I woke with a throbbing ache behind my eyes, lying on my side and curled in a ball. Chilly wind blasted my hair into my face. The rumble of an engine vibrated my bones, and the steel floor clattered with movement.

I was moving.

With a jolt, I sat up, dizzy and alone. Icy gusts slammed against the back of my head. I reached out to brace myself. My hands bumped into wire walls, and I blinked, groggy and confused.

Terror clawed through my insides as I looked around. I was trapped. Caged in a chain-linked box in the back of a pickup truck and speeding through the night.

Chains tethered the cage securely to the truck bed, and a padlock hung from the sturdy door. My heart raced, magnifying the ache in my head. No water, no blankets, nothing occupied the 3x5 foot space but me.

Grasping at the sleeves of my leather jacket, I yanked them up. My arm sheathes were gone. Tremors surged through my hands. Unarmed. Confined.

Michio had done this? Caged me in the back of a truck like a goddamned animal? No, Michio wouldn’t have done this. The man who had snatched me from the battle was like an unknown enemy, not one of my guardians. Panic rose, hot and angry, burning through my lungs.

Where were Jesse and Roark? Did they survive the battle? My chest tightened, and my breaths grew harsh and painful. They had to be alive. I refused to believe otherwise. Maybe they would catch up with me somehow? They could be out there right now, watching me like always.

The pavement blurred behind the truck, illuminated by the dim glow of the taillights and bleeding into thick blackness. No headlights trailing behind. No tracks for them to follow.

The hope of them finding me and watching over me was disintegrating, ideas left behind in a fleeting dream or on a hemorrhaging battlefield.

I clenched my hands. How did I end up here? Michio must’ve drugged me to keep me asleep until he reached the truck? I didn’t remember anything since the strike to my neck earlier today. Or yesterday? How much time had passed?

Rage surged through my veins, pumping to the clipped beat of my heart. What happened to Michio to make him do this? Where the fuck was he? I could sense him, could feel the hum all around me.

I spun and found the rear window of the cab open. Inside, the wide shoulders of two men filled the single bench seat. The driver wore a baseball cap, his blond hair frizzing around his nape. And the passenger… Despite the shadows in the cab, I could make out the perfect symmetry of his profile, the sculpted angles of his hairless jaw, and the seductive almond-shape of his eyes.

Gripping the support bars of the cage, I pulled myself to my knees and scooted to the side so that I could see his profile. The cold metal bit into my fingers as I yelled through the open window, “Did you drug me, Michio? Why the fuck am I caged?”

He stared toward the center of the front dash, maybe so he could watch me out of the corner of his eye, but there wasn’t a flinch in his expressionless features.

“Where are we?” I raised my voice, shouting over the wind. “Did you hear me? Where are you taking me?”

He didn’t twitch an eyelash. Didn’t acknowledge me at all. What was wrong with him? He would never put me in danger. Even under his imprisonment in Malta, he protected me, took care of me. This man was not Michio.

The Drone must’ve done this to him. But what? How? What had he been through to reduce him to this…this empty thing? My chest ached for him, my body tightening with worry.

Up ahead, a red trail of taillights snaked into the dark. At least a dozen vehicles traveled in some kind of caravan. Who were they?

I swatted the hair out of my face and scanned the surrounding darkness. Every few breaths, I felt the distant buzz of aphids, the sensations flickering as we sped in and out of range.

The terrain appeared flat and barren beyond the occasional abandoned car. I couldn’t see buildings or road signs. Were those fields? Kansas? Were we heading west?

Hazy clouds hovered over the moon, crisscrossed by the wire ceiling of my enclosure. I didn’t know how to navigate using moon phases or constellations, and the landscape was so dark I couldn’t see a damned thing.

I turned back to the cab. “Where have you been for the past four months? Did you find the Drone? Who’s in all those cars?”

Could Jesse and Roark be with them? Certainly not willingly. Not with me back here in a fucking cage.

Michio didn’t blink, didn’t give me so much as a sideways glance.

“Why aren’t you talking to me?” Frustration and hurt edged my voice, straining my words. At this point, I knew I wouldn’t be getting any answers, but I had to keep trying. “What happened to you, Michio? Please look at me.”

When he didn’t, I slammed a hand against the cage wall, rattling it, and shifted my attention to the driver. “Who the fuck are you? Did Michio bite you? Were you part of the group that attacked us in Missouri?”

I paused between each question. When he didn’t respond or blink, I continued with more, hoping something I said would finally break their torpid silence. “Where’s the Drone? Can you feel my presence the way I can feel yours? You know, the hum under your skin? I bet you can. I bet you can feel how fucking pissed I am right now!”

Nothing. They were stiff, unresponsive entities, like robots, driving the truck, following the snake of taillights, staring straight ahead. They didn’t communicate with each other, didn’t exchange a single look.

Were they mentally controlled? How deep did that control reach? Could the Drone hear me talking to them? Was he actively broadcasting commands or did he give them orders and send them off?

Thinking back to the battle, none of our attackers interacted with one another. While our guys gestured and shouted and worked together, the fanged men simply drove ahead, single-mindedly focused on killing.

What the fuck was going on?

The darkness of the cab seemed to cling to Michio’s apathetic demeanor. Shadows accentuated the slack outline of his profile. His strong hands lay palms down on his thighs, his athletic body calm and indifferent. What if he’d been harmed so badly his mind had been altered? What if he couldn’t come back from it? God, I wanted to wrap my arms around him.

Up and down, my gaze roamed every inch of him I could see, lingering on the most memorable attributes. His flawless skin had once felt like velvet beneath my hands. The cords in his thick neck used to stretch when he orgasmed. His full lips had tasted like the most exotic spice beneath my tongue. And his fangs, both imposing and erotic, were presently sheathed.

“Did you bite them, Michio? Is the Drone controlling you?”

No response.

I refused to believe he’d killed the Lakota, but maybe he’d seen Elaine? Did he know where she was? Did he know if Jesse and Roark were alive? Not that I’d trust his word on this topic.

The man sitting before me reminded me so much of the stoic Dr. Nealy from a year ago. When I’d met him, he’d been my captor, the doctor who’d held me prisoner in Malta while leading me to believe Roark had died.

But back then, I’d glimpsed traces of emotion beneath the blank mask he tried so hard to maintain. A mask he wore for my protection. And now? I didn’t sense a disguise or pretense.

No one could fake this kind of cruel callousness. He was simply not there.

The Drone was behind this. It was the only explanation. He could command the aphids better than I could, which lent itself to the idea that he could control the men who’d contracted his spider pathogen. Men like Michio.

Wherever we were headed, I was certain the Drone would be waiting, and I wouldn’t be able to defeat him unarmed and caged. Michio was my only chance. I wouldn’t give up on him.

“Remember the first time we made love? We were soaking in the bathtub and you were upset because you thought you’d been too rough with me. You said you were supposed to take care of me, not injure me. Do you remember?” The memories barreled through me, crushing my chest and thickening my voice. “It was the night before we broke out of Fort Manoel. The night before we escaped the Drone.”

His lack of expression only deepened my hurt.

I tightened my grip against the cage wall. “We’ve made love so many times since that night. Do you think about it? Did you miss me at all? Dammit, Michio, I miss you. Please talk to me.”

Woodenly, he reached toward the space between us, and my pulse went nuts. Finally, a reaction!

Gripping the window lever, he slid it shut and pressed the lock. The cold click punched me in the gut. But instead of succumbing to the burn behind my eyes, I lashed back in a fit of fury.

My fingers curled around the metal wires, and I shook the cage with all my might, banging it against the glass, trying to free it from its heavy chains. I jerked and screamed, willing the damned walls to break and pleading for him to open the window, all while glaring murderous daggers at the back of his head.

Eventually, I stopped banging and screeching and closed my eyes. Hands aching and voice raw, I slumped against the wall of the cage and surrendered my body to insufferable mourning. I trembled from head to toe, frozen in the frigid gusts of wind, scared out of my mind, and suffocating under the harrowing pain of betrayal.

I hugged my knees to my chest, and for just a few moments, I allowed myself to wallow. I let all the why me questions unfurl through my head, feeling sorry for my pathetic existence and blaming everyone for every miserable thing that had happened to me. I didn’t try to contain my breathing as it worked its way into a wheezing series of wet hacks. And I cursed Michio. I cursed him even though I knew this man wasn’t him. Mostly I cursed him for sitting in the warm cab while I froze my tits off in the back.

When I finished wading through my wretched neuroticism, I evened my breaths, flexed my fingers, and squared my shoulders. I hadn’t lost my fight.

A comforting realization settled over me. Michio didn’t know I could blow up bugs with my mind, or that I didn’t need skin-on-skin contact, or that my body contained an endless flow of energy that made me feel like I could run all the way back to Missouri.

I sat still as stone, hiding the power I’d yet to understand. A secret I would keep in my pocket until I needed it.

For now, I needed to regroup, watch and learn, and figure out how to find the doctor who’d once taken care of me, the lover who’d seduced me, the man who—I knew deep in my heart—still loved me.

I slept for a couple hours, maybe more, and woke as the golden glow of dawn flushed the horizon beyond the tailgate. The sun was behind us, so we were headed west. Moments later, we passed two weathered road signs.

Leaving Kansas Come Again and Welcome to Colorful Colorado

A few miles into Colorado, the band of twenty-some vehicles pulled off to the side of the interstate. As our truck crept alongside the caravan and headed toward the front of the line, I climbed to my knees and frantically searched for Roark or Jesse or a familiar face.

The chain of parked vehicles consisted of small trucks and cars of the fuel-efficient variety. I didn’t see a fanged mouth—were they retracted?—or recognize a single face as fifty or so men checked engines, refueled from containers they hauled, and urinated on the side of the road. No one talked or shared a glance, yet they worked like synchronized machines alongside one another. The sight made the hairs on my nape stand on end.

Something wasn’t right about them, beyond the whole kidnapping thing. Not only could I feel their auras humming beneath my skin, but their presence seemed to repel nearby aphids. The insectile vibrations were there, a dull buzz in my gut, but the aphids didn’t come within a visual distance. If anything, they fled.

Though I had been unsuccessful in commanding these blank-faced men to die on the battlefield, I tried again. Focusing on two men standing beside one of the cars, I silently breathed, Die.

Nothing.

Shit.

We reached the front of the line and circled back to return to the tail. Not one vehicle held a cage. No familiar faces.

I was the only woman.

The only prisoner.

No Roark or Jesse.

Grief slammed into me with the force of a tidal wave. I slid to my butt, wrapped my arms around my waist, and tried to reign in my raging breaths.

My imprisonment on Malta had almost destroyed me, but I wasn’t the same person I was then. I’d dragged my ass out of a dungeon, survived the bowels of a volcano, watched the bodies of my Lakota companions burn to ash, and faced the charred remains of my beloved home.

Those events had hardened me, but what fortified my every breath was the bond that had evolved amid the hardship. I’d formed a profound, impenetrable stronghold with Jesse and Roark, one I would fight for, bleed for, and kill to protect. That made me stronger than every one of my muscled, empty-eyed captors.

I would stay strong and keep my head clear and my eyes open. No more wallowing. No more hopelessness. I would see Jesse and Roark again.

With these thoughts, so began my second imprisonment under Michio.