All Chapters of Number Seven: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

Serena’s POV“Don’t speak,” said the man in the dark. “Not one word. If you speak, I’ll lose you.”I couldn’t have spoken if I’d tried.The hall of the Mandai Ridge pack house was pitch black. Somebody had taped over every window. Somebody had put out every candle. Twenty women stood in a line along the wall, each in a black veil that fell to her knees, and none of us could see our own hands.I was number seven.I wasn’t supposed to be.A footstep, slow and heavy, came down the line. Then another. It stopped in front of number four. The Alpha of Mandai Ridge breathed in once, long and quiet, and moved on.Number five. Number six.My heart beat so loud I was sure the whole hall could hear it.~Two hours earlier, my sister had knelt on my bedroom floor and begged.“Just stand in my place, Serena,” Natalie said. “Fifteen minutes. That’s all I’m asking. Then I’ll come back and switch.”I looked up from my sketchbook. My pen left a long black line across the page.“You want me to stand in

Serena’s POV“She locked me in the storeroom,” Natalie sobbed. “I didn’t want to say. I’m so ashamed.”I stood in the middle of the Moon Room with my veil in my hands and the whole pack staring at me, and I couldn’t make my mouth work.“She told me the Alpha wanted a private word in the garden,” said my sister. She had wrapped herself in a shawl somebody had produced from nowhere. Her eyes were red. Her voice trembled just enough. “When I went out, she shut the door on me. I banged for hours. Nobody heard. I only got out when Auntie Lily found me at dawn.”“That’s not true,” I said.“Serena.” My mother’s voice cut like a razor. She had come in behind my father, in her jade qipao, and she looked at me as if I were a stranger who had stepped on her foot. “Don’t make it worse.”“She asked me. Natalie asked me. She said she was meeting someone, and she wanted me to stand for fifteen minutes, and...”“Fifteen minutes.” Elder Wee’s stick struck the floor. “She wanted you to stand in for her

Serena’s POV“Eat first,” said Auntie Salmah. “Draw later.”“I’m not hungry, Auntie.”“Then you’ll be hungry after the first bite. Eat.”I ate. The kaya toast was warm and buttery, with a thick sweet layer of coconut jam that melted into the bread, and the soft-boiled eggs came in a saucer with a splash of dark soy and a shake of white pepper. It was just how my grandmother used to make it, in a kitchen I hadn’t seen in ten years.The flat was on the twelfth floor of a block in Woodlands. Three rooms and a tiny balcony. A framed photograph of Mecca above the television. A shrine of plants at the window, ferns and chilli and one stubborn orchid. Below us, the void deck buzzed with old men playing chess and aunties bargaining for fish.I’d been there four days.“You’re too thin,” said Auntie Salmah, refilling my cup of teh tarik. She is sixty and small and round and wears a floral headscarf and terrifying reading glasses. “You’ve got a face like a pencil. Aisyah says you don’t sleep.”“

Serena’s POV“You came,” said Natalie. “I really didn’t think you would.”I opened my eyes.Cold. Damp. A smell of rust and wet stone. A rough rope around my wrists, another around my ankles, and my back pressed against the cold metal of a chair bolted to the floor. A single bulb hung from a wire above me, swinging in a draught.The last thing I remembered was rain and a black car park and my sister opening her arms.She’d hugged me. She had smelled of jasmine. She’d whispered, “I’m so sorry,” in my ear, and I had believed her, right up until the hands closed on my arms from behind and a cloth pressed over my mouth.Now she stood in front of me in a wet raincoat, hugging herself, her face white and small and streaked with mascara.“Where are we?” I whispered.“An old quarry. Off Upper Bukit Timah. Nobody’s used it in twenty years.” Her voice wobbled. “They keep the office. There’s a generator.”“Nat.”“I know.”“You said you wanted to make it right.”“I know what I said.”“You lied.”