That hazy moment between sleep and wake.
Basking under the spray of water in the shower.
And the very first bite of each meal.
Rich, hearty flavour burst on my tongue. Tender beef melting between my teeth. Stew just like Mama used to make.
“Fuck!”
My shoulders slumped; it never took long for the fantasy to die, and I found myself sitting on a cold metal chair in the prison cafeteria, surrounded by a dozen rowdy, grouchy packs of half-feral alphas.
My eyes refocused on the bowl in front of me, full of watered-down broth and chewy beef chunks. The meal was bland as hell, and no decadent taste lingered in my mouth.
Reality? Yeah, it sucked.
I dropped my spoon into the stew with a splash and looked up at Karma. My packmate shoved his bowl across the table, and broth sloshed up over the side.
“Those kitchenpricks.” He flipped the bird at the alpha working behind the cafeteria counter a few tables away from us.
He grinned and shrugged back, throwing up his hands in the universal gesture for‘I dunno man, it wasn’t me.’
“Salt again?” I asked.
Karma growled, glaring at the offending soup bowl. “When I find out who ordered this, I’m beating them to a pulp in the cages.”
Hopefully we never found out, because it was probably someone powerful. Anarchy politics were convoluted and in constant flux, but not everyone could tell the cafeteria packs what to do. Definitely no one that Karma would get away with beating up in one of the entertainment matches he so frequently took part in.
With any luck, this was the end of his punishment; he’d suffered a week of over-salted meals already.
Sin chuckled, taking a bite of the protein bar he’d grabbed from the pantry. “Maybe if you were better at not getting on everyone’s nerves.”
Karma’s eyes narrowed, and he almost rose to the bait.
I slammed my hand down on the table to grab his attention instead. The sound was lost in the chaos of feuding packs in the large, echoing room with stone walls, but it shuddered the metal table enough that he shot me a scowl.
Tilting my head toward Sin, I raised an eyebrow at Karma. “You going with him tonight?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. But I’ll get a fight in before his show.”
He likely needed it.
Vandle, our fourth packmate, had hit a full-blown rut. He was fully feral and had never spoken a word to any of us, but it was easy to block him out in the bond when he was closer tosanity. Now, his side of the bond battered all of us, demanding violence.
Karma didn’t have a hope of shutting Vandle out—not with his own instability. He was the closest of us to going feral too, and now was the worst possible time.
I tried really hard not to linger on that. Or the fact that we needed a miracle fairy to float down here and sprinkle us with magical ‘alpha-stabilizing dust’ if we were going to make it through our upcoming appeal.
Karma was stable six days out of seven, but he went through major feral cycles. Vandle on the other hand—well, we’d do our best, but anything we tried seemed like the equivalent of putting a tuxedo on a rabid raccoon.Sometimespacks got out with just one feral alpha—but two? That would be too much of a threat to society.
That was the point of this place. The Vaults were a massive prison for the most feral alphas. But those who asked to come down to Anarchy—the floor of utter lawlessness?
I think they hoped the more ‘natural’ environment might help us rebalance. It was the only chance we had of getting out.
I’d been lucky; I’d been stable since the pack bond was formed. Karma, on the other hand, we don’t know why he was unstable in the first place. He was fighting almost every day to try and balance out his hormones, and I was getting worried about his health. But between him and Vandle…
I rubbed my face aggressively as I failed at the task: don’t think about it too hard.
“I’ll keep an eye on Vandle tonight then,” I said. It shouldn’t be long until his rut was over.