My neck aches when I wake up, slumped on the floor where I collapsed after they removed my collar. I feel like someone's choked me and left me to die, my breathing shallow, eyes half-shut.

"Wake up!"

The guard kicks me through the bars and I groggily sit up, massaging my throat with my hands. He tosses a handful of food through the bars - he's apparently too lazy to give out and collect in the bowls - and the little brown biscuits go skittering across the floor. We gather them all together by our mats and share them out equally; there's barely a mouthful each, and it does nothing to remedy yesterday's starvation. I'm exhausted from last night, and I'm almost asleep when the corridor's door opens again.

Ben enters, leading a wolfblood girl on a chain. Her hands are cuffed in front of her so that she can carry the rolled-up mat that she's clutching to her chest, her eyes blazing yellow seemingly without her noticing. I've seen this before, of course, after every full moon: kids who have just had their first transformation moved out of wherever it is they keep the younger ones and into this cell block. The surprise comes when Ben takes off her collar and unlocks the door to our cell.

"The place is overcrowded, so she's being put in with you two," he explains. The girl steps cautiously into the cell and Ben locks the door behind her before asking her to lift her feet so he can take off the chain, then turn around, drop the mat and push her hands through the bars to let him take off the cuffs. As Ben leaves, she cautiously picks up the mat - which has unrolled itself - by the corner and looks from one to the other of us, evidently terrified.

"We ain't gonna hurt ya," Maddy assures her, "Come an' sit down."

She hurries over, dragging her mat, and sits hugging her knees.

"My name's Laura," she says quickly.

"I'm Jana," I reply, "an' this is Maddy. You just turned for the firs' time las' night, di'n't ya?"

"How- How did you know that?!"

"Tha's why they've put ya in 'ere," Maddy explains, "it 'appens after every full moon."

"Oh, right," she says, "You'll have been here for longer than me, won't you?"

"How'd you know that?" asks Maddy.

"I'm in the nine thousands," she says, pointing to the number on her jumper, "And you're both six thousands."

I growl, mostly out of habit. I hate that fucking number so much that hearing any part of it is enough to put me into a foul mood.

"I'm sorry!" Laura exclaims, "did offend you?!"

I stand up, turn around and start punching the concrete wall.

"Jana," Maddy says firmly, "yer gonna 'urt yourself again."

"Fuck off."

Neither of them say anything else to me, but I hear them talking about me as if my rage has somehow made me deaf.

"I didn't mean to upset her…"

"It's not yer fault, Laura, she 'ates being called by 'er number."

"Oh, ok. I understand."

"No, ya don'," I growl, "ya ain't wild, are ya?"

"No! Are… Are you?"

I turn to face her again, my eyes bright yellow and my teeth bared.

"What do ya fuckin' think?"

She shuffles backwards, a horrified look on her face.

"But aren't you- Aren't they- ...Dangerous?"

I snarl again, and continue punching the wall.

"No, Jana's me friend," Maddy says firmly, "she's not going to 'urt us."

"Ok," Laura squeaks, evidently still nervous.

I give the wall one last hit and sit back down, trying not to glare at Laura. We can't turn on each other, especially if we're going to be shut in the same cell. For a while we sit in an awkward silence, no one quite knowing what to talk about.

"So," says Maddy, after what feels like an age, "what's it like where dey keep the kids?"

"Well," Laura quickly replies, obviously eager to break the silence, "the cells are a bit bigger, but there's eight kids in each. Each one is kinda like a mini dormitory, I guess. There was a cub in mine who couldn't have been more than four, called Sarah. One of the older kids sort of adopted her, but she still cried for her mum every night, so the guards would slap her. It made me wonder about my parents. I don't know what happened to them, I was arrested at school."

"At school?" I ask, not knowing if I'm pushing it too far but curious to hear the story.

"Yeah," she says, looking from one to the other of us and then sighing. "It's something to talk about I guess," I hear her mutter. She takes a deep breath.

"If I tell you what happened to me, will you tell me what happened to you?"

I look over at Maddy and nod. She nods back.

"Sure," she says to Laura, "it'll help us get to know each other better, right?"

Laura nods.

"Ok," she begins, "so I live - well, lived, I guess - with my parents. I don't have any siblings. I was in year seven at school, and after the secret came out my family decided to just go on with our lives as if nothing was wrong, so people wouldn't get suspicious, and it worked for a while. But it was different at school. Suddenly no one wanted to be to quick in PE, or too interested in nature, or too tired on a dark moon. Everyone made plans on a full moon just to prove that they were human. It was hard, you know? Thinking all the time: how do I do this to look less wolfish? But of course the people who had cards were fine."

"Cards?" I ask, "what the fuck are those?"

Laura looks at me, perplexed for a moment, then glances over at Maddy as if asking for help. After a few moments I realise what she's thinking.

"I wasn't askin'- I know what a bloody card is! I mean, what're the cards you're goin' on about?"

"Oh… sorry," she says, sounding embarrassed, "people got blood tests to prove their species, and then they got ID cards that showed it. I think they're a legal requirement now, or will be soon. Anyway I didn't have one, of course, so I was one of the people that other people were suspicious of. No one trusted anyone anymore. It was terrible.

"So one morning - and I was in year nine by then - we were in form, and we were looking at the news on the computers. And someone read about how wolfbloods have a fear of fire."

She takes a deep breath before continuing with a shaking voice:

"They said it out loud. And my form tutor went over and read it. And then… she pulled out a lighter. She went around the whole form, holding it out, and my eyes flashed. I couldn't help it. What happened after is hard to remember properly because it was so confusing. People were shouting, the form tutor grabbed me, I was dragged across the room, someone punched me in the face, my friend was trying to help me, I think someone fainted. I ended up locked in the supply cupboard with the lights out. At first I tried to get out, I was yelling to be let out but no one would listen. After a while I sat down and took my phone out and messaged my parents and told them what had happened. I was locked in there for a few hours, and I messaged them the whole time. We knew that I was going to be taken away and there was nothing we could do about it, but they tried to comfort me. My friend - the one who tried to help me - messaged me too. She said that she didn't care that I'm a wolfblood or that I didn't tell her. She told me that I'd still be her best friend no matter what I was or were they took me. And she told me that she was going to join the small group of people who stand up for our rights. 'Cause there are people who care. Not many, but they're there.

"Anyway, eventually the police came for me. They took my blazer, tie and bag and searched my pockets. And then they chained me up: cuffs, ankle chains, collar, and even a muzzle - that was awful. I kept my head down while they were taking me out; people were trying to get a look at me and I didn't want to look them in the eyes. I was crying quite a lot, and that was when they shocked me for the first time. It made me yelp, so they slapped me pretty hard."

She pauses, absent-mindedly rubbing her cheek with one hand, staring at the floor.

"So they took me outside and threw me in a van. I'm guessing that it's pretty much the same as what happened to you from there."

She looks up at us.

"That's my story. So what happened to you?"

Author's Note: Sorry for not updating in a while. I've been trying to draw out a clear plan for where I want this to go so that I don't end up meandering around with no clear plot. I'm also working on setting up a deviant art page for illustrations, which may take a while as I want to make my images high quality. Thanks for your patience!