Inhumane

015

DAMON

Time started to speed up and our days had soon fallen into a routine. It would take weeks for our small strategy team to create an effective attack on the Hunters in the East, so the work week was long and tireless. Working these hours at the Alpha House meant Paige was left at my parents' place most of the time. It didn't seem to bother her much, and to my surprise, my mother absolutely adored her. When Paige left, my mother couldn't help but gush about how sweet and funny Paige was. When I relayed this reaction to Cody he simply raised a brow and looked to Faith, who merely shrugged. Neither one was convinced. 

I didn't know that Paige. And as time passed, I was beginning to think I would never know the Paige that my mother got to see every day. It hurt to think about. She hardly even spoke to me. When I would pick her up, we would walk home together, but we couldn't have been farther apart. She didn't need the cuffs anymore, she walked peacefully by my side. Any attempt I made to converse with her was met with dead silence. Her face grew hard when she left my parents' home and somehow she had learned to conceal her emotions from me internally.

When we got home, I would look at the couch that became my bed with disdain, then I would wander into the kitchen and rummage around until I produced a meal. Meanwhile, Paige would stare silently out the window or meander through the house, misplacing or rearranging things that I had forgotten were there. Sometimes she would just go lay down on my bed and I wouldn't see her till the following morning. Those nights felt long for the both of us, where I could smell the salt leaking from her eyes and feel the sadness and anger that radiated from her skin.

Most of the time though, she was just in silent protest of me. The weeks carried on like this, my mother impressed and excited to see her every day, me wondering what I was still doing wrong and burying myself in work.

"You look beat," Cody mentioned when I walked into the cabin built for meetings and training. It was a massive structure, with two floors and a basement made of concrete where we trained the juveniles. Cody and I had spent many days in that basement.

"The couch is killing me," I responded with a glare. "I've been slowly transitioning to the guest room."

His laugh was loud, "I respect your determination to give her space."

"It's not the easiest thing in the world," I idly rearranged stacks of paper on the long wooden table. "Especially when she only talks to my mother."

"What have they been up to?" Cody questioned with a subtle undertone. He wouldn't admit it bluntly, but he didn't trust her. He probably never would, not with her clan still alive, at least.

"Mom has been training her. Using their wolf forms, teaching her history, showing her how to be a Beta... I'm not sure, but you know my mom. Always busy with something, always knows the right thing to say." The thought of how she was clinging to my mother intrigued me. It made me think that there was something there, triggering the bond between the two of them. I thought about her own mother and briefly recalled Paige mentioning her death. "Including the little ecology lesson that we teach the pups. I tried to explain it to her a few weeks ago, but she's stubborn."

There was a lesson about how wolves are a keystone species, as humans call us. Basically, a species that holds the entire ecosystem in balance. Which meant we had a duty to fulfill in Nature. We used natural history as a way for the pups to build respect for Nature. When they respected Nature, the forest remained healthy, and we could continue to thrive.

"Do you guys talk much?" Cody glanced at me from filing cabinet.

"Hardly ever. She's still cold towards me when she decides to open up, but mostly she just ignores everything. According to mom, she's the biggest chatterbox in the world." I paused my movement. "The thing is, I don't blame her for it... It's just confusing. Yes, I took her away from her home, I took her humanity away too, as she puts it... But worst of all, I stole her choice from her, and that's purely my fault."