As young as they were chronologically, I usually translated their lives into wolf years and so forgot their actual ages. We’d been through so much it aged us, made us old souls. Old, worn out, embittered souls.
Dmitri turned on the charm, grinning and slapping his hands together. “How are my beauties?” he asked as they bounced forward, their nostrils flaring briefly to scent him for gifts. He brought them little treats now. Candies and odds and ends, jewelry and trinkets, things that he called baubles—and things Darby called shinies.
Useless things.
Things everyone desperately wanted—brand-name sneakers or purses—things no one really needed.
“He’s buying them,” Gareth muttered, watching more pups scramble for his attention.
“He’s providing for them,” I clarified. “Better than we can.”
“When was the last time we honestly tried?”
I got hung up on his emphasis on honestly.
“We haven’t tried doing anything honestly for months now,” he added, moving closer to me. So close I smelled the mint on his breath. “We could, you know? I have ID, and my record was expunged after Mississippi. I could get a job.” His gaze swept the parking lot and beyond. “There has to be work here—even in this podunk town.”
I snorted. It seemed so simple. So moral. Get a job, feed the family. “Where, Gareth?” I asked. “Where would you work? What would you do?”
“There are burger joints in Junction. I can work a fryer or a grill.”
My backbone slipped, and I bent across the banister, letting my arms slide over its edge so they hung limp. “You can’t.” My hands dangled loose from my wrists, useless.
He straightened, puffing out his chest as he sucked in a deep breath. “Of course I can,” he said, like working as a fry cook would be some challenge to gallantly surmount.
“But, you’re so smart…,” I whispered. “It’s a crime to make you do menial labor.”
He chuckled, the noise making my stomach tremble. Or maybe it was how he stood so close that made my body act that way.… “There are far better men and women than me working what you call menial labor. People with degrees in education and psychology and the arts. Amazing people who had big dreams but small means. People like that, they sacrifice their dreams—or delay them—so their families make it. This pack is my family. I’d give anything for them.”
“Jesus Christ.”
I gawked at Gabriel, having forgotten he was there.
“Seriously, Gareth. You’re just dying for your own cross and crown of thorns. Sacrifice this, sacrifice that. Give until it hurts. Who ever gave anything for us—even a damn? No one. Families failed us. Friends failed us. The system—you of all people know better than anyone—the system failed us. So why feed it with our sweat and blood?” Gabe held the banister between whitened fingers and then dropped to do presses against it, his arms rippling with long, lean muscle as he hissed out his frustration. “If you want to feed the system and get nothing in return, be my guest. But don’t expect us to be so self-sacrificing.”
“I don’t expect you to do it, Gabriel,” he said.
With a grunt Gabe pushed back from the banister and whipped around, heading after Dmitri. He paused a few yards away, looking over his shoulder at me. “You and I have something planned, don’t we?” He didn’t wait for my answer, but stalked away, self-confidence marking his stride.
Gareth looked at me, suspicion marring his features. “You two have plans?”
I swallowed. “Not like you think…”
He raised his hands between us. “It’s okay,” he stated, backing up. “It’s not like you and I made any plans.” He shrugged and, giving me a sad smile, turned and left me on my own outside our rooms.
Jessie
Inside the shed where they’d stashed me the frost on the ground melted under my cheek, shoulder, hips, and side, just long enough for moisture to wick into my clothing and chill me. Sound was muffled by the snow I guessed was still falling outside. I couldn’t be near any houses or well-traveled buildings because, lying there, awake the entire time, I knew no one had been by since they’d dumped me.
I ground my teeth into the gag and focused. I liked to think I’d come a long way since I first met Pietr, but lying bound and gagged, I wondered exactly how much I’d truly grown.
A smarter girl wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped—again—in the first place. A smarter girl would have thought to leave some trail—it sounded a little Hansel and Gretel, sure, but didn’t survivors of abduction usually do something clever to help their heroes find them? Didn’t survivors drop a bracelet, a necklace, a cell phone, or tear out the brake lights from the car trunk they were transported in? Sure, I was unconscious for part of that, but survivors …
I swallowed, realizing.
Survivors.
Maybe I wasn’t slated for survival.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to close out the thought.
Jessica Alice Gillmansen, body discovered in an old shed because she was TSTL.
Survival of the fittest—maybe this was finally the proof; I wasn’t fit to survive.
Behind my eyelids like a movie recorded with a shaky camera, images came into focus and my stomach roiled in rebellion.
Derek. I was going to be sick.
Even better. Jessica Gillmansen, body discovered in an old shed, where she’d choked on her own vomit. Not even her kidnappers had the satisfaction of offing her, because she was, simply, TSTL: too stupid to live.
I fought the bile back down and sank into the vision, knowing the remnants of Derek, dead but not truly gone, were rising to the surface of my brain again.
I floated behind the eyes of someone just a few feet tall, walking down a long hallway, fancy rugs underfoot, paintings thick with pigment hanging in long blurs of color on either wall. I passed a low-set window and strained to catch my reflection in its sparkling glass.
Derek at age six, maybe?
I—he—paused outside a door that was open a crack, pressing his face against the space between the door and its frame. Inside were two people: a quiet-looking woman with a soft body, narrow nose, and sharp eyes; and a tall man with golden hair and strong features.… There were aspects of Derek in both of them. They had to be his parents.
Someone spoke in the room, but neither Derek’s mother’s nor his father’s mouth moved. Someone was with them.