Page 3 of Traitor Wolf (Bonded by Fate Duet #1)

Chapter Two

T he second I walked into my house, one of my middle sisters rushed at me, nostrils flaring. “I smell sweet bread.”

I gave her a nervous laugh, pinching my shirt closed to cover the mark, trying to hide what I’d just been through as I dumped the bread, pastries, and cookies out onto the small dinner table.

What happened next was sad and comical at the same time.

My eleven siblings launched themselves at the table like a herd of feral cats, claiming the best pieces of bread for themselves.

Tyrus looked at me wide-eyed. “Do we have to ration it?”

I shook my head. “Fill your bellies.”

Because I couldn’t bear to tell them to only take a bite. Cheers and whoops rang throughout the house, and they began to gorge on the food.

Next, I peered across the room at my mother, who had tears in her eyes.

Was she happy or sad? I didn’t know anymore.

Ever since my father died, she’d seemed to be barely hanging on.

He was her soulmate, her other half. Even in hard times, which were plentiful here in the Dregs, this house was always filled with laughter and love.

My father was always playing pranks on the little children or making fun of himself to get my mother to smile.

Now that he was gone, my mother hadn’t smiled much.

Especially since he took his eight silvers a week salary with him when he died.

I was doing my best to pick up the slack, but I knew it wasn’t enough. My mother looked skinnier every week.

“You miss him?” I asked her.

She just nodded.

I pulled out a wrapped meat pastry, the nicest one that I was careful not to smoosh, and handed it to my mother.

She glanced at it as if it were a snake. “Did you steal these?”

“No. I swear on the Creator.” I held my hand over my heart.

She frowned, took the pastry, and nibbled a small corner before handing it back .

“No, it’s yours. I’ve had one, and there is enough for everyone.”

She seemed surprised at that. It made me realize how bad things had gotten around here.

She eyed the children behind me, all eating their fill and talking about how good everything tasted and wondering if I’d robbed a catering cart.

“Mom, there’s enough. Eat,” I commanded more forcefully than I usually spoke to her. It was late, nearly ten p.m., and way past the littles' bedtime, but who knew when we’d have this kind of luxury again.

My mother took another bite, and another, and I watched as she closed her eyes and savored the flavor. She wasn’t asking where I got them; I think she knew. She’d heard me talking about Fiona trash diving in the Elite city before.

I stroked my finger over the mark on my chest, just underneath my shirt, and chewed my lip. I was unsure how to even explain to her what had just happened and what I was going to do about it.

“Mom… I have to talk to you about something that happened tonight,” I finally managed.

She’d finished her pastry, and a frown pulled at her thin lips.

My mother seemed to sense that this was private, so she stepped into one of our shared bedrooms where three sets of bunk beds took up most of the space. After I shut the door, I stood in front of her, heart pounding in my chest.

“What is it?” she asked.

How did I even begin? Did I show her the mark? The letter? Or just start telling her what happened. I was silent too long, and she began to panic, eyes going wide.

“What is it? Did you get caught going to the Elite city? Are you heading to the mines? Just tell me, Brynn. I can’t take the suspense.”

“I got initiated into the Arcane Trials!” I blurted out.

My mother was silent for a beat, and then she laughed, and it lightened the entire room. Her genuine laugh was airy and musical and carefree. She hadn’t laughed like that since my father was alive. It would make me happy under different circumstances.

“Oh, Brynn, I missed your father’s sense of humor. Thank you for that.” She wiped a tear that had leaked from the corner of her eye, still grinning.

She wasn’t going to believe me. It was too outlandish. I had to prove it to her.

Peeling my shirt open, I bared my mark.

She hissed, stumbling backward.

“Wipe that off before the Watchers see you! Impersonating an Elite is punishable by death!”

“Mom, it’s real. The House of Draven heir initiated me, and it felt like a thousand lightning bolts ran through my body.”

“You spoke to the House of Draven heir!” she screamed, and my brothers and sisters outside the room quieted.

“Shhh,” I scolded her. The walls of our home were thin. My father built it with scrap metal and wood over a decade ago. I didn’t want our neighbors to hear this conversation.

My mother wrung her hands, eyeing the mark again on my chest, and shook her head. “Why would a Draven heir sponsor you for the Arcane Trials? A laugh? A bet?”

I hadn’t thought of that. Considering he’d been on his deathbed, I didn’t think so. I didn’t want to tell her about his death. She’d surely faint.

“He said something when he marked me, Mother, something unforgivable. Treasonous.”

My mother’s lips quivered as she leaned in. “What?”

I let my hands fall away from her. “He said, Magic for all. Equality ,” I whispered.

My mother’s sharp intake of breath gave me chills.

Her fingers came up to clamp around my mouth. “Talk of equality is punishable by death,” she hissed. Our house had only a two-foot gap between the next one and the next. There wasn’t much privacy out in the Dregs.

I nodded. “I know.”

We were quiet for a moment… she stared at my chest while I handed her the letter. With a sigh, she read it.

“This looks real. Creator help me, it all looks real.” She glanced at my mark again.

“It is real, Mom,” I told her.

She shook her head. “Initiations to the trial go for thousands of silvers on the black market. Why would he waste his on a magicless?”

“Waste it!” I snapped.

My mom scoffed. “Well, you’re not going.”

I stayed silent.

“You are not going,” my mother said again firmly, and for the first time in two years, I saw some of her spunk back.

I frowned. “I am going. I have the mark. I have the letter.”

I hadn’t really decided if I wanted to go until this very moment. Until my mother told me I couldn’t.

Her mouth set into a thin line as she glanced at my chest another time, “You’re barely eighteen! You have no magic, and you’ve never attended an Elite school in your life. You don’t have a weapon, nor have you ever been trained to fight…”

My fists balled, lip quivering as tears lined my eyes.

“You think I’m not good enough!” I screamed.

She shrank back, rubbing her temples. “No, I meant you weren’t raised for that life. I won’t send my daughter to die for the Elite’s entertainment.”

“I wasn’t raised for that life? And whose fault is that!” I spat at her, the tears now flowing freely.

“Not mine!” she shouted back. I was pretty sure the neighbors could hear us at this point, and I didn’t care.

“Exactly, Mom. We have no choice. We are born into this life, given a label, and forced to work for next to nothing. We go to bed with empty bellies, and we can’t even dream of full ones because we know it will never happen. Well, I have a choice now. I’m going!”

She shook her head. “Brynn, you don’t understand them. This is some mean joke. They will ridicule you, and then they will kill you.”

“I have the mark and the letter. I’m an initiate.

I have a sponsor.” Even though he was currently dead.

“And I’ll bond a wolfkin who will protect me.

” That was the entire reason the Elites bonded wolfkin before the trial, for protection as they moved through the different obstacles.

I was convincing myself more than her at this point.

She sighed and walked over to the corner of the room, grabbing a broken piece of mirror.

She buffed the mirror with her dirty shirt tail.

“Look,” she told me.

I grabbed the slice of mirror and looked.

Tears swam in my green eyes. I had black ash caked in my hairline, in the crease around my nose, and in my ears.

I had a small scar on my chin from when I was a child.

My normally silver hair was a grayish black, covered in soot.

It was obvious who I was: a Dreg rat, a magicless, untouchable.

“I’m just trying to protect you,” my mother whimpered.

I nodded, handing her back the mirror shard. “I understand that, Mom, but I’m not worried about them hurling insults at me. Think about what is being offered here. If I win the trial, our entire bloodline gets magic and becomes Elite overnight,” I whispered.

My mother gasped, dropping the mirror. It shattered into a dozen pieces.

I didn’t think she’d put it together until that very moment. The opportunity to raise up her, my two aunts, my uncle, and all of their children. Forty of us in all. My entire bloodline would be given magic. That’s how it worked.

“Honey, winning the trials with no magic … I love you, I think you are so smart and beautiful… but do you really think it’s possible?”

No . I didn’t. I was pretty sure I’d die within the first hour.

Probably even before that, when I bonded the wolfkin.

They said it was a painful and powerful process, and that it alone might kill me, but I wasn’t going to waste this opportunity.

Because there was a small chance that if I bonded a powerful wolfkin and survived it, I might not need magic.

He would protect me until I could win the trials and get the magic.

Then I’d become an Elite. I’d become untouchable in a different way.

“I have to try. Father would tell me to do it,” I said.

“He’d never want you to be hurt,” she challenged.

I nodded. “But he’d tell me to follow my heart, and my heart says to do this,” I countered.

I saw the moment she relented. Her eyes cast downward, and she just nodded once.

“If you have decided, then May the Creator bless your way.”

I didn’t sleep a single minute that night.