Chapter 31

Valerie

My mind wouldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.

Ava was all curled up in that cage, slumped to the ground and hugging her knees to her chest. She was not crying and fidgeting like many of the other slaves. Rather, she looked as if her battle was already lost, her head half-hung in defeat.

My mind reared back over and over again.

It’s not her. It can’t be her. It just looks like her.

But I knew Ava’s face anywhere. It wasn’t one that could be replicated or mistaken for another. That was Ava. The same Ava I spent every day with back at the shop. The same Ava I saw hauled away by a terrible werewolf with nauseating intention.

Why was she here now?

She had changed so much. The sparkles that once lit her eyes like fireworks were gone now. Her skin, which had always been as sun-kissed as light sand, was pale now. I shuddered at how thin she looked.

What sickened me more than anything were the bruises, peppered over her body. Bruises that were likely put there by her master.

How wa