Pride's Run Read Free

food. Extra food feeds the brain, but that’s not
why I’m smart. I’m smart because of my breeding. And lessons
learned have taught me that someone of my size needs to fight with
their head, not their heart.
    A high-pitched yelp pierces the air and I
tear my gaze from Stone’s. I spin around in time to see the
master’s leather strap slice open Sandy’s back–a young wolf named
for the color of her fur. Rivulets of crimson trickle down her
peachy flesh and spill across the grass, turning it a coppery shade
of red. Like an air freshener, the sweet scent of warm blood
catches on a breeze and fans out. Soft, hungry growls sound in
response.
    My fingers curl into fists and the taste of
blood fills my mouth as I bite the inside of my cheek. Guilt that
I’m unable to help her—that I’d been unable to help my
parents—churns inside me and I hate how powerless I feel.
    My mind races as I take another quick glance
around the courtyard. There has to be a way to break free from the
master’s control. I’m convinced of it. I just have to figure out
what it is. That thought always helps me pull myself together and
gives me a seed of hope.
    The master barks out an order and cuts the
air with his strap. Sandy is a pup, a few years younger than me and
she hasn’t learned to play the game yet, hasn’t learned when to
push and when to back off. My nostrils flare and I try not to
react, to show emotions as the deafening snap of the strap
punctures the barriers shielding my emotions. I refuse to let
anyone see a sign of weakness in me.
    When she continues to whimper, my stomach
lurches, and I want to vomit, except there is nothing inside my gut
to bring up. The violent impulse to kill twists my insides. I
should help her. I want to help her. In fact, I want to tear the
master’s head clear off his neck and feed it to the wolves.
Instead, I desensitize. It’s the only way I can get through another
day. But it doesn’t stop me from stealing a look at the bulging
purple mark tracking my leg. We might have regenerative abilities,
able to heal ourselves and close our own wounds, but the scars
always remain, inside and out.
    Her whimpering stops and the master leaves
her. I look at her but she doesn’t return my gaze. She reaches for
him. Him. Her thin fingers wiggling like underfed worms,
begging for forgiveness and approval, but he turns his back on her,
discarding her like she is nothing more than yesterday’s
puppy-soaked newspaper. It’s a form of punishment, a proven way to
train and break a pup. Most of the wolves want to please him after
they’ve been broken. I’m not one of them.
    I won’t be broken.
    The master, of course, insists he’s doing us
wolves a favor by confining us and likes to point out that he keeps
us alive, protected from the PTF, and allows us to feed on the one
thing we love most.
    Humans.
    I still wonder how he found out about us,
and how he was able to first trap the elders. Rumor has it that his
second wife was killed by a wolf and he’d witnessed it. Then he
went hunting, not to kill us, but to use us.
    Key in hand, Mario, one of the three handlers
in the courtyard, comes by to remove my collar. With cognac-toned
skin, his dark hair is long and tied into a ponytail that reaches
the middle of his back. I put him around his mid thirties. Unlike
Lawrence, Mario is always nice to me, but he’s still one of them
and I never let myself forget it.
    “You’re up against Stone today,” he says and
looks at me, his glance avoiding my eyes. “You both go first.”
    I nod, and then something flickers in his
eyes when he sees the way my pale, stringy flesh stretches taught
over my protruding ribs. I let him look and don’t try to make it
easy for him. If they all hate what he does to us so much, why
don’t they do something about it? I don’t ask. I already know the
answer to that question. They can’t.
    I once heard a few staff members whispering
about illegal immigrants. During one of my manner