Lilly Lakin's Arc

Chapter 3 of 4

The attic door had no handle on Lilly's side. She had checked it three times. Below her, the packhouse groaned with the sounds of sleeping wolves. Edward had dragged her back and locked her here to wait for his judgment. She sat under the small window and knew the truth. Every hour she stayed, he decided her fate. She had struck the alpha. A servant did not do that and stay a servant. She had to get out before morning. She stood and studied the room. One window, too high and too small for a body. A rope of old blankets would not fit through it. The door was thick oak, barred from the hall. She pressed her ear to the wood and heard nothing. Then she looked up. The roof met the walls in rough beams. Between two of them, a gap of gray night showed where the shingles had rotted loose. Lilly dragged the bed frame under the gap. She climbed onto it and reached. Her fingers found the loose shingle and pulled. It cracked and came free in her hand. She worked the next one, then the next. Cold air poured in. She scraped her knuckles raw on the nails. She did not stop. The hole grew until she could see the ridge of the roof and the yard below. A board snapped under her weight. The sound cracked through the quiet house. Downstairs, a voice barked. Feet hit the floor. Lilly pulled herself up through the hole and out onto the shingles. The roof pitched steep beneath her. She slid, caught a beam-end carved like a horn, and stopped herself at the edge. Below her, the front door swung open. Lamplight spilled across the stones. Edward stepped out, looking left and right, not up. His shoulders were huge in the dark. "She can't have gone far," he said. "She can't shift." Lilly held her breath. The drop was two stories. A woodpile sat below the eave. She let go and dropped. She hit the logs, rolled off them, and landed hard on the packed dirt. Pain shot up her ankle. She swallowed the cry and ran, low and fast, toward the tree line. A shout went up behind her. Then a howl. She did not turn to look. She ran on her hurt ankle into the dark, and this time no hand caught her chin, no arm dragged her back. The packhouse fell away behind the pines. She was out. But the howls did not fade. They spread and multiplied. The whole pack was awake now, and they had her scent. She had escaped the attic and traded one wall for a hundred hunters. Ahead lay the river she had to reach, the current she had to follow north. She limped toward the sound of water and did not stop running.