Being locked in a tiny cell for twenty-three hours was bad enough, and even the insidious voices telling me my pack loved me despite my flaws became so much white noise after I decided to just let it wash over me and tell me all the lies its little heart desired. It couldn't hurt me, since I knew it was lying to me.
It was the faces of the other inmates that got to me when I was let out for my daily hour of exercise. As per the rules, I didn't speak to them, nor they to me, but I got to know their faces and their stories without a word being spoken. I wasn't sure if I'd always had this gift, or whether it had been awoken during my time in Jethro's manor, but I didn't care. What mattered was that it helped me see inside the other inmates, and that stung on a level that solitary confinement and insidious voices couldn't do.
There was Jerome, a deaf-mute who'd been shunned because he preferred to knit rather than take up the traditional warrior's role expected of him as son of the Alpha. His wolf wasn't deaf-mute, and would have compensated for his human's impediments, but Jerome didn't want to be a warrior, and so, he'd been sent here three months ago. His deafness didn't stop the voices from telling him he was a fool for disregarding his father's wishes, and the look on his face every time I saw him told me he was close to giving in to stop the torment.
Sarah had been sent here for the opposite reason; she wanted to be a warrior, but her mother wanted her to marry and produce cubs, males, to be more precise, since she-wolves had the ability to choose the gender of their cubs the moment they became pregnant. Sarah had refused to be a brood-mare, since her parents had made it clear they wanted to raise an army so they could finally demolish the Winter Snows pack once and for all. I doubted they'd succeed, since Alpha Adam commanded the loyalty of quite a few packs, and could easily crush any and all opposition. Sarah's parents, however, had had an alternative motive; any sons she bore would be sent to join the Winter Snows pack and decimate it from within, which I found abhorrent. I suspected this was why Mother had been so determined to keep Faith under her roof following her marriage; any children of hers would have been sent to the Winter Snows pack as moles, to bring them down from within. I was more glad than ever I'd convinced Faith to run away, and I felt dreadfully sorry for Sarah, who seemed, like Jerome, about ready to give up rather than suffer the torment of the nunnery another day longer.
Alice was another who refused to be a brood mare for her pack, but she was barren, and thus wouldn't have been able to have children at all. Her parents had planned to get around that by imprengnating her wolf and having her bear cubs that way, but Alice had refused, and had thus been sent her to repent. She'd been here for six months, but had so far resisted all that the voices had thrown at her, and no punishment had convinced her to "see the light", as it were. The nuns were growing increasingly angry at her resistance, and had told her she was going to be confined to her cell at all times, with only one meal in the morning. Alice had told them to do their worst, one of the few times she showed open defiance, and for that, she'd be in true solitary confinement before the week was out.
Sometimes I wished I didn't have the ability to read the life threads of the other inmates. But at the same time, I was glad I did get to know them; it helped me realise I wasn't on my own, that there were others who were likewise through with being abused simply for being different to how their pack wanted them to be. Sometimes, I even dreamed of breaking us all out of here and setting up a new pack, but I knew those dreams would never reach fruition. The nuns, for one, would never let us out until we'd "repented", and the packs to whom each inmate would never let them go in any case.
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The days turned into weeks, and before long, I was counting months on my wall. The voices continued to drill at me day and night, while new inmates came in the place of those who'd either lost their minds, or who'd given up and gone back to their packs, rather than suffer the nunnery for a minute longer. As with all newcomers, I read their life-threads and learned their stories, but the day my sister came into the nunnery, my world was rocked to its very foundations.
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