Ruler (Wolves of Royal Paynes #2) - Kiki Burrelli Page 0,64
still was. If only I knew how that woman had fooled all of us. How could she have known so many intimate details about my mother? About me? I needed to know, but I'd promised Faust I would stay where I was.
I searched the room, still unsure what I was looking for. My gaze landed on our unmade bed, then the pile of books in the corner that we'd lined up for evening reads, before settling on the slotted vent in the floor.
I dropped to my knees, and Dog sniffed me, licking my cheek.
What are you doing?
"Nothing I said I wouldn't do," I hurled back, before feeling horrible for snapping and throwing my arms around his neck. "I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that. I'm trying to find out what's going on down there."
Dog sighed. I know we have some mice that scurry around down there. He didn't sound especially pleased by that fact.
Mice were perfect. They could shimmy down there and tell me what they heard without any danger to themselves. They might not have been able to decipher what the human sounds meant, but maybe they could recreate them in a way that let me understand.
Except animals only ever spoke in their own language, it only broadcast in my head as English. There were some animals, like Dog, who understood almost everything that was said around them, but most animals couldn't care less to learn human. At times, I understood why.
I pressed my lips to the vent, ignoring how unhygienic that was as I whispered as loudly as I dared. "Excuse me, is anyone down there?"
I pressed my ear down but couldn't hear anything but wind.
"I hate to be a bother, but if there is anyone down there that can hear me, could you please respond?"
At first, there was only the rushing fuzz of the wind and the ocean. Then I heard a tiny squeak. I'm here. What are you?
I tried to jump with joy and remembered, when my head hit the wall, that I was on my hands and knees. "I'm a human. I live in this room. My name is Storri, and I was wondering if you could help me."
Do you have food? the mouse asked before I'd finished speaking all the way.
I hadn't asked for anything before we came up here. Now I regretted that. "I don't, but if you help me now, I can get you food. Anything from the kitchen. Your choice."
That was hardly an incentive. The mice probably already snagged food from the kitchen. I glanced quickly to Dog, and he glowered like he knew what I was about to say. "And I can promise you the dog that keeps trying to eat you will stop."
Sometimes longer concepts like that were hard for animals to understand, even with most of the words translated. There were times when things were simply lost in translation. But this mouse wasn't confused in the slightest. Deal!
***
The hairiest one—
I'd taken that to be Diesel.
—wants to torture her for information. The square-faced one—
That was Knox.
—does too, but the other three do not.
That was a relief. I didn't like the idea of threatening the woman with harm, though I wouldn't blame Knox and Diesel. It was in their nature to protect their pack, as being nice to the point of being thrown in a tower was in mine.
Pbt is coming. Zzt scurried back down the vent.
Translating was working better than I expected. Most of what the mice repeated was clear and discernible. There didn't seem to be much of a language gap, and I quickly learned these mice loved gossip. We'd also realized that the trip from the vent to this room was too far for Zzt to hear very much of the conversation, but since none of the mice wanted to worry about Dog's teeth chomping down on them, there wasn't a shortage of volunteers.
The woman won't say anything.
I frowned. It had been almost an hour. How was she staying silent? I would've folded long ago.
She said she's more afraid of what her employer will do than she is of them.
I couldn't see any of the alphas liking that answer, and it wasn't a difficult guess as to who her employer was, but she hadn't explicitly named them. Not that I'd heard.
Tsk is coming.
As soon as Pbt left, Tsk replaced her.
She killed Storri's aunt. Tsk's whiskers poked through the grate. Which one is Storri?
I fell back, hitting my tailbone hard against the floor. "I'm Storri."