The sun had only just begun to peek through the trees, and I was observing the wind rush through their leaves. My thoughts turned to wishing that I could dig back into the warmth of my bed. On mornings like these, the cold clung to everything. Even with the stove burning, the kitchen was never adequately warm, at least not before dawn.
"Did you catch that, young woman?" The sharp voice jolted me back to reality.
I looked over my shoulder and found Clara, my stepmother, standing in the doorway. She wore a pink nightgown and wrapped the robe tightly around her waist, as if she could contain the heat. Her blonde bob was still tousled with sleep, but her green eyes flashed with outrage of betrayal whenever she glanced at me. She was small compared to me one of the smallest she-wolves in the pack but she was bite solid and would make herself look bigger. "No, sorry" I told her, gazing again at the pancakes and bacon cooking in the pan.
Clara's tone was venomous. "Listen next time, Iris. I don't like having to warn you twice. Or must I remind you?"
It's always been that way since my first bleed.
She was kind to me in public among the pack, but the moment I erred or did not meet her impossible standards, she tore me apart with words sometimes, other times otherwise. My father never stepped in. He just stood there watching like I was not his flesh and blood like the other kids. But if it was Jayden or Jason, my twin half-brothers, he would be on his knees to defend them in minutes even if they were lying. He always defended them but never me. "I need to dash to the market today" Clara said sitting at the small dining table shoved into the kitchen alcove.
"Yes, Ma'am" I said approaching and setting a mug on the table before her.
"I want everything" She kept placing down a list on the table. "I have to be the best of the best, I will not be turned down by the other women." She gave me a look from her sharp eyes when I poured coffee into her cup.
I returned to the stove, acting as if I were focusing on the food as I could feel the heat of her eyes upon my back.
"I need you to be home early today. Dishes I'm taking with me must be ready by tomorrow. Do you get it?"
I just nodded and went on cooking. She poured out the last of the coffee, pushed her chair back, and swept out of the kitchen, leaving behind an ensuring quiet.
I sighed, glancing at the book on the table. Reading will have to wait until tomorrow night.
I'd assembled the table and wandered into my own little bedroom. Its walls were as dismal, dull blue as the living room's, and the room was small enough that only my tiny bed and rickety worktable could fit. Clothes lay in a tidy pile in the corner of the room.
I flopped down on the bed, exhaling. All I wanted to do was sleep.
And I glanced at the clock. Shit. Already seven.
I sprang out of bed, threw on some clothes, and sprinted to the mirror. I glared at myself with horror. Bruised, pale cheeks and eyes older than seventeen. What would I be if I live and eat real food and sleep real sleep? Would I even know who I was?
Pushing the thought aside, I dressed in a sage blouse handed down by one of my brothers and light brown pants. I tucked the blouse in so it wouldn't drag behind me like it was eating away at me. My scuffed leather boots sat ready beside the bed, seams worn thin by a thread due to stitches I had made so I could get some life out of them. At least the clothes hid the fact that I'd lost so much weight.
With rapid, skilled movements, I plaited my long silver locks into a plait the only thing I enjoyed about myself, and my darkly royal blue eyes. I tossed a cape of light grey across my shoulders, jammed the shopping list into my basket and strode towards the front of the house.
I stepped out and was met with a bite of dawn air. Wrapping my cape about me, I tried to shield from what little warmth remained. I could smell wet earth and fresh pine, and the muted hum of forest closed in around me as I set out on my walk into town.
Our own pack, Crystal Moon, had some power, but we were actually very small. Where the greatest packs of Arvendrails were beyond our comprehension, we did not have much concept of their strength. They possessed wolves that were killers in any but the most literal application of the word deadly, unmatched, and to be reckoned with. Above them sat the High Council, which stood accountable to the majority of the old living wolves.
Every pack had staked its own territory, and over time these had become towns. Centuries ago, the High Wolf Leader had tried to unite all of the wolves into a single town, but that dream was forgotten. A hundred years on, all species now have their own territories and towns, living among each other but still apart.
The only place where all still live together as one is the capital city, Valmyra.
I'd always fantasized about going to Arvendrails, to see the other creatures and worlds beyond our limits. But in Crystal Moon Pack, only the highest ranking wolves are allowed to venture out, and even then only at the Alpha's whim.
I'd long ago overheard women in town square gossiping that pack wolves who tried to escape were dragged back and put into holding. No one ever saw them again.
The danger of disappearance silences everybody. Nobody is daring enough to go. Nobody even musters courage enough to think so.
Cobblestone streets went in neatly ordered, accurate rows, with shops of every shape and colour on either side.
White stone houses had teeny-tiny, narrow doors and windows edged with black wood felled from the nearby forest. Piked up roofs pointed up towards the pale grey sky, giving the town a stripped-down sort of beauty. Most of the shops had silver crystal moon emblem signs stretched stiffly from metal poles. The further I went along. the colder the air seemed to be. The streets expanded slowly, ending at the town square, where a fountain was a quiet sentinel in the middle. Water flowed over the stone basin carved with designs, creating faint light on and flashing like icy slices. The stores ringed the centre, their wood pillars black against pale-coloured stone walls, and the silver crystal moon flags waving stiffly in the cold wind. The square was filled, Wolves passed each other by, in brief, sharp voices or no voices at all. Merchants called out softly, trying to sell their goods to whoever came their way. A butcher displayed slabs of meat in neat stacks, a weaver wrapped bolts of grey and silver fabric into neat heaps, and the blacksmith's hammer cracked sharply, each clanging ring ringing out over the square.
Wolf whelps sidestepped by, adult laughter suppressed by passing through, and I hurried hastily to shower on the edges of the throng, my cape pulled in. Even in the chaos of the market, the mood hung heavy, cold creeping through my tissues, as if the town itself were reminders that I was not welcome here.
I stood on the verge of the square, looking at a small fruit and vegetable stand wedged between the blacksmith forge and a grey-robed weaver. Apples, pears, plums, carrots, and potatoes filled baskets that spilled over the counters, their colours vivid against the pale stone and dark wood.
Two members of pack patrol walked by boots leaning against the cobblestones, eyes scanning the crowd but never mine. They stood me up straight and made me drop my gaze.
The vendor pinned down middle-aged omega-features with juice-stained fingers and hard eyes, looking up as I approached and nodding quickly, calculatingly. I nodded back.
I gathered an apple, spun it around in my hand, and then threw a pear, a bunch of carrots, and potatoes into my basket. The vendor moved quickly, piling each of them with a sack, his eyes glancing at the fountain where the guards moved in circles before looking away.
"That'll be three silvers," he grunted, his tone tough and even.
I rummaged in my coins and gave him money, shivering faintly with cold and fear. He handed my basket back, a thin, flickering smile a glimmer of humanity in an inhumane world.
I carefully pushed the basket into the bend of my elbow and dipped my head, turning backwards into the flow of the marketplace. The colours of the vegetables and fruits in my hand felt intensely vivid a little reminder of life and decision in a town that never offered me either.