“Yup, I’m sure I’ll be good as new in a few days. And having a few days away from Loki won’t hurt.”
“It sure won’t,” Otto agreed. “Have a seat in the circle and I’ll explain what the resistance is.”
Oskar sat down as instructed, somewhat wary of the fact that Otto hadn’t introduced him to the other men in the room. As if Otto could read his mind, the wolf shifter spoke up.
“These are the other shifters who have joined our cause. Asher, Dax, and Easton are bear shifters. Kellen is a wolf like me, and Brenner is a panther. We’re putting a lot of trust in you by letting you see our faces and letting you know that we’re a part of this resistance. As you can see, there aren’t that many of us when you consider how many shifters are forced to participate in the Games. Even though most shifters are here against their will, and all shifters hate the Gilt Hollow citizens, joining the resistance isn’t such an easy choice for many.”
“Why not?” Oskar asked, incredulous. “If there’s anything I can do to bring down the Gilt Hollow citizens, I want to do it.”
“Of course,” Otto said. “Most shifters feel the same. But the price for participation in the resistance could be very high if you are caught. I presume you have family members who were threatened with death if you didn’t agree to come join the Games.”
Oskar nodded, Whisper’s face flashing across his mind’s eye.
“Those family members will be killed if the Gilt Hollow citizens discover that you’re part of this resistance force. The Gilt Hollow citizens don’t like being made into fools, and they respond to any perceived slight by killing off the person who slighted them along with anyone that person ever loved.”
“I understand,” Oskar said. “And I fear for my sister. I hope it never comes down to her life being taken, and the fact that I’m here in Gilt Hollow at all shows you how much my sister means to me. Her life is just about the only thing that could have convinced me to come here. But I cannot completely lie down in fear. She wouldn’t want me to do that. She’d want me to fight. And now that I know there’s a way to do that, I want to be a part of it.”
Otto smiled a grim smile and nodded. “Well then, Oskar Warden, welcome to the resistance. Our meeting times and places change every week, to keep us safer. Leo here keeps everyone informed on the details. We do small things to undermine the trust of the Gilt Hollow citizens in the integrity of the Shifter Games. So far, we haven’t had much luck with that, because the Games are so revered and we can only take small steps. But we’ll keep trying. The Games are one of the worst things for the shifters. It gives everyone in Gilt Hollow an excuse to view us as nothing more than animals, which I don’t have to tell you results in our people being treated quite poorly. Even if we can place small seeds of doubt in the Gilt Hollow citizens’ minds, this will make an eventual coup easier to pull off.”
“You really think that would be possible? A coup on the city of Gilt Hollow?” Oskar had dreamed his whole life of overthrowing the Gilt Hollow citizens who lorded it over the shifters, but it had always seemed like such a far off dream. It still seemed next to impossible, but the fact that Oskar apparently wasn’t the only one who believed this gave him hope.
“We aren’t anywhere close to a coup right now,” Otto admitted. “But every step in the right direction is a victory in my eyes. We’ll keep trying as long as there are still resistance members alive. Undermining the Games isn’t our biggest accomplishment, though. Not even close. What we’re most proud of is building an underground tunnel between Gilt Hollow and Bear Hollow.”
Otto let those words hang in the air, and it took Oskar a moment to process what he was saying.
“You what?”
Otto grinned and nodded. “You’ve joined the resistance at an exciting time, Oskar. We’ve just completed a years’ long project which many of our own members thought was impossible.”
Otto raised his eyebrow in the direction of Asher, who raised his hands in a gesture of surrender and said, “Hey, I’ve admitted I was wrong. Happily so, because the tunnel is a huge boon to Bear Hollow.”
“Indeed it is,” Otto said. “And it comes just in time, with a long, lean winter ahead. The tunnel runs deep, deep in the ground, going far underneath the Golden Claw riverbed and into a spot in the outskirts of Bear Hollow itself. This tunnel will allow us to communicate with our friends and family in Bear Hollow, which is a blessing in itself. Most of us haven’t seen our families since we were brought to Gilt Hollow years ago.”
Oskar shuddered. He’d been trying not to think about how long it would be until he saw Whisper again, if ever. He couldn’t imagine the pain these men must have gone through, spending years with their families just on the other side of the river, but completely out of reach.
“The tunnel will also allow us to carry food across. All those extravagant spreads you’re fed three times a day? Time to start ‘eating’ them up,” Otto said. “Eat as little as you must to maintain your own strength, and then hide the rest of the food in your room, as long as it’s something that will last about a week without going bad. Leo will collect food every day while we’re out at training, and stockpile it at the entrance of the tunnel. Once a week, we’ll take it all over. We don’t dare go more than once a week, because we don’t want to risk getting caught. But even that will provide a ton of much needed food for the Bear Hollow shifters.”
Oskar realized that he’d put his hand over his mouth in disbelief. “This is incredible. I’ve been so worried about our people and the upcoming winter. The hunting this year was almost nonexistent.”
“We know,” Leo said in a weary tone. “You can thank Gilt Hollow’s Emperor for that. He’s the one that set the fires that drove away the wildlife.”
Oskar felt sick to his stomach, and rage boiled deep within him. “I should have known. Just one more way to keep the people of Bear Hollow under his oppressive thumb.”
“Yes, but this time the joke’s on him. While he’s waiting for the population of Bear Hollow to starve, they’ll actually be growing fat and happy on food from Gilt Hollow’s own kitchens.”
Oskar smiled. The thought of not only seeing Whisper, but of also presenting her with a basket of luxurious food, settled his rage a bit. Overcome with emotion, Oskar jumped to his feet. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. You can count on me, I swear it.”
Otto and the others all smiled, and Otto opened his mouth to say something. But before he could speak, the smile froze on his face when the sound of a soft knock sounded at the door. Oskar could tell by the horrified expressions on the faces of each shifter in the room that they definitely had not been expecting anyone else at this meeting tonight. And Oskar didn’t have to be a genius to realize that the soft knock that had sounded at the door was not even close to the “password” knock that Leo had used.
Otto put a finger to his lips to tell everyone to be quiet, although this warning was unnecessary. Everyone in the room was already holding their breath. Oskar felt the sick feeling wash over him again. Was this it? Was his time in the resistance going to be less than thirty minutes long before the whole operation was discovered?
The knock sounded again, and Oskar clenched his fists tightly. If he was going to go down tonight, he wasn’t going down without a fight. He would shift into a bear and take out a few Gilt Hollow citizens while he still could. He would be killed one way or another if he’d been caught as part of a treasonous resistance, so he might as well make the most of his last moments on earth. From the darkening determination on everyone else’s faces, Oskar guessed that his fellow shifters were thinking the same thing.
But then, a familiar voice sounded at the door, a voice that immediately threw into question all of Oskar’s plans to kill whoever was on the other side of that door.
“Otto? Leo? I know you’re in there. I don’t want to hurt you. Please just let me in.”
Zora. Oskar watched Otto and Leo exchange glances with each other, uncertainty etched across their faces. Otto
shook his head no, and Leo shrugged.
Oskar suddenly felt every mistake he’d made today weighing heavily on him. He should never have trusted Zora, not even with the simple information that the fight between Otto and he had been faked. But he hadn’t been content to stop there. No, he’d insisted on kissing her as well. Had he somehow led her here? Had his openness with her given her a clue as to the resistance’s whereabouts? He didn’t want to believe that, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence that she had shown up during his first meeting with the Resistance. Oskar felt his cheeks turning red with a mixture of shame and anger. What had he done? Had he somehow brought down this whole operation? And right when they were so close to being able to transport food to Bear Hollow. Now, Oskar would die at the hands of the Gilt Hollow citizens, and many more shifters would die of starvation over the winter.
“Otto, I have a key to every room in this building,” Zora called out in an exasperated voice. “I can easily get in, but I’d prefer to have you trust me enough to open the door.”
Leo and Otto exchanged another glance, but Otto shook his head. “It might be a trap,” he whispered. “She’s not a shifter. We can’t trust her.”
Leo still looked uncertain, but in the end, the decision was made for them. The sound of metal clinking against metal sounded as a key slid into the door. Oskar looked around in a panic, trying to see if the room had another way of escape. But the wooden door was the only way out. A few moments later, the heavy metal lock turned, and then the door creaked open, its hinges protesting louder than Oskar remembered from when Leo had opened the door just half an hour earlier.
Zora came into view, wearing a long, elegant gown in a brilliant shade of green that Oskar had never seen before. Her hair was piled onto her head in an intricate updo that looked like it had taken hours. Oskar knew that Zora herself hadn’t been the one to do the updo, though. She had a whole team of hairstylists, makeup artists, and wardrobe designers at her beck and call. She clearly made good use of them, too. Zora had never looked anything less than perfect each time Oskar had seen her. He wondered if she’d had somewhere special to be tonight, or if this was just ordinary dinner attire for Gilt Hollow citizens.
She had opened her mouth to speak, her finger pointed at Otto, when her eye caught Oskar’s. He knew in that moment that she had not known he would be here. Her eyes widened slightly, and she closed her mouth into a tight line instead of speaking. Everyone in the room was once again holding their breath, waiting to see what she would say. Oskar felt like his heart was pounding so loudly that it sounded like thunder in the otherwise silent room.
“Hello, Oskar,” Zora finally said, her tone measured and giving nothing away. “I didn’t expect to find you here.”
Oskar had no idea whether that was a good or bad thing for him, but he was sure he was about to find out.
Chapter Nine
“I got a little bored in my room,” Oskar said. “A bear needs to roam.”
Zora raised an eyebrow. “A bear needs to roam, huh? To a secret meeting with a group of other shifters on how to overthrow the Gilt Hollow citizens?”
Oskar felt his stomach twisting up inside of him. Somehow, Zora had found out about the resistance. But it hadn’t been through spying on him. If it had, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him at the meeting. Oskar did his best to remain calm and to not let a worried expression cross his face. Zora might not have any actual proof of the resistance. If that was the case, the best chance all of the shifters in the room had was to act like they didn’t know what Zora was talking about. Maybe she would second guess herself and all of the shifters would avoid being executed.
Zora was looking back and forth between all of the shifters, making eye contact with each one. “I know what’s going on here. I’ve been tracking all of you for months. Especially you, Leo.”
Leo managed not to react, although Oskar did see a shadow pass over Leo’s eyes. Oskar remembered Zora telling him to talk to Leo if he had any trouble, and he wondered if Leo had trusted Zora as much as he himself had.
No one trusted her as much as I did, I’m sure of that, Oskar thought with a sad glance at Zora, who was now staring at Otto. Kissing any Gilt Hollow citizen required an enormous amount of trust, and Oskar was pretty sure he was the only one who would have risked kissing a nobleman’s daughter. What was I expecting? That she might be my lifemate? That we might have an actual future together? What an idiot I was.
“I’m not here to hurt any of you, or to report you,” Zora said, breaking into Oskar’s tormented thoughts. “I’m here because I want to help you. I want to join the resistance.”
Oskar heard Leo suck in his breath, and he saw Otto’s eyes widen just a bit.
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Otto said, keeping his calm for the most part as he addressed Zora. “We’re just shifter buddies who like to hang out, and Oskar seemed like a nice guy so we invited him into the group. There is no ‘resistance,’ as you call it.”
Zora crossed her arms. “I’m not leaving until you agree to let me join. I know there’s something going on here, and I want to help you.”
“Assuming there was something,” Leo said, “Why would an elite Gilt Hollow citizen ever want to help the shifters?”
“Because my whole life I’ve watched your people be mistreated. It’s wrong, and I don’t want to be part of it anymore. I thought about leaving Gilt Hollow behind altogether, but then I realized that I could do the most good if I stay here, with access to all the resources I have, and secretly use those resources to help.”
Oskar along with the rest of the shifters in the room, only stared back at Zora. She looked back at them with pleading eyes, and Oskar wondered if it was possible that her words were actually sincere. He glanced over at Otto, but Otto’s face was a mask, revealing nothing of how Otto felt.
“Give me a chance,” Zora said. “I can do a lot to help you.” Zora’s voice cracked a bit as she spoke, and Oskar thought she was either telling the truth, or was the best actress in the world.
But Otto was not impressed. “We appreciate your willingness to help our people, Zora. But you’re mistaken. There is no resistance.”
Zora looked around at all the faces in the room once more, then let out a long, resigned sigh. “Very well. I’ll leave you be for now. But if you ever decide that you do want a Gilt Hollow insider to help you with your work, you know where to find me.”
With that, Zora turned and left the room. She did not glance at Oskar again, and he wondered if she was angry with him. Had she expected him to speak up on her behalf? What could he say, though? He was the new one in the group. He barely even knew what the resistance was, and it wasn’t up to him to start admitting new members. Especially not new members who were Gilt Hollow citizens.
No one spoke for several minutes after Zora left. Otto had put a finger to his lips, telling them all to remain quiet. Oskar figured that he wanted to make sure Zora was really gone before speaking again. When he finally did speak, his voice had a tension to it that hadn’t been there before.
“We have to be more careful. I don’t know how Zora found out about us, but we cannot allow any Gilt Hollow citizens to know of the existence of our resistance group.”
“I dunno, Otto,” Leo piped in. “Zora seemed like she was telling the truth. It could help us a lot to have a Gilt Hollow citizen on our side. Think of all the inside information we could get.”
“She cannot be trusted,” Otto insisted.
“She seemed trustworthy to me,” Oskar spoke up. He knew he was the new guy, but he felt he had to speak up on Zora’s behalf. “I’ll admit, I was worried when she first walked in here, but think about it. If she wanted to hurt us, all she has to do is go complain to her dad. He’d happily make an example out of punishing a group of shifters. The fact that she left without threatening us tells me she’s serious. In fact, I think she’s a little scared of being caught talking to us.”
“It
could all just be an act,” Otto said. “She’s smart, and she knows how to convince us that we should trust her. But as soon as we do, she’ll get all the information on our resistance and run to her father with it. The best thing to do is lay low and avoid her. And that means our meeting today should be adjourned. She knows we’re here right now, so it’s too risky to stay. What if she comes back, or convinces some of the palace guards to come look at the secret little hideout she found? Let’s get out of here and try again for a different meeting in a different location. I’ll have Leo get the details to all of you.”
Oskar wanted to protest again, but he saw that all of the other shifters were standing up to follow Otto’s orders. Oskar decided it was better to keep his mouth shut, for now. He didn’t want to alienate himself from this group before he’d even had a chance to get to know them properly.
But after Leo dropped him back off at his room, Oskar paced again for a long, long time. Today had been a rollercoaster ride of emotions, with Oskar first believing that Zora cared about the shifters, then believing it was all an act, and then swinging back to thinking she cared. Things had been up and down and all over the pace, but at the end of it all, Oskar couldn’t shake the feeling that Zora was telling the truth. It didn’t make sense, but for some reason this pretty Gilt Hollow noble’s daughter cared about a beast like him. Oskar didn’t know how he would do it, but he had to convince the rest of the resistance that they could trust her.
When he finally lay down, it still took a long time for him to fall asleep. His thoughts were swirling between the resistance, the tunnel to Bear Hollow, and Zora. But when dreams did come, it was Zora’s face that filled them. Oskar knew, even in his unconscious, sleeping state, that his heart was becoming entwined with Zora’s.
The Misfit and the Bear (The Shifter Games Book 1) Page 7