Chapter Three

ROWENA 

I hoped that death would take me and I would never wake up to such a wretched world, but alas I did. 

As the icy wind slapped me across the face, I awoke. My throat was patched with thirst and my lips were dry and cracked. My wrists hurt from the tight rope it was bound with but as I looked around, I saw I wasn't alone.

There were six of us in the small moving cage-like wagon, sitting shoulder to shoulder. The women were filthy looking; with their hairs tangled and their dresses torn. Their faces were marked with silent desolation, as if they were aware of the fate that awaited them- the kind that tears could not rescue them from, no matter how long and heart wrenching it was. 

“Where are they taking us?” I asked the woman seated beside me. She looked a little older than me with brown hair and blue eyes. She took some time before she answered me in order to save what little strength she had left. 

“They are taking us to Ravenshallow–the Western clan, there we will be sold as slaves,” her voice broke. Fear gripped my heart and it made it hard to breathe. At that moment, I saw my mother's melancholic face as she helped get me ready for my mating ceremony. I never got the chance to say goodbye to her and, finally spit in my father's face. 

I had never been outside my clan nor had I ever heard anything about the other clans. I was from the Eastern clan of Eldoria. From the little knowledge I was able to absorb from reading books and looking at the maps in my father's chambers, I knew that the nation of Eldoria was made of three clans but was formerly made of four. 

The Northern clan of Crimonfrost, which was the former seat of power of Eldoria, was suddenly wiped out. No one really knew what happened to make a whole clan cease to exist but when the news broke, all the other clans diverged into their separate factions and remained that way. 

They all became strangers to one another and let hostility fester and grow between them. Wars became a constant activity; lands were claimed and reclaimed in a bid to have more dominance over the opposing clans until, eventually, each clan grew weary of the constant conflict and reached an agreement, a truce of some sort, to never interfere with one another. To become separate independent entities. 

I sat in the silence of her words and let them soak into my skin. The Western clan was notorious for its ruthless treatment of its subjects and overall cruelty. It was rumored that slaves in the western clan were forced to fight against the clan's strongest warriors. Putting a feeble slave before a well trained warrior was murder. And that was exactly what happened. 

As the moments passed, I wanted to ask this young lady I sat next to more about herself but the expression on her face told me otherwise. She looked as if she was trying to recollect her most fondest memories and hold on to them so tightly that it would never leave her. I moved to hold my sapphire necklace but that was when I realized it was gone. Tears fell down my eyes as I remembered Darius stealing it from me. That was the only thing I had left from my mother and now it was gone.

“Save your tears girl,” the woman across from me said. “You are only wasting your time and what little strength you have left. There is no hope here for us.” 

We had been on the road for what felt like days, surviving on scraps of food and barely enough water to wet our tongues. The two slavers knew exactly what they were doing, keeping us weak enough to remain human, too drained to fight back in our wolf forms. 

The roads were carved through steep terrain. When night fell and the cold crept in, we huddled together for warmth, our bodies pressed close out of desperate necessity. With each passing day, the thin thread of hope we clung to frayed a little more. 

One day I awoke to find Mannia, the girl who always sat beside me was gone. All the other captives said they had all woken up to find her gone and that they had no idea where she was. I couldn't believe it and I felt some was amiss. 

That night, I dreamt I was walking through the forest which lined the road we were traveling on. Suddenly, I heard a piercing scream in the distance. I ran in the direction of the sound to one of the slavers on top of Mannia, strangling her. I tried to intervene but there seemed to be an invisible barrier allowing me to see what was happening but preventing me from saving her.

I watched helplessly as the slaver drew a dagger and struck her in the chest several times. I screamed for him to stop but all my protests fell on deaf ears. 

When I woke up, I wept. I told the others what I saw in my dream and no one said anything for a long time. Their silence irritated me. “She was one of us and now she is dead and now we are going to do nothing about it,” I said in anger.

“What do you suppose we do, ehn? Fight the slavers with our feeble bodies based on a mere dream. Do you want to get us killed?” one of the women replied. The other women mumbled in agreement. 

“What if she managed to escape at night, ey?” another woman added.

“Managed to escape? How would that even be possible? These men watch us like a hawk. And have you noticed that they have not uttered a word about Mannia’s absence?” I replied.

I knew that the idea of Mannia running away at night was unbelievable. And they knew it too. The slavers would have hunted her down with her scent and taught her a lesson. But to these women, it was easier to believe that she had escaped-that she was well on her way to a better fate than we were. 

That night, because of my persistence to avenge Mannia, the other captives avoided me. They didn't allow me to come near them for warmth as we slept. Deep in my heart I knew I was right but what was the use of being right in a wicked world?

I was left to sleep on my own, with only the peaceful image of Mannia and my mother to keep me warm.