Captured - Cara Wylde Page 0,1

my family, but the nearby forests didn’t. Half the time, they didn’t care. They didn’t care about hunting season either. If someone spotted them, my father just paid them off and got away with it. The only evidence left behind was the stuffed animals that adorned each and every one of our homes.

I stared at the massive deer head mounted on the wall and felt like I was going to be sick. This had been such a bad idea. I should have never gone along with what my parents had wanted. I should have ignored the threats and stayed at home. They wouldn’t have cut me off. They couldn’t afford the scandal.

God, when was I ever going to learn?

“Isabel?” my mother called out. “Are you all right, honey?”

I looked toward her and realized that at one point when I hadn’t been paying attention, my mother and my aunt had both turned toward me. I suppressed my disgust and did my best to not show how much the conversation outside had affected me.

“I’m fine. I’m just a little distracted. Long days at school. You know how it is.”

“Of course, dear,” my mother answered. “Do you want to go lie down? It’ll be a while until your father comes back. We’ll come get you when dinner is ready.”

If I hadn’t been so upset about this whole, dreadful day, I might have been tempted to hug her. Instead, I offered her a tiny shaky smile. “Thanks, Mother. I’ll do that. I’m sure I’ll feel better later.”

That much was true, at least. Over time, I’d grown more or less used to my family’s habits. I still despised them, but I was better at hiding it. I’d only confronted them about it once, when I’d been fifteen and still clinging to the illusion that I could get them to see sense. My father had laughed in my face. That day, he’d killed a whole family of bears, including the cubs. Their bodies were now stuffed, corpses to be used as decorations.

I hadn’t tried again.

Judging by Aunt Melinda’s expression, she wasn’t fooled by my attempt to remain calm. Even so, she didn’t say anything about it – not to my face. When I turned away from them, I heard her whisper something to my mother. “You have to do something about that girl, Georgia. She just has the weirdest ideas.”

“It’ll get better once she’s married. I’m sure…”

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the conversation. I made a beeline for my room and burst inside like a whirlwind. Tears already streaming down my cheeks, I collapsed on my bed, face down.

The expensive Egyptian sheets felt like gravel on my skin. I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw my eyes out. I wanted to run away and never come back.

But I was trapped here, unable to escape. Some days, I felt just as dead inside as those stuffed animals, only pretending to be alive for my family’s amusement.

“If I don’t get out of here, I’m going to lose my mind,” I mumbled under my breath.

Hell, maybe I’d already lost it, since I’d started talking to myself.

With some effort, I managed to drag myself out of bed and into the bathroom. I slid out of my clothes and turned on the shower. As I stepped under the stream, I willed the water to wash away the filth left behind by the memories.

It didn’t work, but I didn’t expect it to. The resentment and disgust would always be there, a festering wound that was poisoning me alive.

By the time I got out of the shower, I felt even more tired than before, and I had a pounding migraine on top of that. I looked into my wardrobe and extracted an outfit at random. I got dressed on autopilot, relying on the instructions my mother had hammered into my head since I’d been old enough to walk.

When I was done, I stared at myself in the mirror, feeling like a puppet on strings. Why had I come here? Why couldn’t I escape? Why was I so afraid of them?

An explosion of noise coming from outside startled me from my thoughts. First, there was the sound of an approaching jeep. Then, male laughter again. My cousins’ cheers reached me even through the closed French doors of my balcony. “Hell yeah! That was awesome!”

There were moments in life when you knew you shouldn’t do something, but you just couldn’t help yourself. Today, that was exactly what happened. My body moved