Chapter 2: In the Slave Quarters, I Make the Rules
478words
The voice was shrill, smug, and a little nasally. I opened my eyes and saw a face I knew way too well—
Lusa. The local bully of the slave shed. She kept herself fed by tattling and punching people, and once beat me so badly I ran off to sleep in the pigsty.
I sat up lazily and brushed off my pants. “Your bed? It’s a wooden plank with three families of bugs living in it and a healthy dose of your foot stench. Honestly, if I hadn’t just died, I wouldn’t touch it.”
She froze. The other girls around us snorted with laughter.
Lusa’s face darkened. She rolled up her sleeves, ready to lunge. I raised a hand and said coldly:
“If you hit me right now, all your teeth will fall out tomorrow. Wanna test that?”
“You threatening me?!” she yelled.
“Nope,” I said, smiling. “Just giving you a heads-up. Old man Gray’s on patrol tonight. He’s got fox-scent syndrome—can sniff out blood like a hound. Remember the last time you beat up that other girl? He tossed you into the cold well for the whole night. Brrr… you were shaking like a wet chicken.”
She stopped mid-step. Her face changed. Yep—she remembered.
I went on, real casual: “I’m not looking for trouble. But I also know you’re planning to steal jerky from the kitchen tonight... and you’ve got that silver fork stashed under your bed. You sure you want to drag me to hell with you?”
Her face turned red, then blue, then pale white. She muttered a curse and stormed off.
Silence.
Then all the girls stared at me like I’d just started speaking in tongues.
“H-how’d you know about the fork?” one of them whispered.
I rolled over, leaned against the wall, and said lazily, “I know way more than just about a fork. Like, for example, there’s a rat tunnel behind the kitchen that leads straight to the water path outside. And you—you’re gonna twist your ankle in three days after tripping in a mudhole on a night walk.”
Her eyes went wide. “Are you… a prophet?”
I grinned. “Nah. I’m someone who’s lived this life once already.”
No one really got what I meant, but something in the air shifted.
I looked at all these girls with “please-don’t-hit-me” written on their faces and said quietly:
“Listen up. From now on, you’re under my protection. But that means you follow my lead. Otherwise? I’ll make sure your future sucks even more than your present.”
Nobody said a word.
But nobody argued either.
That was the first needle I jammed straight into the so-called “order” of the slave shed.
I lay back down, shut my eyes, and smirked.
“Step one: take out the bunkhouse bully. Next up—make sure even the Alpha’s dogs don’t dare bark at me.”
