Chapter 2
1066 Words
Evelyn POV
“Tiny wolfless.”
The words struck first, then the odor, leather, iron, old blood. I stood where I was stiff, and my fingers were holding nothing, since I had nothing to hold. It had become still in that manner which pertains when everybody is listening, but feigning not to hear.
I didn’t turn right away.
Did you? Did you hear me? Said the voice, sharp and good-natured. Female. Older. A person who liked to be noisy when other people had no option but to hear. “You’re summoned. You are all already gathered together. Don’t keep the pack waiting.”
Tiny wolfless.
I gulp, and I can feel the bone of my throat squeaking. the hunger in my stomach, like a stone—thick, unchanging, sore. I did not recall thee last actual meal. Not scraps. Not bones that were boiled for a long time made them bitter. A meal. My legs were hollow and I moved forward, step by step, with each movement being conscious. And feebleness was demonstrated provided you allowed.
I turned then.
She posed with her hands crossed and a scar going through her eyebrow with curled lips as though my presence offended her. Her wolf was behind her eyes, potent and quite alert. Mine—had it had one—had no speech. Always silent.
“I’m coming,” I said.
My voice came out steady. That mattered.
She sniffed and wagged her head in the direction of the middle of the camp. “See that you do.”
I walked.
Each pack circle was like taking a walk into exposed teeth. Wolves were in the fringes—rogues, the great majority of them—dozing, standing, observing. Their eyes tracked me openly. Some were curious. Some bored. A few are cruel enough to smile.
The floor I stood on was hard-trodden earth, beaten down by years of tramping and combat. The hearth was burning smolderingly in the middle, the odor of burnt flesh torsion wrenching my intestines. Stomach crammed so that I could only see through a heartbeat.
Don’t show it.
I drew my head high and continued on my way.
They discovered me months before in the woods half-starved, feral, skin and bone, starved so skinny I could see my ribs. I recalled how they had surrounded me at the time, sniffing, with a question whether I was worth it.
They’d decided I was.
Not as a wolf.
As labor.
As something useful.
I stood at the perimeter of the formed pack, with my hands relaxed at my sides, my pose neutral. Not submissive. Not defiant. It was a survival in that in-between space.
“Here,” I said.
The alpha, whatever he was, sat opposite me on a split log with his elbows on his knees. His eyes have passed across me slowly and clinically, as though he were cataloguing a tool that was already in the process of wear.
“You took your time,” he said.
“I was working,” I replied.
There was a murmur among the pack. Behind me, the scarred woman gave a laugh.
It was not exactly a smile but a twitching of the mouth of the alpha. “Working,” he repeated. And day after day you get prettier.
I didn’t answer.
Because he was right.
Hunger leaves you hollow, gouges you to the bone, inside. My garments were now loose on my body, and the clothes brushed against my skin, already sore. I had fresh cuts in my hands, old burns on my hands I had not been able to eat the food I cooked.
Other hunger was familiar to my body.
The forest.
Cold and endless.
I gave one blink and the clearing was lost in trees.
The woods were not kind a minute then, fell boughs raking, frost eating through shabby soles, night close at hand. I had been glimpsing in and out of the shadows, breathing shallow, all my senses as taut as possible. Hunger had been after me like a life-thing, (growling all the more each day.)
I had picked roots, snatched at traps I had not been able to place, chewed on dry meat left by travellers inattentive enough not to watch it. Slept in short bursts. Conditioned my physique to rise at the slightest noise.
I’d been angry then. I was outraged at a world where teeth and claws were required, which I lacked. Enraged at the silence within me where a wolf was.
But rage had kept me alive.
It still did.
“Eyes up,” the alpha snapped.
The memory vanished. I met his gaze again.
At dawn a patrol is heading east, there is, said he. “You’ll go with them.”
That was new.
An emotion of response passed through the wolves—surprise, vexation, curiosity. Somebody made a comment about dead weight.
My pulse kicked harder.
“I thought—” I stopped myself. Choose my words carefully. I figured I could not go out of the perimeter.
“You weren’t,” he agreed. “But things change.”
They always did. Never in my favor.
“What do you want me for?” I asked.
His eyes sharpened. “You’re quiet. You notice things. And if something happens…” He shrugged. “You’re expendable.”
There it was.
The mutilated woman was smiling freely. When we get slackened by her, we drop her.
I looked at her. Really looked. Knowing how her smile looked, the belief in it.
“Understood,” I said.
The alpha stood. That was sufficient in itself to stop the murmurs. Eat, he added, virtually as an afterthought, nodding his head towards the fire. “You’ll need the strength.”
At the very word, my stomach twisted painfully.
Eat.
I didn’t thank him. I didn’t bow. I simply turned and walked to the fire, with all my senses aching with the odors of meat and smoke and something perilously near the hope—which I smothered.
Because hope was a luxury.
And I had early on learned how luxuries were snatched away.
I went to the brink of the firelight and halted and the heat came upon my body, and I was hungry, and the hunger was so loud that I could hear no more.
Tiny wolfless or not—
I was still standing.
And for now, that was enough.
- Writer
