Chapter 7 - Selene
It’s been almost a month, and with increased freedom of sorts, I find myself drifting back to the clinic.
No one asked me to, but whenever I turn up, Emma and Dax find something for me to do, and the guard that follows me everywhere, Tom, just makes himself busy in the background.
I think Emma knows I need something to do, and our shared appreciation for herb magic means there’s always something to do or talk about.
I think it reminds me of home, of my coven, and I think Emma knows that.
By rights, the settlement should be pretty grim.
Everything I know about rogues tells me this place should be a lawless hellhole.
And yet, although it was clearly built by people who started with nothing, cabins built plank by plank, misshapen in places, added to over the years with power lines strung between them and generators keeping the lights on, it has a quality to it I didn’t expect.
Somewhere along the way, these people must have decided surviving wasn’t enough.
They made it beautiful. There are flower boxes under the windows and rows of neat little gardens; the paths are swept clean.
Despite the wildness of the fog-wrapped coastline, this is a haven that people have willed into being, and it shows at every turn.
And that unsettles me because it doesn’t fit the narrative I need to navigate my situation.
This morning, Emma has me helping her by holding a dressing infused with herbs while she stitches a gash on a boy who fell off the roof of his father’s workshop before school this morning. He’s too young to shift and heal, so the dressing will help. He watches me the whole time, wide-eyed.
“Are you really a witch?” he asks. “Can you fly?”
“I really am,” I tell him. “Sadly, no flying, though. But the herbs in this dressing will make your arm feel so much better.”
He looks briefly disappointed, but quickly recovers when the dressing really does help take the pain away, and he grins as Emma peels off her gloves and grabs some sweets from the bowl she keeps on the side that never seems to run empty.
The boy runs out a lot happier than he came in, and Emma grins, glancing at the clock on the wall.
“Right,” she says, standing. “I need a coffee and something sweet myself. And you need a break before I set you about sorting out all those shelves for me. I’m not a slave driver, you know. Come on.”
I know when not to argue, and she seems pretty set on it.
Tom, the guard, looks positively elated when Emma tells him we’re all going to the bakery.
So that’s decided, and we walk down the road with Tom trailing us awkwardly, pretending he’s just out for a stroll.
I almost feel sorry for him, as I’ve grown quite fond of him. Almost.
The bakery has to be one of the most comforting and welcoming places in the whole settlement.
Although the building looks old from the outside, inside it’s transformed with fresh paint, beautiful reclaimed flooring, and brightly lit counters filled with beautiful pastries.
Emma tells me that Maeve, the owner, practically taught herself from scratch by watching YouTube videos until she got a small scholarship from Ronan and Ryder to go to the city for training.
The bakery is a labor of love that the entire settlement enjoys.
Cara’s sitting at a table by the window with a stack of schoolbooks in front of her and waves enthusiastically as we walk in.
It’s clear Emma and Cara are good friends, as she’s always stopping by the clinic, and I’ve gotten to know her quite well recently.
It’s nice. It doesn’t change anything about my situation, but it’s nice.
“Oh, thank the goddess, other adults to distract me,” she says, laughing and shoving the stack of books away. “Come and sit.”
Emma nudges me, and I do as I’m told and sit while Emma and Tom get the coffees and a selection of cakes.
Tom takes a table near ours and looks perfectly content with his coffee and pastry, while Emma places the coffees around Cara’s stack of books, and it all feels remarkably normal.
I could almost forget I’m a prisoner for a moment.
The warmth of the bakery and the free-flowing conversation with genuinely lovely women takes the edge off something that feels incredibly sharp.
Cara’s telling a story about how her youngest, Katie, and her friends are drawing wolves for their art class, and they all look like angry potatoes.
I nearly choke on my coffee when she shows me some examples.
They look so joyful and absolutely awful; it’s hard not to laugh whilst also thinking they’re adorable.
I ask Cara how she ended up here, realizing that most of these people seem to have a story, and she takes another sip of her coffee before smiling wistfully.
“Ronan took us in after my husband’s leg got wrecked.
We’d just had our youngest, it was midwinter, and they completely turned their backs on us.
We lost everything.” She twirls the fork on the edge of her plate.
“If my neighbor hadn’t taken a risk, even talking to us and telling us about this place, I don’t know what we would have done. ”
“Same story half the time, near enough,” Emma says, and tips her head toward the woman behind the counter.
“I dread to think where someone like Savannah would have ended up without this place. Her pack tried to sell her off when she was just a pup to some old alpha in another state; can you imagine how Maeve felt? When Ronan found me, I was no use to anyone and half-starved because I’d been thrown away like trash.
Now I run the clinic with Dax; I have a whole new life and purpose. ”
We’re pulled from the story by a couple of older boys chasing each other along the street, making noise, one swinging a stick like a sword and laughing about being in the alpha’s army.
I feel something cold settle in my chest, even surrounded by all this warmth, because that’s what this place is—it’s an army in waiting.
And Ronan wants me to make it even stronger.
I try to distract myself by listening to Emma’s story, drinking my coffee, and reconciling my feelings, because the more time I spend here, the murkier the narrative becomes.
Every one of these people, from Emma and Dax to Cara, Savannah, or the young recruit, Finn, has a story where the respectable packs failed them, and this pack picked them back up.
I was taught to fear the banished witches and rogue wolves, as if living outside the prescribed systems meant that they were automatically bad.
Now I see the truth is that they were often betrayed, sick, hurt, or lost, and that together they’ve made something solid that works.
“You’ve gone quiet on us,” Cara observes.
“Bad habit,” I say, and drink my coffee. “Spending too much time alone, I guess.”
The woman gives me a sympathetic nod, and for a moment, the truth sits heavily between us.
They know I’m a prisoner here, but I also won’t put it on them; I won’t ask them to help me escape and risk the lives they’ve built here.
I’ve no doubt Ronan would severely punish anyone who helped me.
I also don’t think they would help; I think they’re ultimately loyal to Ronan.
In a strange way, I’ve got to admit that I think he’s earned their loyalty.
At least until he puts them on that beach on the island and asks them to die for his own personal vendetta.
If I’m going to escape, I need to do it on my own and keep these people out of it, for their sakes.
But looking at them now, as Tom reads out a story in the paper that makes everyone laugh, why does escaping feel like such a betrayal of their kindness?
And why does it feel like a betrayal of Ronan himself?
I haven’t even seen him more than a handful of times since the incident at the training ground.
He’s come to play chess a couple of times, and once he turned up with some new books and a fresh box of tea, but I feel a distance that wasn’t there before.
It feels like a mind game, because for his plan to work, he needs me closer, and yet it feels like he’s pushing me further away. Which makes no sense.
We drift out of the bakery after lunch in a wave of hugs and friendly goodbyes as Tom follows Emma and me back to the clinic, and I spend the afternoon, as Emma said, organizing shelves and enjoying every moment of mental peace the quiet work gives me.
I’m tired by the time Tom takes me back up the hill and ready to give in and spend the evening with a book, doubtful that Ronan will appear, as he seems less inclined to recently. I hear Bram knock on my door with my food, regular as clockwork.
I smile as he opens the door, and my eyes widen when I see there’s far too much for one person on the tray.
“Cook made too much,” he laughs, setting it down on the small table by the window.
“She really did; you’re going to have to have some,” I say, waving him to sit down, too. “You can talk to me about something that’s not about wars or wolves.”
He hesitates; I think he knows he shouldn’t. But we’ve been getting friendlier, his visits lasting longer, he doesn’t look quite so scared when he comes in anymore, and so he does anyway.
He tells me about his two younger sisters and his mother, the girl he likes who helps out at the store, the boat he’s building with a couple of his friends on the weekends, and how he’s hoping to move up rank next year.
“Oh, I see,” I laugh. “You don’t want to be on dinner duty anymore.”
He blushes, and it’s adorable; he’s shaking his head before he realizes I’m just teasing him. “Oh no, I…”
“I’m joking, Bram,” I tell him. “You’re definitely too good to be on dinner duty forever. Now, what about this girl? Have you tried just saying hello? Girls like that, you know.”
“It’s not that simple,” he says, mortally serious.
“Of course it’s that simple. You walk up, you say an entire sentence, you survive it.” I’m enjoying myself far more than I should because he looks so horrified. “Do you want me to write this down?”
He laughs, and almost an entire hour disappears as we trade ideas for the perfect sentence that will win this poor unsuspecting girl over before one of the other boys snaps her up. I find myself laughing more than I thought I would, but underneath, part of me is still watching, still waiting.
“You’re easy to talk to,” he says when the laughter dies down. “My mom told me all witches are scary, but you’re not.”
“Give it time,” I tell him, and he laughs again, like it’s the funniest thing he’s heard all week. But the truth is, I may well end up being scary, whether I mean to or not.
When he finally realizes the time and stands to leave, he suddenly seems flustered, muttering that he shouldn’t be staying so late.
He quickly gathers the laden tray, which still has far too much on it, and I help him by adding the leftover cups from earlier in the day.
He waves with one hand as he struggles to pull the door, too.
I wait a second, then another, and the lock doesn’t click into place; the wards don’t flare. For a moment, I think I’ve imagined it, but as I cross to the window and watch him walk back down the hill, I rest my hand on the window, and for the first time, I don’t feel the hum of the ward magic.
This is it. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for. All because a kind boy was probably thinking about the girl he’s going to ask out and his guard was down, so he didn’t remember to lock the door.
I hesitate, and I hate myself for it.
I wonder how much trouble Bram will be in when I escape. I think about Katie and her potato-wolf drawings, the plans Emma has for this week at the clinic, and I glance at the chessboard where an unfinished game with Ronan sits, waiting to be played.
But I also think about the island, the people who will pay the price if Ronan gets his revenge.
I think about my home, my coven, and all my plans for the future that didn’t involve being used by an alpha to start a war.
I wipe my face, annoyed to find it wet with tears of frustration.
Pulling on my boots and a warm coat, I open the door quietly and slip out into the night.
The cold almost takes me by surprise; the seasons are changing faster than I realize, being inside every night.
The dark feels all-encompassing as I stay away from the main paths, slipping between the cabins that reach out toward the main gate.
I won’t be able to walk straight through, but I’ve seen gaps in the tree line, enough for a small body to slip through.
I just need to make it that far first. I keep expecting a hand on my shoulder, a shout, something.
I reach the tree line but realize I’ve seriously misjudged the situation.
It isn’t just a case of slipping through the trees; there are sensors that I didn’t see from a distance, set high into the trees, and others sweeping through the undergrowth.
There are paths cut through the tree line and a watchtower that can see everything.
I flatten myself against one of the trees by the path and think through my options.
Ronan hasn’t just built a settlement; it’s a fortress, and even if I get through the defenses, I don’t even know where I am or what’s waiting for me out there.
No wonder he never seemed bothered by my attempts to break the wards; he knew it wasn’t just the magic keeping me here, it was all of this.
I try not to panic. This is my one chance, and I still have to take it.
I think about the magic that doesn’t require a set of wards, herbs, or preparation.
Simple cloaking spells that don’t last, but might just last long enough.
Glamor work, a disguise. I can slip through the trees, and if the sensors only oversee the line, then I might make it.
A simple glamor doesn’t usually pass during the day, but at night, they’re more effective.
I run through the spell, my hands shaking, but suddenly the world goes very silent around me, the way a forest does when something dangerous moves.
Something that feels very close.
I lift my head, knowing it’s now or never. I see a shape move in the darkness and begin to quickly recite the spell, feeling the cloaking begin to take hold. I keep going, knowing I’m running out of time and with a sinking certainty that I know exactly who is coming for me.