Page 41 of Stray
Prologue
“It’s this one, right over here,” the animal control officer announced, pulling an overfilled ring of keys off his belt loop.
The woman next to him stopped in front of the gated kennel, studying the pitiful creature behind the wire cage of the door. Emily Hill was a Matriarch, the premiere among her pride, and that fine breeding showed in every feature, from the elegant slope of her aquiline nose to the grace with which she carried herself on towering heels sharp enough to double as murder weapons. Her mere presence suggested royalty, and while the human man next to her might not have understood the intricacies of the power her natural role within the pride afforded her, he recognized it instinctively enough to give her proper space and deference.
“You’re sure she wasn’t like this when your men found her?” Emily demanded without looking away from the trembling girl on the concrete floor in front of her. She was a slip of a thing, no more than four or five years old, though even under the rough blanket draped over her tiny huddled frame, Emily could tell she was so malnourished she might easily have appeared younger than she really was.
In any case, she was just a kitten. A feral kitten, her jet black locks matted around a heart-shaped face and eyes so wide and petrified that only a sliver of emerald was visible within them.
The officer gave an indignant snort. Larkin was his last name, if Emily remembered correctly. His position was one of the few in the county her late husband hadn’t had the authority to hand select, and she had only run into him at a few dreadful town functions that passed for parties. Hospitality was not a gift with which humans had been endowed.
“I brought her in myself, lady, and let me tell ya, she was a mewling little scrap of fur when I tossed her in here,” Larkin assured her, his hairy arms folded over a stained gray button-down with the county crest embroidered on the breast pocket. “Too early in the day to bethatdrunk.”
Emily wrinkled her nose as he stepped closer and made a note to ask the mayor who’d taken the job in her husband’s stead if the county was really so strapped for cash it could no longer pay its workers enough to afford soap.
Larkin cleared his throat when he realized his attempt at humor had gone unappreciated. “She was like that when I got back from lunch. Doesn’t say a word, neither. Tried to pull her out of there and she damn well bit me,” he grumbled, looking pointedly at his bandaged thumb.
Emily blew a puff of air through her nostrils, the closest thing to a laugh she’d spare around the likes of him. She studied the girl more closely, trying to formulate a plan.
“You were right to call me,” she finally announced. “I’ll take care of it from here.”
“Sure,” he said, fumbling with the keys. Before he opened the cage door, he glanced over at Emily without meeting her eyes. “Like your late husband asked, I always go through you guys first. Rest his soul.”
It took her a moment to figure out what he was getting at. She sighed, reaching into her pocketbook to pull out a bill of a high enough denomination to make his eyes widen with greed. She withheld it as he reached out, giving him a faint yet menacing smile. “Your discretion is appreciated.”
“Of course,” he coughed before shuffling off down the row of kennels, a cacophony of barks and howls following in his wake.
Emily opened the door and the girl scrambled back into the corner, shivering like a leaf ready to pop off the branch. The Matriarch gave pause, mentally calculating how long she had to spare before the women’s committee brunch she had been planning all week.
“You really are a feral one, aren’t you.”
The girl’s eyes flashed an uncommonly bright shade of green for an unremarkable little housecat.
“So you do understand me.”
The girl quickly looked away, hunched with her skinny arms wrapped around her knees.
“What’s your name?” Emily asked with as much patience as she could muster. She’d already spent most of it on her three children at home.
Those green eyes stared back at her, full of emptiness. Emily couldn’t help but wonder when the last time she’d had a meal was--or a bath, for that matter.
“Well, then. We’ll call you Ella,” she announced with all the indifferent certainty of deciding what they’d be having for dinner that night. In fact, she would later spend a considerably greater length of time waffling between bernaise and hollandaise sauce for the swordfish the maid had picked up at the market.
Ella was the name she might have given a second daughter, if the doctors hadn’t declared that any further attempts at childbearing would be fatal. Hers was still a larger litter than most queens could boast.
“Come along,” she said, holding out a hand adorned with glimmering diamonds. The girl’s eyes grew even wider, darting after the little shimmers of light the jewels cast on the concrete walls.
Emily was not a woman accustomed to being kept waiting, whether by important men or feral kittens, and her tone left no room for hesitation. Ella stuck out a fragile hand and followed her into a world that was far more civilized, if just as tortuous as the back alley streets she had roamed for as long as she could remember.
Chapter 1
Ella
Present Day
The great stone structure of Felidae Academy stood out like a crown jewel on the rolling hills that characterized the small town of Vanders in Upstate New York. It was unnecessary to pass the Academy on the route from the market square to the Hill family estate, but Ella found the view well worth the extra quarter mile. It was a Wednesday afternoon, bleeding into the evening hours, and Mrs. Hill would be much too busy with preparations for her dinner party to notice the extended absence.
The Academy rivaled the majesty of any Ivy League university, but it was truly more like a cross between a finishing academy and a boarding school. While Ella would have coveted the chance to extend her studies beyond her recent high school graduation, the appeal of the ancient institution before her lay more in one of its esteemed occupants than in its world-renowned professors or the intricate brickwork.
