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I wasn’t going to argue this with him again. He knew how I felt. “If I get to be a warrior someday, I’ll come back and take you out of this shitty pack, Del. You got a lot of fight left in you.”
“I hope so,” he said in a way that made my ears prick up. What did he mean?
A sound came from the dining hall again.Footsteps, getting closer.
Del’s nostrils flared. “Go, now.”
4
Desperation and Disguise
FLOR
Ipadded across the kitchen floor silently, opening the door to bright sunlight and a blast of damp heat. June in Alabama was always hot and humid, but it could be worse. At least the Conclave wasn’t held in August.
I blew a kiss over my shoulder to Del, who was growling quietly, staring at the door to the dining hall like he knew who was there, then slipped out into the deserted courtyard.Once I was away from the kitchen door, I walked as close to the buried sewer lines as I could at a normal pace, knowing the worst thing a person could do around a pack of predators was run.
At the latrines, I stopped and took one last deep breath before I stepped into an empty stall. My lungs aching, I scraped shit off the side wall of the pit toilet with a piece of paper towel and rubbed it onto the bottoms of my shoes, my legs, splattering it over my arms. Finally, I tucked my hair into my collar, wishing I had a hat.
Trying not to breathe through my nose, I stepped out of the latrine and set a quick walking pace for Del’s shack. For the first time in forever, luck was with me. The few pack members I saw were far enough away that they stared for a bit or nodded, but didn’t come close. That was normal, since none of the other shifters even spoke to me regularly. Who wanted to be friends with the “hunted girl”, the Alpha’s least favorite pack member? Or even talk to her.
I wasn’t going to miss one damned thing about this pack. Except Del.
I slipped in the back door at his tiny house, feeling guilty that I was about to track literal shit though his rooms. That smell wasn’t coming out soon. “It was his idea,” I whispered, trying to ignore my own horrific funk as I worked.
I grabbed a toothbrush—he had a new one on the counter—and ran to his dresser. Inside the top drawer was a set of boy’s clothes, just like he’d promised. Did he have another pack kid he took care of? But then under the clothes, I saw a bunch of muslin: long strips to wind around my body and hold my small breasts flat.
He’d been planning this for a while, then. Taking care of me in ways I hadn’t even known about. I’d find some way to thank him. Somehow.
In five minutes, I’d wrapped myself up, thrown on the clothes, and had hacked off my braid and most of my hair, flushing it all down the toilet. I was ready to leave when I spied something near the back door.
A package, no larger than a few slices of bread, wrapped in brown paper with my name on it. I picked it up, feeling fabric inside. For a moment, I was almost overcome by tears. It was the first real gift I’d ever received from someone besides my mom.
Outside, far enough away that I couldn’t make out the words, an alert sounded on the compound’s PA system. I slipped the present into my backpack and walked calmly out the door, turning back at the last minute to grab one more thing from Del’s kitchen.
It was hard to stay calm. I moved as normally as I could, but in the distance, I could hear shouting, even make out some of the words.
“Del, where the hell is she?” It was Grant. Even though he was much younger than Del, he was still a ranked Enforcer and could cause serious trouble.
“Sir, I don’t know exactly,” Del answered. “Could she have run back to her room? She was pretty scared.”
A low voice let out a short laugh. The Alpha. “That girl doesn’t have the sense to be scared.”
I had minutes, or less, to make my escape.
I kept my head down as I crossed gravel-paved street after street, hoping no one would notice me, stop me. Of course, when I reached the first row of houses, where the trees began to grow thicker, someone did.
“Boy, what is that smell?”
I stopped, daring a glance at the woman who’d shouted from her yard. She stood in front of one of the houses that bordered the second ward of the packlands, where the higher ranked, wealthier families lived. She looked like a maid, though, not one of the wives of the Enforcers.
“Sorry, ma’am,” I grumbled, hoping I sounded like a boy. I coughed and thumped my hand against the backpack I’d wrapped inside a black kitchen trash bag at the last minute. “It’s dirty diapers and, um, some sickbed things from one of the elders. I’ve got to get it to the burn pile.”
“Yes, you do. It smells awful. Go back behind in the alley—I don’t want that upwind from my clothesline, ya hear?”
Now that was a stroke of luck. You couldn’t get into the alley unless you lived in one of those houses.
“Thank you,” I muttered, and slipped past her across the lawn. The smell was bad enough that she didn’t peer at my face. In fact, she ducked back inside the house as soon as I’d shut the gate.
