Thorn (Werewolf) ✔

Chapter Eleven

I sit very still for a while, thinking deeply about my decisions as I wait for Thorn to return. The bruises around my jaw and wrists are stinging brutally. I make circular motions with my hands, testing if they're broken. I clench down on my teeth and I tuck my hands into my shirt.

Thorn was right. I can't survive out here. He doesn't even know me and he already knows me better than I know myself.

I have nowhere else to go. I grew up around other high-born families and I have 'friends' I suppose but they wouldn't dare hide me from the King. My family would have already spoken to them, everyone will be on the lookout for me.

That leaves the low-borns. The people my parents called 'an insult to society.' They live in smaller homes, mostly cabins or cottages. There are tens of thousands of them and it makes me feel incredibly uneasy that I have never met them. I have seen them of course but the moment any of them tried to approach me, my parents or friends would intervene and lead me away.

They are the workers, the providers to the high-borns. They farm our food and hunt for our meat and stitch our beautiful dresses. This new world is much like the old one, the one that existed centuries and centuries ago. After the war, control was the key to maintaining a peaceful society. There has always been division between the rich and poor but this change meant that the poor couldn't progress. We were born high-born. We didn't earn it nor work for it.

I should feel lucky. I should feel grateful. I've always had food and shelter. I've always had education and materialistic things at my disposal. I had everything that the low-borns didn't have. Except one thing. I never had my parents' love.

The first time my father hit me was when I was six. He smacked me so hard that I still remember the fear my child-self endured. The second time was when I was twelve. We attended another high-born family's party and I tried to have a conversation with a low-born servant woman. She was starving, my heart ached for her. I stole money from my mother's purse and I gave it to her. She refused it and tried to give it back to me but my father caught us. He told me to never disobey him again. I never did.

I have always been afraid of my father. My mother, however, was more complicated. Sometimes she loved me and sometimes she suffocated me. The one thing that I do remember is that she never raised her hand to me. She always consoled me after my father's outbursts and wiped my tears away. It was only when I became older that she became distant, more cold, more determined to marry me off.

Greedy.

And then there's Coan. Without him, I think I would have ran away a long time ago. The thought of never seeing my brother again is what hurts the most. Coan is an experienced tracker and hunter. I'd like to think he'd find me one day. I will hold hope for it no matter how bleak.

The entire kingdom is screwed up. Anger has been building in my heart for a long time. All of them are prisoners, abiding to the laws and social dynamics like good little sheep.

Out here there are no walls. No pens. For the first time in my life, I am not trapped. I close my eyes and breathe in the fresh forest air.

"Have you even moved from that spot?"

I snap my eyes open. Thorn appears suddenly, I didn't even hear him approaching the camp. He holds a dead rabbit in his hand, dangling it upside down beside his leg. I've never seen a rabbit or any other animal out here except for the wolves, how did he find one so quickly?

"You can move you know," he says.

"I know," I say. I move my eyes down to the little thing in his hand. "I hope you made it painless."

Thorn squints his eyes and looks down to the animal. He rolls them as he approaches the stack of wood in front of the camp. "Don't tell me you're one of them."