Episode Forty The Decision

M irron

"We need to get our mate south before the snow flies," I say, after giving it some thought. "When we return, we'll meet again. I'll hear your report and we'll decide."

"I've seen your kind," my Little Bird says as she slides onto my lap and cups my cheek with her palm.

Her face squeezes in pain and tears fall from her eyes.

"I was so young. Maybe my father didn't know I was paying attention. It's never talked about. I'm not sure most of the people Up Above even know about it. I must have pushed it out of my mind until just now, when Azael talked about the abductions."

My little mate has all of our attention, but it takes her a moment to subdue her emotions so she can speak.

"I saw a male like you, Mirron, with a thick metal collar around his neck when my father went below the bottom floor at the direction of the Senator. I don't know why he took me, but there was a minotaur who was hauling heavy boxes on his back. A human was whipping him, Mirron. Now that I'm allowing myself to remember, it was awful."

I freeze, unable to do more than blink as my mind absorbs this piece of information. I can't picture the Up Above as she described it, but I can visualize a male like me in a collar and chain being whipped. My mouth runs dry as a metallic taste fills my mouth. For the second time in my life, I want to kill a sentient being. The first were the three males that came for my Little Bird. Now I want to kill them all.

"And… there were monks, Azael," Alliana says. "I realize it now. Some of the women in the back of the tailor shop my mother used to visit for my father were monks who'd had their hair removed," she closes her eyes for a moment, then adds, "just like me," as she glances to the V at the top of her thighs.

Deklan asked her about it once. She said the hair had been lasered off. Now that I've been lasered, I can't imagine how much that must have hurt.

"They were kept in the back in a tiny room and were sewing. I wasn't supposed to have seen them, but I was looking for the potty. When I asked, my mother curtly told me they loved to sit in tiny rooms and sew, and to never mention them again."

Azael closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, the muscle in his jaw leaping in anger.

I set my Little Bird on her feet, stand, and say, "My pack and I need to talk."

The four of us step aside, but the conversation I thought would take a long time is over in a minute when all three of my courageous mates agree we need to stay here for the winter and work with the monks.

"I'll just make a thicker coat," Alliana says with a determined shrug. "A little cold weather won't kill me."

I don't argue, but she's lived Up Above all her life. She has no idea how cold it will be.

"Dek and I will kill more cows, dry more beef, dig the rest of that field of carrots, potatoes, and onions from where they still grow from long ago in that field to the west," Luka says. Then, his voice quiet and racked with pain, he says, "It makes me wonder what happened to my mother."

"Aye," Dek says.

"I'm telling Azael we're in," I say. "We'll see where this leads. If at any time I feel the cost is too high, I'm taking us south. I worked too hard to find this pack. It's too precious to lose."

But now that I know our people are Up Above being held as slaves, I can't imagine letting them rot and die up there. And The Works? This is the first I've heard of it. How can I live my happy life with my new pack when others are in such miserable conditions?