Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Our New Pet

The washing room had a mirror. I contemplated my reflection. Two things had happened on my way to Haven: I'd become infinitely more tan, and I'd turned scrawny and sickly looking.

But no clues why the ravens had been nice to me. No clues why a bunch of mythological shifters right out of stories had made off with me.

I touched the calloused, thickened patch of skin between my breasts. The patch stretched up onto the insides of my breasts. My Trinket had stabbed me so many times, but my skin had toughened over, and of course I hadn't festered, so there was that. And with all the other scars carved into my skin, a patch of hardened skin was nothing.

Somehow some new clothes had appeared behind the door: a light dress of some sheer fabric in a beautiful shade of blue and some undergarments. The undergarments I figured out easily enough, but the dress was far more sheer than anything I'd worn before.

Did mythological shifters have something against clothing, or was this just the style for Haven? It was beautiful, even if it was... sort of revealing. I was used to wools and leather, not silk and linen.

I lowered my Trinket over my neck. The sharp points on the burr pulled instantly at the delicate fabric. I didn't want to take it off, but I didn't want to ruin a borrowed gown either. I sighed and pulled it off, and stared at it in my palm. "I came to Haven to find your other half but..."

I tucked the Trinket into the small pouch that I'd kept on my waist through my trip. It'd have to wait. I'd keep my eye out for its match.

They were still in the front room. Ethat had curled up on his pile of stones, head resting on his foreclaws, but I doubted he was actually asleep. Itek—now wearing clothes—and Korr—wearing a robe he'd barely bothered to sash—lounged on separate couches with a game of chess on the low table between them, and staring at each other like the predators they were.

They both turned to me. Ethat cracked one eye.

"Am I your pet?" I asked them. Skirt didn't seem appropriate. Leaving seemed like a bad idea as well, because Soir's ravens would just spot me from a mile up and Soir would swoop in, and honestly, frying pan meet fire, perhaps? Those ravens hadn't been swooping towards a cut-purse. They'd been spying on me.

Why?

Korr and his group had also been watching me. Itek had probably been flying up very high, where raptors spied prey but a raven couldn't go. They had probably spotted me miles outside the city.

Why?

There was nothing special about me. Tynn and Lucetia and everyone else had made that very clear: I was just a foundling. I'd been found mostly dead and chewed up by something, and I didn't even remember it. I didn't even know how old I was exactly. The enclave wolves who had found me out in the foothills estimated my age had been four or five. But I had been thin, so I may have been older, or perhaps I had been younger.

I'd only known my name: Theia. Not my name, not where I was from, who my parents were, nothing. Apparently by the time I'd come out of the trauma of whatever had happened, I had no memories at all.

You'd think if I was anyone special someone would have come looking for me by now.

"Our pet," Korr said, lips parting in a heart-breaking grin. "Itek, is she our pet? We have never had a pet before."

"I'm no one," I said. "So I don't know why the ravens care about me, or why you would either. There's plenty of poor and hungry and dirty people, so there's got to be a reason I've got shifters trying to take me in."

"Could be because you are beautiful and we collect beautiful things?" Korr said, gesturing to the sumptuous surroundings.

I ran my hands over my skinny, shapeless frame. Lucetia had been beautiful. Now I knew why she always looked better fed than me. It wasn't just because I picked over my food not liking the taint. The constant gnawing hunger hadn't bothered me more than the sick feeling. I'd tried not to be picky. Street rats couldn't be picky or have delicate constitutions, but I'd been both.