Chapter 2

Amelia

The man staggers along, leaning on me for strength. I wind us through the woods, paying careful attention to the footsteps and howls in the distance.

The man stumbles along, hardly picking up his feet as his eyelids droop. I’m practically dragging him, which is a feat since the top of my head barely reaches his nose.

“Come on,” I coax him, hoping he doesn’t pass out until I can settle him somewhere safer. “Not much farther now.”

I notice the sounds of werewolves recede as we approach the outskirts of the Home for the Forgotten orphanage, and I realize they might not expect a grown man to hide among children. I scan the building as it comes into view, but no one seems to be around since most are preparing for their Showings.

I take the stranger down to the basement, almost tumbling down the stairs together when he loses his footing. Thankfully, I’m able to catch him, despite my food-deprived body and his large frame. We ease the rest of the way down precariously into the stagnant air of the basement torture chamber.

Cleaning out this basement hasn’t been my only punishment. After two-hundred-and-fifty-one escape attempts, because even Zella and Julius didn’t know about them all, the director moved my living quarters down here, “to live with the rest of the filth” as she put it.

She thought not being able to live with the other kids would be a punishment. Apparently, she doesn’t know that I don’t have a single friend in this place. Separating me from the rest of the residents here has been an incredible reprieve.

I’ve been careful not to let her know it.

I constantly complain about the basement’s dirty state, its damp, sticky air, and the dilapidated, makeshift living quarters she threw together for me. They are all repugnant, so the complaints aren’t a lie, anyway. And they keep Director Crane thinking I can’t stand staying down here – they keep her from trying to punish me with something worse.

I’m only just laying the man down on my flimsy bit of hay when I hear my name being called.

“Amelia!”

I recognize the voice belonging to Krista, another kid here who’s a couple years younger, as her footsteps echo closer down the basement steps. My little sleeping area where I’ve laid the man is in a little off-shoot from the main basement room, like a closet – without a door. I hastily toss my thin blanket over him, knowing I’ll have to rely on the basement door to block the view of him.

“Krista!” I greet her at the door, holding the door steady in my hand, resolved not to let her walk past it.

She sniffs the air, and immediately gags, sticking her tongue out in disgust. “Oh, gross! It always smells so nasty down here.”

She takes a couple steps farther back up the stairs. “I guess it makes sense that you’re down here. All you little pests flock to the smell of trash, don’t you?”

I wait patiently as Krista laughs.

I will never run out of patience. Patience makes the difference between imprisonment and freedom.

Krista sighs. “Director Crane says you’re supposed to be upstairs helping the older kids prepare for their Showings.”

I nod. “I’ll be up right away.”

“Good,” Krista replies. “You better hurry because I’m going to be pissed if Director Crane sends me down to this smelly swamp again because you’re being lazy.”

I bite back any comments about Krista being half my size and, unlike a lot of kids here, not a threat to me.

And I realize in relief, as she scurries back upstairs, that no one wants to come down to the basement. It may be the absolute best place in the entire orphanage to hide someone.

Later that night, after all the Showings are complete, I snatch a bit of bread and a cloth from the kitchen. When I make it back to my damp room, the man is unconscious and shivering under my sorry excuse for a blanket. I look under the blanket at his wounds, which seem to be healing.

Checking his head again, I can tell he has a fever. I was afraid that would be the case, which is exactly why I grabbed the cloth from the kitchen.

I fill my chipped cup with water from the faucet in the corner of the main part of the basement, carefully lifting the stranger’s head in my lap to help him drink. He wakes only enough to sip the water down slowly, his eyelids never opening in his delirium.

After he’s had some water, I wet the cloth, placing it gently on his forehead to cool him down. I refresh the water on the cloth every twenty minutes throughout the night, holding him through his chills when they rack his body.

Despite hours of attending to him, the man doesn’t improve. I’m exhausted and concerned and hungry despite the bits of bread I’ve nibbled while watching the strange man in my bed and praying for Fate to heal him.

The next thing I know, I’m waking up to the dim light from the egress window illuminating the basement. I’m amazed by how rested I feel, by how ready I am to wake up, as if I actually slept well enough to start a new day.

The feeling is rare for me and absolutely lovely.

Slowly, I realize how cozy I feel – much too cozy for the pathetic hay and blanket I use for a bed.

Opening my eyes, I find myself in the arms of the man I tended to most of the night. His arms are wrapped around me, and we’re facing each other.

I realize I must have fallen asleep while holding him through a bout of chills. Angling my head slightly, I find the cloth on the ground that must have fallen off his forehead at some point.

He shifts in response to my movement, pulling me a little closer. It’s then that I notice the definition in his strong arm muscles and his beautiful bronze skin. Even relaxed in sleep, he radiates power, which is so different from the other slaves I’ve seen.

I glance at his face again, noting the bronze skin that was so much paler when I met him. Hope sparks in my chest, and I reach my hand out to check his forehead, ecstatic when I find his temperature has finally gone down.

I’m smiling in relief as I pull my hand away to find I’m not the only one who’s awake.

I lock eyes with the man whose name I still don’t know, amazed at how vibrant his eyes look now that his body has healed. The deep brown of his irises look cracked by a bright, honey color, like sunshine breaking through stone. I’m about to compliment him on the intricate beauty of his eyes when he suddenly grabs me by my throat and rolls on top of me, those brown eyes seeming to flash gold.

He pins me to the basement floor where I’ve been pinned hundreds of times as part of countless punishments. His words are not the question they seem, but a ferocious demand.

“Who are you?”