Page 3 of Wolf Trial

“I’m not killing you, you divvy,” she said bluntly. “I’m selling you. Completely different thing. And you’ve always wanted to go into higher education; well, now’s your chance.”

I doubted she’d sold me to fucking Cambridge so I could fulfil a calling to become a rower in the fucking Boat Race. I would have said exactly that, but my vision began to flicker, dark spots crowding into my vision, and suddenly my head was on the tablecloth. I could still smell the sweet, spicy moussaka. The perfect camouflage for drugs, I realised.

I should have run the second I saw her Stepford Wife routine in the kitchen.

“You’ll be fine,” she repeated before I succumbed to the drug and passed out, fully expecting to never wake up.

CHAPTER 2

SADIE

Iwas ripped into consciousness with a violent jerk, and I became suddenly sure that I’d have rather been knifed and thrown in the ocean as I saw four wooden walls threateningly close on all sides. A box. I was in a box, and judging by the rocking and jerking, I was being taken somewhere. Someone had stuffed me in the back of their car, then. Or—god, this was a worse thought—was I in a white van? I’d always been suspicious of white vans. Watch enough crime shows and you knew it was the serial killer vehicle of choice.

Clearly, we’d reached our destination because the box only shook a few more times before it came to a grinding halt. That… didn’t sound like a car. Neither did the other noises that came when my box stilled; creaking noises like the hinges of a door, groans of other people, shouts that had the ring of swearwords but were in no language I’d heard.

Not a wooden box, I realised when a hatch swung down at the front of the space I was crammed into. A cart. A literal cart, with four massive wheels, wooden planks that looked like they’d seen better days, and axels that creaked when I shifted my weight.

I couldn’t see the face of the prick who’d opened my cart—my prison cart?—because it was hidden within the depths of a hooded cloak. That should have been my first clue that I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, Toto. The cloak, and the cart. Not a white van. Not a knock-off North Face jacket.

“Out,” the cloaked man barked, and I debated snapping, arguing, but I had a better chance of getting away from whatever the fuck this was if I was outside the wooden box.

My legs protested when I extended them, shocks of pain moving through my knees, my ankles. I’d been in that thing a while, then. Gran’s drugs weren’t the cheap shit, clearly.

I was going to kill her. That moved right to the top of my to-do list, right under get the fuck out of here, and find somewhere to live—because no way was I going back to that flat.

The hooded man—my jailor?—turned away from me, and another prison wagon swung open.

“Jesus,” I breathed, cold dousing my blood when I saw there were five of them. I wasn’t the only one abducted. Had the other four been drugged by their grandparents and sold?

Sold to who, though? And for what? Human trafficking was rife, but something told me this place with its wooden carts and robed men wouldn’t have nail bars or Deliveroo drivers.

No, there was a far simpler explanation, I decided as a small, blonde woman fell from the prison cart next to mine, her green eyes huge and terrified. She looked like a doll. Not a Barbie doll, more like a Baby Annabelle that had been left outside in the rain after a brutal play session by cruel kids. Her dress might have once been blue but now it was grey and ripped at the shoulder. Her hair was lank and dirty blonde, emphasis on the dirty, her golden skin equally grimy.

It put my own treatment into perspective. Sure, Gran’s betrayal was a spiked ball in my chest, gouging all my soft vulnerable parts until I wanted to drop to my knees and sob, but my clothes weren’t ripped. I was more or less clean. I hadn’t obviously survived an assault.

“Are you okay?” I whispered across the space between prison carts, my attention darting from the thin-boned woman to the robed motherfucker who brought us here.

The woman swallowed, her throat moving up and down, and nodded. She didn’t look at me, though; her wide green eyes were fixed on a building in front of us. We’d been dumped in the courtyard of it, I realised. I hadn’t paid too much attention to our surroundings—I’d been a little preoccupied with the prison carts. But now I lifted my stare from the wagons, I saw a dark navy sky and a massive, hulking building with sharp towers, bay windows, and pointed roofs silhouetted by … uh. Three moons.

Three moons.

“You’re seeing this, too, right?” I asked the blonde woman. “There are three moons?”

“No talking,” the hooded prick barked.

My hand automatically curled to expose my middle finger, but I decided to be smart and kept it at my side instead of shoving it in his face.

I had to be seeing things, right? Golden light shone from within the mullioned windows of the grand building; maybe it was the lights’ reflections that made it look like there were three glowing orbs in the sky, each in different stages. One full, two crescent moons. Yeah, that’s what it was—reflections.

Movement drew my eye, and I glanced to my side in time to see the blonde woman hold up her palm, fingers splayed, and two fingers of her other hand.

“Seven?” I whispered. “Seven what?” Something dawned, and a nervous laugh bubbled up. “Seven moons?”

She nodded, glass-green eyes shining in the light. In the light of seven fucking moons.

Okay. So there were a few extra glowing things in the sky—that was nothing, I was still fine. Right? So what if I’d been thinking we’d been trafficked for some zany, rich fuck who liked to live out his Ren Faire fantasies with the cloak, cart, abduction situation. Seven moons.

What if… the prison cart brought me somewhere a little more exotic than the Maldives? I had a very active imagination, and I’d already been thinking body snatchers when I saw Gran cooking, so it was a short hop to I’ve been abducted by aliens.