by Abby Weeks
Given to the Pack
Abby Weeks
Copyright © 2015 Abby Weeks
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This work is presented by the author.
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abby@type‐writer.net
ISBN 978‐1‐927947‐43‐2
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quote
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Back Matter
*
“ALL ART IS EROTIC.”
Gustav Klimt, 1862‐1918
*
“EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS ABOUT SEX EXCEPT SEX. SEX IS ABOUT POWER.”
Oscar Wilde, 1854‐1900
*
Chapter 1
WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS BEEN THE property of men. It’s a truth written into social customs, old legal doctrines, some would say it’s written into the very laws of nature itself. In the Bible, women are told that their husbands shall rule over them. Fathers give their daughters away on their wedding day. The new owner is the groom. Much of history is based on the practice. In Europe, kings gave their daughters as peace offerings to other nations. Peasants gave their daughters in marriage to landowners as a means of trading their way out of feudal servitude. In other lands, tribes and clans gave their women as sacrifices to their enemies or gifts to their heroes. A beautiful daughter was prized not because of who she was or what she was capable of, but for what she could be bartered for.
The entire marriage ceremony, to this day, is a complicated, ritualized human sacrifice. It is a custom of bondage and ownership. The bride is adorned in the most intricate, delicate and expensive clothing possible. She represents wealth, a high dowry, a prized possession. She is walked down the aisle by her father, the current owner, and delivered, in payment for something, always in payment for something, to her new owner, her groom.
*
Chapter 2
OF COURSE, NONE OF THIS was of very great concern to Aisha as she rested her hand on the neck of the Great Dane that had just been rushed into the veterinary center where she was in training. She could feel the life flowing through him, his muscular neck throbbing with each pulse of his racing heart.
“He’s still breathing,” she said to Sophia, the duty veterinarian.
“It’s no use, Aisha,” Sophia said, taking off her gloves.
“Wait,” Aisha said. “You have to do something.”
Sophia gave Aisha a stern look. She’d grown used to her outbursts over the past two years. Aisha was a good apprentice, perhaps the best she’d ever seen, but if she was ever going to make it as a fully qualified veterinarian, she would have to learn to distance her emotions from the animals that came under her care. Too many of them would die, and Sophia had seen it crush the spirit of many young girls who came to the center for training.
“His ribs are broken,” Sophia said, “one of them’s punctured a lung. There’s nothing we can do.”
Aisha couldn’t accept that. She brought her face down close to the hound’s and looked straight into his deep, brown eyes.
“Shh,” she whispered.
She felt the muscles in the dog relax, she felt the calmness enter him. Aisha didn’t know where dogs went after they died, but she would make that journey a little more peaceful for this dog if she could.
She glanced up at Sophia. Sophia was watching her, shaking her head. Aisha already knew what she wanted to say. She knew she had to learn to distance herself from her patients, but she just didn’t know how she was supposed to do that.
*
Chapter 3
“IT WAS KIND OF YOU to stay with him,” Sophia said when Aisha finally came out of surgery.
An hour had passed. Aisha was exhausted. It always exhausted her to watch an animal die in pain. The only consolation was that they didn’t have to die alone.
“I know what you’re going to say,” Aisha said.
Sophia came over to her and put her arms around her. “I’m not going to say anything, Aisha. You’ve heard it before. I just worry for you.”
Aisha accepted the hug. In the past two years, Sophia had become the closest thing she’d ever known to having a mother.
“I just can’t leave them,” Aisha said. “It’s like they call out to me and ask me to stay.”
*
Chapter 4
THEY SAY LOVE IS KIND. They say it’s patient, it’s warm. It looks after you, protects you, keeps you warm in the winter, keeps you safe in the night, keeps you from feeling alone. If that’s the case, Aisha had never known love. She’d never even come close.
She drove the few miles home along the winding mountain road over the valley. The mist often rose up from the trees at this time of night. It made driving difficult. More than once she’d had to jam on the brakes because of a crossing deer.
She was exhausted from her shift at the clinic. No matter how many times she went through it, death never got easier. As she drove up into the mountains she felt a growing sense of apprehension. She always felt this way on the drive home. No matter what happened during the long shifts at the clinic, no matter how hard she had to work and what tragedies she had to witness, at least she felt safe there. She felt secure. She knew her purpose. And she knew she was valued.
Not so at home.
“How come you’re so late?”
Aisha sighed. Heath had been drinking. She took off her boots and jacket and went inside. The air felt as cold inside the house as outside. He’d let the furnace go out. The entire house was dark, apart from the glow of the TV screen. Empty beer cans were strewn across the table.
“We got a call just as I was going to leave,” she said. “I spent an hour watching a hundred pound Great Dane dying.”
>
“I needed the car,” Heath said. His eyes were on the TV.
“Sorry, I didn’t know.”
“Because you didn’t ask,” he said.
He got up from the couch and switched on the light. The living room was a complete mess. Aisha picked up a half-eaten pack of chips from the floor.
“Do we have anything to eat?” she said.
Heath shrugged. “I’ll get wings at the bar.”
“You’re going to the bar?”
He hated being questioned like that. She knew that. She shouldn’t have said anything.
“Do I need your permission for that?” he said.
“No, of course not. Sorry. I just thought we’d eat together.”
Heath walked past her and started putting on his snow boots. “Maybe you should think about skipping a meal or two,” he said.
Her voice caught in her throat. She suddenly felt like crying. She hated feeling so weak, losing her ability to speak up for herself, but when he attacked her like that, implied she was getting fat, it just took the fight right out of her.
“Okay,” was all she managed to say, and it was so faint he probably didn’t even hear her.
He let the door slam behind him and then he was gone. She watched the lights of the car go down the driveway, then she looked at the blackness of the night. And she shivered.
*
Chapter 5
AISHA WOKE WITH A START. Her phone was ringing.
“Yes?” she said, trying to stall the flood of thoughts rushing through her mind. The first was that Heath had crashed on his way home. God, that road was treacherous.
But Heath was lying next to her, snoring heavily, reeking of beer. She remembered hearing him stumble in some time around midnight.
“Aisha, it’s Lilly.”
Lilly was the receptionist who manned the clinic’s phone line during the night.
“What is it?”
“There’s been an accident. Can you come in?”
“Where’s Sophia?”
“I can’t get a hold of her.”
“I’ll be there in ten,” Aisha said.
She turned and looked at Heath. He hadn’t even stirred. It was still dark out. She looked at the clock. It was almost five in the morning. She pulled her jacket and boots on over her pajamas and rushed out to the car. She breathed a silent thank you when it started on the first try.
*
Chapter 6
LILLY WAS WAITING AT THE clinic anxiously. There was a large man in a plaid shirt and work boots sitting in the waiting room.
“What have we got?” Aisha said, taking charge of the situation.
“A wolf,” the man said. “A gray wolf.”
“A wolf?” Aisha said.
The man nodded. He looked like a woodsman, he knew the area and the forests, and he knew how strange it was to find a gray wolf in Washington State.
“What happened to it?” Aisha said, scrubbing her hands at the sink.
“I hit it with the timber jack. I never saw him.” Aisha could tell the man was shaken up. “I never in my life expected to see a wolf in these parts again.”
Aisha nodded. The wolves had been wiped out from these forests almost a century ago.
“Did you reach Sophia?” she said to Lilly.
Lilly shook her head.
Aisha went through to the operating room. There was a burlap sack on the table and it wasn’t moving. She could see where blood had soaked through the canvas. She approached it cautiously.
“Shh,” she whispered as she reached it.
There was a snarling sound from inside the sack. Aisha knew she shouldn’t be attempting this alone. When she got to the sack, she saw that it wasn’t tied shut. Very slowly, she reached out and put her hand on it. Immediately the wolf within reared back and growled. Aisha resisted the urge to draw back her hand.
“Shh,” she whispered, trying to calm the injured animal, reaching out with her heart as much as she was with her hand.
The animal sensed her. She knew it was reaching out, reading her in a million ways that a human couldn’t even imagine. It was smelling her scent, how much she was sweating, listening to the sound of her breathing, the pulse of her beating heart. She always knew when an animal was assessing her like this. It was an intensely intimate connection. She felt an animal like this knew her better than she even knew herself.
She felt the animal calm a little under her hand. Most vets would call her crazy for approaching a wounded wolf like this, but she’d known it would calm when it got to know her. Animals could read her, she knew they could, and they knew she only wanted to help.
Even still, when she pulled back the sack and revealed the wolf’s face, it snarled viciously. Aisha had never seen such large, sharp canines. They were designed for the sole purpose of tearing flesh from bone and it showed. She withdrew her hand but she knew it was just the brightness of the light and the pain of the wound that was frightening the wolf.
“Shh,” she whispered again. “Let me get a look at this.”
Moving very slowly, she placed her hands on the wolf’s body. Her hands were firm. She had to show the wolf that she knew what she was doing. She started by putting her weight on its shoulder where it wasn’t injured. She pushed the wolf down. Luckily it wasn’t an alpha, in fact, it was a female.
“Poor girl,” she said, looking at the deep gash in the wolf’s flesh. It went from her upper thigh to her stomach, and was three inches deep in places. Aisha shuddered at the thought of the machine that had caused this damage. The wolf had lost a lot of blood. It was a perilous wound but Aisha prayed she could save her.
She immediately set about cleaning the wound. She looked at her watch. Lilly must have reached Sophia by now.
She spoke softly to the wolf to soothe her. The sting of the alcohol was going to set in soon, and if Aisha didn’t maintain a connection, she risked losing her. If the wolf panicked and tried to run, it would cost her her life.
“What are you doing in these parts?” she said. “There are no packs around here. Were you lost? Were you separated from the others? How far have you come?”
She cleaned the wound quickly and deftly. Then she stitched the gash before bandaging it up. It took a good thirty minutes, and Aisha spoke to the wolf the entire time. It was only when she was stroking the wolf’s forehead and trying to get her to fall asleep that Sophia arrived.
*
Chapter 7
AFTER IT WAS DONE, AISHA felt exhausted. She went out to the waiting room where the man was still waiting.
“How is she?” he said.
“I think she’s going to be okay,” Aisha said.
Sophia was in the operating room, examining Aisha’s work. The wolf was asleep and calm.
“I can’t believe I hurt her,” the man said. He was visibly shaken by what had happened. “I ain’t ever seen a wolf in these parts.”
“They were wiped out long ago,” Aisha said. She wondered vaguely if there was any coffee made.
“I grew up in Hells Canyon,” the man went on.
“In Idaho?”
“Yes, ma’am. We had wolves in those parts back when I was a boy. I can’t say if there are any left there now.”
“I don’t know,” Aisha said.
“I used to go hunting with my daddy when I was a boy,” the man continued. “We hunted everything, elk, bear, mountain lion, pronghorn, but never wolf. My daddy said if I ever killed a wolf he’d write me off as a son.”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Aisha said, only half listening to the man’s rambling.
“Oh, he meant it, miss.”
Sophia came out from the operating room. “Well, luckily I don’t think you killed a wolf today,” she said to the man, “thanks to Aisha, that is.”
The man stood up and came over to her.
“Miss, I’d like to shake your hand if I may.”
Aisha was surprised. She looked up at him and smiled. It meant so much to him, she could se
e that. She took his hand in hers and he pulled her close and hugged her.
“I have a daughter about your age,” he said to her as he left.
*
Chapter 8
EXHAUSTED AS AISHA WAS, SHE didn’t relish the thought of going home. Heath was always mean when he was hungover, which was more and more often lately. She went into the staffroom to make coffee.
Sophia came in behind her. She put her hand affectionately on Aisha’s back.
“How are you doing, honey?” Sophia said.
“I’m just exhausted.”
“I’m not surprised. That was quite a piece of work you did in there today.”
Aisha nodded.
“If you have time, we need to talk.”
“What about?”
“Get your coffee and come into my office,” Sophia said.
*
Chapter 9
AISHA SAT ACROSS FROM SOPHIA and suddenly felt nervous. It was rare that she found herself in this office.
“Is it all right if I speak to you frankly?” Sophia said.
“Of course,” Aisha said, swallowing. She hated getting in trouble.
“What you did in that operating room today, it was very dangerous.”
“I know,” Aisha said. “I’m sorry. I know I should have waited.”
“A wolf is a dangerous animal. It’s a predator. They take down animals five times your size.”
Aisha nodded.
“They look like dogs, but they’re not dogs.”
“I know,” Aisha said again.
“You should have waited for me today.”
“Am I fired?” Aisha said. She managed to remain calm on the surface, but underneath she was panicking. This apprenticeship was her life, it was the only thing she had going for her right now. She would die without it.
Sophia’s expression softened. “You’re not fired,” she said. “How could I fire you? If it wasn’t for you, that wolf would have died today.”
“Oh, God,” Aisha said. “Thank you so much.”
“That was excellent work you did. In fact, I’ve never seen anything like it. The stitching was flawless. I’ve seen specialists with twenty-five years under their belts who don’t do work that good.”
