Jodie woke up slowly with a migraine. It wasn't uncommon after a vivid insight into the future, but it was the first time she saw the future of strangers, and it severely took a toll on her.
Barely moving, she cracked open an eyelid, glancing around through her eyelashes. She was in a brightly lit room, and she appeared to be alone. Comforted by the idea, her eyes fluttered close as she rolled over, wanting to go back to sleep, but her nose picked up on Ares' scent, and a shiver of terror passed through her. It cleared her consciousness and brought her back to reality. The last thing she remembered was waking up to see him and then the vision that followed the moment their hands touched. His broken cry, his pain, the vision couldn't have been clearer—someone dear to him would die.
She listened to be certain she was alone in the room before opening her eyes to look around. She was lying on a king-sized bed, covered with dark and silver gray bedding. The walls were painted white, a blue double-seater couch was positioned at a corner in the room, and the floors were freshly polished. A black tinted window was slightly opened to aid ventilation, revealing the blue sky outside.
With a hand pressed against her head, she sat up gingerly, confused as to how she'd gotten there. She wasn't cuffed or restrained to the bed, and her face, hands, and legs had been cleaned, yet she wondered if she'd been kidnapped. They weren't friendly-looking. Her little sack lay by the foot of the couch, and her shoes were arranged beside it. She sat in silence for a moment, doubting she was alone in the house. She didn't want to alert anyone that she was awake.
If this was a kidnap, the darn migraine needed to subside before she could fully face anyone. She closed her eyes for a moment, remembering the adrenaline of the previous nights, the change, the screaming, the bloodshed. Jodie concentrated on it, feeling a burst of power run through her limbs as the experience replayed itself in front of her. She channeled the energy into her brain, ears, and eyes. The weakness in her limbs disappeared, and her nails slightly elongated to claws.
A few minutes later, she stood up and moved to the window. The house was somewhere in the forest and towered above other smaller buildings and a few cabins. Save for a few people who went about their activities unperturbed, the grounds were relatively empty, but she could hear them in their homes. Every sound she focused on became clearer, and various scents floated in the air.
A sudden shift in the air snapped her gaze to the left, where she saw Ares leaving one of the cabins below with a displeased look. Two men and a young girl going about her day stopped to bow slightly as he passed beside them, seemingly oblivious to anything but his own thoughts.
So there was a possibility this wasn't a kidnapping, she thought to herself. However, she had the choice of leaving through the window if she wanted to. The distance wasn't so high in her slightly heightened state of power. The wolf would get her down safely, but maybe not now. She had a premonition that the whole place was heavily guarded by wolves like the ones she saw yesterday. Tall, formidable, and scary.
Jodie backed away from the window. She moved into the room, making sure to open every single drawer and investigate every corner as quietly as physically possible. Intrusive, yes, but she needed a general idea of where she was. Environments can be used to one's advantage should a sticky situation arise. It was strange to see his clothes—rows of tailored suits, casual shirts, jeans, polished shoes, ludicrously expensive watches, as opposed to tunics and lion clothes of cavemen—lined up in a huge closet.
The squeaky clean adjoining bathroom had male toiletries and bottles filled with his signature scents. She picked one up to take a sniff, but the bottle slipped from her sweaty palm and shattered on the ground. She jumped backwards, fear frozen in her chest. The noise had been loud, even louder to her heightened wolf ears. She picked up the broken pieces and dried the floor with a paper towel, then rushed out of the bathroom.
For a moment she thought she heard footsteps and paused, staring wide-eyed at the door, twitching her ears to pick up any stray sounds. It took a while for the house to quiet down around her before she could hear the distant murmur of voices. There were footsteps, but they were far away, elsewhere in the building. She assumed she hadn't been heard because of their leisurely pace and a sudden bark of laughter somewhere. She breathed a sigh of relief and returned her gaze to the window, debating whether or not to jump. It was risky, and maybe not necessary for now. They'd found her in no man's land and took her in, so maybe she was a guest. After all, she was in his bedroom and not locked up in a basement somewhere. At that thought, she wondered if she'd been locked inside the room.
Creeping up to the door, she tried the knob and found that it was unlocked. It was safe to say she hadn't been kidnapped. It seemed like she wasn't in danger, but she didn't let her guard down. Jodie cracked the door open, peering around the edge and squinting down a long corridor. It was brightly lit, and a fancy carpet covered the entire length of it. Light on her foot, she crossed the threshold and moved down the corridor, listening carefully to the now distinct voices.
"...allow me to feed her, please."
"She's not a pet."
Two people were talking about her, Jodie realized, heading cautiously towards the direction of the sounds.
"Judging by how she killed three rogues and stomped on your foot, clearly not..."
Her mouth twitches slightly at that, warming up to whoever owned the light female voice. Suddenly, a door opened and closed somewhere, startling her senseless and breaking her concentration on their conversation. She heard multiple footsteps from another part of the house and glanced back at the distance she'd come. There was still time to go back.
Swiftly, she ran down the corridor and shut the door quietly behind her. Cocooned in the room, Jodie sank back against the door and slid to the ground in a heap. What now? It was only a matter of time before someone came in here to check on her. A matter of time before he came in himself and found that she'd snooped around the place and destroyed one of his scent bottles.
A brief knock came on the door at that moment, and she scrambled up. The knob turned and the door opened to reveal a young lady who smiled brightly after recovering from the momentarily shock of finding her awake. But Jodie wasn't smiling. Her breathing was labored, her face went pale, and her head shakes in denial. She was so shocked that all she could do was stare at the girl in her vision. She would die!