*Vanessa*

I’ve spent most of my life accustomed to the feeling of fear.

I know the taste of it, the way it wraps itself around one’s bones and paralyzes even the bravest of shifters. I’d feared many things over the course of my time in Helbane and even more during my stay in Ashborne, rejection, and exile being the two most primal.

And I would’ve expected to feel more of the same now, being dragged back to this hellhole I ...