Chapter 7
Thorn
The train rolls into Broken Belly just as night is falling.
There’s no dinner car yet, and all the passengers are hungry.
My hunger is for more than food. I have been watching Tabby sleep for hours, and thinking about what I am going to do about my overbearing brothers in arms. I will not be pushed around.
Rank and age have no place in this equation.
I am also a force to be reckoned with, even if I am not an aged, tortured warrior.
I think Tabby quietly likes me the best.
She starts to stir as the train slows.
She opens her eyes and smiles at me.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” I say back. “We’re coming into town.”
“Why’s it called Broken Belly?”
“Because some settlers came out this way a few hundred years ago and starved,” Krall says.
I want to stake out a claim on Tabby, something she’ll remember like the candy store.
“I’m taking her to have some dinner when we stop. We’ll be there overnight, and it’s a bigger town. Better food.”
Krall and Skor exchange looks. I sense they’re about to tell me no because they don’t want her loose among people. But they promised, and if we are going to take her to Eclipse City she has to get used to the world a little at a time.
“I want dinner,” Tabby says. “I’m ravenous.”
They don’t want to set her off. So they agree. The dynamics of our little pack are already starting to shift in favor of this magic she-wolf.
Tabby
There are people everywhere in this town. Dozens of them throng the streets. I find myself feeling a strange mixture of feelings I can only describe as predatory repulsion.
Thorn was right. This town is much larger.
It has dozens upon dozens of buildings, and roads paved between them.
There are even smaller versions of the train that trundle around, and even smaller versions that have wheels and can go wherever.
I find myself wide-eyed and overstimulated, but still hungry.
Thorn leads me into a building that smells like a lot of food—amazing, and like a lot of humans—awful.
“This is a restaurant,” he explains. “They cook meals here. There will be foods you’ve never had before. Try whatever you want.”
The restaurant is full of people, all seated around us. I’ve never been around this much anything before. Even when the pack gathered in the mountains, there were less than twenty of us. This is… unbearable.
Thorn lifts a small book that contains a list of foods we can eat. I don’t recognize most of the food, and I am far too distracted by everything going on around me to care.
“What would you like?” A young woman in a white shirt and short black skirt comes and takes our order. She gives me a slightly quizzical look, and I become immediately aware that I am not dressed the way others in the restaurant are.
My dress has been through days of hard magical battle and even harder travel and skirmishes on trains, and multiple rough breeding sessions. My hair is long and wild compared to hers, which is sleek and tied back. I look like a mess, and that matters.
I don’t like the way she smiles at Thorn either. It seems she is hungry as well.
“We’ll have two steak dinners, rare, please,” he says. “And a beer for me and a sparkling wine for my wife.”
The waitress smiles, slightly tighter this time, and walks away.
“Why did you call me your wife?”
“It’s the human word for mate,” he says. “The easiest way to explain our relationship. I want to get you a ring, so others will know you are taken when they look at you.”
That seems quite sweet, I suppose. Thorn is possessive. All my mates are. I can tell they’re not having an easy time sharing me. They all want to be inside me as often and as deeply as they can be. I was a virgin just a day ago and now I have been mated roughly more times than I can count.
“Enjoy the bread,” the waitress says, delivering a basket full of hot bread and butter to the table. “Your meals won’t be too far away.”
“Thank you,” Thorn says.
“Thank you,” I echo.
She goes to do more tasks. It looks like a challenging job. She has so much to do and so much to remember. I know I couldn’t possibly do it.
“Want some?” Thorn offers me the basket.
I shake my head. I am feeling hungry, but this place is making me nervous.
I’m used to eating mostly alone, and this feels like eating in the middle of a huge crowd.
Any of them might come for me at any moment.
My back is toward so many strangers. The energies in here are intense, and so are the scents, and then there is the chatter.
It comes from everywhere. I try to concentrate on a few threads of conversation, but I can’t.
They’re not talking about anything, and then someone will talk over someone else and my mind is caught in a tumult of nonsense.
“I love your dress, is that cerulean blue?”
“So I told her, there’s no way he’s ever going to catch that fish, and you know what…”
“…his promotion means we can go to the beach…”
“…Forty-three. No. Forty… one? Wait. I think it was forty-four.”
“Oh, my gods, shut up!”
I’m not aware of how loudly I made that exclamation until the restaurant goes quiet, and dozens of eyes swivel to look at me. The quiet only lasts for a moment, then slowly creeps back in as people return to their conversations.
Is this what people are like? And my mates want me to live among an entire city of humans? Absolutely not. The only thing keeping me in my seat is the smell of food, but even that is beginning to wear on me. Some of the tables have their meals. Some of them do not. We do not.
“Are you okay?” Thorn asks me, his brow creasing in concern.
“I’m fine,” I say, lying through my teeth because I know he wants me to enjoy this. I try to tell myself that it’s not that bad. They’re just people. They’re prey, really. They’re meaty, squishy, silly creatures having meaty, squishy, silly conversations. I shouldn’t let them bother me.
I try to quiet my mind and tame my impulses. I yearn for a cold night, for an empty mountain, for the freedom of feeding alone. I have a flash of being in my wolf form, my jaws sinking into the still twitching muscle of my prey. That is how I was designed to feed.
“Try some bread,” he says.
“I don’t want bread,” I reply, my voice tense.
He looks confused, which only serves to make me feel guilty. Does he not feel the same way? Are his senses not completely overwhelmed? Does he not want to choke on the acrid perfume barely covering the scent of salted sweaty human flesh?
“You don’t look happy,” he says. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I lie again, as I fantasize about my homeland.
The man behind me starts slurping a beverage of some kind.
It feels as though the very interior of my body and mind is being violated by the presence of this stranger who is inflicting his gross body noise on me, his rubbery wet lips inhaling too much air and creating a gurgling noise that is louder than any conversation.
Krall
Skor and I find ourselves on the street, looking for a vendor to supply us with a few foodstuffs.
There’s one restaurant in town, and Thorn and Tabby are inside.
We can see them through the window. Tabby is at a three-quarter angle away from us, so I can mostly see her back and a little of the side of her face.
The scents of the restaurant draw me inexorably. My stomach growls.
“We could go in and eat at a separate table,” Skor suggests.
“We should let them eat alone,” I say. “Thorn needs this time with her. We are all going to have to find ways to bond with her individually.”
“Hm,” he says.
We start to move on, but a sudden flurry of motion in the restaurant draws our attention. Tabby has gotten up. She grabs a stranger’s drink and dumps it on his head.
“What the…”
The man, now covered in beer, looks at her aghast, then clenches his fists.
Skor and I are in the restaurant in an instant, the plate glass window shattering around us as we burst through the translucent barrier. The diners break into screams as Skor grabs Tabby and throws her over his shoulder.
We leave as quickly as we came in, jumping out the window. Thorn follows, and the four of us escape into the night, leaving behind a shattered restaurant and dozens of frightened diners.
“What was that about?”
Skor sets Tabby down and questions her.
“Did he touch you?” Thorn adds a question. “I’ll kill him if he touched you.”
Tabby looks deeply upset. We might have to kill someone tonight. The expression on her face is pitiful and creates pure rage inside me. Skor is shaking glass out of his hood.
“He didn’t touch me,” she says.
“What did he do?”
“He was making noises with his mouth,” she explains. “And it made me want to die.”
“What?” Thorn looks at Skor and me, deeply confused. “He was making noises?”
“There were too many noises,” she repeats. “And he was slobbering so loud it felt like I was inside his mouth, or he was inside my head. But there’s no… I couldn’t take it. It drives me crazy.”
“You can’t throw drinks on people because they’re making annoying noises,” Thorn says.
“Why not?”
“Because…”
“People are allowed to be annoying?” she asks.
“Yes,” he says. “I guess they are.”
“Well, I don’t want to be around them,” she says. “I don’t want to be in rooms full of stinky people saying stupid things and chewing with their mouths open.”
Thorn looks thoroughly confused. Skor does not. He understands what has happened more quickly than any of the rest of us. I have to give him credit. He understands our little mate more innately than either Thorn or me.
“We are predators. We are made to notice the smallest things, and when we are surrounded by too many small things it can overwhelm us. But you should have asked to leave, rather than attacking a man with his own drink,” he says.
“I suppose,” she admits reluctantly. “But I didn’t like him, and I didn’t like his sounds, and it was better than using magic, right?”