OLIVIA POV
I couldn’t last more than ten seconds standing still without doing something.
Every fiber of my body screamed at me to move. To fight. To shift.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t fight. I couldn’t shift. Not now. Not when there was a heartbeat inside me that wasn’t just mine anymore.
That didn’t mean I was helpless.
The air in the safe room was heavy — thick with fear, sweat, and too many heartbeats pounding too fast. I could feel it. The vibration of panic in every breath, every trembling body, every pulse too wild to calm.
There were fifty of us crammed inside. Maybe more. Elders, mothers, pups, the injured. The walls were solid. No sound escaped. No scent leaked out.
And yet it didn’t feel safe.
It felt like a cage.
Too familiar. Too much like the cell I’d spent weeks in —
