Total pages in book: 164
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 152666 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 763(@200wpm)___ 611(@250wpm)___ 509(@300wpm)
Something she couldn’t control. Granny damn well could’ve.
Granny had a good amount of power. Plenty to pull out the woman’s animal, at any rate. The woman wouldn’t need much, just a gentle tug from any decent alpha. Granny would’ve known that. She would’ve felt it. She’d purposely kept the woman suppressed, and in so doing, ensured the woman would be despised by her co-worker and likely many others in this backwards village.
What a fucking life.
With my heart now beating too fast—a warning that I needed to stop thinking about this or risk softening toward her too much—I took in the village center. There was a small play structure for the children amid a thick pelt of grass. That was nice, at least. A few benches ringed around the edge, all empty, and sheds lined the north side. Those appeared to be better built than the houses and were newer as well, a few with windows and counters, as though used to sell something.
“Is this what passes as their village market?” I asked as we headed to the end of the row.
“Granny supplies what they need, remember?” Dante said, shadowing Nova and me. “She buys in large quantities and ships it here.”
“Yes, given that was how we found the location of this place, I am aware,” I said semi-patiently. “But they must have a market for personally made items, little things to trade to keep their community going.”
Dante grunted. “Probably, since they have a small setup for it. No idea what they’d trade, though. I looked over the supply manifests we managed to grab from Granny’s estate. She had all the necessary needs met. Not a lot of any one thing, but enough. They wouldn’t have needed to trade for supplies.”
“Maybe just to keep people busy?” Nova offered. “Make them feel like they were still part of an active society, trading with their neighbors, offering some sort of value to their community?”
“Given the tirade of Mr. Poet,” Dante said as Nova opened the supply shed, “it didn’t work.”
“Maybe not for him . . .” She stepped aside. “It didn’t have a lock.”
I paused before stepping up. “It didn’t have a lock?”
“No. The doors had been closed, the contents as you see, but no lock.”
“How does that make sense?” Dante asked, peering in. “It’s in the village center where children play. Anyone could wander over and start up an addicting and potentially deadly habit, willy-nilly.”
I shook my head, at a loss. Surely everyone knew what the product did and how dangerous it was, so they’d warn kids to stay away, but teenagers tended to do the opposite of what they were told. Not to mention the adults with poor decision-making skills, much like Mr. Poet, who sampled and got caught in the addictive snare. It didn’t make sense to leave it open like this.
I looked over the small crates stacked on top of each other, the site lacking the precision of the woman. Clearly someone else managed this storeroom. Each crate had a name scratched in the side, like “hallucinogen 1,” or “mild relaxant.” None were names I recognized. Granny must’ve changed those for market.
“Have we found the packaging area?” I asked, picking up an elixir in a little glass tube. A green dot was painted on the side. It matched the other tubes in the crate, the only thing to identify the individual contents. “This is all very . . . rudimentary.”
“We haven’t found anywhere where they might do packaging, no,” Nova said. “There’s nowhere nearly sophisticated enough. It must be done elsewhere.”
“The woman makes the goods and someone else gets them ready for market.” Dante pulled his lips to the sides. “We haven’t found all the players in this scheme.”
“The packaging people don’t matter.” I picked through another crate, then the next, seeing all the contents marked with a colored dot. “Cut out the root of the operation, and the whole thing will wither.”
“Still, it would be nice to bring them all in,” Nova said.
“The woman should know,” Dante said. “We just need to get it out of her.”
I couldn’t help stiffening, but didn’t comment. He was right. She’d know the ins and outs of the organization. They could force her to reveal Granny’s secrets.
I took a step back. “Start moving this out and talk to more of the village. Let’s see what else they know and what else might be of use to the dragon royalty. We’ll see who needs to come with us and stand in judgment and who should be left to pick up the pieces of their lives. It’s clear Granny forced this life on this village. They’ll be useless without the woman and happily so. But let’s reserve judgment until after we know what they have to say.”
“Yes, Alpha,” they said in unison.
“Nova,” I said before she got to work. “Do you know where the woman resides?”