Chapter 8 The Cage

I wake up alone, and somehow that feels worse than everything else.

The fever is gone. My body feels strong again, steady in a way it hasn’t since I woke up in this place. But the bed beside me is cold, and Thad is nowhere to be found.

I sit up and take stock of myself. The sweat-soaked sheets have been changed while I slept. Someone dressed me in fresh clothes—soft cotton sweatpants and a loose shirt that smells like lavender. I don’t remember any of it.

How long was I out?

I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand. No dizziness. No cramps. Just this strange new strength settling through my muscles like electricity.

The door isn’t locked.

I stare at the handle for a long moment before I turn it. Part of me expects an alarm to sound or guards to appear. But the hallway beyond is empty and quiet, lit by sconces that light up the walls behind them.

I step out and start walking.

The mansion is enormous. I pass room after room—a library with top-to-bottom shelves, a music room with a grand piano covered in dust, and a dining hall with a table long enough to seat thirty people. Everything is old and expensive and untouched, like a museum no one visits anymore.

My bare feet are silent on the hardwood floors. I move through the space like a ghost, taking in the portraits on the walls and the antique furniture and the heavy curtains blocking every window.

There’s no sunlight anywhere. Not a single ray.

I round a corner and nearly collide with a guard.

He’s tall and broad, dressed in the same black uniform as the men from before. His hand moves to the weapon at his hip, but he doesn’t draw it. He just looks at me with flat, unreadable eyes.

“Ma’am,” he greets me. “You should return to your room.”

“I’m just looking around.”

“Mr. Samford prefers that you stay in the east wing.”

Mr. Samford. So formal.

“And if I don’t?”

The guard doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. His stance says everything—he’ll stop me if I try to go farther, and we both know it.

I turn around and walk back the way I came.

There are more guards than I realized. I spot them in doorways and at the ends of hallways, positioned like chess pieces across the mansion. They don’t speak to me, but they watch. Every movement. Every step.

Thad isn’t protecting me. He’s containing me.

I find a sitting room in the east wing and sink into one of the velvet chairs. A fire crackles in the hearth, and the heat it emits feels good against my skin, even though I’m not cold anymore.

I don’t know how long I sit there before Thad appears.

He walks in without knocking, but then again, why would he? This is his house. Everything in it belongs to him.

Including me, apparently.

“You’re awake,” he comments. He stops near the fireplace and doesn’t come any closer.

I watch him, trying to read something in his face, but he’s giving me nothing. “I noticed the welcoming committee. There are guards at every corner. Very hospitable.”

He doesn’t look at me as he replies, “They’re for your protection.”

“From what? I’m not allowed outside. What exactly am I being protected from?”

“Yourself, mostly.” He clasps his hands behind his back. “You’re still learning to control your new body. Until you understand what you’re capable of, it’s better if you stay away from the staff.”

I stand up from the chair. He doesn’t move, but I see the way his body goes still as I approach. Like he’s bracing for something.

“Don’t patronize me, Thade. You’re keeping me away from people because you think I’ll hurt them.”

“I’m keeping you away from people because I know you will. You haven’t learned to control the hunger yet. One wrong move and you could kill someone without meaning to.”

I stop a few feet away from him. Close enough to see the faint shadows under his eyes and the tension in his shoulders.

“Is that what happened to you?” I ask. “When you were turned?”

He doesn’t answer. He just looks at me with that impenetrable stare, and I want to shake him. I want to crack open that perfect composure and find the man underneath.

“You’re my responsibility,” he states.

“I didn’t ask for that.”

“Neither did I.”

The words land between us, heavy and final. He turns away before I can respond and walks toward the door.

“Stay in the east wing,” he instructs without looking back. “Someone will bring you blood in an hour. Try not to break anything.”

Then he’s gone, and I’m alone again with nothing but the fire and the guards and the growing certainty that whatever Thad Samford is hiding, it’s going to change everything I thought I ever knew about myself and the world around me.