Page 19 of Broken Kingdom

I don’t have time for either. The rift with my brother is going to take time and sustained effort on both our parts to repair. But if I make it out of here alive, we’ll repair it. I have no doubt about that. Alex is as much a part of me as my skin and bones and the crooked pinkie finger he broke when we were seven.

He shoved me to the ground and covered my body with his just as a pipe bomb went off outside our old home. He caught so much shrapnel that his back is still scarred. I got away with a crooked pinkie finger.

Because he’s a hero. A flawed hero, but aren’t we all?

There are no perfect people, no perfect places, no perfect situations.

That’s why I could still love Lost Moon and hate how easily ugly attitudes were allowed to flourish at the same time. Especially when the good so vastly outweighed the bad. I loved my friends and my classes and my ballet club. I loved parties on the quad and late-night study sessions at the café, where the baristas gave out tiny cups of free espresso beans at ten p.m., and swims in my secret cave of wonders.

And I hated Beck and his Variant-hating asshole friends.

As I leave the walkie-talkie at the base of the ladder and scurry up one side to scout the situation up above, I wonder what kind of wolves live here.

Are they all like Beck? Full of hatred for anything different than themselves? Or are they like so many of the New Lupine Brotherhood, going along with the path of least resistance, hoping things will get better without them having to stick their necks out?

But that’s the thing about “better”—it doesn’t happen on its own. It’s something we have to do our part to make happen every day. Better is an ongoing act of energy and sacrifice and action. Better happens because we choose to do the kind thing, even when it isn’t easy or in our own best interest.

So, twenty minutes later, once I’ve skittered through a truly miserable-looking dungeon, filled with glassy-eyed, suffering, starving people, and emerged into the entryway of an impressive mansion just in time to see Juliet whisked away to a car waiting out front, I don’t immediately head back to the sewer.

I sneak past what appears to be a small office in one corner of the dungeon, waiting until I’m past the window set into the door before I shift and press myself back into the shadows.

A sharp inhalation from the cells draws my gaze to a middle-aged woman with filthy blond hair and wide blue eyes. I put a finger to my lips, and she nods before moving to the bed in the corner where another woman is sleeping. She bends to whisper in the other woman’s ear, and I turn back to my mark.

Peeking in through the glass, I see a bored-looking man in a khaki uniform watching some French game show I don’t recognize while shoving deeply orange popcorn into his face.

There’s a gun at his hip and several other weapons hanging on the wall to his right, many of which look more like instruments of torture than anything else, but he’s deeply off his guard, this guard. His jaw is slack in between bites, he’s rocked back on the rear legs of his chair, and his legs hang limply toward the floor.

If I move quickly, I’ll have him taken care of before he can swallow that next bite of popcorn, let alone call for help or sound an alarm.

Taking a deep breath and pulling on my ballet training and every bit of stealth my expert tracker of a father taught me as a child, I whip open the door and disarm the man in one smooth motion. He pulls in a breath, but before it can emerge, I bring the side of my hand into his neck with as much force as I can, striking his vagus nerve.

His intended shout emerges as a whimper as his eyes flutter to half-mast. Before he can recover from the stunning sensation, I have my elbow locked around his neck from behind. I squeeze until he stops struggling and then squeeze for another thirty seconds just to be safe.

I don’t want to kill him, but I don’t want him coming to before I figure out how to open the cells doors, either.

Luckily, the locking mechanism is simple, almost primitive. The electrical board below his still warbling television looks like it hasn’t been updated since the 1980s. All the buttons are large and plainly marked. Once my mark is out, I turn the key set into one side of the board to “armed” and hit “open all” and every cell door slides open with a dull clanking sound.

The blond woman is already at the exit to her cell waiting, the arm of an older woman slung around her neck, but she freezes when I hold up a hand.

I narrow my eyes and prick my ears, straining for any sign of movement from the building above. But after a few adrenaline-charged seconds, it becomes clear no one is coming down the stairs.

Which means it’s time to move. Fast. With the condition so many of these people are in, it could take time to get them down into the tunnel.

“This way, everyone,” I whisper. “Quickly and quietly after me. If you need help on the ladder, put a hand on your head and I’ll carry you down one at a time.”

“I can help my mother down,” the blond woman says as I shift the large grate covering the sewer out of the way. “Thank you so much. You’re the answer to a prayer.”

“Quickly,” I say, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Then head north through the water as fast as you can.”

Two teenage girls with glassy eyes go down first, followed by my new friend and her mother. I carry a lovely, frail young man with an infected leg down next and start back up to help the older man with the white beard. But he’s already on his way down, followed by two more middle-aged women so gaunt that it hurts to look at them.

“That’s the last of us,” the final woman wheezes, her pulse leaping in her thin throat from just that much physical exertion. She and her friend move to either side of the man with the infected leg, something in the way they touch making me think they’re all family.

“Okay, good, head that way,” I say, motioning to my left. “I’ll follow up the rear and help anyone who’s having trouble.”

I’m not sure if any of these poor souls will be able to make it the six blocks to the extraction point, but we have to try. One naked woman crawling out of a manhole directly across the street from the Montreal pack’s fortress would attract attention, let alone an entire posse of nude folks, and none of these people have the energy to shift.

I’m not sure I do, either. Not so soon after shifting into my human form.

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