Chapter 70-1
Kiana
Claim
The regiment was always the same. After my shift ended, I had three hours to relax, shower, and prepare for dinner. As always, there was a dress laid out on the chair. Not the bed, as if that was
somehow supposed to make me feel better.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the suite was searched every day while I was gone. There were little things I would note before I left and saw that they’d been moved. Sometimes it was a lampshade turned just a little. Once, I’d tucked the edge of some thread under the rug and found it in the corner when I got home. My bedsheet was tucked differently. Morven told me that he would have the maid come in every day, but I’d asked to keep my own suite clean. He’d relented, but it hadn’t stopped
him from searching the rooms.
Tonight’s dress was red. Most of the dresses were red. That seemed to be Morven’s favorite color. The dresses were never the same. Either the pack’s seamstress was very busy or Morven was spending an enormous amount of money clothing me for the two hours he required my
attendance at dinner.
They were always the worst part of the day. Otherwise, Morven left me alone, but I had to have dinner with him. Forced pleasantries. He’d tell me about his plans. He’d ask about my day.
Every night, I asked if he would let me leave yet. Every night, he would tell me that I made a choice,
and I needed to honor it.
Without touching the dress, I headed to the shower and turned the water on. So far, I only had one mapped out route. My best chance of getting out of here was getting to the human settlement at
the bottom of the mountain.
They traded freely with Morven’s pack, not realizing that it was a shifter settlement, and it was an enormous town. It meant going down to go up, but once I was in the human settlement, Morven
couldn’t touch me. He wouldn’t dare expose the wolves by taking me by brute force.
Getting back up to Troy was a different story. I didn’t have a plan for that. I didn’t even know if Troy
wanted me back.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to go back.
There was only one weak spot I could easily identify from my limited knowledge of the layout, and
that spot wasn’t as weak as I would like. To get that close to the boundary, I’d have to get to the
infirmary. Unfortunately, every accident that I’d had (slicing my finger open at the bar, slipping on
one of the longer dresses and falling down the stairs, the horrid cramps I’d fabricated on my last
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< Chapter 70-1
period) had only resulted in the healer visiting me and not the other way around.
Claim
If I was going to get to the infirmary, I was going to have to seriously hurt myself, and I feared I would have to do it twice. Once to take stock of the area and figure out how to escape from the
infirmary. And once to actually make the escape.
The question wasn’t how badly I needed to hurt myself but when would I ever get the opportunity to do it. I’d happily throw myself out the window and plummet the four stories below if there
weren’t bars on them.
Grabbing the dress, I gathered the rest of the things I needed and headed to the shower. I locked the door behind me and turned on the shower. As steam rose up, I stared in the mirror at my
reflection.
In captivity, I’d turned into the healthiest version of myself. Ironic. I ate better. I exercised when I could. I got plenty of sleep. As much as I wanted to do a hunger strike, I knew Morven would just call my bluff, and I’d waste away until I was too weak to fight.
And one day, I would need to fight. I needed to be ready for when that happened.
Stripping, I stepped into the shower and let the hot water run over me. As always, I thought about the last time Troy touched me. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it had been like when his arms were around me. When his lips were on me. When my body melted against his.
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