“No, no, no,” Zoe whispered to herself, hands curling around the bars she found herself behind.

This couldn’t be happening. This had to be some kind of nightmare. There was no way she could be back in her old pack. Had she died while she was walking with Zagan? Was this some kind of cruel afterlife where she was bound to repeat her worst, most vulnerable moments? Was this perhaps repayment for being complicit in the tracing and capture of other alyko all these years?

When Andreas had bitten her and Zoe finally got her memory back, this was one place she would have preferred remain forgotten. Zagan was not her favorite person by a long shot, but being with him—even in the dark—was better than being here. No one expected a vampire to treat them well, but when it was your own family guilty of imprisonment and neglect, that was the most painful kind of hurt. It was the kind of hurt that made you feel lost and wrong and unloved in the innermost part of yourself. If your family couldn’t love you, then… how could you even love yourself?

Zoe slid down with her back against the bars and just let the tears come. The craggy inner wall of her room that was built into the mountainside glistened with water flowing down its face, mimicking her tears. After all of these years, she recognized that constant drip, drip, dripping of water that had not changed. It echoed somewhere deep within her—a familiar pool of hopelessness, the depths of which were always waiting to swallow her whole. And here she was, back at the mouth of it.

“Goddess Selene in heaven, who are you?” a startled elderly male voice cried behind her.

Zoe scrambled up and turned to face him, grasping the bars in her hands. “I am not supposed to be here. Please let me out!”

“Are you alyko? We aint had no alyko locked up here in years,” he gaped, stumbling back away from her.

“I… I belong to the ancient one. The vampire. H-he will be looking for me,” she said, stumbling over the words.

Was she really claiming to belong to Zagan? But if it could get her out of this dark, crying room and away from her pack, then she would say just about anything. She would even go with Zagan if she had to.

“Dagum, you look like you were ate by a wolf and shit over a cliff,” the male remarked, eyes wide as he stared at the stitches on her face.

Zoe pounded the bars in frustration at the old man. “Let me out!”

“I don’t have the keys,” he said, backing away from her. “But I will let the Alpha know, darlin,” and then he scampered away down the dark cave.

Zoe groaned, wiping the tears from her eyes. She wasn’t going to be stuck in here. She was going to find a way out if it killed her.

———————

“She looks like Annabel, Alpha. I remember her,” the elderly male reported, standing in his leader’s office. “Same cage and everything.”

“In one of the mountain cells?” Alpha Kane asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. They had not had anyone down there in over a decade. The male nodded. “But Annabel was removed so long ago. She would not look the same.”

“I’m just telling you what I saw,” he replied. “And she’s mad. Got her tail in a real kink.”

Kane debated going down there or calling the vampire first. He decided to just call. Even if it were not one of the vampire’s alyko, he would be the one Kane called to remove the creature anyway.

“Well, it looks like someone from the ancient’s crew will be paying us a visit,” Kane said after finishing the call with Zagan. “It has been a long time since they were here last. Let’s make sure she is secure,” he told the old male who had waited in his office.

“Why were you down here at this time of night?” Kane asked the male as he led them toward the cave with a torch.

“My cabin started flooding again. Hasn’t happened in ages. Figured it was coming from the mountain. Followed it to that cave, and there she was—cryin in the dark.”

They were approaching the mouth of the cave, and Kane stopped walking, recalling again how risky it could be dealing with alyko. What if she were a powerful one? Wouldn’t she have to be powerful to have returned here without the guards catching her crossing the border? Maybe she was back for revenge.

The old male shuffled to pass him, not needing the flame to show him the way. “Is something the matter?” he asked the Alpha who looked… afraid.

“Perhaps we should wait,” Kane said, waves of heat rippling off of the torch in his hand.

“Wait? Why?” the elder scoffed and squinted at the Alpha. “You fraid of the dark?”

“No, I am not afraid of the dark,” Kane growled at the ridiculous question. He wasn’t afraid of the dark, he was just wary of alyko who appeared out of nowhere and made the mountain weep.

“She aint goin nowhere, Alpha. She was tryna get out when I was here,” the male reassured him.

Kane grumbled something indecipherable and continued into the cave. The steady sound of water did not escape his awareness. There had not been water running down this mountain in ages, and now the sound of it was eerie, as if it were luring them closer.

“Hello?” Kane called out in his most authoritative voice meant for intimidation, yet somehow the sound of water and the darkness that swallowed it won.

They approached the mountain cell she had been in, the elder making sure to point out the exact one. But she was not there. Kane got closer to the bars, shifting the torch to cast more light into the darker crannies that greedily kept their shadows. And splayed out, unmoving in one of them was the figure of a young female. She appeared to be unconscious.

“Hello?” Kane tried again, but she didn’t move.

He growled and reached for his keys, eventually finding the right one and unlocking the door to make sure the vampire wasn’t on his way here to retrieve a dead body.