"I'm not gonna lie to you." Iris said after long moments of silence. I could hear the child next to me breathing rapidly. Too rapid for her to be asleep. "This place is a hell hole."

I can see that.

"And you're older, which means it's gonna be worse."

"How do you mean?"

"We're here for more than just research and studying. Something specific that the younger girls can't provide."

I drew in a sharp breath, my stomach revolting in disgust. "How long have you been here?"

The silhouette of her shoulders shrugged up and down once. "The days and months blur together eventually. I'm twenty, I shifted at fourteen. It wasn't too long after I shifted I was brought here."

My hand clamped over my mouth. This girl had been here for up to six years? "How did they find you?"

"No idea. I don't remember much about coming here, or my life before here for that matter."

"Your parents? Your pack?"

Her head shook, "nothing. Trust me, I try every day to remember pieces of myself and I come up empty handed every time."

"I remember." A fragile voice to the right piped up. I turned to see the redhead was now sitting up, her legs folded under her, her body turned where she could see both of us. My eyes were adjusting, and I could form the curl of her hair strands, and the structure of her face through the dark.

"Not everything, but I still have nightmares of watching Mommy die."

I choked back an involuntary sob, not expecting her to say that at all. I stayed silent, and the child continued.

"Daddy was already gone, and she was trying to get to me. They attacked after I shifted and I was carried away. Mommy kept screaming for me, but I can't hear the words anymore. Can't even see her face. I just know it's her."

Slowly, I crawled across the floor, reaching my hands through the bars in an attempt to comfort her. She gladly fell into them, and I held her, the only thing separating us were the bars we were pressed against.

"What's your name?" I whispered.

"Kalmia. I'm five."

And there went my heart, shattering into a million pieces for this girl. Five years old! Not even have gotten a chance to experience the world, go to school, have friends. She was alone, with not even her mother able to be searching for her.

Suddenly I put two and two together. Aralia. Kalmia. Iris. Rue. Ivy. Those were all plant names. Newly sprouted. They gave us the names of plants, replacing our old identity by brainwashing us.

Two things became clear: I was determined not to forget the ones who loved me, who were searching for me. And as I held onto Kalmia, I knew I had to be there for her; she didn't have a family, these girls were all she had anymore. And I knew we were going to get out of here.

🐾🐾🐾

The day went by without anything else exciting. I watched the window above the door as the light shifted through the hours, our only way to telling the time. It was dimmer than ever by the time Ian brought Rue and Ivy back, throwing them into their cells. He called them by name, and that told me who was who.

Ivy had the tangled dark curls that took up more space than her own body. Rue had been hiding her face on the way out, but when she was thrown back in, the light from the doorway was enough for me to see a jagged scar that crawled from her forehead, across her nose and down to her jaw, splitting her face into two with the curved line. It was red, lighting up against her pale complexion, enough that I knew it couldn't be too old.

I turned to Iris and she nodded, instantly understanding the question behind my eyes. They did that to her.

I was mad. Beyond mad. I was furious! But I was also afraid. What would happen to me if we stayed too long?

Xavier! I called out inside my head. Please come find us.

When Ian left, it wasn't long before a handful of people I hadn't seen yet shuffled in. With my spot in front of the door, I could see that the only light was coming from the artificial sources, the windows were dark now. The men and women brought a round tray to each cell, slipping them under the low rail that sat less than a foot off the concrete. When mine slid under to me, I pulled it close, eager for food to settle my suddenly rumbling stomach.

On the tray was a glob of mashed potatoes and a few slices of processed meat. It was barely a meal, but at least they weren't starving us.

Everyone around me immediately dug in, not even waiting for the pack members to leave us. The snarls echoed through the room as they snarfed up every speck off the tray. I took my time, scooping up the potatoes first, because I knew they'd be the most filling and that's what my body needed.

There turned out to be a reason the other girls scarfed their meals down: we were on a time crunch. I had no idea how long we got to eat, but too soon, the people came back and took the trays away, whether we finished or not. Lesson learned.

The next group of people that walked through the door had arms filled with fleece blankets. Each one unlocked our padlocks and tossed us two blankets each. Mine smacked me right in the face.

There weren't any pillows, but I supposed that was asking for too much.

The group locked our gates back up and shuffled out. Seconds after the door closed, the hall lights went out and we were left in complete darkness. I couldn't see anything, but I made myself a makeshift bed with what they gave us and curled myself in a ball. I listened to the sounds of everyone breathing as they settled in for the night.

"What's your name?" Kalmia's voice whispered from above my head.

"April." If I ever forgot it, at least they could remind me.

"Why did Ian call you Aralia?"

I smiled to myself, surprised she noticed. "They're trying to change my name."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

It was quiet for a moment. "Is Kalmia my real name?"

Now I frowned, hating that I couldn't tell her what her real name might have been. I didn't even want to tell her Kalmia is the name they gave her. "I don't know."

The next morning came quickly, and I awoke from the light coming through the tiny window. I couldn't tell if it was from the LED's or from the windows. I sat up, my limbs cracking from the stiffness of the concrete floor all night. I rolled out my joints, adjusting my eyes as they circled the room. Everyone else was already up, probably from years of the same routine. I noticed Iris had folded her blankets and stacked them against the gate, so I copied her, figuring it was what they would want.

I had to obey. I had to survive. For Xavier, and for my family.

Just like the night before, a group of wolves came in, and they took our blankets. I expected it to be reverse of the night, so I thought food would be coming. My stomach rumbled with anticipation, especially because I didn't get to finish dinner.

Food never came.

Instead, Ian was the next one to walk through that door. Everyone instinctively shrunk back. Except Iris. Like yesterday, she stared him down with blazing eyes as if daring him to touch her. He didn't get the hint, because hers was the cage he unlocked, and she was the one he dragged out the door.

Hours passed of nothingness. I sat and listened to the breathing patterns of the girls, and in the dim light I watched Kalmia try to spell things out on the floor with her fingers. By the time Ian and Iris returned, and he plucked a different girl from the ground to take out, I had scooted myself over to the bars that separated Kalmia's cell from mine.

I started helping her, letting her sound out the word she wanted to spell, and then correcting any mistakes she made as she dragged her fingertip across the concrete. Every time I said something, she grinned at me with her tiny teeth — one was missing on the bottom — and then rewrote the word.

We did this until Ian came back. The girl he had was younger than Rue and Ivy, but definitely older than Kalmia. Her pale blond hair appeared to be freshly brushed out, and it reached her hips. Just catching the light, her blue eyes shined as she gazed around the room before he shoved her into the cell on the other side of Iris's.

The next girl to go was as little as Kalmia, with skin and hair so dark, no wonder I hadn't spotted her in the shadows before. She didn't seem scared, walking confidently on her twig-like legs out the door, accepting whatever fate had in store for her today. I sent a little prayer to the Goddess that she would be alright.

Each girl was gone for hours, but none of them came back severely traumatized, or beat up. At least not from what I could see during the seconds they passed through the light of of the doorway.

That wasn't the case every day, though. I began to notice a routine in the day: after our blankets were taken, three or so girls would leave one at a time. When the last one came back, we would have an hour or so of nothing. Usually, the girls that had left would end up asleep, but it was hard to tell when no one really said anything. Then, two girls would be taken out together for "cleaning duty". I counted five days before I was chosen, and it was Iris and I, so she could "teach me". It was the first time I got to leave my cell since the doctor visit.

We were given buckets of soapy water and sponges and expected to scrub the hallway floor and walls, and then the different rooms that were stations along the corridor. This gave me a chance to see the different places, though it wasn't much. There were four rooms, and they all looked the same as the room I went in my first day. I didn't understand the use of the rooms until the following day.

Just like the others, I was dragged out the door and down the hallway, except it wasn't Ian. This guy was tall and gangly, with longer hair the color of roasting chestnuts. His grip was softer than Ian's, but he wasn't any less scary.

"Lay down." He ordered, gesturing to the table I had the exam on the first day.

I obeyed, climbing up and then laying flat on my back, staring at the ceiling above. Moments later, the door opened and the same pack doctor as before walked in. This time, she was accompanied by four others. Each carried something on a small tray.

I stiffened, my eyes following their every move. One of them stopped near my head.

"Nineteen year old female. Fox shifter." She recited. Whispers broke out in the group.

"Yes, she's new." The pack doctor said. Today, she had a pin that read "Dr. Brinn". She focused on me, "today we're going to do simple samples. We won't keep you long."

And they didn't. Using the supplies carried in, they took samples of my blood three different ways, took my vitals, and then recorded everything down while I merely laid there. The gangly man stood there watching.

When they were satisfied, he took my back to my cell, and then he dragged a girl they called Sage. She was a younger teenager with shoulder length blonde hair. I hadn't heard her speak even once.

When the door banged shut, Kallie — a nickname I had started to call her, hating that I only knew her plant name — grasped the bars between us. I scooted closer to her. "What did they do?" Her voice was a whisper, seeming almost too scared to ask.

"Pretty much nothing. Took some blood, that was really it."

"That's a good day." She didn't offer to explain what a bad day was.

I found out three days later, when Ian barged through the door, face red as an ox, and fumbled with my lock. Kallie tucked herself in a ball and shook with fear. Uh oh.

Plucked from the floor, I was dragged out the door by one arm and thrown into the closest room. It didn't take me long to realize no one else was coming, I wasn't being tested on. I broke down into sobs, but he just ignored me, taking what he wanted, what wasn't his, what should never have been his. I was a distraction from whatever was on his mind, something to play with for a minute before he had to return to reality.

As the days blurred into weeks, I noticed this wasn't a common occurrence, but when I cried to Iris after the first time, she explained that when a higher ranking member of the pack — such as Ian — became greedy, or needed a distraction from whatever went on upstairs in the pack, we became that distraction. We never knew when it was coming, but we had to take it in silence, whether it was being their punching bag, or their slave.

The first few times were awful, traumatizing me to the point my dreams were haunted with my own screams. But after a while, I became numb, knowing what was happening was out of my control, and that if I closed my eyes and stayed still and silent, it would be over soon. Eventually, I figured out ways to block it out, I would lose myself into dreams of the past, and hopes for the future, and that ended up turning into willingly passing out. I became so good at it, the second he threw me on the floor, or the couch, or wherever he pleased, I would black out so I didn't have to remember. I just hoped the other girls found their own ways of coping. The thought of Kallie. . . It was too much sometimes.

I also discovered the pack had other methods of testing us, researching about us besides needles and scans. We were taken to a different section of wherever we were, with giant rooms full of different equipment. They had discovered us to be faster than them, stronger, with more endurance. So, they tested us to our limits. Racing us against different wolves, and even our own times.

We were tested on distance, time, agility, and strength through different tracks and courses. The pack doctor was there for every single one, furiously writing notes as she watched and studied our performances. Many of the pack would come watch, especially if news spread that one of us was exceptional at one of the categories. Like I was with speed.

Over the weeks, they tested me against nearly every member of the pack. Well, that was just a guess since none of us had ever seen the entire Black Mountain Pack as a whole.

But I grew weaker as the days went by. Eating the same minuscule meal once a day, sleeping on concrete, and participating in rigorous physical activity for testing was taking a huge toll. When I was cleaning one day, I looked down at the water that had grown still in the bucket. My face was hollowed, my eyes dull, my skin pale, my soul numb. Not to mention the rats nest my hair never seemed to get out of, even after the days a particularly nice nurse would brush it for me. I was starting to not look any different than the girls in those cells. We were shells, the life sucked out of our structures, leaving nothing but skeletons and a little bit of skin and blood.

Yet somehow, the days we were beat into pulp for a defiant attitude — or for sometimes no reason at all — the blood seemed to never end. I didn't understand how we were still alive. Yet everyday, we scrubbed our own blood off the walls and tables of each room until we were so tired someone had to carry us back.

My fire had nearly died out, it had to have been months since I was brought here. Months of the same routine, with a splash of torture that came from nowhere once in a while. But one of those days, I was running the track, racing some kid from the pack because he thought it would be fun, when the door to the track room opened. When I saw who it was, my feet tripped over themselves and I was sent tumbling across the ground. The kid laughed, finishing the run and easily beating me.

I stayed on the ground, glaring up at the newcomer with the fire that I hadn't felt in a very long time. "You!"