Austin woke up with a blood-curdling shriek.
"Ava! No! F-Father!"
His eyes snapped open, wide and wild, scanning the perimeter for fire, for the huge hammer, for the charred remains of his home.
But the scene was entirely different. His head swam, throbbing with a monstrous, dull ache where the hammer had connected.
He tried to raise his hands to clutch his stinging face, only to find his wrists bound tightly by rough rope, pulled taut against a solid, wooden pillar behind him.
He was inside a structure—a rough, temporary tent, its walls made of thick, stitched canvas stretched over wooden supports. The interior was spartan and dim, illuminated by the scant light filtering through the canvas and a small opening near the entrance.
There were no furnishings, no tools, nothing but a layer of sprawled, dry hay covering the dirt floor beneath his bare feet.
