Ice -- Wolv book II

16 - Separation Anxiety

As the day wore on, the ambient sounds around us began to fade into silence. The pipes in the walls ceased their incessant hissing; the sound of footsteps outside our cell ended, and the quiet thrum of the heating system slowly died down to nothing.

It was as if the entire town--or, the building we were in, at least--had emptied itself of activity.

Nadie and I kept our backs pressed together, keeping our body heat between the two of us from evaporating out into the air. Our room was slowly cooling down, and my skin began to prick with goose-flesh.

I huddled my arms up to my chest and shivered. Were they going to leave us here? It had been hours already, and the temperature in our room continued to drop, undoubtedly nearing single-digit levels. It would reach freezing in here soon. Are they going to let us freeze to death?  Maybe that was why they'd thrown us in here without any clothes.

Or maybe they've just forgotten about us.

Ha. I doubt that. No one could forget us--we'd just been exposed in front of the entire community as some ancient enemy.

And so what? Why do they care if we're direwolves? We were living in peace for the most part, weren't we?

My lips parted and I let our a shiver. I could see my breath in the air; the temperature was that cold. My fingers were cold and numb, and refused to warm themselves up.

"C-c-cold," Nadie stuttered. My ears perked up at her voice; the silence in our room had been deafening.

"I'm sure they'll let us out soon. They have to." They couldn't just let us die here. It wouldn't be fair;  we'd traveled hundreds of miles over the past few months. To have everything brought to an end via hypothermia just seemed so...anti-climactic.

"Maybe w-we shouldn't be w-waiting for them t-to let us out..."

I nodded sullenly, and eyed the thick padlocks that hung on our cages. We needed to escape, but there was no way we'd be able to break out of this. I looked down at my broken foot sadly. The bone had already healed itself up, but my heel was still a little swollen.

I was too weak to try and kick the cage out again. I could still feel the shifting sickness inside me, slowly draining my energy as my body tried to mend itself from my shifts.

Hutch...

"Sarah said Hutch was in the room next to us."

"S-so?" Nadie's teeth chattered together, clicking loudly in the silence.

"Hutch could probably break outta here." He is an Alpha, after all.  I leaned forward, pulling away from Nadie's back. Ice-cold air chilled me instantly. "Hutch!" I called out weakly. "Hutch! Tara!"

I rapped my hand against the metal of my cage. Nadie joined in, clanging against the cage behind me.

"Hutch!" she screamed. "Hey! Are you there?"

Clang.

Nadie and I froze, our ears swiveling around.

Clang!

I slammed my hand into the cage once again. "Hutch! Is that you?"

Clang!

"Hum....eeee!"

I threw my head back and almost howled with joy as Hutch's muffled voice filtered through the walls. He'd heard us!

What if THEY heard us as well?  "Hutch! Can you get out?" I called. If he could escape and free the two of us fast enough, it wouldn't matter  if anyone else had heard our ruckus.