The man who enters has to duck beneath the frame to fit through it.
He stands easily over six and a half feet tall, broad as the doorway itself, with shoulders that could block out the sun if he chose to stand between it and the earth. A horrific scar runs from ear to ear across his throat, the tissue pink and puckered, impossible to ignore. As if someone once tried to take his head clean off and nearly succeeded.
His hair is cropped short and dark against his scalp, but his eyes are warm brown and entirely at odds with his terrifying frame.
Fantastic. I've been kidnapped by a gentle giant who looks like he lost a fight with a machete.
I lie motionless on the narrow bed, keeping my breathing shallow and even while I track his every move across the room and catalogue every sensation demanding attention. My skull throbs with a migraine that pulses behind my eyes like a second heartbeat I never asked for. Every muscle in my body protests the simple act of existing, my mouth feels stuffed with cotton, and my throat is so dry that swallowing brings tears to my eyes.
When he finally moves from the door, it's with deliberate slowness, each step measured and careful. As if he learned long ago that sudden movements from a man his size only frighten people.
And the sacrificed women, apparently.
The tray he carries holds a bowl of soup, a thick slice of bread, and a glass of water that catches the firelight like liquid amber. If only he knew what I'm ready to give away just for a sip of it right now.
"You should eat," he says, and his voice emerges damaged and raspy, scraped raw by whatever violence left that scar across his neck. "You've been out for two days."
Two days. Fuck.
The confirmation settles into my bones with the weight of a death sentence delivered casually over breakfast. Two days unconscious in an unfamiliar place, surrounded by strangers who may or may not want me dead. Two days during which anything could have happened to me, and I would never have known until it was too late.
Two days since my own grandmother drugged me like a lamb being prepped for slaughter.
"Where am I?" The question scrapes past my parched throat, barely louder than a whisper.
He sets the tray on a small table beside the bed with movements so gentle they seem almost rehearsed. Like genuinely practiced to make himself unthreatening in a body clearly built for the opposite purpose. "Somewhere safe. No one here is going to hurt you, I promise."
"Why should I believe that?" I push myself upright despite the screaming protest of every muscle, refusing to have this conversation while lying prone and vulnerable like some fainting Victorian maiden. The flannel shirt someone dressed me in falls past my knees, and I pull it tighter around my body like armor made of soft cotton. "You could be working with the people who tried to sacrifice me. You could be planning to finish what they started. For all I know, that soup is poisoned and you're just here to watch me choke on my own optimism."
He pauses, and something sad flickers across his features. A grief too old and too familiar to be caused by my paranoia alone.
"You shouldn't trust me," he admits, and the honesty in his damaged voice catches me off guard. "Not yet. I haven't earned that, and neither has anyone else here. But it's still true that no one is going to hurt you."
The kindness in his eyes doesn't waver. It just sits there, patient and steady, waiting for nothing in return.
I want to demand more. I want names and explanations and answers to questions I do not yet know how to ask. I want to know why I woke up in a stranger's shirt with a connection humming in my chest that wasn't there three days ago. I want to know what the hell is happening to my body, why my skin feels too tight and too sensitive, why I can feel a presence at the edge of my awareness that pulses like a wound refusing to heal.
But he does not press for anything in return. He simply turns and walks toward the door, giving me space I did not expect from a man who could crush my skull with one hand and probably wouldn't even need to put down his morning coffee to do it.
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I am alone with my racing thoughts.
Do not trust the gentleness from strangers.
Margot taught me that lesson well enough, though she never realized she was teaching by example. Kindness without context is merely patience waiting for the right moment to strike. A warm smile can hide a cold heart, and the people who hurt you worst are always the ones who make you feel safe first.
I wait until his footsteps fade completely before sliding off the bed. My bare feet touch rough wooden floorboards, and I move toward the wall where the gaps between planks are widest. The cabin walls are thin enough that through the gaps I can hear male voices arguing with an intensity that makes my pulse quicken.
"She has to die." The voice is sharp, authoritative, brooking no disagreement. "There's no other option."
"The ritual wasn't meant to survive," another argues, this one calmer but no less certain. "She's an anomaly, a threat to everything we've built here."
"You felt it too." A third voice enters the debate, heavy with implication I do not fully understand. "She's in heat. The bond is already forming with the others."
"Then we contain it." The first voice again, cold as mountain streams in winter. "Or we end it."
End it.
End her.
End me.
My heart pounds against my ribs so hard I fear they might hear it through the walls. I have heard enough. Whatever mercy the scarred man offered, whatever safety he promised with those sad brown eyes, the others have already made their decision about my fate.
I move silently to the door on feet that have learned to walk without sound through years of avoiding Margot's attention. My hand closes around the handle, cool metal against my palm, and I pull.
But the next second the door rips from my grip with violent force, yanked open from the outside by a hand faster and far stronger than mine.
Standing in the doorway is the auburn-haired man from my dream, his sharp features twisted with contempt that looks carved into his bones rather than merely worn upon his face. Green eyes burn with hostility so intense it radiates from him like heat from a forge, and his athletic frame coils with tension that promises violence if I so much as breathe wrong.
He does not block my exit. Instead, he steps inside the cabin and kicks the door shut behind him with one booted foot. The lock clicks into place with heavy finality, the sound of a cage closing around its prey.
He stalks forward, and I retreat instinctively until my back presses flat against the wall with nowhere left to go. His eyes never leave mine as he draws closer, and I realize the green isn't merely bright—it glows with literal supernatural fire, irises that should not exist on any human face burning with an hatred I haven't earned yet.
"Going somewhere, little sacrifice?" he snarls.
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