by Casey Morgan
But the more I pressed, the more my father became even more tight-lipped. And eventually, when I was old enough to make him angry with the things I’d said – that only bad fathers wouldn’t tell their daughters what happened to their mothers – he had just started calling me obstinate and ungrateful.
“It should be enough for you to know that your mother passed away and I raised you since then,” he said. “I don’t even really know the exact circumstances of her death. And what I do know would only scare you and hurt you more than help you, so I’m not going to tell you, and it’s for your own good. You’re being too stubborn to see that I have my reasons.”
But Gideon was showing hopeful signs of being an easier nut to crack than Melchior and Simeon had been, because he shrugged again and said, “Pretty much.”
“Pretty much?”
His answer took me by surprise. These shifters seemed to be strong, tough men, each of whom liked to appear stronger and tougher than the others. But although Gideon looked the same as the others in that regard, he acted differently.
“I owe him my life,” he said, simply. “And even before that, I never cared as much about this ‘king of the jungle’ stuff as he did, so it’s easy to let him play that role. In fact, ironically, that may have been what caused all our problems in the first place.”
I looked at him, wanting him to continue, and he finally did.
“Bethel Forest isn’t made for shifters who don’t want to be in charge. Its natural state of being seems to be constant conflict, fighting between those who want to have power and those who are in power. Gaspar and Simeon were fighting to be in charge, and I wasn’t able to help Simeon fight Gaspar hard enough, and Gaspar threatened to kill me unless Simeon let him win. I don’t really fit in here, I guess.”
“So, why not leave?” I asked him, glad that I was getting some information out of him, even though it seemed rather specific to a feud between him and his brother, and had little to do with finding out much about things that concerned me.
But my hope was to get there, eventually, by asking these more personal questions first.
“The outside world isn’t really made for those who are from Bethel Forest,” he said.
“I see. So, that’s quite a dilemma,” I remarked encouragingly, wanting him to continue.
“Yeah. But it has been done, and I do eventually want to do it.”
“What stops you?” I asked him.
“I guess I’d miss my brother too much,” he said. And then, as if wanting to be completely honest, he added, “Plus, just plain inertia.”
He really did seem to be too wholesome to be from the same place as these big, strong alpha males. He didn’t even seem to want to fuck me.
That made me think of something. Maybe there was an additional reason he didn’t fit in here.
“Are you gay?” I asked him. Then I immediately wanted to throw a hand up over my mouth, except that I couldn’t, because I was tied up. “I mean, umm. Sorry. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong with that. Just that you were saying you didn’t fit in here in the forest, you and you didn’t seem to want to…”
I trailed off, feeling like an idiot now more than ever. At this point I was wanted to stick my foot into my mouth, but I couldn’t do that any better than I could move my hand.
“Make a move on you?” he asked.
Then he smirked, before I had said anything further, because I was now trying to weigh my words carefully.
“Don’t worry, it’s not that I don’t think you’re hot,” he said, causing my cheeks to blush. “And it’s not that I’m gay. It’s just that there’s someone else I want to be with.”
“Oh,” I said, blushing even further now, feeling bad that I would be so presumptive. “That’s really sweet of you. It wasn’t quite clear to me how, umm, mating relations were determined in this forest…”
“It’s not really clear to anyone,” he said. “Usually it’s every man for himself, taking a woman, even as a captive, unfortunately…”
It was now his turn to fumble with his words. And my pussy started dripping wet as I realized that that was what Simeon had been doing. Taking me as his captive. And I had liked that idea, even though I was also into Melchior.
What the hell had gotten into me?
Was I going from virgin to slut?
How could I want to be with both men, and I had even entertained being with Gideon, before I had found out he wasn’t interested.
In a way, I still wanted to be with him. It made me want him even more, to know I couldn’t have him.
Wasn’t this a betrayal of Melchior?
I couldn’t seem to think straight. I wasn’t being my normal self at all.
“Anyway,” Gideon finally continued. “They’ll keep the woman for a while, to themselves, until another man comes along and, um, claims her as his own for a while. Sometimes, due to rivalries and truces, a woman is shared by multiple men.”
“Really?” I asked, getting even more wet when I heard that.
In the real world, being shared by multiple men would be something that society looked down on. But here in Bethel Forest, if it was the norm, and if it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, well then, I might just be in luck.
In fact, maybe something about the aura of the forest was what made me feel as if I was in lust – if not also love – with at least two men at once. It seemed right, here in the forest, even though in the world I was used to, it would have seemed wrong.
“Yeah, sometimes,” Gideon said. “But I tend to think true love should only be between two people, or else what’s the point?”
“I have no clue,” I told him, honestly, because these things were a mystery to me.
I hadn’t had any luck dating, and I was the one who was going to give up my virginity to a douchebag before I had been called away. At this point, anything was better than that, and I would just try to figure out my own way as I went along.
Speaking of figuring out things on my own, I decided now might be the time to turn the conversation to more practical matters.
“So, why are Melchior and Simeon fighting?” I asked him.
He shrugged, which seemed to be his favorite thing to do.
“You mean this time?” he asked. “They’re rival packs. They always fight, although sometimes they make a truce to work towards shared purposes.”
“Like Simeon and Gaspar?” I said, trying to understand.
“Not really,” he answered. “Usually pack members are loyal to each other and get along, but this is a special situation. Both Simeon and Gaspar are alphas, but there aren’t enough packs in the forest for them to lead their own. Simeone wanted to create a new one but Gaspar said he would kill me, and I tried to help Simeon fight against Gaspar to rule the Lumi or to get him to submit to letting Simeon start a new pack with Gaspar’s blessings and promises of safety, but I just couldn’t do it as well as they could. Simeon was worried about my well-being so he ceded power to Gaspar.”
“I see,” I said. “So, now they always hate each other, as if they were from other packs.”
“Kind of,” Gideon said. “But they also get along at times, too. I mean, we’re still from the same pack. We have clan loyalty. It’s not like one of them would kill the other, after that initial battle to break off into two packs and then the truce, once it was determined that we were all going to stay Lumi members and that Gaspar would be in charge. Simeon does honor the law of the forest. It’s just that he resents it, and so there are power struggles.
“Sometimes they get along and work with each other and other times they don’t, so in that way it’s similar to alliances we make with the Eira clan. But the level of violence is less when they’re not getting along. It’s not like one of them would kill the other. They can count on each other to keep each other safe, at least.”
“Okay.” I was still trying to make sense of it all but decided the whole back story wasn’t something that concerned me right now. And the inner
workings of the pack loyalties and forest rules were things that might always allude me. I decided to cut right to the chase. “But what are they fighting over now?”
There was that shrug again.
It drove me crazy.
I wanted to shake him into having some sort of urgency. I wanted to laugh as I realized this was probably how Simeon always felt around him. I started to want Simeon even more when I realized how kind he was to put his brother before his quest for power.
“Hell if I know,” Gideon said. “They don’t really fill me in on these things.”
“Why not?” I asked, feeling exasperated.
“It’s not really for those without power to know,” he said.
I felt he was stuck in a catch 22. Knowledge was power, and he had none of it. Yet he couldn’t get power unless he had knowledge.
Perhaps Simeon accidentally infantilized him. If he would work together with him and share some knowledge and power, perhaps Gideon could help him get what he wanted when it came to Gaspar.
But this was no time for me to be attempting to solve age-old questions of sibling rivalry. I was mostly feeling quite powerless, myself, since I had no further information about what was going on.
Suddenly, though, something white drifted down past my head and landed on his, as he sat on the ground underneath me.
“Incoming,” I told him.
“Huh?” he said, reaching up to pick a folded-up piece of paper off his head.
It was then that I saw the white dove hovering near by.
“You guys really do things around here by messenger pigeon?” I asked, trying not to laugh. “I mean, um, messenger dove?”
“Who exactly are you?” he asked, turning to look up at me as if just realizing that he had no idea who the woman he’d tied up was.
And I didn’t think he had cared, because he was just following orders. Perhaps I should have been offended, but it was rather refreshing, since I really didn’t know who I was in relation to this forest, either, or why Melchior and apparently Simeon wanted me here so badly. At least Gideon and I were together in our innocence.
But before I could give it much more thought, the dove dove-tailed – being true to its name – down and bonked Gideon on the head with his beak.
“Hey!” he cried out, but the dove’s apparent mission was accomplished – Gideon was reminded to open up the note that he had still been holding in his hands.
“Oh, fuck,” he said, as soon as he did, climbing up into the tree.
“What it is?” I asked him, suddenly alarmed, if only because he was.
“Shhh!” he said, putting his hand over my mouth as soon as he reached my location on the branch.
“Woah,” I whispered, as I felt his weight on me.
He had broad shoulders and large pecs, just like his brother did. I wanted to run my hands down his arms but I was still tied up.
Was he changing his mind? Did he want to be with me after all? What about the girl he had in mind, and the fact that his brother would be upset?
But before I had the chance to answer of these questions, a pack of wolves came running into our area of the woods. They stopped and sniffed around, and then kept going.
“Whew,” Gideon said, letting out a deep breath. “They passed us. They must not have been expecting us to be in human form.”
“Yay?” I asked, assuming this was a good thing.
“Yay,” he said, his face very close to mine.
“I’m so happy I could kiss you,” he said. “But I won’t.”
And yet he stayed there with his face close to mine for some time. It felt like an eternity passed, but it was only a couple of minutes. His head sunk onto my chest and I let him rest it there – not only because I had no choice in the matter but also because I liked it. I felt that Gideon and I were the only two people in this forest who didn’t have some ulterior motive. We were both just trying to help others.
Well, I couldn’t say I didn’t have any ulterior motive, I thought, as I noticed that my nipples were standing up hard and erect against Gideon’s chest, as his breath moved in and out of his body in the same rhythm as mine was. I was still on a quest to have my virginity taken, and it really didn’t matter to me which one of the three strong, handsome shifters I had met on my journey so far was the one to take it.
All of them were handsome. All of them were so much better candidates than Charles Stubb had been.
Perhaps it could be Gideon?
Technically he had the least amount of power of any of the three, but part of me wanted to be shared by three men, or more, at once, like he had told me sometimes happens in this forest, and I had a feeling that if he were to take me first, the other two would still fight over me. Whereas if he didn’t take me first, he would give them preference, and I’d only get two instead of three.
Look at me, wanting all three, and even more, I thought, almost ashamed of myself, but telling myself that was just how things worked in this forest.
Maybe I could have everything I wanted.
When in Rome…
But then, all of a sudden, a voice beamed out, scaring me back to reality.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing with my woman, Brother?”
I jumped instinctively, the sound of anger in Simeon’s voice so powerful that I wanted to run. But I couldn’t. Because I was tied up, with no way out.
Chapter Five - Simeon
“Nothing!” my brother squeaked, scampering down from the tree and standing straight up in front of me, as to prove to me that his clothes were still on.
I didn’t believe him, though, not entirely. Leave it to Gideon to put the moves on my captive. I knew he wouldn’t try to go all the way – he wasn’t enough of an alpha to do that – but I was sure he’d tried to do something. The sheepish look on his face gave it away.
“Simeon,” Marilyn called out, from up in the tree. “He’s telling the truth. Don’t be mad at him. We didn’t do anything.”
I glared at Gideon, and both he and I knew that her saying this only made things worse between us, not better.
“What did you tell her?” I hissed at him.
Why was she so eager to calm me down? How much about our pack dynamics had he let out?
“Nothing,” he shrugged, letting me know that he had indeed told her way more than “nothing.” “She was just asking about our history.”
I growled and pushed him to the side. He had one simple job – to keep her tied up for me until I got back. Of course he had to go blabbing things to her during that time, letting her use her feminine wiles to lure information out of him, that she could later use against us.
“Please,” Marilyn said. “Leave him alone.”
Something about her tone of voice let me know that she would have liked to have done a lot more with him than he tried to do to her. I should have figured that, knowing that she was a feisty woman, in the prime of her youth, probably desperate for one or more of us big, strong men to give it to her good, and my brother was too much of a wimp to satisfy her needs.
Still, my cock reared up in jealousy and my inner beast threatened to come out. I hated shifting when I didn’t want to, and now was not the time. So I had to get rid of my brother – my issues at the moment were with Marilyn.
“Gaspar came through?” I asked Gideon.
“Yes,” he said. “Just a couple minutes before you got here.”
“Good. Now get out of here,” I told him. “Go to the clearing over near the Eira’s side of the woods and see how many pack members are fighting Melchior. Don’t report back to me until I tell you to.”
“They’re fighting Melchior?” Marilyn said, her voice sounding even more concern.
And that just made me even more jealous. Did she really need to make it clear that she would happily be with Melchior, with Gideon, with me? Did it even matter to her who fucked her?
“Stay out of this,” I told her. “It’s none of your concern, what happens to your precious M
elchior. I’m going to deal with you in a moment.”
She didn’t say anything further.
Gideon nodded to me and then shifted into wolf form. He ran off to spy on the battle for me. At least he was good for something, and usually obeyed my instructions.
This one, on the other hand… I thought, looking up at Marilyn as if I knew I couldn’t trust her. She would have bounced out of here the first moment she could, had she not been tied up.
I climbed the tree until I was up there beside her. I was a little concerned about Gaspar coming back, but I knew I had some time, and I wanted to use it wisely.
Gideon had tied Marilyn’s ankles to the same branch. Her legs were closed together and over to one side, resting on the branch beneath it.
“Let me see your pussy,” I commanded her, as I took one of her legs and moved it all the way over to the other side, so that she was spread wide open for me.
She said nothing, so I pinched her clit, hard.
“Ouch!” she cried out. “Mmm.”
From the second little sound she had made, I could tell she liked it, despite her protests.
“Did Gideon touch this?” I asked her.
“No,” she said.
I reached up and pinched her nipple, too.
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not!” she objected. “Ouch!”
“Oh, please,” I told her, laughing. “Don’t act like you don’t like this. You’re dripping wet for me.”
As if to prove it, I stuck my finger into her pussy hole. I had planned to bring it right back out and show her the juices that were covering it, but it was so tight and warm that I couldn’t help but leave it in there.
“Mmmm,” she moaned again, as if by way of admission.
“I thought so,” I said, grabbing hold of her by a couple more fingers, cupping the thick part of her pussy lips in my hands while my fingers were inside her.
My other hand left her nipple and began to circle her clit.
“Are you a virgin?” I asked her, although I already knew.
Her pussy walls were gripping my fingers tight, as if she didn’t want them to leave her.
“Yes.”
