Shaded Paws

I thought the pounding in my head was what had woken me from sleep, but soon, a sound began to register through the fog in my brain. Someone was crying. Was it Lily? She had bad dreams sometimes.

"It was just a dream Lily, go back to sleep."

"My n...name isn't...isn't Lily. It's Rain." At the unfamiliar voice, my eyes snapped open, and I sat bolt upright scattering scalps of cloth. Lightning shot through my head at the sudden movement, making me curl forward, clutching my throbbing temples with a whimper.

“Don’t...don’t move too... too fast if you can hel... help it.” I groaned in acknowledgment and tried to uncurl slowly.

The room was almost completely dark, except for a sliver of light peeking under what looked like a door up a flight of stairs. To my right sat the girl who had spoken. Her white-blonde hair glowed faintly in the darkness, allowing me to see her face. Subsiding tears had washed rivers through the dirt smudged cheeks that were too hollow. Her eyes were also sunken in, and had lost any sparkle of life that had once been there. She looked tired, hungry, and… sad.

“Where...am I?” I asked, looking around. This place was so foreign. My home was warm and full of light and laughter. This place certainly was not. “Where’s my dad? I wanna go home!” I scrambled to my feet and ran for the stairs only to be jerked backward by a chain fixed to a cuff around my ankle. I hit the floor face first, smacking my chin on the concrete.

“They won’t let us leave.” Rain said softly.

I looked back to the girl, where she huddled in a small nest of torn fabrics against the wall. “Why?” My shout echoed in the barren space.

Rain held a finger to her lips and shushed me. “Don’t wake the others.” I hadn’t realized until then that there were several other nests like the one I had sprung out of. Each nest had two or three sets of breaths coming from them. “You also don’t want to attract the attention of anyone upstairs. Trust me. Apparently, there is some big prophecy that revolves around one of us, or so I gleaned from passing conversations that I listened in on. They say that the Silverwolf is the alpha of all alphas and that if they can mate her and control her, then there would be no one to stop them." She glanced up at the sliver of light from the door, fear sliding across her face like a liquid mask.

I let out a soft whimper and curled into a ball where I lay on the floor. Then the tears came. I sobbed into my knees until I started hiccuping.

“Hey,” Rain crawled over to where I lay and started rubbing my back in gentle circles. “I know it sucks, but we’ll look after each other, okay?” As she rubbed, my tears slowly began to subside.

"But I… I'm the Silverwolf." I sniffed and looked up at Rain. Sympathy colored with pity in her eyes. "I don't like it here. I want to go home."

"Hush now. I don't want to be here either, but we don't have much of a choice."

“Everything okay, Rain?"

“Yeah, it’s just the new girl.” Rain responded to the voice from the corner of the room.

“Mmm… The first week is always the worst.” There was a sigh and the rustling of fabric, then the soft snores resumed.

“Come on, let’s go back to bed. Long day tomorrow. ” Rain crawled back to the far wall and patted the rags beside her. With a sniff, I crawled over to join her. “There you go. You never told me your name.” I snuggled up against Rain’s side, letting her cover me with a threadbare towel.

“I’m Kendra.” I said after a moment.

“Well Kendra, welcome to the Shaded Paws pack. Welcome to Hell.”

I quickly learned why Rain had called this place Hell.

A harsh cold light accompanied by the slamming of a door shocked me awake. I wasn't sure how long I had even slept.

"Wake up!" A man stood at the top of the stairs, one hand still on the heavy metal door. At his shout, the other girls scrambled to their feet.

"Come on." Rain hauled me up with her. I found my feet and stood looking around. Everyone else had their heads down, so I copied them, watching through my lashes as the man descended the stairs.

He reached the floor and looked about quickly, then approached one girl who was still lying in her nest. A look of disdain crossed his features as he nudged her with his toe. When she gave no response, he kicked her, and her body jiggled limply.

"Carter!" I flinched at the sudden noise as he turned and shouted up the stairs. "Got another one."

"Damn it!" A second man clomped down into the basement coming to stand beside the first. "Fucking useless." He grumbled and unchained the girl from the wall.

"Get the rest of them in order. I'll deal with this." The second man grabbed the girl by the ankle and began to drag her to the stairs.

As they passed, I let out an unintentional squeak of fright. The blank stare boring straight through me was the same glassy stare I had seen in fish washed up on the beach. I had never seen a dead person before.

There was no breakfast following that experience, and when I made the mistake of asking, I was slapped across the face and called a greedy little pig. I didn’t stop crying for nearly twenty minutes.

Around midday, I was introduced to the rest of the pack in a twisted version of a welcoming ceremony. A guard dragged me up onto a stage before everyone where the alpha had locked a heavy collar with sharp spikes on the inside around my neck.

"There," He declared, smiling. "Now you belong to us." The spikes bit into my skin, burning any flesh they encountered. The collar would not sit comfortably no matter how much I fiddled with it. Now I matched Rain and the other slave children. "Welcome to the pack."