Lila’s POV
The truck bed smelled like rust and old blood. Every pothole in the road sent a fresh jolt of pain through the rope burns at my wrists.
I wept quietly. Quiet was the only kind of crying I could afford. Somewhere in the dark beside me, huddled against the same cold metal wall, three other people shifted with every turn.
Other captives. Other wolves. Though none of them looked much like wolves anymore. One of them, a boy who couldn’t have been much older than me, had a wound along his ribs that had gone the wrong color days ago. It wept dark fluid every time the truck lurched. Another lay so still I couldn’t tell if she was breathing at all.
The third watched me with hollow, exhausted eyes and said nothing. Like speaking had stopped being worth the effort a long time before I
