Layla
I don't even know how long I've been here.
Three months? Maybe more. Maybe less. Time doesn't exist down here. The only thing I count is the sound of my own breathing and the times they open the small flap in the door to shove in that bowl of rot they call food.
The cell is always dark. The only light I see creeps in like a whisper when the door creaks open—just enough to remind me what I'm missing. What freedom used to feel like.
I've grown used to the taste of their filth. The water they give me tastes like rust and something worse. Urine? Blood? I can't tell anymore. My tongue doesn't even flinch when it hits the metal bowl. I drink it because I have to. Because somehow, I'm still alive.
The chains… gods, the chains.
They've been on me since the first day. Thick, iron links bolted to the wall, tight around my wrists and ankles. Too tight. I stopped struggling weeks ago. Maybe months. The skin there is raw—deep gashes that never heal. My blood crusts around them, but the wounds open every time I shift even slightly. I think they're biting into my bones now. I feel it. A constant, sharp gnawing that never ends.
My back sticks to the cold stone floor, or sometimes I curl into the farthest corner of the cell, where the shadows feel thicker, like maybe if I close my eyes hard enough, I'll disappear into them. It's the only place that doesn't echo with the memory of their voices.
Especially hers.
Felissa.
Every opportunity she gets, she drags him to my cell. Right to the bars. Right where I'm chained and broken and silent.
Kain.
I don't even recognize him anymore. Not the man I loved. Not the friend I trusted. He stands beside her like a loyal pet, letting her trace her fingers over his chest, down his abs, under his waistband while she moans loudly on purpose. She talks about how he begs for her every night. How he can't get enough of her mouth, her body, her screams.
Sometimes, she kisses him hard, hands gripping his hair, grinding against him, eyes locked on mine.
Just to watch me break.
"You thought he loved you?" she says, laughing like I'm some sad, sick joke. "He was never yours. He was mine the whole time. He only touched you because I let him."
He never defends me. Not anymore.
He just lets her spit on me. Lets her throw the bowl of food on the ground so it splashes over my already-filthy skin. Lets her laugh as she tells me how useless I am, how I should've died during the Ball of Emergence.
Sometimes, she reminds me that my mother's life hangs on her mercy.
That she could end her any time.
And I believe her.
She and her wretched mother, Luna Catherine, run this pack like it's their kingdom of cruelty. The guards don't listen to anyone else. They follow Felissa's orders as if she's the goddess herself. They call her "Luna-to-be."
Nobody visits me. Nobody speaks my name.
I'm the ghost in the dungeon. The disgrace.
And yet, I'm still breathing.
Barely.
I find moments of quiet joy when Felissa doesn't come. When I can exist for a few hours without hearing her voice or seeing her paw all over the boy who used to be my world.
The silence is kinder.
But even in the silence, I wonder.
Is my mother still alive?
Is she still waiting for me?
Does she still believe in the daughter who failed her?
That thought… that's the only thing that still hurts worse than the chains.
Because no matter how much I try to tell myself he is the one who lost me
—I'm the one who's truly lost everything.