beautiful thieves | ✓

thirty-eight

I'm not much more than a shell for days. My nights are plagued with thoughts of Chelsea and Enoch being tortured, beaten, killed, along with the searing pain in my ribs whenever I move, cry or breathe. I feel sick whenever I eat. I spend hours in burning hot showers. I haven't slept.

I miss Chelsea, her peals of laughter that grow with the more she drinks, her smile that lights up a room, the way she looks down at her baby as if she's paradise embodied in human form. I miss Enoch with his intelligent brain and his jokes that make the tough days move faster and the way he treats every single person with genuine kindness. I don't want it to be all stolen from them. I want them to be safe.

The bright spots are the distractions around me. My brothers are as hectic as ever, making premature jokes about their kidnapping and almost death-experience that has the whole room laughing. Dad has been constantly checking on me, comforting me and has basically been my rock since everyone else I love is yet to make an appearance. Then there's the Winter thieves, who have been nothing but loving and helpful. I've made fast friends with all of them, including Pandora who is the most reserved girl here and Alyx who spends most of their time painting in their art room. They let me sit and watch for two hours one day, and allowing me to sit in that kind of comfortable silence while watching the therapeutic brush-strokes on the canvas meant more to me than Alyx would ever know.

Elodie and Lilith are the girls who wake me up this morning. Lilith is the girl with the dreadlocks and honey eyes while Elodie is the only girl who's my age who has one striking blue eye while the other is deep brown. There's nothing basic about any of the Winter Thieves, each of them so individual and powerful and unique and all with names you'd find in a fairytale story. In fact, it is like living in a fairytale most of the time. Living in a huge cabin mansion, surrounded by miles of woodland with the people here, sometimes I find myself trying to find something that convinces me that I'm not dead and in heaven.

That something comes very quickly every time; heaven wouldn't allow two innocent people to be kidnapped and the subject of all kinds of abuse.

Elodie excitedly unlocking a door to the outside snaps me from my depressing thought. She opens it and runs out, her dress billowing against pale legs as she enters a section of the garden dedicated to the wolves.

Yeah, wolves. A whole field of trees and small, wooden houses for the fourteen wolves they own. I was apprehensive when I first met them a few days ago, but they have been trained by professionals to be as friendly and domesticated as golden labradors. They only attack when they see you as a threat, but will happily play and cuddle if they decide they like you.

Lilith and I walk out together, watching as Elodie starts to rile up the dogs and gets them chasing after sticks in no time. I chuckle fondly as one of them catches one and bounds towards me, dropping the stick at my feet and sniffing at my legs. Lilith and I plop ourselves onto the grass and I immediately have a dog getting comfortable on my lap.

"You got the Alpha female there," Lilith says, stroking the dog's head. "She likes you."

I smile, scratching through the thick, ash grey fur. "What's her name again?"

"Maiya. And her Alpha male is Echo. We're pretty sure she'll be having more puppies soon."

"What do you do with the puppies?"

Lilith shrugs, throwing a few dreadlocks over her shoulder and showing the buzz cut on the left side. "We'd like to keep all of them, but if we did we'd have at least fifty of them by now. We mostly sell them for good money, but not to gross people who will abuse them until they kill them for sport. You'd be surprised how many people all over the world want a pet wolf in their garden."