Precious Life

Guildheart Finishing School

Cesca POV

I awoke to the daylight breaking above the rolling hills to the East.

Again I had suffered. I had been forced by my classmates to sleep outside in the dirt after they had pursued me through the halls with Silver blades last night.

Feeling the sun hit my cheeks I sighed. Another day at Guildheart Finishing School. I was trying to stay determined; trying to keep myself together and even though my birthday is in one month I cannot see an outing from this. Although I am getting excited for my birthday and Wolf Turning, I am hesitant to believe that I will be truly free in one months time.

I sighed again and stretched, attempting not to think about my fate and focusing on the now. My back was hurting from sleeping in the Schools attached churchyard. The ground had been dry at least for last night; the sunny weather had finally dried out the earth enough that it was actually too hard to sleep on. Many a night I had slept outside in mud and rain; causing illnesses and even a bought of pneumonia last winter because of the freezing conditions.

Sitting on the gravestone of a “Professor Drake Munro”, I dusted myself off as best as I could and turned to face the school sitting on top of the hill. Guildheart finishing school looks like a piece of architectural beauty in the English countryside, however I shuddered at it.

It’s beautiful; stunning.. a piece of handcrafted art within the world. To an outsider looking in Guildheart Finishing School is the essence of Elite in the community; especially with the humans that did not know our secret. Posing as a school of human elite upper-class ladies, the reality differed.

The school in itself felt like my own personal prison. I’d suffered a lot in my time on this earth. I had been rejected; I had no family; I had no status; and I knew that my own sense of being did not exist and I was forced on a daily basis to be reminded of this by my “peers”.

So even though I knew my life had little meaning, I was reminded of this on a daily basis at Guildheart; therefore I detested it here.

Again I shuddered, thinking of what was to come today. More bullying; more torment. I ached to leave and it was so close now I was still hesitant to believe it fully.

The finishing school has taught me in the last two years of my education, of how to be a female within the wolf community. I knew how to sew; I knew how to bake; I was taught my purpose in life which was to provide my services, whoever that was to, to the best of my abilities with precision, elegance, and grace.

However, my intended plans differed from those expected of me. I did not want to be a slave to an Alpha or other high-ranking official. I did not want to be treated as a possession. I wanted to experience a life away from the Wolf Community; where females were treated as inferior.

I breathed in and out to focus myself; I could not be thinking these thoughts; getting my hopes up. A month still felt very far away, but it was in touching distance. I longed to be away from this patriarchal and male-dominated society.

The English Wolf Council was very traditional. It caused females within the wolf community to be used as objects, to provide services to male wolves; to be seen but not heard. It was a brutal and harsh environment compared to what she Wolves experienced across the rest of the world. I had heard rumours of the modern ways in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She-wolves were treated as people; they had status and power; some were even Alphas on their own packs. Unfortunately in England it is a very traditional and archaic system.

The laws still favoured males and caused she-wolves to still be undermined and enslaved.

Bidding my farewell to Professor Drake Munro, I stand and head back into my prison, ticking off a mental calendar that another day was done and I was one step closer to freedom.