🦋 ALTHEA
The chains burned me, like a too-warm knife pressed around my wrists. Not potent enough to scar, but the silver would leave slow-forming blisters that would ache for days.
I bit my bottom lip and forced down the rising pain lancing through my joints. If the two Vargans escorting me noticed my discomfort, they didn't show it. The silver-marked men in simple tunics remained stoic as we took what I counted as the fifth turn on our journey to what the Hell Hound had called the War Room.
I surveyed my surroundings as we moved through corridors that felt eerily like a maze. The High Alpha's Labyrinth flared to life behind my eyes—twisting passages, crushing darkness, the certainty I would die lost and alone—and I couldn't help but shudder.
