Caged No More: The True Heir's Wrath novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cage

Locked in a Venomfang barn cage, Ivy faces a grieving she-wolf, her own wolf wakes for the first time in ten months with silver eyes, and Jonah comes alone to ask who touched her phone.

The Venomfang lodge sat on a black lake, and every window in it was lit.

Wolves stood in the yard in a double line, holding lanterns.

When Jonah pulled me out of the truck by the chain, they began to howl.

It was not a song of welcome.

It was a howl for blood.

"Corinne is on the second floor," Jonah said in my ear. "Every one of them has sat by her bed tonight. Remember that."

"I didn't hurt her," I said.

"Walk."

He led me past the line.

Nobody threw stones here, because Jonah's wolves did not need to.

They only stared, and their hatred came off them in waves that made my burns throb.

Behind the lodge stood an old timber barn with a cage built into the far wall.

The bars were thick iron, and the lock was the size of my fist.

Jonah unlocked it, took the end of the chain from my wrists, and fixed it to a ring bolted to the floor.

"There's a blanket," he said. "Water in the bucket."

"For nine days?"

"For nine days."

He walked out and left a guard at the barn door.

I sat down on the concrete floor with my back against the bars and my ribs on fire.

The barn smelled of hay and cold iron.

For the first time since the courtyard I was alone, and I let myself shake.

Dane had looked at me and seen a stranger.

Bree had kissed my cheek.

Someone had written to Corinne Dray for six weeks as me, and I did not know who.

I did know one thing.

The phone had been on the kitchen table, and three people lived in that house.

I closed my eyes and did not follow the thought any further.

I was not ready to.

Hours passed, and the guard changed twice.

Then, a little before dawn, the barn door banged open.

A woman walked in with her shoulders shaking, and she was not carrying a lantern.

She had red-brown hair like Corinne's, and she smelled of smoke and tears.

"Traitor," she said, and her voice cracked down the middle. "She was my best friend since we were six."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't do it."

"Liar."

She dropped to all fours on the concrete, and her bones cracked and her spine bowed.

A russet wolf the size of a calf came out of her clothes.

The guard shouted from the door.

The wolf crossed the barn in two bounds and slammed into the bars.

Her teeth snapped an inch from my face, and the iron rang.

I threw my arm up, and the chain dragged me back against the wall.

She hit the bars again.

And inside my chest, where the bond had been ripped out, something that had been asleep for ten months opened its eyes.

It was a wolf.

My wolf.

She came up through my ribs all at once, hot and furious and awake, and she said one word in my head.

*Enough.*

My vision went bright.

I stood up with the chain slack in my hand, and I looked straight into the russet wolf's eyes.

I did not growl.

I did not need to.

The wolf stopped with her teeth bared and her ears flat.

Then a small, frightened sound came out of her throat.

She backed up, one step and then another, until her haunches hit the barn wall.

The guard stood frozen at the door.

His mouth hung open.

"Your eyes," he said.

I looked down at my hands.

The silver light from my own gaze lay on the concrete in two pale circles.

Then I heard slow boots behind him.

Jonah Dray came in with a lantern in one hand.

He had not slept either.

He looked at the cowering wolf, at the guard, and then at me.

His gaze held on my eyes a long time, and his own face did not change.

"Take her out," he told the guard, and the guard hauled the russet wolf out by the scruff.

The door shut.

Jonah set the lantern on an upturned crate, and the light threw the bars across his face.

My wolf was still in me, quiet now but not gone.

I kept my chin up and my eyes on him and let him see it.

"That's new," he said.

"It's been ten months," I said. "She's only just woken."

"The Rennick heir," he said slowly. "Everyone says you were born without a wolf worth the name."

"Everyone says a lot of things."

He crouched on the other side of the bars.

Up close I could see the scar through his eyebrow was an old one, and that his eyes were red from no sleep.

"Corinne's fever rose again at midnight," he said.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be useful."

He pulled his phone out and laid it on the floor between the bars.

The thread of messages from "Ivy" glowed on the screen.

"I've read every line of it four times," he said. "Whoever wrote this knew Corinne's dog's name and her favourite song."

"I don't know either of those."

"You knew enough to get her on that trail."

He leaned closer.

"So tell me about the phone, Ivy Rennick."

"Tell me where you want me to start," I said.

"Start with who touched it."

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