Quiver

Prologue

It had been... months? I believed it had been months, it could have been merely days since I couldn't remember a single thing anymore. The days ran together into nights in one continuous loop of time. How much time? I had no idea. There was no way for me to tell being locked in this cage and fed next to nothing. Only being let out to get beat and...tested upon. I was barely alive, barely hanging on at this point. I could have died and I might have been happier, but there was something that kept me alive, that kept my heart beating somewhat solidly in my chest. Him. Roman.

Roman Morrison kept me alive because I kept hoping he'd save me and my brother from them. The Jaecars. I knew he'd come at some point and no matter how much Claire and Jason and the rest of these flithy humans tortured me and told me otherwise, I knew. I could feel it deep within my soul, even though we hadn't completed the bond, I knew Roman wouldn't just leave me. He had watched me for three years, loved me for three years and now when he could finally have me I had been taken... no, Roman would not give that up. All this time I was here, I knew it was for a reason. Hell, Roman had probably tried to run after the Jaecars the moment he'd noticed I'd disappeared, but I figured the reason he didn't was due to...his leader.

Being in this...this facility that the Jaecars had, made me forget the faces and names of my pack members. The only one I could remember was Roman, but I had trouble recalling his face, the way he spoke, the way his lips felt...the little things that I missed and ached for daily. I hated the fact that Claire had ruined the first Annual Gathering I'd been to, I hated the fact she took me from Roman who I'd just begun to love, but what I hated Claire for most was the way she teased and tortured me with my brother, with Cole.

It was like knives in my heart to hear him scream, to hear him groan in agony and to know he was only a cell across from mine, yet I could not hear much unless it was loud. The Plexiglas had a way of drowning out most of the noise, leaving me in total silence, while it also kept me contained in either form, but I could still see him bleed and his face twist in agony. Of course, being Jaecars they had drugged me from the beginning, meaning I couldn't shift even if I wanted to, to try and save Cole. Whenever I even thought about switching skins an awful fire burned through my veins and only got worse the further I shifted.

I mostly lied in my cage confines, rarely moving or sleeping aside from passing out in black fits due to extreme exhaustion. I was barely fed, kept to the bare minimum so I couldn't attack or escape. The worst part was the beatings I would get...but now it's the tests they run. Using me as some sort of experiment and just hurting me by hurting Cole now. I was slowly going insane and I prayed, oh, how I prayed for Roman to come. Each day and night, not that I could tell which was which in this facility, I grew more desperate, but yet it felt as though I was giving up at the same time.

I wanted to survive, I did, but each day I remained trapped here I felt myself slipping away. The torture, the inability to shift, my brother's screams, the lack of food and water, everything was horrid. And in the time I'd been here, Claire had collected more and more Lupus, but I noticed that those Lupus often came and went...only I was special. Whatever tests they had run on them...it killed them. I could only hope it would never happen to me.