Chapitre 4: Kate - The Issue With Defiance

Jack was hiding her.

It took me two weeks to realize that but now that I had, I couldn’t help but laugh. I had missed all the clues.

The day after my arrival, the librarian – Mrs Kim, came to take me on a tour of the library. It was a haunted place. Tall, thick walls made of boulders, high windows, a cozy yet dark fire place and absolutely grey. I loved the color grey but it gave the library a really dark look and I thought it was a perfect place to go to if one wanted to be depressed in peace. At this point in my life, it was probably right for her. The old books inside the library were depressing as well, maybe that was the theme of this whole building. And the most obvious fact was this, no one visited this place.

Mrs Kim was a middle aged woman, lively, always had something to say and she was welcoming enough. As her assistant. I was to be in charge of everything Mrs Kim did not want to do, and that included cleaning the books, the library itself, arranging the books and on the rare occasions that someone came here, I would accommodate them and make sure that their library experience was not as depressing as theme was.

That was the endless days begun. I would wake up, bath and get dressed, make a simple breakfast thanks to the ingredients left in the kitchen for me then I would go to the library. After taking the required fifty steps to get to the library’s back door I would start with cleaning a section she could, take a break during lunch time, then arrange books in one section of the library in the afternoon.

Mrs Kim never came back. No one came to read. No sound from a living creature was heard apart from my own. I had been assigned to a building that had zero contact with the rest of the pack.

The fact that it had taken two weeks to discover this made me feel like an idiot. The hormones in my body were raging and I had days when would would wake up and feel like the most pathetic person in existence but never had I woken up feeling angry. In fact, I could not remember the last time I had been this angry. If they wanted to keep me prisoner they should simply have said so and she would not have complained. Tricking me into thinking that I had been trusted to work for the betterment of my life drove home the fact that I had been reduced to nothing. The only thing she could feel was anger. Anger at Jack for acting like a considerate person, angry at Hayden for acting like a helpful and angry at the Alpha for blatantly lying to her. She needed and outlet.

I had grown up in two places – one I referred to as heaven and the other as hell – yet I only had vague memories of her heaven. I had been taken from that place when I was very young. However, I had managed to run away from hell. That place was brutal. It was a perfect reflection of how packs should be, how pack life should be run, still it devoured the weak. I remembered the time I was made to undergo physical training – the harshness of the instructor assigned to them and how all he ever seemed to want from them was rage. Any other emotion was seen as weakness. I had been given a lot of reasons to be angry so for a while, that was all I ever felt until one day I decided I did not want to be or to feel anything that the instructor wanted me to feel. If he wanted my anger I would give him calmness. If he wanted my sadness I would give him rainbow smiles.

So that was what I did.

Over time the instructor realised that my defiance would last a very long time so he traded me with a girl from the head maid’s quarters and that was where I stayed until I got pregnant.

And now I was here feeling so much anger. I had thought I was over this emotion.

I had been told to stay and work here and apart from his first name, I really knew nothing about jack. I wondered what defying him meant. Would I be told to leave? Would he punish me publicly, humiliate me perhaps. No one took defiance or disobedience lightly.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I did not realise that someone was trying to get her attention. I had my first customer.

I was so shocked that all I could do was watch hmy customer. She was beautiful, she looked like a princess. I had been so convinced that no one would ever visit that I never once wondered how I would treat a customer, I had no idea what to do. A greeting was mandatory, but what kind?

‘Welcome to the library, how can I help you?’ I asked

‘I came to…’ she paused as if not sure how to tell me the next part, ‘Jack sent me.’

I once overheard a conversation between mated women and one of them had said that a no woman‘s pride could remain intact if another took her man, whether she wanted him or not. I did not want Jack to fulfil his duty to me as a mate but standing in front of this beautiful customer and hearing that she had been sent by him flipped off a switch inside me. She must have noticed the change in me since she rush to explain.

‘Don’t get any ideas,’ she said ‘A few of us are going camping and we will be back tomorrow evening. Since we might leave the pack territory he thought you would feel restless when he crosses the bolder, especially because you are pregnant.’

I believed her. It was a normal thing for mates to feel restless when the other is away, it acted like a six’s sense to wolves. That six’s sense was what had helped me find Jack in the first place. When I had started my journey and gone west, I could feel that I was getting further away from something so I changed directions and headed east. After that, I could feel that I was getting closer to him with every pack territory that I crossed. The same feeling led me to the north-eastern bolder of this pack, and that’s where I found him sitting in a car having a conversation with Hayden. Now that I thought about it, it had seemed like a serious conversation. It had to have been serious, they had driven all the way to the bolder to have a private conversation. I wonder what they had been talking about.

The lady in front of me was telling me that jack was about to leave the pack territory. That I would feel restless when that happened. I believed her but I wondered why Jack had sent her, he could have sent Hayden to deliver the news to me. Or he could have come to tell me.

‘He could have sent someone else to deliver that news.’ I said. My voice betrayed me, it sounded sad.

‘Oh, I volunteered to come’ she replied. ‘I am his little sister yet he refused to formally introduce me to you, imagine that!’

I will always remember this encounter with her because it was the first step I took towards freedom – I like to believe that – and it was the first time I had genuinely smiled at someone. My first real smile. Suddenly the insecure thoughts I had seemed childish. His sister had come to see me. To me, that seemed like a breakthrough.

‘You totally thought I was his mistress.’ She said that and we both laughed because it was true. She introduced herself as Cathy. She had a twin sister named Carol. They were fraternal twins. Cathy had said they were going camping but that was when I noticed – she was in a white floral dress, sandals and she had a big black bow in her hair. She was dressed for a picnic not camping.

‘Does camping stand for a secret mission you are going on?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?

‘Your dress code.’ I replied and she laughed.

‘This is my way of fighting back.’ She replied. ‘My version of defiance. I did not want to go camping but Jack insisted. He even threatened to not give me my monthly allowance if I decided to stay. I have been saving to buy an oven so I could not risk it.’

That admission made me think that jack was probably a tyrant, a rich tyrant that lorded money over his family. I did not know how to take that bit of information. However Cathy’s defiance made me remember my own. If tyrant Jack could take Cathy’s little defiance then maybe he could take mine as well. That is why after Cathy left, I set out to work.

During my first week working at the library I had discovered a store room that had a few interesting thing – a tiny mobile blackboard, comfy brown couches, a black carpet. From the looks of it, the library once had a section for readers that loved a cup of coffee while seating comfortably. I had thought that the fireplace was a little out of place in this depressing library, but after I had seen the items in the store room it made sense. My plan was simple, I would bring back the reading by the fire place. And I would reintroduce the coffee. This place was deserted but that could have been because everyone assumed it had been closed down. There are always book lovers in a community, always. I would find them and sell coffee, win-win.

It took hours to move the furniture, strategically position them around the room and then to clean them. Luckily I had experience, I had been a maid for the better part of my life. I knew what I was doing. Every artist inspects his work after completion, I was so proud of my work that I considered it a perfect work of art. So I took a few steps back to inspect it and then the doorbell jingled. I had my second customer. I had gone from zero customers in two weeks to two customers in one day. Happy day

I turned around and there I saw Cathy. Her neck was wounded. It looked like something had decided to feast on her neck, I could see teeth marks. Blood must have flowed freely from that wound because her beautiful dress was stained with blood. Tiny drops must have spluttered on the sandals. Her neatly done hair was loose, the bow halfway falling out. Yet her face looked calm. Relieved. And when my eyes met hers I could feel that she was happy. Behind this mess was my mate, Jack.

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