Wonderful.
We paused to let the fey come clattering, huffing, and screeching back this way to pick up their cart, and then roll away with it down the hall.Dante’s, I thought, mentally shaking my head.We needed to get out of here.
We needed to get everyone out.
“Wolves in a pack care for their elderly,” I told Dave tightly.“They bring them food, protect them, let them eat the softer parts of a kill first, and that’sanimals.Literal wolves out in the wild.They understand that the older ones have wisdom, experience, and utility beyond a strong back or sharp teeth.An elderly wolf can protect pups while the pack hunts, or show them water sources in a drought that no one else remembers, or—or just be there!Just be part of the family—loved and nurtured and—”
I felt my fists curl into my palms until the nails bit into the flesh.
“But we, who are supposed to be so much smarter, we dothis.”
“Some do,” he agreed.
“Yeah, well, not anymore.”
I grabbed his clipboard and headed into the dorm full of elders, who all tried to rise when I entered, even one in a wheelchair.Until I pushed him back down and hugged him, and accepted the touches they gave me in return, so soft, so tentative, so seemingly overwhelmed that I was there, that I gave a shit.I felt a flood of shame, horror, fury, and so many other things that I couldn’t name them all.
What if the whole clusterfuck in Tartarus hadn’t happened?What if they’d been left down there to fend for self?What if—
My hands shook slightly as I thumbed through the pages on the clipboard until I found an empty one.“Can you give me your names?”I asked, and was deluged with information before I realized that I had no way to write it down.
“Pen?”I asked Dave.He handed one over, then just stood there, not letting go.After a second, I looked back to see him staring at me, looking slightly shocked for some reason.“Dave?”
“Oh.Oh, yes.”He started looking around.“I, uh, I have a pencil around here somewhere, too…”
“The pen is fine,” I said impatiently, and he finally let it go.“Is something wrong?”I added, because he just kept staring at me.
Which finally got him to look away and shake his head.“No, not at all.It’s just…”
“Just what?”
He looked back at me, and his eyes held an expression I couldn’t read.“Just… you might be exactly who we’ve been looking for.”
Chapter Nineteen
Masks,” Caleb barked at our students as we neared the door of the dust-filled old grocery on the outskirts of town.
It had been three days since my life started over as Lupa of a clan now approaching five hundred people in size, and it had been a constant whirlwind of activity.We were still trying to identify and vet everyone moving to Wolf’s Head, figure out what to do with those too infirm or too questionable for Sienna to take in, and keep everybody fed, clothed, nursed, and housed in the meantime.And now, I had a new challenge on my hands: not getting fired.
The Corps did not understand PTO, unpaid time off, or even sick days if you could still walk, not when they were already stretched to the breaking point, and were more likely than a wolf to bite your head off for any infraction.I’d stopped by HQ to return Gerald’s coat yesterday and gotten yelled at by half the people I met.It seemed that winning a battle bought me, at best, a couple of days’ recovery time, and I was past that, so get the hell back to work, mage!
So, I was back at work, only apparently, everybody was even more pissed off than I’d thought, because I’d drawn the shit detail this time.
“Seriously?”Aki said, the sunlight gleaming on his blue-tipped hair.“It’s just dust in there—”
“Dust that could be laced with asbestos,” Caleb retorted.“The report said that part of the ceiling collapsed recently.You want your lungs shredded or cancer in ten years?”
“But we already spent, like, twenty minutes checking for snares and traps!”
“And you haven’t been snared or trapped, have you?”
“Because there was nothing there!”
“It’s still good practice,” I pointed out, and got an eyeroll in return.
Teenagers.
“And if there had been anything, you might be missing a limb,” Caleb added.“An abundance of caution is better than a lifetime of regret,” he added piously, as if he’d been cautious a day in his life.But in fairness, he was trying to teach the kids properly, which required safeguards he might otherwise have ignored.
