The Tenth Time I Ran

The tenth time I tried to run, Garrick Cain dragged me back by my hair.

He beat me until the whip split my skin.

Again.

Again.

Again.

“Run?” he snarled. “You still think you can run?”

I curled in on myself, arms over my head, and begged.

“Please. Please stop. I won’t run again.”

The lie tasted like blood.

“I’ll be good,” I sobbed. “I’ll give you a son. Just don’t hit me.”

That made him pause.

He stood above me, breathing hard.

Then he spat on the floor beside my face.

“I paid thirty thousand dollars for you,” he said. “Thirty thousand. And you think you can just walk away?”

The whip cracked across my back once more.

My body jerked.

I did not scream this time.

I had learned screaming only made him smile.

When Garrick finally grew tired, he threw the whip aside.

Night came after that.

I will not describe what he did.

Some things do not need detail to be understood.

By morning, I lay on the stained bed, staring at the ceiling, my body covered in bruises and dried blood.

I felt nothing.

That scared me more than pain.

My name was Lina Vale.

I was twenty-three years old.

I was an investigative reporter.

In February, I was supposed to marry the man I loved.

If nothing had gone wrong, Felix Arden and I would have stood beneath white flowers, exchanged vows, and built a quiet life together.

Three days before the wedding, Felix said he was overwhelmed by work.

“Let’s get out of the city for a few hours,” he told me. “There’s a small roadside tavern near Blackpine. Quiet. No one will bother us.”

I went.

It was five in the evening.

The tavern was almost empty.

Felix was not there.

At first, I thought traffic had delayed him.

I called.

No answer.

I called again.

Still nothing.

By the fifth call, anxiety curled in my stomach.

Had something happened?

I stood to leave.

That was when a man walked in.

His face was narrow, his eyes too eager.

He looked at me like he already knew the price of my bones.

I moved toward the door.

As I passed him, he grabbed my wrist.

I tried to yank free.

“What are you doing?”

He slammed me into a chair.

Pain shot through my back.

Before I could stand, someone behind me struck the back of my head.

The world tilted.

My vision blurred.

As my eyes closed, I thought I saw Felix step into the tavern.

Felix.

Help me.

That was my last thought before darkness swallowed me.

When I woke, I belonged to Garrick Cain.

Or at least, that was what he believed.

I had been sold into a village hidden deep in the Blackpine Mountains.

A place so remote that maps forgot it, roads avoided it, and missing women disappeared into it like stones dropped into a well.

Garrick was a low-ranking wolf from one of the old hollow packs.

He had bought me to bear him a son.

For a month, I tried to escape.

The first time, I made it past the outer fields.

I ran until my lungs burned, only to realize the hills folded into one another endlessly. Every trail looked like the last. Every ridge led to another ridge.

They found me before dusk.

The beating nearly killed me.

A neighbor, Old Mae, stopped him.

“Don’t kill this one,” she said. “You paid good money.”

Not because she pitied me.

Because dead women were a bad investment.

After that, I ran again.

And again.

Each time, Garrick caught me.

Each time, he beat me worse.

Old Mae came once after hearing my screams and told him to stuff a rag in my mouth next time.

He did.

So after that, when he beat me, the village slept peacefully.

No one heard.

No one cared.

Old Mae also told me about the woman before me.

“She ran too,” Mae said, squatting by the fence while I fetched water under Garrick’s watch. “Wouldn’t settle. Wouldn’t give him a son.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

Mae looked at me for a long moment.

“He made an example of her.”

I understood.

She leaned closer.

“Stop running, girl. Give him a boy. That’s the only way you’ll live.”

Her warning did not frighten me into obedience.

It taught me something else.

Garrick had killed before.

The village knew.

And still, they let him buy me.

So I stopped begging them silently to be human.

They were not.

I began watching instead.

Who carried keys.

Who guarded which road.

Who came into the village and when.

Where Garrick kept his phone.

Which men drank too much.

Which women looked away because looking hurt.

One day, I told myself, I would get out.

And when I did, I would write every name.

Every price.

Every road.

Every wolf who bought women and called it marriage.