Read Wolf Captured for Free Online Page A

of sawdust in its wake.
    Behind her, Derian cheered under his breath.
    “Now,” Firekeeper said, “you keep working it loose. I go see what I do for Blind Seer.”
    “Firekeeper, do you mean to try and escape?”
    Derian did not sound upset. He was only doing as humans always did, confirming what common sense should have told him.
    “We must,” Firekeeper replied. “I think we must try first time they come to look at us after we are free of chains and cages. This food time they not bring bows. They not lock door. Food time will be our time.”
    But perhaps I will not eat, she thought. I do not think eating will make me strong. I do not like how my gut feels.
    “But someone may rescue us,” Derian said.
    She could tell from the man’s tone that he didn’t believe this was likely, but felt he must make the prudent suggestion, so she only grunted in response.
    Firekeeper knelt alongside Blind Seer’s cage now, testing the bars, seeking out the loosest ones. With the iron bar as a tool, breaking away the wood should prove easier. The ship itself made so many noises—timbers popping and creaking, sails snapping—that as long as she didn’t pound too loudly or too rhythmically, her working should pass undetected.
    The wolf-woman decided that the best place for Blind Seer to emerge from his cage would be the open side away from her cage. The backs of both cages were bolted to the side of the ship. If she concentrated her efforts on the side with the door the sailors might see evidence of the damage she had done. Besides, the alley between their cages was wide enough to separate them, but not so wide that the wolf could maneuver easily. Straw bedding could be shoved over the base of the cage bars in an emergency, and so hide what she had done.
    Firekeeper got to work before resuming her conversation with Derian.
    “Derian, no one come looking for us. No one worry we is gone for many moons turning.” She took a deep breath. “Roanne is dead. The meat they bring Blind Seer is her.”
    Derian made a sound somewhere between a choke and a sob.
    “No,” he said in a voice full of pain, but Firekeeper knew he wasn’t accusing her of lying, only trying to deny for a few minutes longer.
    “Yes,” she said, crossing to him, putting her hands on his bent shoulders. “Blind Seer knows and tells me.”
    Had she been human, she would have made up some comforting lie about the wolf being sorry, but she knew Derian wouldn’t believe her. She settled for letting him hear her own sorrow and anger, hoping that would be enough. Beneath her hands she felt Derian shaking, not only with tears, she thought, but with rage.
    “Put anger-strength into the bolt,” she said, “and we will be free.”
    She left to her own task before Derian could reply, knowing he would not want her to see his tears, and knowing as certainly as she now heard rain falling on the exposed upper side of the deck that he was weeping.
     
     
     
    DERIAN SHOVED THE BUTTER knife into the wood, gouging out a chunk and exposing a bit more of the bolt’s base. He blinked back tears. Somehow, he didn’t think Firekeeper would think the less of him for crying, but she was being so strong in the face of their shared adversity that he didn’t want to seem less.
    He grasped the bolt and felt it turn, took a new hold and made slightly more progress. A third attempt did nothing, and he returned to hacking away with the butter knife. Tears blurred what vision was permitted by the dim light that seeped through the decking, so he stopped, forcing himself to face his grief.
    Roanne had been among his first really good purchases. He’d spotted her potential when she was a newly weaned foal, hardly more than long legs made to seem longer by the snow white stockings that reached to just below her knees. Her dam was unremarkable, and her sire could have been any of several studs kept by the sloppy breeder, but Derian had known Roanne was special. He’d purchased her from