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IZZY
Isabel Wright sat huddled in the corner of her room, her arms around her knees, her head pressed against the wall, breathing deeply and trying to relax.
It was hard. Relaxation did not come easy to her these days. She felt disoriented and confused most of the time, uncertain of the time of day or even how long she’d been here in this room. Could it have been a year? Surely not...but there was no way to know for certain, was there?
It can’t have been too long, she told herself. The people who bring my food all look the same as they did on the first day. No one had aged noticeably. No one’s hair had changed. Not too much time could have gone by, then.
But it was a small thing to cling to. Maybe time hadn’t passed yet, but it would. There were enough people in this pack that there was no way she would be able to slip by them all and escape. She was stuck with them.
From the time she’d been old enough to understand that she was an omega, she’d known that it came with risk and a hard life. “You can never trust anyone,” her mother had told her. “You need to stay on the move. Keep running, keep hiding, because once a fellow wolf finds you, he’ll never let you go.”
Isabel had done just that. After her mother’s death, she had packed just a few possessions in a bag and boarded a bus across the country. But as soon as the bus had pulled out of the station, she had noticed a man at the back with his eyes fixed on her. Isabel had gotten off at the first stop and hidden in the ladies’ room, her heart pounding madly, waiting for the sounds of people milling around outside to die down. Finally, she’d heard the bus pull away and had slipped out of the bathroom and out onto the road, crossing the highway to a small roadside motel.
She’d had enough money to rent a room at the motel for a month, giving her enough time to take stock of her situation and decide what to do next. As soon as she’d checked in, Isabel had pulled all the blinds and curtains closed, locked and bolted the door, and turned off all the lights. Then she’d gone into the bathroom and locked that door, too. Sitting in the bathtub fully dressed in the pitch darkness, she’d considered her options.
She’d known it would be hard to be out on her own as an omega. That truth had been reinforced throughout her life. She’d thought she was ready for it. But the moment someone had looked at her strangely, she had panicked and bolted. Sitting here now, she had to admit that she didn’t even know whether the man on the bus had been a shifter. He could have been looking at her for any number of reasons.
I can’t let myself live in fear like this, she’d told herself. I need to get a job. I need to find a permanent place to live.
Her mother’s voice echoed in her head. Stay on the move. Finding a permanent job and home was no way to stay on the move. Her mother wouldn’t approve. But I have to figure out a way to live, Isabel had thought. I can’t keep cowering in this bathtub for the rest of my life.
The next day, gathering all her courage, she had crossed the highway again to the gas station where her bus had stopped yesterday and asked whether they were hiring. It turned out the manager needed a clerk for the night shift, and just like that, Isabel had a job. She extended her stay at the motel to three months, working and trying to save up money, trying to come up with some kind of a plan.
Most days, things felt all right. Most days Isabel would go to work, stand behind the counter for the eight hours she was required to do so, and come back to the motel just as the sun was beginning to rise. She would sell cigarettes and energy drinks to truckers who had pulled off the highway for a pitstop, primarily, and she could tell that she was the only person they had spoken to for miles and miles. Most days, Isabel was able to forget what she was, and that the world wasn’t a safe place for her.
But there were scares. Near misses. One evening she caught the scent of a wolf on the air and knew she couldn’t go to work while he was in the area. She was forced to call in sick. Her boss was angry at the late notice, but there was nothing she could do. If it came down to losing her job or losing her life, Isabel would give up the job. She spent that night in the bathroom with the light off again, knowing that the wolf had probably scented an omega nearby and praying that he wouldn’t find her.
In the morning, he was gone. But it took days before Isabel felt normal again.
Another time, Isabel was awakened by the sound of howls. Regular wolves wouldn’t howl during the day, she didn’t think. It must have been shifters. She had pulled the covers up over her head and breathed as slowly as she could, trying not to panic, trying to gauge how far away the howls were. She couldn’t smell them. They couldn’t be too close. Still, it was hours before she was able to sleep again, and by the time she dragged herself in to work that evening, she felt half dead.
Still, life fell into a pretty regular routine. Isabel was happy. She was earning money. She was beginning to think that her mother might have been wrong, that life as an omega wouldn’t be a constant struggle after all. Maybe she was the exception. Maybe she had been lucky enough to find a place where she could live below the radar, where she could just get by and be happy.
Then everything changed.
It all fell apart the day the motorcycles rumbled down their small stretch of highway. Isabel had seen motorcycle clubs on a run before, of course. It wasn’t uncommon for them to pass through this way, or for them to stop at the gas station and refuel. But as the bikes pulled into the parking lot, the scent of shifters was overwhelming. There must have been dozens of them. Fear and adrenaline shot into her brain like drugs, but she was paralyzed. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t hide. She couldn’t even move.
They knew what she was as soon as they entered the station. She could see it in their eyes. “Be gentle with her,” one of them cautioned as another vaulted over the counter and grabbed her by the arm. “I don’t want her damaged.”
Isabel wanted to scream, but she couldn’t find her voice. She wanted to kick, fight, punch, run, but she felt as if her insides had turned to water. She was helpless. The hand holding her belonged to a man who must have been more than twice her weight, short but muscled and with closely cropped hair. He lifted her easily onto the counter as if she were his shopping. Another man took her by the elbow and pulled her down.
Nobody spoke to her. Nobody even looked at her. It was as if they were robbing the store of merchandise rather than kidnapping a real human person.
“Isabel is her name,” the one holding her said. “It’s on her nametag, see?”
“She looks more like an Izzy to me,” someone else said.
Isabel had never been called Izzy in her life. But she didn’t correct the man. She didn’t say a word. She felt apart from what was happening somehow, as if she were watching it on TV. As if it were happening to somebody else. Surely, she was still behind the counter, waiting for her shift to end, solving her crossword puzzle to pass the time? She couldn’t have been so suddenly taken like this? She was too careful for this to have happened.
They chained her hand to the wrist of one of the men and sat her on his motorcycle. When he leaned forward to grip the handlebars, she was forced to drape herself across his back. They placed a helmet on her head and lowered the visor so she couldn’t see where she was going, which she was thankful for. It allowed her to relax into the horror of what she was experiencing. She cried for the first time as they sped through the night, the motorcycle rumbling beneath her.
It would not be the last time.
She’d been dragged up the stairs and into this room. She’d been tossed to the floor—not violently, but carelessly, the way one might toss their coat over a chair when returning home at the end of the day.
“I don’t want her damaged,” someone had said again. Not hurt, but damaged. As if she were a thing that could be broken. Not as if she were a human who could be harmed.
Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe being an omega meant being less, somehow, than everyone around you. None of the people who had taken her from the gas station had seemed to question their own actions at all. None of them had seemed to have any doubts. Maybe that was because there wasn’t anything wrong with what they were doing. Maybe omegas were meant to be taken by a pack like this, and she was the one who had been doing wrong by trying to protect her own individuality.
That’s not what Mom would have said. But her mother was dead. Her mother had been killed by a wolf, fighting to prevent him from entering the house and coming after Isabel. If she’d let him in, she’d still be alive, Isabel often thought. Maybe she shouldn’t have done what she did. Maybe she shouldn’t have died for me.
In the beginning she had counted the days, making a mark with her fingernail in a floorboard each time they brought her a meal. But she quickly realized she couldn’t reliably tell time by the meals. Sometimes she was starving when they came and felt as though she hadn’t eaten in days. Other times she wasn’t hungry at all. Were they doing this on purpose to confuse her? Or was it just that sometimes they forgot to feed her for a while? Neither idea made her feel any better.
Now she had been here for who knew how long. She almost wished they would get to whatever they had planned for her already. It was likely to be horrible, she knew, but it couldn’t be worse than this waiting. Isabel was beginning to feel like she was going insane here.
The door creaked open. Her head darted up. Dinner? Or something else?
The man who came through the door had a tray in his hands. That was different, because they usually just brought a plate and a cup. Today there was silverware on a napkin, and a bowl beside the plate. She could see steam rising from it, and smell the savory flavor of a broth. It was a five star meal compared with what she was usually given. Maybe he had brought it to eat himself. Maybe he wanted to eat in front of her for some reason. To flaunt the food that he had and she didn’t, possibly. She pulled herself back into her corner and waited to see what would happen.
The man set the tray on the floor in the middle of the room, backed away, and sat against the opposite wall.
Isabel didn’t move.
The man didn’t move either.
She wasn’t going to go for it. If she moved toward the food, he might yank it away at the last minute. She knew that this bountiful tray couldn’t be for her. The pack didn’t feed her this well. They never had. She was given cold bread, a hunk of cheese, a piece of leftover meat, and some slices of apple. She was given all the nutrients she needed to remain healthy and ready for breeding. But food to comfort her? That was never on the menu.
Yet the smell of that broth was intoxicating...
“It’s for you,” the man said. He seemed to know what she was thinking. “I can go if you want.”
She nodded. She couldn’t help it. How could she trust him? How could she eat it while he watched her?
Looking disappointed, he got to his feet and left. As soon as the door closed behind him, Isabel ran to the tray. Warm broth. Hot, tender meat. Vegetables. And ice in her glass of water.
She devoured every bite.
***
THE NEXT NIGHT IT WAS cold dinner again, and the night after that as well. Isabel began to wonder whether she’d dreamed the man who had brought her the delicious meal.
But on the third day, he was back again.
He didn’t have a food tray. This time he was carrying a soft down pillow. Isabel stared at it. She hadn’t seen a pillow since leaving the motel, and the pillow she’d had there was flat and lumpy. This one looked like a cloud.
The man placed it on the floor, in the center of the room where he’d set her tray the last time he’d come. “I got permission to give you this,” he said. “The floor looks pretty uncomfortable to sleep on.”
Isabel didn’t leave her corner, but she reached out and pinched the edge of the pillow with two fingers. Without taking her eyes off her benefactor, she drew it toward her.
“There’s something inside,” he said. “I didn’t get permission for that. So, keep it hidden, okay?”
She waited until he was gone to reach down to the bottom of the pillowcase. Her hand met something that crinkled, and she pulled it out. A package of gummy candies.
She shoved them back down into the pillowcase.
That night, when she was lost in her loneliness and terror, she pulled the candies out again, ripped open the bag, and put one in her mouth. Someone cares, she thought as she tasted the sweet berry flavor. Someone cares enough to give me a bag of candy, which is more than not at all.
***
TWO DAYS LATER, HE came again. This time he had a novel. “Hide it in the pillowcase,” he said, and she shoved it down deep without looking at what it was. It didn’t matter. She’d been sitting here with nothing but her thoughts for ages, and now she would have something to take her out of her own head. It felt like a lifeline to sanity.
“Who are you?” she asked him, hugging the pillow with its hidden treasures to her chest. She kept her eyes on the floor in front of her. Looking at him for too long a stretch of time when she didn’t yet know what he wanted was hard.
“I supposed I haven’t introduced myself,” he said. “My name is Wyatt. Wyatt Howell. I’m a member of the Hell’s Wolves.”
She was quiet.
“That is, I’m trying to become a member,” he amended. “I’m new here, like you.”
Do they keep you locked up in a room? She didn’t need to ask the question. It was obvious they didn’t. It was clear by the way he kept showing up to visit her. “What do you want?” she asked instead. The words grated on her throat, and she realized it was the first time she’d spoken aloud since she’d been taken.
“I wanted to meet you,” he said. “You’re always in here by yourself. I thought you might like some company.”
She twisted the hem of the pillowcase in her fingers and looked up at him. He was older than she was, his hair graying and his face lined, but not yet so old that he’d lost his muscles. She couldn’t remember seeing him on the night she’d been taken from the gas station. Had he been there? He’d claimed to be a new member of the pack...
“Your name is Izzy?” he asked.
She nodded slowly. Isabel, she thought, but she was afraid to correct him. He had been kind to her so far—he was the only person who had—but what if that changed? What if she made him angry? She couldn’t risk it.
“I’d like to come and see you sometimes, Izzy,” Wyatt said. “Would that be okay?”
Did she have a choice? She nodded.
“You and I are the two newest members of the pack,” Wyatt said. Isabel was tempted to roll her eyes. Did he think being new to the pack made them equal in some way? Did he think there was any similarity to what they’d been through? She’d been locked up in this room for God only knew how long, and she was willing to bet he’d been making friends and enjoying delicious meals—all the wonderful things she could smell coming up through the floor each night. Just being new here didn’t mean they had anything in common.
But he’d brought her that broth.
Whoever was in charge of this pack wasn’t giving her any broth. Where had it come from? Where had that miraculous dinner come from?
It was his. That’s the only way he could have gotten it for her. He’d brought her his dinner that night, given up a hot meal so that she could have it.
So maybe he was a friend after all.
Maybe.
