And he had never been filled with so much anger at life’s unfairness. The world beyond Bear Hollow was filled with wonders he would never be able to partake of, merely because he’d been born a shifter. It didn’t matter how hard he worked. He would live and die in Bear Hollow, scraping out an existence on what the forest and land offered each year. Oskar had sworn that day that he would never go back to Gilt Hollow unless the day came when shifters were treated as equals with humans.
And yet, here he was, crossing the river once again, but definitely not equal to the humans. He wasn’t wearing chains, but he might as well have been. Loki held him captive with Whisper’s life.
Oskar was riding in an open-air cart more ornate than anything he’d ever ridden before in his life, and yet he knew that Loki normally used this sort of cart for things like hauling animals or food.
I shouldn’t be surprised. That’s all I am to him—an animal.
The cart ambled across the gilded main bridge, its golden supports glimmering by the light of the full moon. Only Gilt Hollow citizens could use this bridge, but shifters were allowed if they were being escorted by a human. Shifters who wanted to cross the river on their own had to use the run-down shifter bridge, a rickety wooden contraption a few hundred feet downriver, which looked like it might collapse into the water at any moment. Shifters had to pay a toll to cross that bridge, but the money from the tolls went somewhere other than to bridge repairs.
Oskar looked down at the water of Golden Claw River, which glittered in the moonlight. Despite decades of heavy panning for gold, the river still contained quite a bit of the precious metal. By this point, most of the Gilt Hollow citizens had grown so rich that they couldn’t be bothered to perform a mundane task like panning. This didn’t mean that the shifters could have a turn though. Shifters were strictly forbidden from panning, and any shifter caught taking gold from the river faced the death penalty. Oskar had seen two shifters put to death for this in his lifetime, and he was sure those two wouldn’t be the last. The temptation of wealth was too great for some shifters to resist.
Once the cart crossed into the city, the peaceful quiet ended. Here, revelers always filled the streets, even on a normal weekday night. Oskar watched as his cart passed the endless parade of colorful outfits, outrageous hairdos, and general excess. People everywhere stuffed food in their mouths or raised glasses of wine in drunken toasts. It looked like a carnival, not a Thursday night. Oskar looked down at his hands, unable to watch anymore without vomiting. How could anyone bear to live like this, knowing that just across the river an entire population of shifters was starving?
The cart slowly ambled into a more residential area of town. Gleaming houses, all accented with gold, rose proudly from the streets. The houses grew larger and larger the further into the city they went, until each house was a giant palace situated on a huge lawn covered in lush gardens. Oskar shook his head. Even here in Gilt Hollow, where everyone had more money than they knew what to do with, a class system still existed. There were the rich, and then there were the uber-rich.
Loki rode ahead of the cart on a gleaming white horse. He sat proudly on the horses elaborate saddle, as though he were a king riding into town to greet his people. Oskar wondered if he’d ever hated anyone as much as he hated Loki right now. He might hate Loki even more than he hated the soldiers who had killed his parents. After all, Loki had threatened his sister, and Whisper was all he had left.
Will I ever see her again? Oskar had no idea whether the Gilt Hollow citizens typically allowed their “volunteer” shifters to go home to visit family now and then, but if he had to guess, he would have bet that Loki wasn’t going to be offering him any vacation any time soon.
The houses kept growing, reaching astronomical proportions, until Loki finally turned onto the front path of one of the palaces. The guards standing by the gate saluted him, and Oskar was surprised to see that one of the guards was a shifter. Shifters occasionally got jobs as guards for the Gilt Hollow citizens, but such jobs weren’t easy to secure. While shifters were strong and much better at hand-to-hand combat than any of the Gilt Hollow citizens, the humans usually didn’t trust them to guard loyally, for obvious reasons. After oppressing the shifters for so long, why would the humans trust those shifters to keep them safe while they slept?
The shifter guard caught Oskar’s eye as the cart passed, and gave him a polite nod. Oskar quickly looked away. He didn’t want to be friends with anyone here, let alone with a guard who had agreed to protect the life and property of Loki Severson.
Then again, perhaps he shouldn’t be so hard on the guard. For all Oskar knew, the guard might have a sister, too. Perhaps Oskar wasn’t the first one to fall victim to Loki’s promises to kill family members for noncompliance.
Loki led the cart to a giant garage of sorts. Inside were dozens of carts just like the one Oskar was riding on. Several fancy carriages for Loki and his family members to ride in also filled the space. And then, to the far left, a gleaming black car stood. Oskar’s mouth dropped. He’d never actually seen a car. He’d heard talk of them, but he almost hadn’t believed they were real. Cars were completely impractical on the narrow roads around Gilt Hollow, which was why most people only had horses. Besides, gasoline had to be imported, meaning only the richest of the rich could afford such extravagances as a motor vehicle, but perhaps Oskar shouldn’t have been surprised to see a car in Loki’s family’s garage. If anyone in Gilt Hollow were to splurge on a car, of course it would be the Seversons. Oskar didn’t even bother trying to keep the names and ranks of all the noble families straight in his head, but one thing no one could forget: the Seversons were only outranked by the Emperor’s family itself. And, if one believed the rumors, even the Emperor’s family didn’t come close to outpacing the Seversons when it came to frivolity and extravagance.
As soon as the cart had come to a stop, one of the guards barked at Oskar, telling him to get out and follow Loki. Oskar obeyed, keeping as neutral of an expression on his face as possible. Loki led him through a giant door in the back of the garage to a tunnel that led straight into the main house. Oskar followed Loki through a dizzying series of hallways and stairs, blinking in disbelief at the gold, precious stones, and marble that seemed to cover every possible surface. Paintings twice as tall as Oskar hung on some of the walls. Other walls were covered in drapes of deep purple with golden threads woven throughout.
After what felt like twenty flights of stairs, Loki opened the door to a large bedroom.
“Here,” Loki said, a wide grin on his face as though he were giving Oskar some sort of prize. “This room will be yours for the time being. Tomorrow, or the day after at the latest, we’ll find you some more permanent quarters in the Arena fighters’ wing of the house. But for now this will do quite nicely, I think. It’s small, but nice.”
Oskar peered into the room and wondered whether Loki was joking. The room must have been as big as Oskar’s entire house back in Bear Hollow. It held the largest bed Oskar had ever seen, covered with a comforter in purple, of course. A wooden dresser of polished wood stood in one corner, with a jeweled mirror above it. In the other far corner, a desk of the same wood was accompanied by a plush chair. And in the center of the room, a small table with two elaborately carved chairs was covered with a spread of food unlike anything Oskar had ever had access to in his life. Fruits, breads, cheeses, and olives enough to feed three men teased him. A water pitcher and a pitcher of wine waited on the table as well.
“Eat and drink as much as you like. You’ll find clothes enough to last you a few days in the dresser. We’ll get you more clothes exactly fitted to you after our tailor measures you tomorrow, but those should be close enough for now. The only rule for the moment is do not leave this room. There are guards posted at the door, and if they tell me you attempted to leave, Whisper will pay dearly for your insolence. Do you understand?”
Oskar nodded.
“Good. I must be going now. Don’t stay up too late. Y
ou’ve got a big day ahead of you tomorrow.”
With that Loki left, shutting the door behind him. Oskar walked in a slow circle around the room, not sure what to do with himself. His stomach growled, but he felt guilty about eating any of the food in front of him. He thought about Whisper back home, eating leftover potato casserole, probably salted with the tears she was sure to be crying for him.
Oskar looked down at his clothes. Plain, worn cotton. So out of place here in the midst of this finery. But Oskar didn’t even want to look at the clothes waiting for him in the dresser. He knew he would hate them. Everything here represented everything he hated. And he was trapped in it all, held hostage by threats to Whisper’s life.
Oskar sank onto the bed and put his head in his hands. Eventually he would have to eat their food, wear their clothes, and sleep in their beds. But for the moment he couldn’t. For the moment all he could bear to do was keep breathing, and even that felt like a chore. He would have gone and jumped out the window to his room and fallen to his death, if not for the fact that he knew doing so would be signing Whisper’s death warrant as well.
A sharp rap on the door startled him out of his gloomy thoughts, and he sat up straight, suddenly tense and alert. What now? Had Loki thought of some other rule to impose on him? Was one of the guards going to lecture him on falling in line? Couldn’t they all just leave him in peace for the night?
The knock sounded again, but Oskar’s mind was so jumbled that he didn’t even realize he hadn’t answered.
“Hello? Oskar? May I come in?”
A woman’s voice. Oskar sat up straighter, curious. What woman was coming to see him, and why? Perhaps she was the tailor, and had been sent to get an early start on fitting him for clothes?
“Come in,” he called out. His voice sounded thick and gravelly, and he realized he hadn’t spoken for quite some time. There hadn’t been anything he’d wanted to say to his captor. Nothing he wanted to say that wouldn’t have gotten him in serious trouble, anyway.
The door handle turned, and to Oskar’s surprise a woman walked in. She was dressed in the rich clothing typical of the Gilt Hollow citizens, a sweeping midnight blue gown with gold accents. Her dark brown hair was swept up into a fancy up do, and her eyes had the same deep black color that Loki’s had. But while Loki’s eyes made him look shady and almost evil, the woman’s eyes had a soulful, beautiful look to them. They reminded Oskar of onyx, and almost seemed to shimmer in the soft lamplight of his room.
For a few moments, Oskar could only stare at the woman, somewhat dumbfounded. Her soft skin and generous curves sent a funny thrill through him—a thrill like he’d never felt before. He forced himself not to stare at her body, and to fix his eyes on her face instead. He had the thought that she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and then he immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Even though he’d never gotten serious with any of the girls over in Bear Hollow, he’d always known one of them would be his eventual lifemate. So why was he mesmerized by the sight of a Gilt Hollow woman? And a Gilt Hollow woman who belonged to the infamous Severson family, at that. Her resemblance to Loki was unmistakable. A sister, perhaps?
“I heard my brother had a new volunteer from Bear Hollow,” she said, confirming Oskar’s suspicion that she was Loki’s sister. Immediately, Oskar’s back stiffened. No matter how beautiful this woman might be, she was his enemy.
“I didn’t volunteer. He forced me to come by threatening to kill my sister if I didn’t.”
To Oskar’s surprise, the woman winced.
“Of course he did. I’m sorry,” she said in a voice that did actually sound sorry. “I’m afraid he learned the best ways to make shifters ‘volunteer’ from my father.”
Oskar blinked at the woman, not comprehending fully for a few moments. When his mind had time to process what she’d just told him, he felt sick to his stomach all over again. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that most of the volunteers didn’t really volunteer?”
The woman glanced toward the door nervously, as though afraid someone might be listening in. She lowered her voice when she spoke again. “Most of them didn’t, no. There are always a few shifters who do actually volunteer, but those are usually the weakest ones who are a bit cowardly and don’t do well in the Arena. The strongest, best shifters have to be forced to come, so the nobles blackmail them into volunteering, usually by threatening to kill family members. The nobles make a big show of acting like it’s all voluntary, to keep the shifters from rebelling too much. But it’s pretty much a giant scam.”
Oskar felt like the floor had just fallen out from under him. He took a step backward, and then had to go sit down at the table in the middle of the room. All his life, he’d scorned anyone who’d volunteered for the Games. Realizing that most of those shifters had been forced into the Arena the same way he was now being forced made him feel awful.
“I guess I’m lucky,” he said, not even realizing he was speaking aloud. “At least everyone in the bar saw that Loki blackmailed me, so they know I was forced into this.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. “Loki threatened you in front of a bar full of shifters?”
Oskar looked up at her and nodded dully. “My sister was in there, working. Loki came in and told me to come with him or he’d kill her. Half of Bear Hollow saw it happen.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “God, he’s such an idiot. He better hope our father doesn’t hear about it. The Games depend on the majority of people thinking the participating shifters are volunteers.”
The rage inside Oskar flared at the woman’s statement. “Heaven forbid anything should mess up your sick little Games.” He immediately regretted saying it. This woman seemed nicer than Loki, but she was still the man’s sister. She was still a Gilt Hollow citizen, and a Severson at that. If she told Loki what he’d said, Loki could easily use it as justification for hurting Whisper.
But the woman didn’t seem angry at what he’d said. In fact, her face took on a guilty, almost sad expression. “I’m sorry. I don’t support the Games. I hope I didn’t imply that. I was just trying to explain how they work.”
Oskar’s eyes widened, and then narrowed. “Who are you?” He’d never met a Gilt Hollow citizen who’d been anything other than condescending to shifters. But this woman seemed almost…nice.
“I’m Zora. Zora Severson. I know my family name probably makes you hate me automatically, and I don’t blame you for that. But I promise you, I’m not like them. I’m trying to be better. I’m trying to understand shifters and help them.”
Oskar kept his eyes narrowed. “Well, Zora, that’s a nice thing to say. But if you really want to help shifters you should tell your dad and brother to quit supporting the Games. And maybe to donate a little bit of their food to the starving citizens of Bear Hollow. You guys probably waste more food in a day than my family eats in an entire year.”
Oskar knew he shouldn’t say things like this to a Gilt Hollow citizen, even to one who claimed to want to help shifters. This might all be a trap to test him and his loyalty. But he was too tired to care right now.
“It’s not so simple,” Zora said, a pained look on her face. “My family isn’t above killing me, if I don’t fall into line. And I can’t help anyone if I’m dead.”
Oskar made no reply. He just continued to stare at her, wishing she would go away. Her presence confused him. Her beauty drew him in, and her kindness was unexpected for a Gilt Hollow citizen. But she was, in the end, still a Gilt Hollow citizen. She still represented everything he hated.
Zora sighed when she saw that Oskar had nothing to say to her. “Anyway, I just came to check on you and make sure Loki was treating you well. I’m glad to see they gave you some good food. You should eat some. I know you probably don’t want to eat our food, but you’re going to have to eventually. And you’re going to need your strength for tomorrow. Loki will start training right away, and it’s going to be intense.”
Oskar frowned, but still didn’t say
anything.
Zora nodded, as though she hadn’t expected much more from him. “I’ll leave you, then. But if you need to get in touch with me, tell Leo. He’s the shifter guard who is usually at the front gate. He’ll know how to get a hold of me.”
With that, Zora turned and headed out of the room, closing the door behind her with a gentle click. Oskar stared at the closed door for several minutes, not sure why his heart was beating so quickly in his chest. He felt like his own body was betraying him.
She’s beautiful, but she’s the enemy. Don’t let yourself fall for her.
Eventually, Oskar stood and went to turn out the lights. He wondered if the electricity here ever went out, the way it so frequently did in Bear Hollow. Probably not. The Gilt Hollow citizens would go crazy if any of their precious luxuries were unavailable for any length of time.
Oskar collapsed on top of the bed, not bothering to change his clothes. He’d have to change eventually, he knew. Tomorrow, Loki’s cronies would force him to wear whatever clothes they’d put in the dresser for him. But for one more night, at least, Oskar wanted to wear his own clothes.
He kicked off his shoes and marveled at how soft the bed felt. He didn’t crawl under the comforter, but even from lying on top of it he could tell how plush it was. Lying on this bed felt like what Oskar imagined lying on a cloud must feel like. He felt disloyal sleeping on something so luxurious while Whisper was back home on her stiff bed made from a stiff pine straw mattress covered with scratchy blankets.
The Misfit and the Bear (The Shifter Games Book 1) Page 3