But nothing happened. She remained in her human form and not only that, the dull gnawing feeling of hunger that she had felt even in her sleep, exploded through her body and manifested in actual pain.

  She took some shallow breaths to calm her body. She had to get her mind off her hunger. She looked around the place she was in. It was warm and round. If the walls had been wood or stone or concrete, she might had seen herself in one of those hobbit holes, like what Bilbo Baggins lived in at Bag End.

  There was a single chair in the room. There was no kitchen; there was no place that she could see to get water. As far as she could tell it was a hole with a fireplace. “Who the hell digs a hole in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t furnish the place but has the time to build a fireplace?”

  Keva shook her head, if I don’t watch it; I’ll start talking to myself. She pulled up again on the chain but it was so heavy she soon gave up and let her hands rest on her lap. Her body was sore and she knew she had sustained some injuries, her ribs felt bruised and definitely her back and shoulders were bruised, but she didn’t have any broken bones that she could tell. She was thirsty though and that meant that as well as having massive hunger pains she would start to get the world’s biggest migraine here in a few hours.

  Grunting hard she forced herself to sit up against the wall that she had been thrown up against apparently. She studied the bolt in the floor that the chain was attached to. It had been welded to a metal plate. The welding had been done so crappily, or heavily, depending on how you looked at it, the bolt seemed to rise out of the metal plate, like the bolt had been pressed up and through the metal plate that it rested on. The metal plate itself was a two-inch-thick piece of metal and there were bolts on each corner. She couldn’t imagine how securely those bolts anchored the plate to the dirt floor, but if the plate was made of the same metal as the chain, she wouldn’t have nearly the strength she needed to try to pry it up out of the ground anyway.

  She breathed deeply against the pains of hunger that struck her in waves. They pulsed outward from her stomach with her heart beat and she closed her eyes tightly to try to stave off the migraine, whose pressure was already starting to build and throb behind her sinuses.

  She didn’t know where her pack was exactly, she could feel them though, at least a few of them. She could feel Soter somewhere not too terribly distant. She could feel Hysminai also and she could feel Michelle close by, Michelle was very close by. Keva concentrated but she soon gave up trying to feel for Javier and Erato. She was too exhausted to try to concentrate that hard. And the more she tried to focus her mind and abilities, the more tired and the more pressure forced itself against her sinuses. After a few moments she slumped back against the dirt wall and rested, breathing deep even breathes, trying to ward off the pain that assaulted her entire body.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  She didn’t know where she was. Had they all been taken prisoner like she had? The last thing she remembered was walking north, trying to make a stupid tree stop dancing in front of her. Then there was nothing but blackness. Now she was here, wherever here was.

  A crack suddenly appeared in the far wall opposite the fire place. Keva tried to get to her feet but was only able to manage getting her feet underneath her in a kneeling position, so short was the chain holding her wrists to the heavy plate in the ground she couldn’t stand up even if she had had the strength to.

  A large portion of the wall swung inward on hinges that she hadn’t noticed till that point and a large man pushed his way into the hole through the snow. He stopped and nodded to the tied-up woman, before he turned and closed the door behind him. The door disappeared almost seamlessly into the wall. No wonder she hadn’t spotted it. The door fit into the wall so snugly the only thing that marked it passage was a thin line of snow that the door hadn’t pushed back out outside as it closed.

  The man bustled over to the fire place, putting more wood on the fire and laying a rather impressively large bundle of wood, that he had carried inside, down next to the fire place. Once that was done and the pile was neatly arranged to the large man’s satisfaction, he turned around and took off a single layer of heavy furs. Draping the furs on a peg in the wall he sat down heavily on the chair facing Keva and regarding her carefully with bright clear blue eyes around his somewhat aged and weather worn features.

  Keva sat looking at him with her green eyes. He was built and tall. He had blonde hair that came down past his shoulders. His clear blue eyes shone brightly with intelligence in the soft fire light. The man said nothing and Keva said nothing. The two just stared at each other till Keva’s stomach made her introductions for her in a rather embarrassingly loud grumble that sounded throughout the hole.

  Keva didn’t allow herself to be embarrassed by her own body. Instead, she evenly looked at the man who sat across from her. “Why are you holding me here? Where are my friends and wolves?”

  The man simply smiled at her. “Oh, raring, don’ts worry about them for now, they’re, being takens care of.” His thick Scandinavian accent made understanding him a bit of a task for her pounding head and waves of pain racking her body.

  “Why am I a prisoner here?” Keva tried to keep her voice steady but her body and head were working against her.

  The man simply smiled, “You know it’s a crime to bring those animals intos our country don’ts you?”

  His voice remained calm and congenial but his accent put an edge to the word ‘animals.’ Keva didn’t like how he said it and she liked even less the prospect of what might have happened to Erato. “What have you done with my wolves?” Her eyes glinted menacingly, all pain was forgotten and all she knew was her very familiar rage.

  The man though, infuriatingly, stayed calm and congenial with that stupid smile on his face. “I didn’ts do anythings that any other rights thinking person wouldn’ts do. I have a rights to protects my home and my country.”