Close Watch

Violet felt him leave. The male who had marked her. When he left her it was like a weight was taken away, and she breathed deeply—exhaling him out and letting him go. It was freeing.

And then suddenly the hollowness set in. Everything became gray and bleak and lonely.

"This will pass. It's like a new moon," she whispered to herself in the corner of the cell that she was stuck in.

It felt like specters were whistling through her hollow body. She was a haunting. She was the shell of a person she had once been.

She didn't know how much time had passed since she was in this cell. There was no light, so there was no indication of time. And the minutes bled into hours and the hours bled into whatever was next, her time becoming an infinite expanse of nothing but the occasional guard coming by with food or water that turned her stomach.