Page 3 of Cursed
He looks around at his team. “The rest of you, with me for a perimeter sweep. We need to make sure there are no more of these abominations trailing her. Also, see if you can scent who else was with her. She’s too small to be on her own.”
One of the males lifts the she-wolf and throws her over his shoulder. “Man, she doesn’t weigh anything. She must be starving.”
The Beta is mildly concerned about the state she’s in. Although if he’s honest, he’s more concerned about why she has entered his territory without permission. “Throw a blanket in the cell with her. Maybe the promise of food will loosen her tongue when she wakes up. Let’s go.”
chapter two
Nori wakes with a start, shivering from the cold stone floor beneath her. She pushes herself up, leaning on one arm to look around. She’s a little dizzy from the aftereffects of the drugs those Enforcers gave her.
She is in about a five-foot by five-foot cell with three stone walls, the stone floor, metal bars, and a bucket. Without a window, she’s guessing she’s been out for several hours. Someone also threw a blanket over her. She smiles and laughs out loud.
“Oh great, Aylin! We have a bucket and a blanket.”Still chuckling, Nori inspects the blanket more closely. “Thisblanket is nicer than the one we had in our tiny room back home.”
Aylin’s voice grumbles in her mind, sounding dejected. “It’s not much nicer.”
“Hey now. It’s a pretty warm blanket. And what do you know, we aren’t dead!” Nori looks around the cell again. “I think this cell might actually be larger than our room back home.”
“Not much larger, and at least our room back home didn’t have bars.” Aylin’s tone is bitter.
Tilting her head, Nori sighs heavily at Aylin’s less-than-joyful attitude. “Yes, Aylin, our room back home had bars; you just couldn’t see them. We were just as trapped there as we are here, now.Not to mention, we spent plenty of hours in our own dungeons back home. As far as cells go, this one isn’t even that bad.”
She takes a deep breath, wrinkling her nose. “It does smell pretty bad in here, though. Damp and mildewy.”
Aylin snorts with a mental grin. “Not as bad as we do.”
“That’s the spirit!” Nori cracks a smile and giggles again.
Standing to get a better look at her surroundings, the world tilts. She waits for the dizzy feeling to fade before taking her first step. She walks to the bars and looks up and down the hallway of empty cells.
“Guess we’re the only criminals here today.”
Grabbing the blanket, Nori takes a seat against the backwall. She adjusts the thick blanket so that she can sit on it, keeping her bare butt off the cold floor while still having enough fabric to wrap around her naked body. She pulls her knees in to keep warm, grateful the blanket isn’t too scratchy on her skin.
Aylin groans loudly in Nori’s mind. “Seriously, you are way too cheery for our current situation.”
“The reason I am so cheery, as you say, is because we are doing remarkably well. We’ve achieved many of our goals.”
Nori starts counting, holding up her fingers. “First Goal: escape our Pack and the constant beatings and abuse. Check! Second Goal: Don’t get killed or die from starvation in the woods while we search for another Pack. Check! Third Goal: Find another Pack; hope they don’t immediately kill us, and hope they take us in. Check! Well, I guess that one is really still in progress, but we are halfway there.”
Aylin finally relents. “Alright, yeah, we’re doing great,” she says, sounding only slightly less depressed.
Nori’s voice in Aylin’s mind grows softer. “I know we are in a dungeon and have no assurances that they won’t kill us, but on the bright side, we haven’t taken a beating in weeks. So, even though we are sitting in this smelly cage with nothing but this crappy blanket, which is actually nicer than ours at home, and even though we are really fucking hungry, we are still alive!”
Aylin reluctantly agrees. “Yes, alright. I agree.”
Nori can feel her wolf’s mood lighten just a little, and she smiles.
Aylin’s tone changes from depressed to determined. “We should think about what we are going to say next. You cannot tell them who we are. They’ll kill us for sure then.”
Nori breathes a sigh of relief, grateful that Aylin is starting to cheer up. Her shoulders drop, relaxing against the stone wall. “Yup, can’t go around saying I’m the she-wolf who killed her parents. Parents who were previously the Alpha and Luna of her Pack. And oh, by the way, I belong to the Starfall Pack, whose new Alpha was suspected of instigating the Vampire Wars. Nope. We definitely need a better story than that.”
“Agreed! Hey, I smell a male down the hall; maybe it’s a Guard and he can bring us some damn food or water.”
Just as Nori is about to call for the Guard, she hears the heavy thud of footsteps coming down some stairs to her left. Taking a deep breath in through her nose, she smells mint and citrus and male.
The heavy thuds stop, and a loud, gruff voice reverberates down the hall. “Is the prisoner awake?”
Another male voice, which must be the Station Guard, responds, “Afternoon, Beta Garek. Yes, I heard her moving around in her cell. She’s been laughing now and then, which I thought was weird.”
