Page 25 of The Ashpaw: Part One

Fern

The pillow brought no comfort that night, nor the next. If anything, it made it more difficult to sleep.

Her wolf begged her not to get rid of it, but when she had lain awake for hours, knowing she could not last another second, she stood, collecting the gift and heading towards the Ashpaw in the back of the room.

Apparently, the Ashpaw couldn’t sleep either, the moonlight reflecting off her wary eyes as she watched Fern approach.

“Do you mean to smother me with the thing?” she asked with a whisper.

Fern froze, realizing it was the first time she’d heard the woman speak. “No. Unless you’re asking me to.”

She snorted softly. “Perhaps it would be for the best.”

The joke was brittle, but it was still a joke, and Fern laughed despite herself.

She then settled down on the cold, hard floor, realizing that perhaps she’d been too quick to judge her lumpy straw mattress. It could be much worse.

“You may need this more than I do,” Fern whispered, but the Ashpaw shook her head.

“If Alpha Darion gave you a gift and I was discovered to have it, I’d be accused of thievery. And if you insisted it wasn’t stolen but freely given, you’d be joining me on the floor for the crime of your compassion.” She pointed towards the fireplace with her chin. “Better to burn the thing if you don’t want it.”

No! her wolf cried, but Fern silenced her.

“Are you sure?”

“Being ignored is the best I can hope for, not small acts of mercy by ignorant Solvekh. Just leave me be.”

Fern stayed for a moment longer, watching the Ashpaw cling to her threadbare blanket and turn away from her. With a sigh, Fern stood, her knees already aching. “If you say so.”

She walked to the other side of the large room, past the women snoring gently, until she reached the fireplace, the pillow cradled to her chest.

Her wolf was having none of it, howling in pain and doing her best to drag Fern back to bed, but she didn’t have any other choice. With trembling hands, she held it out, over the embers, closed her eyes and…

Ran to her cot, tucking the pillow between her knees.

Perhaps having it further away would help her forget how she’d come by it, and what it had cost her.

* * *

Fern did her best to keep her head down the next few weeks, realizing how true the Ashpaw’s words were to all the Solvekh living in the castle—safety was in being ignored.

It was difficult to do some days, especially at dinner, where the ale flowed a little more freely and the wolfkin’s appetites for something more than dinner grew.

The approaching full moon did not help.

Her backside was covered in pinches she received on a nightly basis, unable to keep herself from yelping in a way that only encouraged further teasing.

Harland, one of the betas who had come to the tavern in her village, gave her the most trouble, and her pleas to the other servers to take care of his table were met with patronizing laughter.

“Why would we? He’ll only be angry if you’re not there. And besides, he obviously wants to petition you,” Vedia told her while they picked up new platters in the kitchen. “You’re lucky.”

“Lucky” was hardly the word she’d use to describe the state of her buttocks. “I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but—”

“But nothing,” Vedia replied, her tone slightly more clipped. “You’re the shiny new toy, entering her prime fertile years. You’d do well not to refuse, unless you mean to spend the rest of your life in the kitchen.”

“Or worse,” Tegen added. “I once saw a Lurvekh rip a Solvekh’s stomach open during a shift because she had refused him.”

A hard knot formed in the pit of her stomach. Her only experience with a shifted wolfkin had been Darion, and aside from biting her finger, he had been gentle.