Chapter 9: Locked In

They carried me home and locked me in my own room.

The key turned in the door at four in the afternoon.

By five, my hands had gone cold again.

I sat on the edge of my bed in the green blanket and watched the color drain out of my fingers, nail by nail.

It happened more slowly than the first time, but I could feel every minute of it.

The warmth of the morning had been so brief that I now understood exactly what I had lost.

My window was nailed shut.

There was a guard in the hall, and I could hear the Beta shifting his weight on the boards.

"Brynn," he said through the door, quietly. "I'm sorry about the arms."

"You held me down."

"He's my Alpha."

"He's a liar."

The boards creaked.

"I know what I saw today," the Beta said, after a while. "A girl who was walking around in the sun, and then a girl who can't stand up."

"Then do something."

"I can't," he said, and he moved away down the hall.

I put my forehead on my knees.

Down the hall a door opened and shut.

Someone was carrying Clara to bed.

I could hear my mother's voice, soft and wrecked, and Hester's, brisk, and the creak of the old stairs.

Then my father's, loud and warm, telling a room of elders that the Alpha's daughter was overwrought and that the Moon Stone would have to wait.

The pack believed him.

I heard them go down the drive in twos and threes, murmuring about how hard it was on the family.

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