... ALENA ...

The bindings around my wrists were so tight that it was impossible to move. Even if I'd broken a thumbs to wriggle free, they wouldn't have fit. I stretched my fingers as far as they could reach, inching my body back and forth for slight shifts to feel into the small spaces around me. If there was anything in the trunk, it was too far out of my grasp.

I was panicking, able to feel and hear the speed of the car putting me miles and miles away from my found family. Asphalt gritted underneath the tires, traveling unsmooth roads that made the car bump. They took turns so fast that I shifted even in the tight space, grunting each time my head, shoulders and hips knocked against the interior.

Every now and again there would be the repetitive thumping and then cracking of something being hit by the car, maybe an animal or one of the undead, travelers that they must have been aiming at given the number of collisions.

A slim sliver of light shown through a slight gap in the tail light seal. Through its glow I knew the day was passing, bright yellow transforming into deep gold.

The road turned to gravel, sparse crunching from a path that'd been well-ridden. Adrenaline from the fight against them and constant observation had started to wear off and though I wouldn't fall asleep, my body deflated with fatigue.

My eyes never closed but drooped, widening only when the car pulled to a quick stop, as if it were unexpected or intentionally meant to jerk me to attention.

Slamming car doors, heavy footsteps and the unloading of weapons. I waited for their approach, without a move to make. My legs and ankles were still bound, rubbed painfully raw from my failed attempts to loosen the knotting.

There was muttering at the back of the car, a short back and forth of words that were impossible to make out. And then came the silence.

My joints ached from their stifled movement and locked position, tingling starting in my fingertips and toes until all of my limbs had fallen asleep. So had the sun, moonlight trickling through the cracks not big enough to give me sight. The focus on my hearing was so quiet that it became too loud, not a single indication that anyone or anything was nearby.

They could have ditched the car, leaving me to succumb to the temperatures, to starvation or my own fright. I found myself torn between hoping that they disappeared forever, perhaps killed by a group of the undead in the night, and wishing for their return, if for nothing but the small chance to fight for my life.

My eyes drifted with the hours that passed, pinpricks of pain and the thud of my heartbeat drawing me from sleep every few minutes.

After a certain point I lacked everything, my stomach hollow with only the few berries I ate before being taken as my last meal. As every ounce of energy wore down, so did any air that felt breathable, the slow, deliberate breaths I took turning more ragged and desperate.

Just when I thought I was on the edge of my last exhale, that I'd used up all of the oxygen within the confined space, the jingling of keys sounded.

It was a horrifying relief, a contradiction in being alive but at the beginning of whatever torture they had in store.

Sunlight blinded me, piercing so strongly with the trunk's opening that my eyes could only bear being opened a crack. Demetrius didn't lift me easily, his fingertips digging into my arm to pull me over the edge of the car so that I thunked onto the ground. Still, there was air. I breathed and listened, letting my eyes flutter as their shapes came into view, Demetrius positioned to take whichever limb he'd use to drag me to my next destination and Gideon looking down on me with a sinister smile that became sharp against his blurred frame.

"You look like shit."

Looking at myself became another piece of the puzzle for them. First, they set me up in an empty shed in the backyard of the two-story home they occupied. Demetrius rigged me to a chair by the same rope already stained with blood from where it scratched. My arms were pulled taut, bound together and to the rough wood just the same as my legs.

"There isn't a way out." Demetrius commented, taking note of the way I scanned the space. It was completely empty, shreds of hay layered over the dirt floor and slivers of paneling missing so that rays of sunlight shined through. The hole in the roof was the most prominent, providing light that I appreciated now but knew could flood the ground below me with a heavy rainstorm.

It was the first time he spoke directly to me, and while I knew Gideon's men to be immensely loyal, I hadn't seen him in Carolus.

"You don't have to do this. You don't know who he is." I hated the desperation in my voice, the tears that welled in my eyes at the mere thought of everything he'd done. Jimin would have told me to plead with him, to negotiate using my perceived female helplessness. Fool him, he'd say.

Demetrius didn't give way to any emotion, unreadable as he squatted in front of me. "I do, on both accounts. And even if I didn't, I would have chosen to." The familiar softness, masked by strength in his eyes suddenly became clear, clicking into place when he stood to peer down at me in a stark height difference. "You killed my brother."

I decided then that I wouldn't beg. It was of no use. I meant nothing to either of them and while I vowed to myself not to beg, I had to fight.

I couldn't have prepared for what they had in store. Days blurred together. I lost track of how many passed somewhere in the thirties.

They switched up on forms of torture, more psychological than anything. They rarely touched me, if only to lift my head or shift my body into other positions to be tied. Still, I didn't need to be touched to feel humiliated, kept in my underwear to bear their eyes and slow cold that grew each passing night.

Food deprivation was the easiest. I'd dealt with it enough that the hollowness of my stomach no longer translated into an ache. They technically fed me, after a spread of days when one of them would crack open a can of vegetables, tilting my head back to pour it down my throat in one go until I choked. I usually spit more up than I ingested.

They played with my senses, blindfolding me and plugging my ears so I couldn't tell what was coming next. Sometimes I was greeted by intense sound, the blare of an air horn or high-pitched frequencies that lasted hours. I was never free of my bindings, strapped into positions that made my muscles cramp and often led to restricted breath.

"Just wait, Alena. They'll slip up, forget something. You'll get yourself out."

A voice, muffled as it came from outside the building and growing closer with each sentence. I'd been hearing voices for a while. The others were the only ones that motivated me, Jungkook's to fight, Namjoon's to come up with a plan, and Yoongi's to focus my mind. That became more difficult by the minute.

My own voice was the worst, like a second person inside my head to mock and demoralize me. She came to life when they placed a mirror against the wall across from me, movements out of tune with mine, me but not me. The mirror had simply been a tool to disgust me from my purely filthy appearance. The resulting trigger of hallucinations was a worse effect.

She cackled at me for being captured by men for a second time, ensuring that I'd be trapped with the belief that the probability of a second rescue was slim. And that's what she convinced me I'd need, a hero to come save me yet again. If the odds were in my favor, this would just leave more scars, visible and invisible.

I was never sure of how much I slept. Some days it felt as if I'd been passed out for hours, my body heavy and in the same dark I fell asleep in. On other's it seemed that I was dozing and waking every minute, every second. I couldn't know whether it was the same night or the next.

My head snapped up from sleep too quickly, and I groaned at the tightness across my shoulders. It was a wonder I dozed at all. Demetrius tied me to a hook in the ceiling two days ago, at the perfect height to keep me on the tips of my toes, my weight tugging at the corded ropes around my wrists.

"You need to focus, Alena. Wait for your chance to get out of here." He sounded exactly the same, upbeat and warm.

I sagged against the binding. "Focus?" I chuckled, a contradiction in the mix of crud-coated tears that dampened my cheeks. "You're not even real. I'm talking to a ghost."

Hobi laughed. The one that rang out was only a touch away from my favorite of his, where he'd tip over from his chair or fall to the floor, making his entire body an expression. It kept going for too long, becoming louder and louder in my head until it reached mania.

I must have blinked, because he was suddenly a hair's breadth away from me. He didn't laugh or smile, as serious as he'd always been when giving instruction.

"Focus on your sight."

"We miss–" There was nothing in particular that cut my statement off, but Hobi was gone before I could finish. I couldn't even be sure if I were awake or asleep, in some deep dream state or whether I'd been given some type of drug. My memory and thoughts ruptured, and my fucking lips were chapped.