Chapter 75
Forty days.
He had been in this hell hole for exactly forty days. Hiding in the crevices, eating crumbs of dirt from the ground. Disguising as a beggar and asking for crumbs on the street. His golden blonde hair was turning a grumpy shade of brown and Harris could not remember when last a comb touched his beard.
This was what it was really like in the land of the rogues. This was the reason people dreaded this place, this was why the outlands was every wolf’s worst nightmare. It was a place where the strong ate the weak and picked their teeth with their bones. It was a place where you could choose to eat or be eaten, kill or be killed. There were no middlemen, you were either a victor or a victim. Harris could not still tell his standpoint, but the way he had survived these last days was still a surprise to him.
After being locked up in the jail cell for two days, Harris had not seen his banishment coming. When the iron bars of his prison were pulled open, the joy in his heart was indescribable. All of a sudden, he as being thrown into the back of a van, blindfolded and chained. Harris could not see anything; neither could he speak.
His lips were taped together, his eyes were covered with thick sackcloth, while his hands were still cuffed. The truck continued to drive nonstop until his eyes were untied and he was pushed down from the back of the truck. They released his mouth and hands before a huge man knocked him unconscious with one sweep of his elbow. Harris felt and saw himself tumble to the ground.
He did not wake up until evening, when the cold of the night caused his bones to shiver, and tiny drops of rain sent chills down his spine, causing him to spring back to life. However, the moment he was fully aware of his surrounding, Harris began to wish the man’s elbow had hit him at the back of his head and killed him immediately. He would have been better off dead, and not be in the position he was in; lost in the land of the rogues, with nowhere to go, no one to help and no money to help himself.
The river was a good source of water; Harris had found pleasure in it. Only food caused him to worry. For the first ten days, he had his bath in the river, hiding at the far end, away from both men and women. He ate nothing but fruits which had fallen and wandered away from their trees, most of them were rotten, but his stomach quickly adjusted to it, it must have known it did not have a choice.
Other days, he covered his head with his hood and sat on the streets of the market place where he slept under the shades of locked stores after their owners had closed for the night. Good people passed by and dropped rumpled notes and faded coins in front of him. If he wasn’t robbed, he used the money to get bread for the next three days. And on days he as robbed, he stayed on an empty stomach, until the next day.
No one had been able to catch a glimpse of his face, or so he thought. Every day, he asked himself how he had gone from a skilled playboy to a street beggar. The more he thought of it, the more he realized he had never seen the transformation coming.
How could he have known that fighting to get the woman he loved to love him back would have put him in such a situation. He could not tell who he hated more; Jojo, for refusing to kiss him on that night, for not returning his love. Or, was it the alpha, who had put him in this situation without mercy? Or himself, who had allowed his need for Jojo cajole him into going after her and doing what he did? It was hard to choose when there were so many options to choose from.
However, on the fortieth night, how he had gotten to the land of the rogues was the least of Harris’s problems. He had barely had anything to eat in three days, and allowed himself to give in to the thoughts of stealing.
Yes. He had stooped that low.
However, his attempt at being an Alladin had not gone very smoothly. The trader sent off an alarm before he was ten feet away from her store. Before he could run any further, he felt himself being lifted from the ground and hurled over the shoulder of a huge man. They were supposed to burn him alive, he knew this because the continued to hear the market traders scream.
“Burn him! Burn him! Burn him!”
The goddess must have loved him enough to give him a second chance. The men carried him to what looked like an abandoned castle, and threw him into a jail cell.
Harris lay weak and sloppy on the cold concrete ground. He kept his lips sealed and could barely muster the strength to cry, even though the tears burned his eyelids. He knew that the next time the iron bars of the cell were pushed open; his fate would be decided. Harris had never wished for death before, but it was the safest thing he could think of.
He would rather leave the world, than become a prisoner to the woes of the world. He was too proud to suffer.NôvelDrama.Org owns © this.
Just as he expected, the iron bars creaked open, and he was bundled out of the cell, with the same force he was thrown in. Harris allowed himself to be dragged along the dark corridor into what looked like a courtroom, where he was flung to ground.
He lay on his back, his forehead kissed the ground. In front of him, a tall and lean man was seated. Brown hair and sea blue eyes, Harris noted, as he fought to raise his head up.
The man frowned at him, with a deep sense of unfamiliarity. He corked his head to the side as he stroked his beard gently.
Harris took note of the man’s attire. A faded black jacket on top brown long sleeved shirt and faded cargo pants. He looked old, about thirty years older than him.
“He is the thief we found, chief. The traders had wishes to burn him, but we thought it best we came to you.” One man spoke. Even though Harris could not see his face, he could tell the speaker was staring down at him with disdain.
They were all rogues, weren’t they all thieves?
“He doesn’t belong to us. I haven’t seen his face before.” The chief spoke, before rising to his feet.
Harris swallowed his saliva, and wondered why he had not done so until he filled his stomach, instead of attempting to steal.
“Look at me.” The elderly man growled, and Harris scrambled to his feet with the little strength he had in him.
“I am Jesse, chief of the rogues. You would state who you are and why you’re here.” The man snarled.
Harris was tongue-tied, too weak to speak until the man snapped at him again.
“I said speak!”
Harris jolted up, and cowered in fear as he pressed his head to the ground.
“I… I am Harris, from Rush pack. I… I was banished some days ago, for… for fighting for the woman I love.”
Laughter erupted from the throats of the men around him. Harris felt like a fool, a big complete fool.
The man in front of him scoffed and shook his head.
“Love. We are prisoners of that, are we not?”
Harris raised his head from the floor and looked up at him.
“I swear sir, I only tried to steal because I was hungry. I have been begging since I got here, but I was robbed three days ago and I have been unable to eat since then. Please sir…” He clapped his hands together, tears stung his eyelids, threatening to rush down, but he held it back.
“Spare my life, and I would do whatever you ask of me.”
The elderly man looked down at him, his face voids of any express, until a wry smile slowly formed on his face, spreading his fairly wrinkled cheeks apart.
“Of course, you definitely would.”