Chapter 7
Fern
Sleep evaded Fern that night, despite the aches and fatigue carving their way into her muscles to make a permanent home.
Everything was simply wrong—her bed was too lumpy, the blanket too thin and rough on her skin. She had no pillow, and tried to scrunch her dress from the day to make one, but someone had taken it for laundering and now her neck was cramped.
And the room… she felt exposed, all the open air and far away walls making her vulnerable. To what, she wasn’t sure, but the effect was keeping her too anxious to relax.
Back at home, most of her tips and earnings went into the family’s account, but the bit she was able to keep was almost all spent furnishing her small room.
Even as a child, she’d preferred being cocooned in small spaces, wrapped in warmth and soft fabrics, while her shelves had all been filled with her “treasures”—rocks or minerals she’d found outside, or broken pieces of pottery she’d tried her hand at fixing.
But being here, stripped of all of it, was disorienting. There was a numbing, clawing feeling working its way from the outside in, making it difficult to breathe, and she wondered if it would ever ease.
And so, when the other women began to stir in the morning, so did she, rising well before Marin’s bell. She made her bed, splashed water on her face, and began another day, the sky still not touched by dawn’s early light.
“What’s petitioning?” she asked Hyde, following behind him and setting the knives and forks as she had yesterday.
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head. “I’ve heard others speak of it, but I don’t understand what it means here.”
He exhaled loudly through his lips, as though he didn’t know where to begin. “You know Lurvekh don’t have babes as easily as humans do, right?”
“I… have heard some such things.”
Hyde then quieted, and he looked around before continuing. “Solvekh are for more than just keeping their homes running. We also offer the Lurvekh better chances at bearing children.”
Heat filled her cheeks. “You mean…”
He nodded. “Aye. And so a Lurvekh may petition for a Solvekh to share a bed with them for a time in the hopes of conceiving.”
So when Jules had said he wanted to petition her…
Fern choked on nothing but her own spit and coughed, her cheeks growing even redder.
“You are moved into the Lurvekh’s private residence,” he said, “and serve only them instead of the whole clan during the length of the petition. If it takes, they may make it a permanent position.”
“Like a mate?”
His eyes dimmed. “No, the Lurvekh still prefer mate bonds with other Lurvekh, for alliances and such. Instead they call us ‘Naravekh,’ signaling our new duty to the house, and you become… I think the best human equivalent is a mistress, only it’s an official title and here, the mate welcomes you.
” He paused, looking down. “Most of the time, at least.”
“I see…”
Hyde turned around, finishing one side of the table and moving on to the next.
Her hand absently moved to her lower stomach as she thought. Serving one family would probably be easier than a whole clan, but if the cost was sharing a bed with someone she might not even like, and a house with someone who might like her even less, she wasn’t sure she wanted to pay it.
“Is it only women who are petitioned?”
Hyde didn’t look back but replied. “No. I have three children, but I was not offered a chance to stay.”
“Oh. Oh, I’m so—”
“Please don’t,” he said softly.
Her mouth snapped shut, and they continued their work in silence.
The wolfkin began entering, and Fern looked forward to the constant, hard work for the next few hours, her body becoming too busy for her mind to linger on their conversation.
Not that the men were making it easy to forget. Every lingering glance, every subtle and not-so-subtle sniff as she walked past, and every hand on her backside had her nervous they would whisk her away to be bred at a moment’s notice.
Her wolf was annoyingly excited by the prospect.
She had just placed a platter on one of the tables and was about to get another when she felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, a heavy weight drawing her back into the room.
Turning around, her breath caught in her chest as Darion approached her.
“How were your first days?”
Her wolf was practically vibrating with excitement, and her voice shook as she replied, “Th-they were fine. Good, I mean. Thank you, sir.”
He grunted softly, inspecting her from head to toe, and Fern fought back the instinct to smooth her hair and skirt. To step closer. To bury her face into his chest as she had when he had brought her here.
“And you are treated well?”
“A-Aye, sir. Alpha.”
If one could call slavery with the only chance of freedom spent in a man’s bed with his child in your belly being treated well, she supposed.
He nodded once. “If you need anything—”
“A pillow,” she blurted out, immediately covering her mouth.
His eyebrow quirked, his lips curving slightly. “What was that?”
“Nothing, sir. Alpha.”
He grunted again, starting to walk away when he paused and reached over awkwardly to pat her on the head. “I’ll see what I can do.”
He then left to join his mate-to-be and the other alphas at the head table, and Fern took a few deep breaths, begging her knees to unlock themselves so she could move. Finally, noticing the interested, amused looks of the other wolfkin, she retreated, almost running into Hyde on the way.
That evening, after another long day, she trudged downstairs to the sleeping quarters, warming as she discovered a small, buckwheat pillow had been placed on her cot.
* * *
“Alpha Darion seems to favor you,” Hyde commented the next morning.
“Hm?” Fern looked up in surprise, already accustomed enough to the repetition that she could afford to retreat into her mind as she worked.
“Makes sense, I suppose,” he said, although she wasn’t sure if he was talking more to himself or to her. “I don’t believe he’s ever marked and bound a woman before. Perhaps he means to petition you for himself.”
Oh, no…
Oh, please, her wolf barked.
“We were children. I doubt that was on his mind.”
Hyde gave half a shrug, like their ages were hardly a counterargument.
“And he’s courting someone.”
Another half shrug. “He’s an alpha. He’ll need heirs.”
“But… I’m small. Jules said it wasn’t…”
“I am smaller than the she-wolves who petitioned me. The wolfkin are a lot less picky than you’d think, especially in this.”
He stopped and turned towards her abruptly, putting down the plates. With one hand he grabbed her waist and pulled her into his chest, his nose nudging her braid to the side as he breathed in her skin.
Her whole body stilled, as though something inside her welcomed such unexpected, intimate touch. Even if her mind was screaming.
“You smell very nice, Fern,” he said, his breath warm on her skin. His voice was low, and he didn’t smell too bad himself. It was easy to see why he was a popular petition despite his shorter stature. “Wolfkin like that. A lot.”
And then he released her, continuing his work as she struggled to catch her breath.
“Do you think you could speak to him for me? On my behalf?”
Fern was still reeling from the touch, feeling somewhat bereft of its absence. “I… what?”
“Alpha Darion. I want to be reassigned to the stables. There are… no she-wolves there. I won’t have to worry about any more petitions.”
He was many places ahead of her now, and she rushed to keep up, placing forks and knives as she spoke. “I don’t even know if I have that sort of relationship with him. I’m not even allowed to serve the head table.”
Hyde stopped again, and in her rush, she almost ran straight into his back.
“Please. I can’t… I can’t go through it again.
Savina has been watching me, I know she’s going to ask.
She already has two from me, I cannot bear to give her more that will never know me. And I cannot live with her mate again.”
He swallowed audibly. “He beats me when she is not around. He… he doesn’t like that I can give her what he cannot.”
Fern walked around the other side of him, his eyes closed and now lined with tears. Her heart cracked with the despair and fear she felt pouring out of him.
Tentatively, she placed a hand on his shoulder, squeezing once. “I’ll see what I can do.”
* * *
Fern’s eyes found Hyde at the other side of the room, a woman’s hand grazing down his arm. He looked up, his expression pleading, and she nodded, taking a deep breath.
Her fingernails had been chewed down to the skin as she’d worked up the courage to approach the head table that evening. And with her hair freshly braided and her apron clean, she held her hands in front of her, her gaze lowered as she walked and stopped before the head table.
“Alpha Darion?”
The alphas all stopped talking, watching her carefully as she curtsied.
One of them chuckled.
She dared to flick her eyes up to see Darion’s face. His jaw was set tight. Beside him, his mate-to-be, the Lady Kyntha, was unreadable.
“What is it?” he asked, his tone a little harsh.
Fern flinched, fighting the urge to turn tail and flee back into the kitchens for the rest of the night, but she had to say something. She’d made a promise, and there was no going back now.
“T-thank you for the pillow.”
“Pillow?” Kyntha asked, her tone soft and lyrical. She tilted her head, breathing in deeply and looking at Fern more carefully now. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
She’d never wanted more to disappear than she did in that moment with her body shaking and sweat dripping down her back. “No one, my Lady. Just—”
“Just the unpaid debt,” one of the alphas laughed.
He was around the same age as Darion, slightly smaller but not by much, and his hair shone with hints of red in the firelight.
But there was a spark in his eye that warmed his features, bringing life where Darion’s dark stare could feel like a promise to end it.
“I’m surprised he could have forgotten this one.
I would have returned to snatch her back the minute the full moon had set. ”
“You never would have marked her to begin with,” said one of the older ones.
The alpha gave her a wink. “I think I would have made an exception.”
The other alphas added their agreements, and Darion rested his hand on top of Kyntha’s, who had stiffened in her seat. “Is that really what you interrupted our dinner to say?”
Her wolf whined, and she shook her head, her eyes scrunching closed. “No, Alpha. Sir, I just… I wanted to ask a favor—”
“A favor?” His voice rose as his body did to a stand, his hands curling into fists and resting on the table. “Have I not done enough for you already? Or perhaps too much, if you think you are in any position to request favors whenever the fancy strikes you.”
The other wolfkin were all watching now, the room quieting as they tried to listen in.
“It’s not for me, Alpha! I… a friend, from the kitchens, was wondering—”
“Ah, so you wish to leverage the guilt I felt in forgetting you existed for these ten years into favors not only for yourself, but all of your ‘friends’ as well?”
“No, sir, I would never—”
“Away from me, she-wolf!” he said, dismissing her with a flick of his wrist.
Her eyes blurring with tears, she picked up her skirts and ran for the safety of darkness and solitude in the hallway.
No one followed as she kept going, past the kitchens and down the stairs, until she finally collapsed against the wall, sliding down to sit, her chest heaving to catch breath that had left and would not return.
Why did his admonishment affect her so? She’d been scolded before, by school teachers, her parents… even customers, who felt she’d mistreated them.
But this was consuming, the shame and fear of falling out of favor tearing at her gut.
Do you still wish for his attention now? she asked her wolf, wondering if she might throw up.
…. Aye…