CHAPTER 98: SILVER CAGE

Kaya

Everything hurts. Every inch of my body throbs with soreness. Every muscle feels wound tight, every bone crushed beneath an invisible weight.

I’m wide awake—pain has a way of making that perfectly clear—but no matter how hard I try to open my eyes, my eyelids feel glued shut. The darkness clings to me, dragging me back toward a heavy, unwilling stupor.

Rana...

I reach out to my wolf, desperate for her steady presence, for anything to help me pull myself together. But she is silent.

Rana? I call again, more urgently this time. Nothing.

A jolt of panic rips through me. I force myself upright, shattering the wall of agony that chains my body like weighted shackles—only for another, sharper shock to seize me by the throat.

"Good morning, sweetheart."

I freeze. Then, I want to scream, though I can’t tell which part of what I’m seeing is twisting every nerve inside me.

"Damien..."

I see him with absolute clarity, as if everything else has been blurred and shoved far, far into the background.

He smiles—that subtle, dangerous smile that makes his eyes glint with something dark and thrilling. The same smile that once made me believe there was no one else in the world but him. The smile that used to bring me to my knees.

"Are you happy to be back, doll?"

He stalks toward me, each step slow and deliberate, like a predator savoring the hunt, salivating at his prey. His eyes gleam with the hunger of someone who enjoys watching his victims squirm—and that’s when I finally notice them.

The bars.

Thick, silver bars stretch from floor to ceiling, encircling me in a cruel prison. I’m trapped inside a gleaming silver cage, placed in the center of a vast, shadow-drenched room like some rare, exotic pet meant to be admired—or owned.

"What’s wrong, darling?" Damien croons, his smile twisting into something darker. His gloved hands wrap around the bars, the leather creaking as he leans closer, pinning me to the spot with an unblinking, suffocating stare. "I thought you’d be happy to see me. I know I am. I’ve missed you."

I meet his gaze, unflinching, but the only thing I feel is a slow, simmering rage. Once, those words could unravel me. Once, I would have given him anything I had and more. But now... now they’re as hollow as his heart.

"What did you do to me?" I hiss, the sound low and feral. I feel like a trapped cat. "Where is Shelly? How could you use her like—"

"Shhh." He presses a finger to his lips, demanding silence. When I obey, his mouth curls into another mocking grin. "I don’t like this rebellious side of you, doll. You lose all your beauty when you act like this."

The insult ignites something violent in me. I lurch to my feet, fury surging hot and wild through my veins akin to relentless lava. I want to grab him. I want to shake him. I want to hurt him.

But in my blind rush, I don’t notice how close I’ve gotten to the bars—until the searing bite of silver scorches my palms. A sharp cry tears from my throat as I jerk back, clutching my hands to my chest.

"Ah, how unfortunate." Damien clicks his tongue, a grin curling his lips. The mockery in his tone cuts deeper than the burn searing my skin. "Now that your wolf nature is no longer suppressed, you’re just as weak to silver as the rest of us. Ironic, isn’t it? For a silver whore."

"Don’t call me that," I spit back, my hatred for the title burning hotter than the pain.

"Baby..." Damien crouches in front of the cage, still looking down at me like a king observing a pitiful subject. He basks in the control he has never once loosened over me. "I’ll call you whatever I want. And whatever I want you to be—you will be. Because you belong to me, sweetheart. You are mine. Remember?"

Before I can react, he slides an arm through the bars and catches my chin between his fingers, forcing me forward until I’m dangerously close to the silver.

I flinch, squeezing my eyes shut until tears prick and blur my vision.

Damien smirks. His other hand drifts to the back of my neck, to the broken crescent scar carved there. The moment he touches it, I feel it hum—sing—to him, as though it still remembers him.

It’s a shameful scar I will never erase. A brand. Proof of my foolishness. The last, fragile shred of innocence I handed over to him nine years ago without hesitation.

"There was only you and me against the whole damn world," he whispers, and for a moment, I see the Damien I fell for at the broken age of fifteen. My chest tightens, as if barbed wire coils around my heart, squeezing it in slow, merciless turns. "And yet, you chose to forget all your promises... and sold yourself to the Alpha of the fucking Blood Moon Pack."

"You were the one who betrayed me first," I bite out through clenched teeth. "You were the one who sold me to Arcanis."

"You knew I had a plan." His grip on my chin and the back of my neck tightens, fingers digging in with bruising force. "I was going to bring you back. But you just had to run off with that bastard. Why did you do that, Kaya?"

"You have no idea..." I force the words through the pain, ignoring the fear that his grip might crush my jaw. "...what I had to endure in Diamond Claw. In Arcanis’s car. You have no—"

"Shut the fuck up." Damien’s voice is ice—cold, absolute. The finality in it ripples through my skin like a painful shiver. "You are mine, Kaya. You made a promise, and you’re going to keep it. Whatever it takes."

He shoves me so hard that I hit the floor with a sickening thud. The cold bites into my back as the air rushes from my lungs, leaving me breathless and gasping.

Footsteps pound across the room. The cage door swings open. Then hands—strong, mercilessly cold—close around me, pinning me to the ground like an animal about to be slaughtered.

"Inject the drug," Damien orders.

A split second later, agony rips through my right arm. It’s sharp and searing, like an electric current shooting straight into my veins. My spine bows, a violent convulsion wracking my body as the world blurs at the edges.

"It will be over soon," Damien’s voice drifts into the fog of my mind, low and melodic, almost tender. "Everything will be alright. Everything will be the way it’s supposed to be, darling. Just wait."