Chapter 4.
I wasn't allowed to go to school past fifth grade. I didn't need to know past the basics according to Luna Vicki, I was useless beyond a slave anyhow. I would sneak into the packhouse library at night and read. I've taught myself quite a bit about this pack's histories, it's laws, shifter laws, and many other things. I learned to sew reading old magazines and patterns, learned to cook by recipes and trial and error. I loved to read and I loved to learn. It was a secret rebellion I had just to myself.
I can't count how many times I had to shimmy up on top of a shelf or under one to not get caught. Some of the pack teens liked to sneak into the library to neck and hook up. I knew who was dating, who was cheating on who with who else's boyfriend or girlfriend, who was mated but hiding it for what reason and even a few closeted whos around.
The head security's younger brother was hooking up with the main tailors young apprentice and both were mated to the Luna's maid's daughters who surprisingly not only knew about it but were doing the same with each other and sometimes they even traded. Outside of the tailors apprentice and the security guards brother's mate, I was the only one to know that each had a kid fathered by the other's partners.
It was all manner of messy. But from what ive learned and observed over the years, pack life is messy. Once I dreamed of turning 18 and leaving. Running as far as I could from this place and never setting foot here again. Now at 21 I knew I could never leave. Not before being put into the dungeon and not before. Luke must've sensed I wanted to leave because not long after he forcefully mated then rejected me he alpha commanded me to this pack.
For whatever reason, as I had no wolf and shouldn't be able to be commanded, I couldn't go against his word. This place was as much my own Hell as my prison.
Later in the evening when the guard shift changed again, a young, thin sandy haired guard came to our cell door. He brought us our laundry, the bag fit right through the slot in the door. Once it was closed, Aggie grabbed it quick and rummaged through bringing out fresh bandages, some salve, and another shot of antibiotics. She knelt beside me and changed the worst of my wrappings and injected the antibiotic into my arm.
"This'll keep the worst of it at bay." She said, stepping back to look at her handiwork. "That's Johnny, the only blessed one of these guards with a heart. He's a good kid, he only stays to make sure they don't let us all starve and live in complete filth."
I came to learn that Johnny was a distant cousin of her mates. She occasionally got news from him about James, but he was not allowed to spend any time at our cell when other guards were on the floor. She had once convinced him to sneak her a pen and paper to get a note to James and he was beaten so severely by Mace he was out of work a week to recover. Since then he could only do small things to help, but never tried to sneak a letter again.
Mace was somewhat the boss around the dungeon. He was the one who decided which prisoner received what punishments or, if they kissed up enough, the occasional favor. I shuddered to think exactly what would gain one a favor from him.
I asked Aggie if they ever allowed us books or anything to do other than sit and rot, but she said they didn't. In fact, the only reason she was even in the same cell as me was due to there only being six cells and they wouldn't bunk the men together. They tended to keep us separate to minimize any risk of anyone trying to overthrow the guards to escape.
There were only ever two guards on usual, and four at meal times. The women were let out first, then the men.
It struck me as odd that they'd even bother to double the guards, as the women here were all small and frail looking. Outside of Aggie and myself, there was only Jeanna and a young omega named Megan who was thrown in for being a ranked members unwilling affair, and because his wife was friends with Luna Vicki, she was accused of seducing him and imprisoned.
She was honestly so small. She couldn't be more than 17. Which means she's barely had her wolf, and could honestly not even be old enough to find her mate, let alone consent to being a mistress. She always looked like she was on the verge of tears. Aggie said she felt almost motherly to her.
The third day in I was able to sit up and when my tray was brought in by a female omega, she sat it on the table and scurried away. The meal was nothing more than a thin soup, some bread and a small glass of milk. This or a sandwich was all that were usually provided. Aggie helped me to eat it, and I managed most of it before I couldn't hold more.
Something perplexed my mind. I had had my share of cuts, scrapes, and the occasional slap, kick, punch or so over the years, but nothing this severe minus a broken arm once. I had no wolf, therefore no wolf healing. Yet, somehow I seemed to be healing fast for someone without one.
"Hey Aggie, tell me something." I said after a while of going over it in my mind.
"What is it Lisa?"
"I don't have a wolf. Does that mean I am human? And if so, how am I able to heal so much in only three days?" granted if I had a wolf I'd be much further along by now, but still.
"Well, I don't know about a shifter, but you Lisa are NOT human. No human would've survived that many lashes of a whip. That much blood loss and trauma. Not to mention the odd things that seem to occur around you. No, if I had to wage a guess, there's something else in you, maybe not a wolf or any shifter, but you are certainly not human."
I thought on this a while. Humans didn't have silver hair that only changed when they wanted it to, humans didn't have a mark that somehow changed colors and certainly didn't have so many odd things happen to them when they were emotional. Great, I was a genetic misfit mystery. No wonder Luke rejected me.
Over the next days things stayed much the same. By the fifth day I was able to leave the cell to eat. The worst of the wounds no longer bled at the slightest movements. I met Megan and immediately felt the overwhelming urge to gather her up and protect her, just as Aggie and Jeanna did. She really did look like a child trapped in a bad situation. She had only been here a month from what I gathered, and in that month, we later came to learn, the bastard that used her repeatedly had already taken another mistress. A human this time.
One night at the end of the first week, I realized that the ceremony was only three days away. I sat in the darkness that night and for the first time in a long time I said a prayer to the Moon Goddess. I didn't even know if I were one of her children or not, but she was all I knew, so I prayed.
"Dear Goddess Mother, please, if it is how it's to be, let me die peacefully when he marks her. Please do not let me live here, like this for the rest of my life. I have always tried to be obedient, I have tried to remember my place, but nothing has ever been good enough. Now I find myself here with no clue how I even landed in this position. I didn't try to harm them, I don't even know how it happened, but yet I am punished for something I had no control over. Please deliver me from this fate. I beg of you."
I laid on my bunk and pulled the thin cotton blanket to my chin and closed my eyes. I drifted off thinking of how my life has gone and wishing that a human had found me in those woods instead. Would I have been better off? Would I be shunned there too? Somewhere in imagining the way my life would've been if I'd have been raised in the human world I dozed off into a strange but beautiful dream.