𝙴𝚌𝚕𝚒𝚙𝚜𝚎𝚍

Chapter Ten

Just as we were about to pull out of the driveway, I peered out of the carriage window to get one last look at our home. Because once I returned, I knew I would have been a much different person than before I had left.

Pain changes a person. It changes their perspective on life, on everything if enough of it is dealt. Specifically, when it has been wrongfully accrued. Being thrashed about the market was one thing, but being flogged in the middle of town for all pack members to witness as punishment, for an outrageously fabricated charge, was another.

A glimpse of Mira standing in her window, like the day before, caught my eye. She had been watching the carriage with tears streaming down her face and eyes glowing brightly. She must have felt them arrive with her heightened senses from newly awakening.

Pups fresh from their wolves waking within them were the strongest they'll ever be in the first month of their lives, but they're also extremely unstable and unpredictable if not mentored straight away.

So instead of coming downstairs and joining us for breakfast, for everyone else's sake, she stayed in her room to keep from losing control of herself. Something I would have never expected from someone as impulsive as her, and it filled me with so much pride.

But it also filled me with sorrow. A fourteen-year-old shouldn't have had to think about hiding herself away, crying in a window at the sight of her big sister being arrested and dragged off for flogging. She should have been scarfing down all the meat at breakfast without a worry in the world, other than those her teenage mind dramatized.

It hurt me, seeing her cry like that, and I wanted more than anything to be able to comfort her. But once again, my shortcomings of being a useless Mutt stood in the way of that.

I gently placed one of my shackled hands against the glass, hoping she would see and understand that it was me telling her I loved her. I watched desperately as I waited for Mira to notice, and when she finally did, she mimicked me by placing a hand of her own on the window. If it weren't for the scary redheaded werewolf in front of me, I might have allowed myself to cry.

With a tug of the reins, the carriage began to pull off with a slight jerk, and we started on the thirty-minute journey it would take to get to the pack house.

"Why do you hate mutts so much?" I asked, breaking the silence and disregarding her warning from before.

My fear had numbed me, leaving only anger in its place and I felt like bothering the she-wolf who had arrested me with little to no tact.

"I told you not to speak." She growled, flashing her eyes at me as if it were a warning.

I disregarded it and continued, "Why am I being escorted to the pack house so early? The flogging isn't until noon."

Her wolf's voice intertwined with hers "Speak one more time and you will not have any teeth left."

The air shifted and the hair on the back of my neck prickled, signaling me that she had attempted to use her Gamma aura to try and force me into submission. Though, it was useless since I was a Mutt.

I stared back at her for a moment, her green eyes blazing with disgust. That was, until her composure started to falter as soon as she realized her act of intimidation had not worked. I had never been around the Alpha or his underlings enough to see just how ineffective their auras really were against Mutts. But having witnessed it firsthand, it was almost comical.

Such strong wolves being unable to bend the weakest of the weak to their will was like some sort of sick joke. Though, I suppose they did not really need the auras when it came to the Mutts. Because in reality, just their sheer physical strength and wolf forms were more than enough to scare every last one of us into submission.