Amelia
“Amelia?”
The voice suddenly appeared inside my head, soft and yet so clear that it slipped between my own thoughts like a foreign one. I frowned, grimaced, and let out an involuntary groan when a dull, throbbing pain instantly spread through my skull, as if someone had decided to perform a small but highly committed drum solo in there. My temples pounded, my neck felt stiff, and my whole head seemed far too heavy for my body.
Did I party too hard yesterday?
The thought came sluggishly and unpleasantly, accompanied by the uncomfortable feeling that my brain was currently running in power-saving mode. I tried to remember, let my thoughts grope backward, but everything felt blurred, like pictures seen through fogged glass. Dancing maybe. Voices. Lights.
And then another thought, much clearer than the rest: Aunt Lara.
No. Definitely not. Aunt Lara loved to party, she practically lived for good music, loud bars, and nights that went on far too late, but she had iron rules. No partying during the week. Never. She was far too responsible for that. And even if she had made an exception, she would have sent me to bed by midnight at the latest and given me a lecture about how sleep deprivation was bad for concentration, mood, and world domination.
“Amelia!!!”
The voice came again, louder this time, more urgent, and tore me roughly out of my inner haze. I flinched slightly, my heart gave one small alarmed leap as realization suddenly struck. I knew that voice. Far too well.
“Nando?! Where are you?!” I murmured through the mind-link, my voice sounded rough, sleepy, and honestly rather offended that someone was apparently waking me with no regard for my headache. I even yawned while saying it, one long uncontrolled yawn that did not suit the quiet unease slowly spreading through me at all.
“Amelia, I’ve been trying to reach you this whole time! You were kidnapped. With Sofia!”
In that moment, my eyes flew open.
Not slowly, not carefully, but all at once, as if someone had flipped a switch. My vision was blurred, swaying before my eyes, but even through the haze I recognized the body beside me. Too still. Too motionless.
Sofia.
She was lying right next to me, her head tilted slightly to one side, dark hair scattered wildly across her face. Her chest rose and fell evenly, she was breathing, but she was unconscious. My heart clenched painfully, and I squeezed my eyes shut as anger spread hot and sharp through me.
Which bastards kidnapped us?!
The thought was clearer than anything else I had thought so far, and it drove me to move. I tried carefully, tensed my muscles, wanted at least to sit up a little or move my arms, but my body only reacted with delay, as if it first had to decide whether it even wanted to obey me. A dull ache ran through my limbs, my legs felt heavy and foreign, and it hit me all at once that the drug they had injected me with was still crawling through my body and keeping me dazed.
Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.
And somewhere deep inside me, despite the fear, a bitter, almost sarcastic thought stirred: this was going to be a damn terrible awakening.
“Please tell me you’re okay!”
Nando’s voice pushed through the mind-link again, tense and rough, and even without seeing him, I could hear the naked worry in it, that tremor beneath the control he only had when he was trying to stay calm even though everything inside him had long since started screaming alarm.
“Yes, Nando,” I answered and grimaced involuntarily as another wave of headache tore through my skull, dull, pounding, and persistent, as if someone had decided to create a small but highly ambitious chaos right there.“I’m as okay as I can be under the circumstances. I’ve got a massive headache and my head feels like someone tried to reorganize it from the inside, but the drug is wearing off slowly. Sofia is still unconscious.”
Those last words alone made something heavy sink in my chest, and while I took a deep breath, I let my gaze drift briefly to her to convince myself she was still breathing, that her ribcage was rising and falling, even though she lay completely motionless beside me.
When I moved carefully to change position, I felt resistance at my wrists and frowned, because the pulling sensation definitely did not feel like sore muscles or an awkward position. Only when I lowered my gaze did I see the rope binding my arms, rough, tight, and clearly not intended decoratively, yet to my own surprise no curse rose in me, no panicked thought, only that cool, clear calm that always spread through me whenever my wolf made itself known and made it very clear that panic would truly be a waste of time right now.
I closed my eyes briefly, focused on the strength inside me, on that familiar pull beneath my skin that felt like taking a deep breath before a leap, tensed my arms, and tore the rope apart without much drama, a quiet groan escaping me when my hands were finally free and the blood returned to my fingers in prickling waves.
Slowly I sat fully upright, deliberately taking my time because my head was still swaying slightly, and finally looked around more closely while my gaze wandered through the dark room we were in. At first I thought of a trunk, but this place was far too large, too high, and too empty for that, more like a separated cargo compartment made of metal, functional, cold, and somehow disturbingly tidy, so it became immediately clear to me that this was no normal vehicle.
I couldn’t tell where the men were, because there had to be a solid partition between us through which neither light nor voices passed, and all I had was the deep hum of the engine and the steady vibration of the floor beneath me, which told me we were moving, somewhere I really would have liked to glance at on a map. I had never seen anything like this, a transporter of this kind, but well, who was I to judge, after all I had never planned a kidnapping either, and if I had, then definitely not like this.
“Amelia, we’ll find you,” I heard Nando again, his voice firmer now and at the same time more desperate, as if he were clinging to those words while outside everything was probably already spiraling.“Diego is losing his mind over Sofia.”
I swallowed, gathered myself briefly, and turned my attention fully back to the transporter around us while my heart was still beating faster than I liked. Carefully I began to move across the floor toward the door, crawling forward slowly and feeling along the cold, smooth surface with my fingertips, hoping to find some clue that would tell me where we were or at least where they were taking us.
“Nando?” I murmured softly into the mind-link while moving forward bit by bit.“Since we can talk, we must still be near San Sebastián, right?!”
At last I reached the door and carefully sat upright, my back leaning against the metal while I tried to look outside through a narrow gap. What I saw made me snort softly. Trees. Very many trees. So many damn trees that it became instantly clear we had to be somewhere in the forest. No houses, no streetlights, only green rushing past us as if someone had decided to kidnap us into a particularly badly lit nature documentary.
“Yes, Amelia,” Nando murmured back, his voice sounding focused and tense at once. “As soon as you get farther away, it won’t be possible for me to speak with you through the mind-link anymore.”
I kept staring outside, searching desperately for anything useful, but there was no sign, no turnoff, nothing. Nada. Only forest, forest, and even more forest gliding slowly past me and giving me the uneasy feeling that with every second we were getting farther from everything familiar to me.
“Then Sofia and I are pretty screwed, Nando,” I said dryly and sighed softly while running my free hand over my face.
I forced myself to keep looking anyway, not letting my gaze falter even though my eyes were already burning. And then I finally saw it. A sign. Small, inconspicuous, but beautiful.
Gijón 10 kilometers.
“Nando!” burst out of me at once, my voice sounding excited and relieved at the same time.“We’re ten kilometers away from Gijón!”
I let out a deep breath, as if that information alone had given me back a piece of control, and briefly leaned my head against the cold door while my heart beat a little slower.
“Gijón?!” came back immediately.“Then you’re heading east. I’ll tell Aunt Lara so she can open a portal to you.”
Before I could reply, the mind-link fell abruptly silent, as if someone had drawn a curtain shut. The familiar warmth vanished, and I was left with the low drone of the engine and my own thoughts.
I sighed again, closed my eyes briefly, and muttered half aloud:
“Well great. Kidnapped, tied up, and now dependent on magical pickup too. Today is really going excellently.”
Then I opened my eyes again and looked out into the forest, dense and endless as it passed us by, and inside me formed that one firm resolve that always came whenever I knew that sitting still definitely was not one of my strengths. I couldn’t just stay here and hope everything solved itself. No. I had to open this damn door, take Sofia with me, and then simply jump and seriously hope we both came out of this alive, even if my plan was about as solid as a house of cards in a storm.
With that exceptionally optimistic thought, I crawled back to Sofia and studied her briefly while searching for any restraints. To my surprise, I found no rope on her hands, which drew a soft, almost relieved snort from me, because at least I would not have to improvise knot-untangling too. Carefully I grabbed her under the elbows, pulled her toward me bit by bit, and began dragging her with me toward the door, firmly resolving not to think later about how absurd this situation actually was.
“Amelia! Damn it, can you hear me?”
Nando’s voice suddenly rumbled through the mind-link again, tense and sharp, as if he were only one breath away from losing control completely.
“Yeeees, Nando,” I murmured softly back without taking my eyes off the door while trying to keep Sofia as steady as possible beside me.“But I need to concentrate now.”
“Concentrate?!” he asked suspiciously, and I could practically hear him mentally running through every possible catastrophe scenario.
I hesitated for a moment, let my gaze travel over the massive rear doors of the transporter, and deliberately dragged out the answer while still trying to sort my plan inside my own head.
“Well,” I said slowly and twisted my mouth slightly,“I’m trying to open the rear doors of the transporter right now and then Sofia and I are jumping out.”
I straightened up a little, felt strangely proud despite the completely questionable idea, and added honestly while even I realized how insane it sounded: “So… I’ve never done anything like that before.”
For one brief moment, silence ruled the connection, as if Nando’s brain were currently performing a complete restart.
“Okay, that… wait a second WHAT?!”Then his voice exploded.
I had to grin briefly, even though my heart was pounding in my throat, while my fingers were already gliding along the door in search of a way out and I thought that this might not be my best plan, but it was definitely the most exciting one.
