by Loki Renard
Hannah squealed and laughed at first, then simply squealed. It was fun to tease him when he played the serious and infallible alpha, but the consequences were not nearly as fun. Lorcan was taking the whole situation beyond seriously, as was evidenced in the way he yanked up her nightgown and started spanking her already very well spanked rear with even harder slaps and swats.
“You will stay away from Sacha,” he said grimly. “She has ill intentions for you, and you do not know the depth of the pain you seek.”
“That’s rich considering you’re beating my ass,” Hannah whined.
“You’re getting a little spanking,” Lorcan replied. “This is nothing compared to what she already did to you, and what she will do to you if she gets the chance.”
And so Hannah’s night ended much as it had begun, with her bare bottom squirming under the alpha’s palm, her anus aching, her welted cheeks still stinging, punishment after punishment only serving to temporarily tire her out. She laid there on the bed with Lorcan’s palm bouncing off her cheeks and swore to herself that sooner rather than later, she would take Sacha’s deal.
Chapter Twelve
Three days later the full moon rose, and Hannah once more crept out of the alpha’s bed to take herself down to the basement where Sacha was being held. To her surprise, Sacha was not behind bars. She was standing at the base of the stairs with a dark smirk on her face, almost as if she had been expecting her.
Hannah wondered for a brief moment if Sacha had ever actually been a prisoner. Sacha seemed to do just as she pleased. She was a darker, much more devious version of her brother and she seemed completely prepared for what was to happen next.
“Come,” she said, beckoning Hannah to a small door in the recesses of the basement. “We will not do this in the manor. We cannot risk being disturbed.”
The little door led up a series of very little stairs and passageways that led onto the heath. Hannah found herself emerging from the earth not unlike a mole, the silver of the moon casting a glow over the landscape.
“This way,” Sacha urged, walking through the misty night air toward what at first seemed from a distance to be some kind of walled pen, but which Hannah realized the closer she got to it was a cemetery. A very, very old cemetery with headstones in the shape of wolves and teeth and angels besides.
She felt no small amount of trepidation as Sacha led her to the very middle of the holy ground and bade her sit down.
“This is where our ancestors are buried,” Sacha explained as she lit candles, which seemed to have little effect given the power of the moon’s glow. “This is the place where our power resides, where generations have been laid to rest. Tonight they will watch over you as you are transformed, or welcome you as you go to your eternal rest.”
Hannah felt the grimness of the situation, the weight of a moment that would truly be life or death. Sacha sat cross-legged in front of her, looking her over with a calculating gaze.
“Do you understand what it is we are about to do?”
“You are about to make me as I should be,” Hannah said, locking eyes with the female alpha. “My ancestor is buried here too. Honoraria. She led me here, and I do not believe that she intended for me to stay weak and human and some pet for an alpha to punish daily.”
Sacha smiled and nodded, approving of her rebellion. “You have been little other than a plaything for my brother,” she agreed. “It is an honor to help you claim your birthright, but I must tell you, whelp. This will hurt. I must bite you so deeply you stand a real chance of bleeding out. That is the best way to ensure that the lycanthropy is delivered deep enough into your body to take hold.”
“Do it,” Hannah said. She was not thinking about pain or the prospect of death. There in that dark graveyard she was thinking only about life, the life Honoraria had meant for her to have, the life she would have as her full self, woman and beast.
“Your life as you know it will end,” Sacha continued, showing more restraint than Hannah had given her credit for. “If I do this, you either die or you are reborn. There is no coming back.”
“I will not live as a prisoner here, separate from the pack,” Hannah repeated herself. “I will be of it, or I will be gone.”
Still Sacha spoke, moderating Hannah’s impulsiveness with calm words.
“Do not think this will earn you Lorcan’s favor. He will be furious. We will be breaking a code that has been in place for over a hundred years. You will be the first new whelp in the Darkwood pack in more than a century. You will lust for prey, you will challenge each of us, and you will be whipped for it. He will not be merciful—and neither will I.”
Hannah stood up, stripped her gown from her body, and stood naked in the moonlight. “I am ready, Sacha,” she said in a voice that was clear with resolve. “Take me.”
Sacha likewise removed her clothes, her naked body beautiful and frightening as it began to shift and change from human to wolf with an elegance that both frightened and thrilled Hannah. She stood there, watching, waiting to see what the beast would do as it first prowled in a circle around her, sniffing at her.
And then it came. The bite. Delivered hard to her right inner thigh. Hannah screamed and crumpled to the ground as those fearsome jaws closed around her flesh. Fire ran through her blood, agony as searingly pure as anything she had ever felt before. Her mind felt as though it were aflame with a white-hot intensity. She was dying. She knew it more than she knew anything. Death was close at hand, enveloping her in a dark embrace that seared every part of her.
She cried out, screaming for life and for death and for release. Her voice did not sound human. It sounded like the baying of an animal. Next to her, Sacha had slid back to her human form and was leaning over her, applying pressure to the wound with Hannah’s once white garment, silk now soaked red with her blood.
It was not the wound that hurt; it was the burning in her veins, the wrenching of what felt like every cell in her body. Hannah screamed and cried her agony to the moon as she begged for death to release her from the pain.
“Shh.” She felt Sacha’s lips against hers, a soothing, rare moment of compassion. “It will not hurt too much longer.”
Tears coursed down Hannah’s face, drawn from the very core of her. There was nothing left. She was turned inside out, whatever she had been was gone, and what she was becoming had yet to arrive.
Chapter Thirteen
Lorcan awoke to a frantic pounding at his bedroom door, and then the presence of three of his men surrounding his bed. He knew the moment he sat up and saw that Hannah was not there that something had gone horribly awry.
“In the cemetery,” Mark said. “There are screams. We think Sacha has Hannah…”
Cursing, Lorcan pushed back his covers and ran naked from the room, his body flowing into wolf before he hit the top of the stairs. There was no time to waste, and he was perhaps already far too late. He should have seen this coming. Hannah’s ongoing rebellion, her talk of being part of the pack, her visits to Sacha…
He reached the gate of the cemetery in under three minutes and assumed human form once more, a cry of despair rising to his lips as the glow of the moon lit a scene straight out of his worst nightmare. Sacha was crouched above Hannah, trying desperately to rouse her. Hannah was unconscious, perhaps already dead.
There was blood. So much blood. Sacha was coated in it. Hannah was pale, seeming devoid of it. For a horrifying moment he was certain Sacha had killed Hannah. There was a bandaged wound on her inner thigh where Sacha had clearly bitten her. She was entirely naked, smeared in streaks of her own life force.
“What the hell have you done?” Lorcan fell to his knees beside Hannah, his fingers on her neck. To his immense relief, there was a pulse there. It was weak, but she was still alive. He gave a silent thanks to whatever was looking out for her and focused his attention on doing what he could to save her life.
“I tried to…”
“I can see what you t
ried to do,” Lorcan growled. He knew beneath the bandage there would be four distinct puncture wounds, perhaps more related to various teeth. She had bitten Hannah in the hopes of turning her. Lycanthropy was a condition most easily transmitted through saliva to blood contact, and the weaker the recipient, the more likely it would be successful. That explained the blood. Sacha had clearly tried to wound Hannah through several bites designed to shock her system into accepting the change.
Lorcan’s heart ached for Hannah as he saw that it was already starting to take effect. There was a fine dark down appearing on her naked legs, back, and neck. It was growing slowly though—too slowly.
“You have cursed her,” he said, his voice breaking with despair.
“She wanted it, as her ancestor before did,” Sacha said unrepentantly. “I did what was expected of me. I did the right thing, Lorcan. You know it.”
She passed a tender hand over Hannah’s hair and murmured a soft word of comfort as Hannah whimpered. The process of the change was painful. Lycanthropy affected every cell. Every part of her would die and be reborn. Nothing would be as it once was. She would hold two species within her and be able to become either one at will—if she survived this first biological onslaught.
“She may still die,” Lorcan said gravely. There was no time for rage or revenge. Hannah was in more danger than she ever had been.
“If you give her your blood she will be stronger,” Sacha reminded him. “I have given her some of mine to start the process, but the blood of an alpha male is stronger than that of an alpha bitch. Besides, you don’t want her bonding with me, do you?” Sacha smirked coldly at him.
Lorcan let out a little growl under his breath. A freshly whelped werewolf was almost always in love with the one who turned him or her. If he did not give her his blood, if he did not infect her with his particular seed, she would die, or she would perhaps survive and be Sacha’s—and that he could not stand. It was already a foregone conclusion that she would have a bond with Sacha now, but he could ameliorate that somewhat.
“Quickly, brother, before the change is too far progressed. She is weak. I do not think it is working.”
To her credit, Sacha sounded concerned about Hannah’s impending demise. In all likelihood she’d thought she could actually turn Hannah without killing her. She’d been wrong. Hannah’s breathing was shallow and the change had stalled completely. Sacha did not have what it took to create new werewolves—a fact many of their ancestors had discovered far too late for the innocents buried out in the Darkwood cemetery. Whether the human could tolerate the change was only part of the equation. It took a true alpha to be able to create new werewolves, and Sacha fell short.
“She does not have her canines yet,” Lorcan muttered. “She cannot take her first flesh.”
Lycanthropy was not a pretty condition. There was no romance in the change. Hannah would wake as ravenous as a starving wild wolf. She would be a ferocious predator with a yearning for living flesh and a prey drive that would make her exceptionally dangerous. If she survived the change, Lorcan was in for the biggest challenge of his life. He had read of what it was like for a freshly turned werewolf, but never seen such a thing with his own eyes.
“Then you must give it to her,” Sacha said. “Give her your blood.”
At long last, and far too late, Sacha was right. Without an infusion of lycan blood, Hannah would surely die.
Lorcan’s control of his shifting allowed him to extend his canines without shifting entirely. His face elongated into strange beastlike form as his canines grew to viciously sharp points, almost like a vampire aside from the fact that they were much larger than any vampire’s fangs ever could be. He slashed at his wrist and pressed the welling wound to Hannah’s mouth.
At first nothing happened. She lay there senseless, his blood flowing out of her lips meaninglessly. And then her tongue moved in a lapping motion and then she was suckling, drinking of him. Lorcan had never experienced such a thing, giving life directly to another through his own blood. As he watched, her color began to warm and her eyes flickered open. They were still green, but not as they had been. They were a vibrant hue, like new leaves lit by a summer’s sun, still ringed by darker pigment, which served to make them all the more dramatic.
Her sweet face began to change, humanity lost to the onslaught of animal consciousness, which he knew would take her completely. He had seen so many shifters shifting that he had almost forgotten how dramatic it was. Seeing Hannah change was like seeing a shift for the first time. Her face was consumed by the wolf within, her nose and mouth turning to a snout and jaws as the rest of her body flowed into animal form.
To his surprise, her fur was almost entirely black, save for a gray V on her chest. She was a stunning creature, quite unlike the wild pack types that most of his pack conformed to. The very tip of her tail was also white, a little like a fox.
“She has domesticated traits,” Sacha noted, puzzled.
She was not wrong. Those who were born human did not always take to the wild in quite the same way a born werewolf might. Lorcan had read accounts of all kinds of strange coloring and certain differences in temperament. There was no simple way to make a werewolf—and no guarantee of anything once one was made. She could have lost herself completely. She could be driven mad by the process. For all he knew, a tragedy had taken place, an irreversible loss. He fervently hoped not. All they could do now was wait and see what happened when Hannah regained consciousness.
“Did you bring prey for her?”
Sacha pointed to a covered cage. “Of course.” She pulled a sack off the cage to reveal a small white bunny rabbit with red eyes. Lorcan could not believe what he was seeing.
“Sacha! That’s someone’s pet!”
“I thought something domesticated would be easier for her first meal,” Sacha said blandly.
“Isn’t that Mrs. Maguffin’s rabbit? Peter?”
“Could be,” Sacha shrugged.
“What is wrong with you, sister?” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You’ve always been cold, but this new streak of cruelty does not suit you.”
“It’s a rabbit, Lorcan,” Sacha snapped. “I didn’t inquire as to its name. I was trying to take care of our newest member.”
That was how it always was with Sacha. Her practicality overrode any kind of emotional capacity. It would have probably been worth a visit to a psychologist, if not for the fact that Lorcan was fairly certain her personality defects were caused by the fact that she was a wolf at heart and thought like one too. He murmured a silent prayer that Hannah would not suffer the same deficit of conscience when she awoke.
He reached out and stroked the dark fur of her head just as she began to stir. A few moments later, Hannah made a little whining sound and rolled over onto her belly. She seemed confused, as well she might be given the fact that she had never been a wolf before. Her head turned and she looked at him. He thought he saw a spark of recognition in her bright green gaze, a notion that was reinforced when her tongue extended from her mouth and she licked his hand.
“Hello, whelp,” Lorcan murmured in soothing tones.
She let out a little whine and rolled over onto her back, looking up at him with her mouth hanging half-open.
“So much for the vicious werewolf,” Sacha snorted. “She’s like a dog.”
Lorcan laughed as pure relief ran through his body. Hannah was intact. Her spirit and her body had both survived, he was sure of it.
“Who’s a good girl?” Lorcan crooned the question, rubbing his hand through the dense dark fur along her flank. She let out a little yawning sound and stretched, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth as her lower leg began to shake back and forth.
Sacha made a sound of disgust. “She’s a pet, Lorcan! We’ll have to get some dog roll in for her.”
“She’s a good girl,” Lorcan praised Hannah. “A very good girl. Yes, you are!”
Hannah’s happy panting filled t
he night air. This was not at all how the tales of people being made werewolves were written. Those tales were full of freshly made half-mad werewolves turning on their creators and rampaging through villages. Hannah did not seem overly inclined to do anything besides lie there and thump her tail against the ground. Sacha was right. Hannah was behaving as if she were domesticated.
“Now,” he said. “We need to help her shift back to human form.”
“The sooner the better,” Sacha murmured. “She’s sickening. If she is like the rest of us, she’ll probably turn back when she falls asleep,” Sacha added. “Or you could try playing fetch with her… Hey!”
In the midst of Sacha’s criticism, Hannah stood up and shook herself, then bounded onto Sacha, paws extended against her shoulders, knocking her over backwards.
“Get off!” Sacha squealed as Hannah pinned her down and licked her face.
“I think she’s saying thank you,” Lorcan smirked. “Enjoy it while you can. Once I’m sure she’s not been harmed, you’re both in trouble.”
“Cut it out! Stop!” Sacha squealed as Hannah’s tongue snaked into her ear.
Laughing with a mixture of amusement and pure relief, Lorcan could barely contain himself. Hannah’s affection was about as painful a thing as Sacha would ever have to endure. No physical punishment he could have given Sacha would have been as satisfying as watching her writhe around under the eager, happy werewolf.
Chapter Fourteen
Hannah had spent a week under the care of the pack being nursed back to full health. Lorcan had not seen her in that time, as was tradition. It had not been easy for him to stay away from her, every part of his being had yearned to be by her side, but tradition was tradition for a reason. Hannah needed to bond with her pack mates, and she needed to learn to respect her alpha.
