I direct my energies just outside the train. A burst of elemental force explodes right on the boundary of our cabin and the outside world.
The window shatters loudly into a million pieces.
“The fuck was that?” Thorn jumps forward, covered in glass.
“That was the sound of us being thrown off the train for absolutely certain,” Skor says calmly.
The cabin door flies open and an authoritative voice booms. “Let the lady go!”
Krall lets me go, but I am still gagged and obviously upset. The window behind us is broken, and the general chaos of the place, previously hidden, is now plain for all to see. The conductor has thrown the cabin door open, and he is not alone. A very burly man is standing to his left, and a well-built woman to his right. All three of them look concerned and displeased in equal measure.
I run toward them. Krall tries to grab for me. The big man with the bushy beard and a white shirt with straps around his arms presses into the cabin and lets me out.
“Unhand the girl! Precious wee mite!” he says while the lady helps me take the gag off. At this point, I am so very angry at Krall and the others I have no interest in maintaining secrecy.
“They kidnapped me from my home and forced me to be their bride,” I say. “I have been trying to get away, but they keep taking me further and further from home.”
I can’t bring myself to look at my mates as I say this, but that only lends more credence to my words. It’s not hard to look disheveled and pathetic and weak.
“You three are under arrest,” the conductor says. “And I’m sorry we’re not throwing you from the train for what you’ve been doing to this poor girl.”
“Come, lass,” the lady says. She is taller than me, broader than me, and her shirt strains to cover her bosom. She has a comforting aura, like a mother, and she ushers me away from the men.
I throw a smug look back over my shoulder as I go. He had the nerve to think he could simply bully me into doing what he wanted, after having seen my power, after knowing what I am capable of. He’s lucky it’s just the window that broke. It could have been him.
A dining car has been added at Broken Belly, I discover. The nice lady who rescued me from the cabin takes me there and tells me I can have whatever I want to eat.
Her name is Maria, she says. She’s got daughters not far off my age, she says. She screws her face up at the idea of any of them being in my position.
“What do you need?” she asks. “Do you want a bath? I’d offer you some clean clothes, but I don’t know that we have any that would fit. Perhaps the Lost Property would provide?”
“I’m just hungry at the moment,” I say, aware that my dress is starting to get into a condition that is considered pretty unacceptable by most human standards. The hem has been dragged through dirt and mud a lot, and there’s marks from previous meals and candy break-ins and other things I’ve done that I probably shouldn’t have if I was a good girl.
But I am not good. And I am not a girl.
My stomach comes first. My dinner back at Broken Belly was interrupted, and my snacks are back in the cabin, so I order the biggest slices of cake I have ever seen, and devour them one by one until I start to feel sleepy. Maria stays with me the whole time, drinking an herbal tea and occasionally picking at some cheese and crackers.
“What will happen to the men who took me?”
“They’ll be met by police at Larchford and charged,” she says. “And you’ll be free to go.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“No need to thank me,” she replies. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen?”
“And them being grown men. It’s not right. There’s plenty of women of marrying age who want to be married. I don’t know why a group of soldiers would head to a remote place to get a girl who barely knows her own mind yet. Or maybe I do. Maybe that’s the whole point. Men can be scum, but don’t you give up. You go back home, and you feel better, and then you decide what you want for yourself.”
She’s being so sweet. I almost feel like I want to tell her the whole truth, but there’s no real chance that she would believe me, and also it doesn’t really change all that much about my story.
The idea of deciding what I want for myself is kind of a new one. When I lived in the mountains, I assumed I would be mated and then go back to have my pups in the hills. Up until this moment, I thought I would run back to the mountains to have pups. But now, I’m thinking about all it takes to survive up there, and how hard it would be for a baby, let alone multiples to get by. What if they do not have my strengths? What if they are killed by the monsters in the mountains? What would that do to me?
CHAPTER 8
Skor
I have to admire Tabby’s game. She played us like a pack of fools. We are now looking at one another, knowing that police will be called at the next town and we will be charged with kidnapping. The door to the cabin is being guarded by train security, which is armed.
