The Ultimate Series Book 1: Feral

Nothing was louder than silence. It allowed the voices in my head to scream uninterrupted.

I wasn’t really sure where they came from. Were they products of my dark desires or just another curse Myrin had saddled me with?

Either way, I wouldn’t have to listen to them much longer. My execution drew closer with every rasping breath I took.

It was dark in my iron coffin, small and cramped. Still, it was more enjoyable than the prison I had been tortured in for months.

The familiar biting chill of metal links wrapped around my torso, securing my arms tightly at my sides. My ankles were encased in manacles with a thin chain attached between them, and a heavy wire muzzle covered my face.

The fit wasn’t quite right, and the buckles dug into my cheeks. Despite all of this, I was the most comfortable I had been in a long while.

For once, the poison in my veins was calm. I started to hum a little nursery rhyme that gave the voices in my head pause.

A few of them started singing along with me. Others went quiet.

“She’s singing again.”

My ears perked up. It was too coherent to be one of the voices in my head.

They were here for me. Finally.

“Creepy fucking bitch.”

Two voices. Yes, it was time. They had sent my escort.

The door screeched open, metal against metal, like nails on bone. Or was it teeth?

My iron coffin cracked, and three stone walls greeted me. I blinked, adjusting to the dim, dank cell.

My bare feet hit the cement as I stepped out of the iron box, the chains on my ankles rattling against the ground. My blood had discolored the floor, staining it black over time.

Splatters of metallic silver glittered out of place there, too. The shackles hanging from the ceiling still swayed gently, empty now.

But memories seared my skin with ghostly pain. My struggles were etched permanently on my wrists from the countless times they had cut into my flesh as I’d writhed and thrashed against his cruelty.

It was loud in between these four walls. Screaming. Always screaming. But not now. Not anymore. Just silence.

I’d bled here. Wept here. Broke here. How boring.

I couldn’t understand the fear that had once gripped me. Perhaps when my sanity had been stripped away, so had my emotion.

I didn’t even feel anger, which had been my most loyal friend for years. The only thing left in me now was hollow indifference.

Before me, three Zeta agents, black like shadows, were wrapped in armor. Kevlar vests, helmets with dark visors, shin guards, and arm guards adorned their towering frames.

They weren’t taking any chances with me. Their weapons—a mix of tranquilizer guns and shock batons—were strapped at their waists and slung over their backs.

Behind them, Samson stood watching, arms crossed over his chest. He had risen to the position of One of High Lake territory, but I had little knowledge of him beyond his status as Myrin’s former second-in-command.

His gaze lingered on the grotesque scars etched into my stomach in jagged letters.

His gaze was stuck there, unable to pull away. Like the scars were crawling, alive, trying to eat him. I almost laughed.

Then he looked up and met my stare. I watched the shiver go through him. Weak. Just like the others.

They were all weak. I could smell it on them, sharp and bitter, laced with adrenaline. Delicious.

“Get her in the truck,” Samson commanded, his voice tighter than he wanted it to be. “Three guards at all times. She is not to be underestimated.”

The Zeta agents moved in quickly, checking that the restraints on my body were secure. They paraded me through the halls of Myrin’s mansion—Samson’s now.

I’d killed their leader here, right on this very floor. Myrin, that raving mad fucking scientist, had met too easy of a death.

I should have picked him apart little by little over the course of months as he’d done to me. His end was something I replayed in my mind over and over.

His blood still coated my hands, long dried and pulling my skin taut in an irritating sensation I longed to itch. But I could remember it fresh, dripping from my hand, splashing onto the white and gold marble.

A pool of sticky red liquid fanned from Myrin’s neck, covering the floor with its dark beauty. His body lay beneath my feet as I crouched, poised on his chest.

My toes dug into the flesh beneath his collarbones. My badly chopped bangs tickled my lashes, blood leaking from their tips.

I breathed out a sigh of delight, savoring the memory as I was prodded out of the mansion.

“She’s fucking rancid… still got pieces of him on her…,” a Zeta agent muttered as he hoisted me into the armored vehicle.

Another agent on the inside pulled me up.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “We’ll hose her off before the trial.”

Myrin’s flesh, still under my claws, had been there for some time. Besides the acidic ammonium smell from the piss that soaked my tattered clothes, it was probably the source of the stink.

Good. I’d let it rot. He deserved to decay in my hands.

I was forced into a seated position and strapped in further with the restraints attached to the walls of the vehicle. I stared at them above the wire muzzle, my gaze slowly moving from one agent to the next, watching. Piercing.

Their discomfort was palpable, their tension evident in every jerky movement. As the armored doors slammed shut behind me, sealing me in, I let out a soft hum of the nursery rhyme from before.

I could sense the unease ripple through the guards, even without seeing their faces. They knew better than to show fear.

But I didn’t need to see it to know it was there. I could smell it—thick, sour, and suffocating.

None of them spoke, but the voices in my head were more than happy to provide me with conversation.

Did it even matter? I was going to die soon. Why did I need to decide that?

Easy.

Death was easy. Just ceasing existence would make all of this go away. Would I ever be allowed such a thing?

I’d deserved it multiple times throughout my life, yet it had been taken from me. It was like I was not allowed the ease and peace of death.

What did that mean for me then? If I wasn’t to die, then what was left for me? I could not go through another Myrin.

I would not survive that again. Even if death was not the end, my shattered mind, my broken will, and my empty soul would be. Who I was would simply disappear.

I’d be forced to become someone else, something else. That in and of itself was a kind of death, I supposed.

The voices didn’t relent, pestering me with more senseless questions until I entered a light sleep.

It was only seconds later when I felt it.

A jolt of electricity surged through my whole body.