The next few days passed in a hazy blur. All of my possessions save my bedroom furniture and a few clothes had been confiscated as though I had hidden some secret of Jackson's in my Doc Martins. The side of my face where my father had hit me had swollen and my eye had bruised, given me the look of someone who had just been in a boxing match.

I couldn't find the will to care.

Instead, after my initial fighting and pleading with the pack members who boxed up and took away my things, I just laid on my bed – staring off into space, imagining what it would have been like to simply have gone with Jackson the day that he had bit me.

The night of the full Moon my body felt electrified, as usual. This brought on a sense of confinement and fear. I would be forced to turn tonight, regardless of what I wanted, and my wolf would be trapped in this room. She would try any method to get out, including ripping the bars off of the window with her teeth – which she could. The other pack members would hunt me down and rip out my throat without a second thought if I tried to escape. Maybe that is what my father had wanted all along.

But, even if I managed to somehow evade hundreds of wolves, I wouldn't even know how to get to the Merphate pack. And they would all be shifted as well.

I curled into a ball on my bed, praying that I could somehow control the wolf raging inside of me.

One hour before nightfall, Phil came to my room and shackled my hands.

"We are going to put you in one of the cells in the basement," he explained.

The cells were specifically engineered to be strong enough to keep a werewolf captured. This new prison I would be taken to would save my life... for another twenty-eight days at least.

The halls of my father's house were vacant and eerie. Everyone would be outside by now, either shifted or shifting. No one liked being forced to shift by the Moon; the pull was more torturous than doing it freely. So, normally we shifted on our own before we felt the pull. I felt the beginning tugs of it now and I am sure that Phil did as well.

I said nothing as Phil marched me into the basement and placed me in a cell. It wasn't until I heard the door shut behind me and lock automatically that I felt safe to whisper a "thank you".

Phil did not reply and simply left me in the basement to myself.

I ridded myself of my clothing and shifted only a moment later.

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The night was a long one. My wolf yearned to run through the woods freely; instead she was confined in a small cage. She wanted to be with her mate, which made my heart ache to the point of breaking. Instead, we were in solitary confinement. We had never been without our pack before. We were lonely and cramped and miserable. The longer the night went on the more stir-crazy we got. She even went as far as to start chewing, fruitlessly, on the bars.

As soon as the moon's pull had vanished, I was a girl again. A naked girl who frantically pulled her clothes back on before curling up in a corner. Almost the whole pack would still be out running. They would run until day-break, maybe even longer. I would be stuck in here for at least another three hours. Which, I suppose was better than the alternative – dead by the hands of my former pack.

However, I did not have to wait long until Phil was unlocking the door of my cell.

"Do I need to use the handcuffs?" He asked.

I shook my head. I knew it was pointless to run with all of the wolves outside on a run. I wouldn't make it a mile.

Phil ushered me out of the cage and back upstairs to my bedroom, my other cage. The house remained deserted. It seemed like my father did not want the servants or my mother seeing me being treated as a prisoner. Or, maybe even more, he didn't want anyone to see the wound he had inflicted on his own daughter's face. Once I was securely in my bedroom again, Phil shut the door and slid the lock back into place.

I took a long bath, trying to wash myself of the loneliness I had felt as a wolf. I wouldn't have been able to survive as a rogue – it would kill me.

Not that it mattered now anyway, I had only twenty-seven days left to live.

With that, I sank into the tub and cried.

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It had taken a week for my face to heal completely. There was no lasting damage on my skin, but it left a huge fissure in my heart where my father had once been. The same father, who had bounced me on his knee as a child, taught me to ride a bike and coached me through my first shift. The same father who had struck me down and denounced me as quick as a bullet.

A week after my face heals, two weeks from the full moon, I decided to stop eating the meals that had been brought to me three-times a day.

If I was going to die, I would die on my own terms. Somehow, starvation seemed a lot kinder to me than delusions, fever and the possibility of going insane and killing Jackson.

They let me go for four days without me having touched any food or water, despite the gnawing pains in my stomach, before they strapped me into bed and hooked me up with an IV drip. Apparently, I was worth more to them as live bait for Jackson than dead. They were certain he would come for me before the full moon, no matter the cost to him or his pack.

I prayed they were wrong.

They let me off the IV a week before the full moon once I had promised that I would eat my meals so long as they took the damn IV out of my arm. My arms, legs and torso were all bruised from my constant battle to free myself from the restraints.

The next day, the fever set in once more. Amplifying each passing day. I could hear my mother wailing at my door, demanding someone to let her in. They never did. Her crying only intensified my sadness. She had realized something was horribly wrong.

I was dying and there was nothing anyone could do about it but my mate, my Jackson.

And, as much as I wanted him to be the best leader he could and do what was right for his pack, I couldn't help feeling a little resentful that he would not come for me.

Four days before the full moon, a week into December, the first hallucinations started.

I had woken up from a bad nightmare that I couldn't recall. My sheets were soaked through with sweat from my ever-intensifying fever. Jackson stood at the end of my bed, staring at me sadly.

"Jackson! You came!" I whispered excitedly and threw myself off the bed, staggering. My body was weak with fever and I steadied myself on the edge, waiting for him to come to me.

He shook his head at me.

"I will never come for you, Romy."

Tears formed in my eyes and burned their way down my enflamed cheeks.

"You will. I know you will. You love me."

"I don't," said Jackson without feeling. "I never said that."

I stopped up. It's true. Neither one of us had said that yet.

"If I loved you, I would never have sent you back to your father."

"That's not true!" I cried out, stumbling forward and landing on the floor.

Jackson disappeared in front of my eyes and I realized that he was a figment of my imagination. Now that the fever was growing higher and higher I would have more of these. I collapsed completely onto the floor and laid there, staring off into space and trying to ignore anyone or anything that suddenly popped into my vision.

I was alone, I had to remind myself.

Even though it killed me not to reach out for every vision of Jackson.

Instead, I pulled my journal out from under the floorboard under my bed. This was one of my possessions that my father had not managed to take from me. I instead concentrated on the words of my past, not visions of the present.

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The next day, three days until my ultimate insanity and/or demise, a cell phone was slipped into the room with my breakfast. I stared at it for at least an hour, trying to determine if it was real or not. Whether the cell was actually here, like my breakfast tray, or if it was a hallucination (like my mother standing in the corner of my room with her lips moving but no voice coming out).

I lifted it off the tray. It certainly felt real. But I had never tried to touch my apparitions since Jackson disappeared the first time. Maybe as time went on my brain tricked myself into thinking that it was real so it fooled my body into that too?

I pressed the button and the screen flicked to life. There were no numbers in the contacts list. So, either my brain was uninventive (which had proven unlikely so far) or someone had carefully covered their tracks.

My only question was whether it was friend or foe.

I looked at the cell phone for only a few more minutes before deciding on a course of action.

If I was going to die in three more days, I was at least going to hear Jackson's voice one more time, whether he had abandoned me to my fate or not.

So, I punched in the familiar numbers I had memorized. Hesitated for only a moment and then hit the call button.

"Hello?" Jackson's voice answered frantically.

I choked back a sob.

"Romy? Romy, is that you?" He demanded.

"It's me." I said, my voice hoarse from lack of use.

"Oh thank God!" He said. "I have been so worried I haven't been able to sleep. Are you alright?"

I didn't answer.

"The fever? The delusions? How are you coping?"

"As well as can be expected," I answer dryly.

"I have been having my men at your father's house watch over you while I tried to get my pack together and form a plan."

A lot of help that's been, I think sourly but then stop myself.

If I only had a few days, I don't want to go out angry. I had already figured out that if there was a spy in Jackson's pack it would only make sense for Jackson to have some as well.

"Do you have one? A plan I mean? Other than leaving me here to die?" I ask, not angrily. It was just curiosity. I had already resigned myself to death.

Jackson growled on the other end, angrier than I had ever heard him before.

"Do not think for a moment that I am going to leave you to die, Romy. You are my mate."

I didn't say anything and just closed my eyes tightly. He had just appeared, standing in front of me, his mouth moving to the words that came through on the cell phone.

"Romy? Are you still there?" He asked, gentler, after a few moments of silence.

"I am trying to figure out if this is a hallucination or not."

"It's not."

"That's exactly what a hallucination would say," I teased. "In fact, I am fairly sure there is one of you directly in front of me that just said the exact same thing."

"Ignore him and listen very carefully to me," Jackson replied seriously. I kept my eyes squeezed shut and focused only on his voice. I ignored the beads of sweat that were dripping from my forehead. "Romy, we are going to break you out and get you off of your father's territory tonight."

"Tonight?" I repeat, almost flabbergasted. How would that be possible?

"Yes. Some of my pack members and I will be waiting all around your father's border – a mile past the outskirts. All you need to do is get there."

This would be the best solution, I decided. Let me break free and make a run for it in my feverish and mad state. If I ran to Jackson, it could be defended that I was completely out of it and ran to my mate. If I didn't make it, Jackson and his pack couldn't be implicated – thus, preventing the war from breaking out again tomorrow.

"I'll never make it, not even as a wolf," I say. "I am too feverish and I can't trust my eyes as a human let alone a wolf. I would be hunted down within five miles. It would take them only moments to figure out I have fled. I have bars on my window I would have to rip off with my teeth."

"You don't have to rip off any bars with you teeth. In fact, you won't be changing into a wolf until you are well into the forest."

"But-"

"I have arranged for someone to help you. You are going to be given bath salts at lunch to mask your scent. Use them immediately and soak. Your door will be unlocked an hour later. Go with the man outside and we will escort you into the woods and protect you. Get rid of this cell phone in the trash incinerator in your house on the way," he said slowly and surely, making me repeat back the words to make sure I understood. "No matter where you come out at on the perimeter of your father's territory, one of my pack members will be there to help you. Do you understand?"

"Yes," I reply breathlessly, hoping beyond all hope that this wasn't some sort of hallucination.

"Then run fast, run far and be safe."

With that, the phone went dead and I cradled it in my hands. I felt safe enough to open my eyes once more and found that the vision of Jackson had passed.

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