This is Not the Spa Package I Booked
678 Words
Blaze straightened, scanning the horizon with a predator’s certainty. He scooped her up once more, holding her against his chest as if she weighed nothing. Roslynn’s head lolled against his collarbone; the last thing she registered was the flicker of moonlight off the silver in his eyes, and the way his entire body shuddered as they crossed an invisible line.
Something changed. The air. The pressure. The world itself, rippling for a heartbeat.
They had crossed the threshold—midnight Pack territory.
She’d always wanted to see the world. Apparently, she should’ve specified which one.
Roslynn surfaced from darkness like a swimmer breaking through ice—lungs burning, skin prickling, mind refusing to orient itself to reality.
The first thing she noticed was the stone, pressing against her cheek and leeching the warmth from her face. The second was the damp air saturated with a chill; beads of condensation trickled down the walls and pooled in shallow divots along the floor. Drip. Drip. Drip. Each drop echoed, compounding the migraine blooming behind her eyes.
She tried to roll over, but her wrists refused to move. With a groan, she lifted her head and found her arms bound behind her—heavy iron cuffs linked with a short chain. The skin at her wrists was red and raw, but there was a deeper pain, radiating from her collarbone. The mark blazed, not with light, but with the steady pulse of a second heart.
Roslynn flexed her fingers, testing the cuffs. Solid. Not amateur hour. She followed the chain to a steel ring sunk into the wall behind her. She was shackled like a junkyard dog.
She snorted, a quick burst of sound that only made her head throb harder. Blaze and his cave-Kidnapper Friends had apparently graduated from the “shove you over the shoulder and run” school of abduction to the “actual dungeon” approach.
Classic.
She squinted at her surroundings. The room was more cell than chamber—no window, just blocks of stone darkened by centuries of moisture and neglect. Two torches guttered in sconces, casting oily shadows that writhed across the ceiling. The air was layered: sweat, wet stone, and beneath that, a sharpness she couldn’t place.
A line of silver runes banded the top edge of each wall. The symbols looked like a language written by someone mid-seizure: all jagged points and curves, so dense they almost shimmered in the light.
Roslynn licked her lips, tasting salt and blood. “If this is how you guys do Airbnb, I’m leaving a really bad review.”
A shape filled the doorway, wide as a refrigerator and topped with a head that nearly brushed the stone crossbeam.
Knox.
He didn’t speak. Instead, he glared at her with yellow-bronze eyes, a color that seemed both unnatural and weirdly appropriate. The torchlight caught the irises and made them glow.
Roslynn raised her eyebrows. “You gonna explain, or am I supposed just to guess the kidnapping etiquette here?”
No answer. He jerked his chin—a command. Stand up.
She sighed, shifted to her knees, and fought her way upright. The chain was just long enough to let her shuffle a few feet forward, but nothing more.
“Silent treatment,” she said, tilting her head. “Very avant-garde. What’s next, interpretive dance?”
He gave her another look—equal parts disgust and reluctance—then reached behind him. A key, held between thumb and forefinger. He stepped forward, keeping just out of reach, and knelt in front of her. The air between them thickened, the smell of mountain ash and wolf musk coiling around her like a threat.
She fought the urge to flinch as he unlocked the cuffs. His touch was careful but clinical, like a vet setting a snare trap. She expected him to re-cuff her the second her hands were free, but instead, he rose to his full, terrifying height and pointed to the door.
“Chivalry’s not dead,” Roslynn muttered, massaging her wrists. “Just deeply repressed.”
- Writer
