Yes, yes, we were. My pulse quickened, hammering at my temples, when I sat up to find myself in the belly of a boat, surrounded by unconscious she-wolves. Most of them wore the same modest bluedress as me. But there were also a few Scottish she-wolves sporting long, plaid dresses over footwear such as cowboy boots, flats, and even low heels. We all appeared to lie like tossed dolls on the keel's aluminum floor.
I, myself, had never been in anything bigger than a canoe. But the latent memory of some media I must have consumed over the years combined with deductive reasoning to let me know that the circle windows on one wall of the dark space were portholes, and the slight swaying motion indicated that we were headed somewhere. Somewhere that wasn't Scotland.
What in the world?
A faint, familiar smell wafted into my nostrils, slightly above all the rest of the wolves on the floor.Sadie!
“Sadie?” I unsteadily rose and followed my nose to her distinct smell of snow and pine needles. “Where are you?”
I froze and clapped both hands over my mouth when I found her lying on top of a nearby table. Inside a clear, glass coffin with her arms crossed over her stomach.
"Sadie! Oh, Sadie!" Wretched tears filled my eyes. "What did they do to you?"
My knees weakened, threatening to give out under the weight of bitterness and regret. But then, I saw the gentle up-and-down movement of her chest.
Oh, thank goodness! She was still breathing. That meant she was still alive. Just sleeping like some terrible cosplay of thatSnow Whitemovie I’d watched exactly once on the forbidden internet before deciding in an instant that it was my least favorite Disney film of alltime.
My chest filled with relief — especially when I saw a set of circles near the box’s top. Breathing holes that would allow her to stay in this strange container without suffocating to death.
Still, I had to get her out of there. I went to the container's bottom and banged on it with all my wolf strength. But the side of my fist bounced off the surface with a totally unbotheredthud. So, not glass, then. Whatever the material was, it was tempered with no discernable locks or cracks for me to exploit.
What in the world?In a near-half a lifetime of being obsessed with worldly tech, I'd never encountered a material like this. It was clear as glass but tempered and seamless — like something that had been 3-D printed or fused together on a molecular level through some process I knew almost for certain only lived in the minds of theoretical physicists and sci-fi writers.
But Sadie was strong. Much stronger than me. Just a few weeks ago, she’d cut and hauled the most ice from the Faoltiarn lake the Wölfennites had sourced to build our New St. Ailbe icehouse without any help from the Scottish males.
Maybe she could break herself out of the container.
“Sadie! Sadie! Wake up!” Stuck for anything else to do, I banged on the “definitely not glass” above Sadie's head. “C’mon! You have to try to get out.”
But Sadie just slept on, looking downright peaceful as I slammed my fists against the glass and called her name.
Frustration and guilt knitted in my chest.
I had lied to Sadie.
About my true reasons for agreeing to the Bridal Exchange program with her.
About my plans to leave our community and go to university in the human world.
And most of all, about everything being alright and me figuring out how to get us out of this.
Everything wasn’t alright, and I could only stare at my friend, powerless to break her out of the glass coffin.
My gut twisted with the memory of Bear Hood’s and Pirate’s conversation before we were put out. I’d gotten the chemical-covered cloth, but the Pirate had plunged something into Sadie’s arm.Two needles filled with something much stronger than whatever they gave me.
“What is the meaning of this!”
Or Amanda, whose voice drifted over to me from another part of the boat's underbelly.
"I demand to know the meaning of all of this!" she was saying to someone. “Whatever ongoing quarrel you have with the Scottish Wolves, it's none of our concern.”
I waded through the sea of passed-out she-wolves to where Amanda was shaking her finger at a group of male wolves.
They were all slightly hunched over, thanks to the boat's low ceiling. But half of them were dressed in leather pants and tough leather vests, like the heavily tattooed Pirate who'd appeared out of nowhere with his friend Bear Hood to kidnap me. The other half wore leather kilts despite the boat's cold temperature, and though none were dressed in dead bear coats, they sported the same kind of earrings as Bear Hood, made of some metal slightly less burnished than gold.
They all looked beyond dangerous as if they could — how did BearHood put his colorful threat to Alban? Oh yes, "gut you and feed your entrails to the forest boar for their supper."
These were the horrible males who’d kidnapped us. The ones who were probably taking us somewhere far away from Scotland to keep us locked up in cages until the next full moon when they could wolf mate us.
