“You have enough herbs growing here to get you started, I hope. I know there’s just the small work table inside but there’s rooms for you in the Keep where you can work with more space and equipment. Anything you need that we don’t have let me know and I’ll make sure we get it. Not to mention you won’t find a safer place on Bloodstone Territory. If anything goes wrong, this is exactly where you’ll want to be.
Safety.
That word is as foreign to me as home is.
“Why is it safe?” I ask. My head is spinning again. More rooms and equipment? Just say the word and I’ll have what I want? This isn’t just heaven, this is whatever is past that, thesuper upgraded heaven. The place that only truly blessed souls go to and somehow I’ve been counted among them. Oh gods, what if this is a dream? What if I wake up and I’m still on the bus? Or worse. What if I wake in Maud’s hut and none of this has happened?
That’s irrational. You’re here.
But still…my brain whispers to me in its normal nervous way and my daydreams feel more real than life. But still, it could happen. I’ve wished for my life to change for as long as I’ve been a part of Frostclaw, and before that I can’t remember my life.
It’s all I’ve known.
Why wouldn’t this all be a dream, something my brain invented to help me cope with Keiran rejecting me? Stranger things have happened, I know that. What if it’s the bondrot? My hand flies up to my chest and I push on the place where our bond was but there’s nothing there. I never heard of bondrot doing this to a shifter but there’s a first time for everything. Come to think of it, I haven’t felt anything where our bond was or where the bondrot should have settled into me all day. And when I think about it a little harder, I realize I haven’t felt a thing from it since I’ve set foot in Bloodstone Territory.
But still, the absence of my bondrot doesn’t mean that everything is okay, or that any of this is real. I have to lean against the porch post to steady myself. If it was possible it would happen to me. I’ve never had luck. Of course I would imagine I was in a place like this and none of it would be real. It’s hard to breathe and the ground start to tilt under me. I’m dimly aware of Thorne’s howl. It feels like it’s getting louder but that doesn’t make sense. I take in another short breath and then another but it's not enough. Panic bubbles up in me, and for a wild second I think it might pull me under but as quickly as it comes, the spell is broken when Clyde steps up beside me and points to the dark mountain wall ahead of us.
“No one will ever come from there. See that?” He asks, moving his finger along the length of the mountain wall in front of us. “It’s impossible to scale. That means to get here the intruders have to go through the forest, the mountains, through the Keep, through every single shifter and human that calls Red River home before they’ll finally be able to get to you. That’s why we’ve put the Healer’s Cottage here. To make sure you’re safe. Without a healer we have no hope of putting the pack back together, now do we?”
Through every single shifter.
They’d have to get through Thorne.
The thought comes out of the same screwy place that has me paranoid I’m dreaming all of this up so I take it with a grain of salt but still, it might have nearly sent me into a tailspin of anxiety but it’s right. Anyone invading the territory would have to get through the Enforcer before I was able to be a target.
The thought gives me peace and I’m able to breathe again. Somehow, knowing Thorne is out there between me and the unknown makes this real again. It grounds me right into the present and I can finally breathe again.
“Thank you, Gamma.” Clyde leaves a few minutes later after he gives me directions on getting to breakfast and making sure that I know exactly where everything is in the cottage.
I don’t care if it’s a dream or not when I go to bed that night it’s with a smile on my face. For the second night in a row, I have the best sleep of my life.
Chapter
Thirty
COREDELIA
When I wake up the first thing I notice is the silence. For the past three days I woke up on the bus and while that was peaceful enough the steady rumbling of the bus wasn’t truly quiet. After that, I was in the Visitor’s Quarters and that night feels like a blur really. I was exhausted from the day and I don’t remember much after I climbed in my bed. But before all of that, it was the dorms. Mornings there were anything but quiet and peaceful. There was always the random crying or shouting from the other unmated females sharing the space with me. Sometimes the females with rank would come into our space to throw their weight around for fun—those were the worst mornings of all.
There’s nothing like being woken up by an irate She-wolf throwing a freezing bucket of water on you, or being tossed out of your bed and onto the floor. Busted my lip one morning when a few of the female Betas were bored. They had two of the other orphans with them that day— Lena and Marie. Both of them had been given to families straight away and assimilated the fastest out of any of us. They’d done such a good job at fittingin that unless it was a moon run, I don’t even think the pack remembered that Lena and Marie weren’t Frostclaw, not really. Not truly.
I remember rolling onto my back and looking up at them. They were laughing along with the Betas.
“Cursed bitch,” Marie spat at me.
Sometimes it was like I was the only one that remembered they weren’t really Frostclaw. I had no problem reminding them exactly what they were.
“If I am thenso are you,” I told her. The effect was immediate. Like I slapped her. The Betas stopped laughing and looked at her and Lena like they were seeing them for the first time.
“Shut up, shut up!”Lena had been quick to slap me but the damage had been done. The Betas they were with remembered the truth. The Betas left and without Marie and Lena too. The pair had been running after their “friends” begging them to talk to them and on the verge of tears. Totally made the bloody lip worth it.
That’s not my reality this morning. Just like it wasn’t yesterday morning.
“A girl could get used to this treatment,” I whisper and stretch in my bed. What can I say? I’m easy to please. I roll onto my side to look out the window. The sun is shining in the perfectly blue sky. I smile and watch a bird fly by the window. It’s so pretty, perfectly serene and I almost don’t want to get up but Thorne’s words flit through my memory and shatter the golden sunshine pouring into my room.
“Breakfast tomorrow is at eight am sharp. Do not be late.”
I sigh and sit up in bed with a grumble. I don’t want to do what Thorne said, because who is he to order me around like that? But I am hungry, plus there’s the fact that I can’t look lazy.I know what that does in a pack. If you’re not useful you’re low in rank, you’re a burden. Lazy wolves are at the bottom of the pile.
