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She was the reason I loved books so much. When I was about eight years old, the other wolves in our class decided it was let’s-make-Raika’s-day-hell. She didn’t allow it, but she also couldn’t stop a dozen wolves by herself, so she took me to her office in the school, which was filled with books. She told me to stay in there for a few hours and relax. She would be back later to take me home. At first, I barely moved, afraid of messing up her office, but it didn’t take long for my eyes to turn to the books and skim the spines. I picked one, to pass the time, and by the time Rue returned, I had read almost half of the book. She let me take it home. Later that week, she came up with a field trip for the class: the library. It had been my first time stepping in there, and it felt like entering heaven. I went back almost every day of my life ever since.
I returned my attention to the chopping board. “How are they this morning?”
Rue clicked her tongue. “Same as every day. Half just lie there waiting for time to pass, while the other half are agitated. Tyren rammed against the door a couple of times earlier.”
I shook my head. Rebelling like that and acting stupidly would only make things worse. But we had been at this for almost a year now. Would things ever get better?
I doubted it.
Rue and I finished lunch, served several portions in small paper bowls, and placed them on a cart. We also had a big water bottle and a stack of small paper cups to pass around.
Once we had everything, I pushed the cart out of the kitchen and into the corridor that led to the classrooms. Because the school only served our community, it wasn’t large. We never had more than one or two classes per grade, ten to twenty kids in each class, and usually had the same teachers in every grade. We learned most of what was taught in the human world, but we also had special subjects like Wolf 101, or Living in a Shifter Community, and Honor and Loyalty.
That was all ancient history now.
Two demons stood by the new wall and door installed in the middle of the corridor. They saw Rue and me approaching and unlocked the door, opened it, and let us pass. Once we were through, they closed and locked the door again.
The moment we stepped into this side of the corridor, the atmosphere changed. The corridor was lined by a dozen doors that also had been modified—they had been fortified, with the glass pane replaced by metal bars.
Inside of these classrooms-turned-prison-cells were wolf shifters—what was left of my pack.
* * *
A year before,Conri and his gang had joined forces with the Nightmist witches and invaded our pack lands.
It had been fast and hard, and we barely had time to react. Conri killed Franc, the alpha, and took over the mantle, and the alpha’s son, the one wolf I thought would step up and challenge Conri for the title and save us all, had run away.
Like a coward.
And just like that, we went from a pack of about seven hundred wolves to less than fifty.
At first, Conri had them all thrown in the prison building, beneath the town hall across the main square. They were crowded in there, without any resources.
I convinced him to have them moved. I had hoped for a house, maybe a couple of houses, but Conri had chosen the school—he had a few classrooms modified to accommodate the prisoners by taking out all the desks and materials, leaving only a few mattresses and blankets, and installing bars on the outer windows.
It was still better than the prison.
There were eight classrooms in this corridor, and about six wolves in each one of them.
Right now, they were all waiting by the bars at the doors, knowing Rue and I were coming with lunch—their only daily meal.
“It’s about time,” Lonan said, reaching his arm out. He was an old wolf, almost as old as Rue, but the man had hated me before, and he hated me even more now.
Rue glanced at me as I opened my mouth to tell him to shut his pipe or there was no food for him. She shook her head once and I let out a long sigh. Sometimes I wished I was heartless and willing to let them starve. If they starved for two days, they wouldn’t be so mean to me.
Truth was, most weren’t anymore. Not after the attack, not after I helped with their wounds, after I carried them when I didn’t have any strength left, and especially not when I fought with Conri every opportunity I had to make their lives a little easier.
“Just shut up, Lonan,” Roman said from the classroom across the hall.
The old man grumbled but retreated from the door.
I shot a thankful glance at Roman and he offered me a tight smile. Once upon a time, Roman had been a friend. The night of the attack, he had tried helping my mother and me, but Phell hurt him. I thought he had died, but thankfully he recovered.
Mealtime went like usual: Rue and I stopped in front of each classroom’s door, we passed the paper bowls and cups to the wolves inside through the gap in the bars, then moved on to the next door.
In the beginning, the wolves tried rebelling and leaving their classrooms. They rammed against the other door, as if they could break it down. Once, they even used me as a bargain to have Conri let them go.
Nothing worked.
