I wake up in a lab and know immediately what's happened.

The veil between shifters and humans has been getting thinner and thinner. We’ve integrated into society, but that’s only created more opportunities for our discovery. In this fight to keep the shifter community free and out of cages and labs, to keep us as lore in the minds of humans, our brute strength and keen instincts have always kept us one step ahead.

In recent years, the faulty, desperate science of man has closed the gap, and we’ve found ourselves with more groups like the ones who have captured me nipping at our tails. When they make moves against us, we move faster and deadlier. We rip out their throats and leave their carcasses to rot.

However, this woman, who is my captor, is not the evil scientist I would have imagined. Her long, regal neck is too beautiful to rip out. She makes me salivate, but not in bloodlust. And my wolf wants to lick up her pulse to feel her heartbeat.

When she appears in a dream she's not supposed to be in, I have to decide if she's my enemy. Either way, fate has brought us together, and for me, that is the only way it's going to be.

CW: Mentions of Sexual Violence by a Partner, Mentions of Emotional and Mental Violence by a Partner, Mentions of Partner/Parental Loss by Illness, Mentions of Pregnancy Loss, Violence, Gore.

Zellie is tired of living as her mother’s captive. She spends her days wielding magic for a woman who has never been anything but evil, and she dreams of a day when she can escape.

That day comes when she accidentally slips into the abyss, a dark-filled void with one occupant: a man who says he knows her and claims that she's his.

He also has a plan, the one thing Zellie’s been missing in her quest for freedom. It goes like this: Take the book. Find his eyes. Kill the mother.

CW: Forced Captivity, Violence, Gore, Mentions of Parental Abuse, Kidnapping and Abduction, Reference to Suicide Attempt, Explicit Sexual Content, Sub/Dom Dynamics

“Jesus.” The horrified whisper of the woman, Karen, who is gathering the uniform I am meant to wear while employed at this large shopping center doesn’t faze me.

At one point, many years ago, when I was still a youngling, having someone look at me and feel compelled to call upon their personal deity may have bothered me, but I long lost any sense of caring. At least when it comes to how I look. And I know what I look like.

Not only am I keenly aware of every jagged etch and groove in my skin. I can remember, like it was only a turn ago, how they were made with claws and teeth, sometimes broken metal and stone. The blunt points were the worst, poking and prodding until they finally breached the flesh.

But the memory of that pain is nothing compared to the rage I feel at my lehti, Ivy, the one responsible for my suffering. It's a rage I doubt she knows exists.

But she will soon.