Claudine’s heart softened, looking down at the soft wool slippers. Sadie had knitted them for her last winter.
Such a sweet daughter. Since the day she was born, with no idea of how hard she had made her poor mother’s life just by existing, she’d been a huge, kind heart wrapped up inside a big, chubby body. Both a gift and a living reminder of Claudine’s worst mistake.
But she loved that little idiot. She did.
That was why she had to discipline her rightly. Keep her safe. Keep her protected. Even from herself.
Claudine rose from bed to make the two of them some corn porridge for breakfast.
But then she stopped, frowning.
Her door was closed.
Claudine never closed her door as it blocked out too much sound. Living in a windowless, technology-free room, she’d come to depend on the rooster’s crow from the neighboring farm to replace the digital alarm clock that used to wake her up when she’d been a Critical Care Nurse.
That vaguely bad feeling turned into a knife of dread, twisting cold and sharp in her gut.
Something was wrong.
“Sadie?” she called out, yanking her bedroom door open to find an empty house, free of Sadie’s strawberry scent.
How late had she slept? The metallic taste in her mouth took on a new tinct. The memory of the nightly cup of tea Sadie always brought her before bed came back to her then.
It had tasted strange last night. More bitter than usual. But Claudine had ignored it. Even though it was months later, she still felt a bit guilty about punishing her daughter the way she had after Sadie had walked into the house reeking of the mail steward’s spawn, Reuben Yoderwulf.
But now, understanding crashed over her.
Sadie had drugged her with valerian root—a plant that was harmless to humans but known to have a temporary sedation effect in shifters, with a metallic aftertaste left behind. If Sadie had known her mother required a much higher dose to be put out, Claudine might still be sleeping. In any case, the girl must have closed the door to her bedroom to increase the chances of Claudine not waking up in time to… what?
An image of that weaselly Yoderwulf boy, who hadn’t dared to meet her eyes in church while Sadie was on punishment, popped into her mind.
A mind which Claudine then proceeded to lose.
She didn’t stop to put on proper clothes or even her prayer covering. She charged outside in her nightdress, fury and fear powering her steps.
Her outsized strength hummed dangerously under her skin, and for once, she didn’t tamp it down.
Because she planned to use it.
She’d tear that cowardly boy who'd given her daughter such terrible ideas to go against her own mother apart.
Then, she’d drag Sadie home by the hair if she had to. Lock her up for six months this time. A year! However long it took to drain the stupidity out of her.
Foolish girl!Chasing false dreams of love.Claudine’s mouth twisted as she broke into a lumbering run.
Sadie didn’t know…love was a lie, a snare, a curse. Claudine had believed in love once, and it had left her pregnant, abandoned, and unable to function in the human world—much less stick to her twenty-five-year plan
She rounded the bend toward the mail steward’s house…
And stopped cold when she spotted something in the distance that she hadn’t seen with her own eyes in over two decades.
A bus. A transportation carriage, like the ones they’d used to ferry nursing students in for hospital visits.
It sat just beyond the town sign, which was as far as cars were allowed in St. Ailbe.
Its engine grumbled as a line of she-wolves in black bonnets and hand-sewn laundry bags repurposed as luggage climbed aboard.
Including one female who stood a good half foot above all the others.
