… the look in his eyes.
Not rage. Not revulsion. Something else.
And then—Nothing.
I shifted upright with a sharp gasp, panic spiking in my chest. I pressed a shaking hand to my throat. There was a bandage there. Small. Clean. But I was alive. He had stopped me.
The Lycan King.
The one who hated rogues. The one who stood stone-faced while I spilled my soul at his feet. The one who laughed at me for requesting sanctuary. He had caught me. He had saved me.
Why?
I sat in the center of the floor, arms wrapped around myself, trying to make sense of it.
Had I failed? Had I been too slow? Or had he truly—intentionally—saved me?
And if so…What did that mean? I wasn't shackled, but I wasn't free. I wasn't dead, but I wasn't living either.
And now a guard stood inside my cell, as if my own mind couldn't be trusted.
He doesn't want to kill me. But he won't let me go.
The thoughts tangled like roots around my lungs.
I looked down at my shaking hands. What was I now?
A broken girl with violet eyes, rogue with no pack, a wolf that had only whispered to me in a dream.
I wasn't strong. I wasn't special. So what was I doing in the Lycan King's kingdom? Why hadn't he let me die? What was I supposed to do now?
The guard's gaze was heavy on my skin, but I didn't look up to meet it. I wasn't ready to look at anyone. Not yet.
Instead, I closed my eyes and whispered, more to myself than anyone else—
"What do you want from me…?"
But the only answer was the silence pressing in. And the weight of survival where death should have been.
The room was too quiet. The guard didn't speak, and I didn't want him to.
I pressed my forehead to my knees, curling tighter into myself, arms wrapping around like a armor made of nothing.
The burning in my throat had eased, but the ache behind my eyes remained. I was so tired. Not in the way sleep could fix—but deep. Bone-deep. I closed my eyes, and for a moment…I wasn't in the cell anymore.
We were sitting under the half-dead oak behind the pack house, hidden behind its gnarled trunk from our father's patrols. It was the middle of winter, but Dean had dragged out a worn blanket and two bruised mugs of reheated cocoa.
My hands had been frost-bitten from chores I was required to do in the snow, knuckles cracked and bleeding.
He had rubbed warmth back into them gently, muttering curses under his breath about Victor's latest punishment.
"I swear, Karma," he had said, his voice tight but soft, "one day I'm going to get you out of here."
I laughed bitterly. "Sure. Maybe you'll grow wings too."
But he hadn't smiled.
He'd just looked at me—really looked at me—with that same unwavering steel in his gaze.
"You'll get out. You have to."
He hadn't said we.
He never did.
My throat tightened as the memory faded like smoke, replaced by padded walls and cold light.
Dean…Was he alive? Had he made it out? Had the rogues caught him? Had Victor? Did he think I was dead?
The thought wrapped around my chest like iron bands. This couldn't be what he imagined when he told me to run. Bleeding in a cell under the eye of the most feared Lycan in existence, caught in the space between mercy and punishment.
I let my head fall back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling, eyes burning.
"Are you out there?" I whispered, barely audible.
"Are you still fighting?"
Because I didn't know if I was anymore. But if Dean had survived… if he was still trying…
Then maybe I shouldn't give up. Not yet. Not until I knew.
Kelowna's P.O.V
I leaned against the far wall of the security room, arms crossed, eyes locked onto the lone monitor glowing in the dark.
She sat there, knees to her chest, hair damp with sweat, skin pale against the sterile white padding of the cell. Still alive. Still silent. But not empty. Not anymore.
The screen flickered slightly with the feed. I could see her lips moving faintly—murmuring to herself, maybe praying, maybe remembering. Her expression wasn't blank now. It was tired. Haunted. Worn down by the weight of something she hadn't let go of yet.
My jaw clenched. What are you?
I'd seen plenty of rogues. Killed them. Tortured a few. Watched many beg. Few lasted past the first interrogation.
But her?
She didn't scream.
Didn't flinch when threatened.
Didn't try to run or cry or lie.
She just tried to die.
And that disturbed me far more than I wanted to admit.
I watched her bring her hand to her throat—just where the bandage lay—and then lower it again slowly. Like she didn't want to remember, but her body wouldn't let her forget.
I exhaled through my nose and turned slightly, only to find my reflection staring back from the darkened glass of the monitor.
My face was taut. Cold. Impassive. But something in my eyes betrayed me.
There was… a pull.
A tension in my gut that hadn't let go since the moment I'd caught her wrist. From the moment I looked down at her bleeding and limp in my arms.
And Godric—my wolf—hadn't stopped pacing since. Restless. On edge. Drawn.
Why?
She wasn't powerful.
She wasn't beautiful in the usual ways.
She was thin, filthy, and full of scars.
And yet—
I couldn't stop watching her.
It made me furious. Not just with her—but with myself. Because deep down, some part of me already knew: I wasn't going to let her go.
Not now. Not ever.
I pushed off the wall and stepped closer to the monitor.
Sanctuary.
The word tasted like ash. I had laughed when she asked. The thought of giving any rogue sanctuary was laughable. And yet…
Here you are.
Here I was.
Guard at her door. Food being brought. Hands trembling when she bled.
I snarled softly under my breath.
"This is weakness."
Godric stirred again.
Or instinct, he whispered back to me.
I stared at her image on the screen. She shifted just slightly, and even that was enough to keep me rooted there. Minutes passed. I didn't leave. Didn't look away. And eventually, under my breath, barely audible even to myself—
"She's not going anywhere."