The Human Among Wolves (Aurora) novel Chapter 337

Chapter 337

Aurora

The throbbing at the back of my head dragged me awake.

It pulsed in slow, brutal waves, each one blooming behind my eyes before sinking back into a dull, nauseating ache. For a moment, I didn’t move. I couldn’t. My body felt heavy, disconnected, like it hadn’t quite caught up with the fact that I was conscious again.

When I finally forced my eyes open, there was nothing.

Not the soft darkness of a room with the lights turned off. Not shadows or shapes or even the faint glow of something distant.

Just black.

Pure, suffocating black, like someone had covered my eyes completely. Panic flared instinctively in my chest, sharp and sudden, but I pushed it down, breathing slowly through my nose. I tested my head first-tilting it slightly, wincing as pain lanced through my skull.

I was sitting.

That much I realized quickly.

My back was pressed against something firm, upright. A seat. My arms were pulled outward on either side of me, wrists bound tight enough that I felt the pressure immediately when I tried to move. Rope. Or cuffs. I couldn’t tell which, only that they bit into my skin when I

struggled.

I stilled.

The air around me felt… enclosed. Not cramped, but contained. There was faint, unfamiliar hum beneath the silence, steady and low, vibrating through whatever I was sitting on. It took a few seconds for my foggy mind to put the pieces together.

A bus.

Or a plane.

My stomach dropped.

I held my breath and listened harder, straining for any sign of movement, of voices, of life. But there was nothing. No footsteps. No breathing.

No rustle of fabric. Just that quiet, persistent sound in the background and the pounding of my own heart in my ears.

My mouth felt painfully dry.

“Charlotte?” I called out, my voice coming out weak and hoarse, barely more than a whisper.

The word seemed to vanish into the darkness, unanswered.

“Do you even have a brain?”

Zayn’s words echoed in my head, sharp and cruel, and now-now they felt impossibly true.

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Do I have a F**king brain?

The question burned as understanding settled in, slow and sickening. How could I have been so stupid? So careless. I swallowed hard, my throat tightening as the reality pressed down on me. Of course it hadn’t been him. Of course Zayn wouldn’t have called me from an unknown number, wouldn’t have asked me to come outside like that, alone, without explanation.

I’d wanted it to be him.

That was the worst part.

I’d been so desperate for answers, for confrontation, for anything that might cut through the mess between us, that I hadn’t stopped to think. I

hadn’t questioned it. I’d just gone. Walked straight into it with my eyes wide open.

The humiliation hit next, hot and bitter, followed closely by fear. Real fear The kind that crawled under your skin and stayed there, whispering all the things you didn’t want to admit.

Zayn had been angry. Harsh. Unfair, even.

But he’d been right about one thing.

I should have known better.

“Charlotte?” I repeated, forcing the word past my dry throat, this time a little louder.

The sound of my own voice felt wrong in the space around me-too small, too fragile, swallowed almost immediately by the thick silence. My

heart hammered in my chest as I strained to hear anything else, any sign that I wasn’t alone.

For a second, there was nothing.

Then-movement.

It was faint at first, almost easy to miss.

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