Instead his fingertips grazed my back.
I tensed at the unexpected caress. The light touch sent my skin alight at first, until his fingers seized my shirt.
“I told you,” he snarled, “naked!”
He surged across the bed. His silhouette was darker than the lightless room, and he yanked me onto my back. I scrunched back into the pillows, sheer terror choking me.
He’s going to kill me.
The violent fury smashed through my soul. His silhouette loomed over me, his fingers cranked into my arms.
Stop it! Stop it! You can’t do this!
“Did I not warn you?” he growled.
How are you doing this? The Bond shouldn’t let this happen!
“It’s just a shirt,” I gasped.
His fingers tore at my panties. “And these.”
The lace of the panties raked my skin, and his anger suffocated me. “Let me go. You’re hurting me!”
He damn well knew how badly his grip hurt, how his fingers dug into my half-healed Mark. He bent over me, and his breath pulsed into my face, but a rictus shook him, and he cringed as it caught him by surprise. His fury slammed into me again, and I stifled a scream.
“You have five seconds to take this off, or I will rip it off you. Again, and again, and we will do it every.single.damn.night!”
He abruptly released me and rocked back on his heels, his own nudity obscured by the darkness. Dazed, I pulled off my shirt and squirmed out of my panties. He grabbed both and flung them away.
“I told you.” He slunk back to his corner of the bed, like a beast slinking back into its shadows. “We do not stand on human modesty here. It’s stupid. You defying me just to prove you have the will to do so is even more stupid. Pick something that matters.”
Ten seconds. My defiance had lasted all of ten seconds. I curled into a ball and wept. There was no point holding back the tears. He sensed my misery like I sensed his angry resolve to not care. He was the Alpha, and I had defied him. He was the Alpha, and I wasn’t the Luna.
He didn’t tell me to stop crying. His resolve to withhold comforting me—if he even knew how—and to resist my tears churned like iron machinery.
I laughed in my misery. Fool. We were already lost.
Sparring Session
My Goons still hadn’t introduced themselves by name, and considering I knew so few names of the IronMoon, it didn’t seem like asking was appropriate at this point. The IronMoon didn’t seem to deal in names, or even much in the way of conversation.
I sniffed the early summer air. My two goons were nervous in their large wolf-forms next to me. They weren’t bad company, as far as such things went: polite, respectful, and not my jailers. They followed me around and made sure I didn’t get lost, and also pointed out where I could find things so I didn’t flail around like an idiot.
“Take me down to the road,” I told them, pointing my snout at the main driveway that twisted down the hillside. “It’s that way, isn’t it?”
Goon A, a typical grey wolf with tawny highlights, reluctantly trotted out ahead of me, while Goon B, a darker brown, stayed at my shoulder. The driveway was steeper than I remembered, and much longer, winding down the steep southern face of the bluff. Most of it twisted through thick woods that would have afforded excellent cover for an attacker, except for the ever-present IronMoon scouts.
The driveway flattened out, stretched over a wide, deep creek, and then emptied onto a narrow two-lane country road stretching east to west. Across the way was more forest and rough terrain, and the trees stretched their branches overhead, creating a sun-dappled avenue. No mailbox, and no street markers to tell me where I was on a map. I inhaled the summer air again: no humans or other structures on the breeze.
“Which way is town?” I asked Goon A.
He indicated west with his snout. “About twenty miles.”
I sat down and my tail thumped on the asphalt. Running away had a certain romantic appeal to it. It’d also be stupid: I wasn’t a Hunter or a warrior, and while I had been on my share of hunts, I didn’t know the art of tracking like the professionals did. I didn’t know how to cover my trail. Gabel’s Hunters would find me within days, if not hours. I could run a hundred, two hundred, maybe even three hundred miles in any direction and still be in IronMoon territory.
“We shouldn’t linger down here,” Goon B said, nervous.
“Why not?”
“It’s not safe.”
Safe from Gabel, he meant. I sighed. Fine. My Goons would catch it if Gabel thought I tried to run away, and they had helped me. I let them take me back up the bluff, where an irate Platinum sat on the front step, wilting in the sunlight and sweating under her makeup. Still doused in perfume. The chemical-floral scent flooded my snout. Goon B coughed.
“Alpha Gabel wants to see you.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.” She smirked. “He wasn’t much for talking to me, if you get my drift.”
Liar. Despite the haze of her perfume she reeked of aggravation, not sex, or even arousal. The aggravation intensified to hot jealousy as her eyes rested on my Mark, cut into my shoulder, and burned into my pelt.
Gabel had summoned me, but I decided on a shower first. He could wait.
He wasn’t, however, in his office. That time of the afternoon he was down in the training ring. The Goons left me in his office and closed the door behind me.
I wandered around while I waited, examining his impressive collection of art and ancient weaponry, and his even more impressive library. On a large easel by the window was an immense map of the region, covered in pins and markers and multi-colored threads. I eased over to it.
IronMoon’s heart—where I was—sat to the northern edge of the territory. The outline of IronMoon’s reach was in black thread, wrapped and stretched neatly by pins tracing the pack boundary lines. More pins and notes marked human cities—places to be wary of—and more pins and thread denoting the packs in that part of the world. To the west the mountains created a natural boundary between IronMoon’s ambitions and the ancient SableFur, to the east sat the ocean, and to the north were the forests where no packs lived.
The door opened and Gabel walked in, freshly showered. “Admiring my domain?”
Admiring? No. More like taking in the scope of it. It was worse than I had realized back in Shadowless. “The rumors are true, aren’t they. You want to be King-Alpha. That’s what all this is about.”
“I trust my secret is safe with you, buttercup,” he replied, chuckling.
Time to change the subject. “Gardenia said you wanted to see me.” I remembered to use her proper name and not Platinum, so he wouldn’t know how much I loathed her. The less he had to use against me, the better.
“Are you two friends yet? She seems quite popular.”
Right. More like domineering to the handful of females, and popular with males for a very particular reason. “Not yet.”
Gabel’s smirk warmed. “Perhaps if you gave her a chance, buttercup.”
“Perhaps.” There were some she-wolves who would never get along, and Platinum and I were two such she-wolves. I didn’t want to get along with the painted whore.
Gabel inhaled, paused on whatever scent he caught, then asked, “Did you enjoy your jaunt down to the road?”
“It was hot.”
“So why did you go down there?”
“I want to see the entire heart. Is that not allowed? You didn’t inform me I was a prisoner in addition to your toy.”
“You’re not my prisoner. Just a reminder, Gianna, that you are also here as my Oracle, and you were taken as an offering from your pack to mine as terms of surrender. Abandoning your place here would violate the terms of Shadowless’ surrender.”
As an Oracle, I could leave and go to another pack, claiming the Moon had summoned me elsewhere. But as a she-wolf, Shadowless had offered me to Gabel as a condition of their surrender. Gabel had both claws into me: I had offered mys
elf as an Oracle, and Shadowless had offered me as a female. I couldn’t leave.
Gabel stated it without any menace at all: just a simple statement of the facts, and his ocean-colored gaze waiting for me to acknowledge it.
I said with dignity, “Running away wouldn’t solve anything. We’d still be Bound. Just remember that abusing me violates the Oracle-Alpha rules, and I can still leave if you do that.”
“Have I broken those rules? As I understand them I cannot prohibit other wolves from petitioning you, I cannot demand you give up the secrets you keep for other wolves, and I may not deprive you of your tools. Did I break one of those?”
“Not yet, you haven’t,” I retorted, despising his civil, patronizing tone.
“And I won’t.”
“Says the wolf who broke one of the biggest rules of all.”
“You were offered to me. I took what was offered.”
“That didn’t give you the right to Mark me!” I shouted. “Stop trying to justify what you did! You just wanted a toy.”
His tone remained maddeningly calm. “Are you having a difficult time accepting that your precious Moon hasn’t rotted that Mark off your arm? Beautiful Moon-touched Oracle that you are, with that Mark you resent so much cut into your flesh. If She objected so strongly and thought I had committed such a vile sin, your arm should be washed clean.”
I stiffened, and my gorge rose. No. I wouldn’t play this game with him. I wouldn’t let him chip at my faith. The Moon didn’t prevent us from mistakes, and She didn’t punish us the instant we sinned. Our sins were counted when our lives ended, not before. An Oracle who broke her vows didn’t always lose her Moon-touched skin, or even her Gift. There was a reason the Bond had taken hold, and my skin hadn’t rotted, but that didn’t make what Gabel had done right.
“Is there something you wanted?” My voice sounded raw and strained. “Or am I just here so you can play with me?”
“Anders’ collars. In the vision. Are the colors symbolic?”
I chewed on my tongue so I wouldn’t tell him to go screw himself. Mixing the duties of an Oracle with the nightmare of my Mark: clever. Trying to trick me into breaking one of the rules. Gabel did seem to love his rules, and bending them until they just about broke. I had been on offer to him for exactly the purpose he cut into my arm. There was no mortal rule that said he couldn’t do what he had done, just the Moon’s decrees, and Gabel didn’t follow those rules.
No, Gianna. What he did was wrong. A normal wolf wouldn’t need to be told not to take another’s soul.
Although Gabel had thought it was a little less permanent than it was.
Stop it. Stop trying to justify or excuse it. There is no excuse.
When he stood there, all civilized and groomed, and reasonable and balanced and his scent of strength and authority in every breath I took, and his power on offer, pressing into me and the tiny little voice within me that whispered this is yours, this magnificent, terrible wolf is yours.
I shored up my mental walls, imagining myself within a clear box, where the Tides pressed around me, but I was safe on rock and behind strong, thick walls. “If the colors mean something to you, then yes, it is likely the Moon showed me those colors for a reason. If not, then it was just so that I could see there were four collars easier.”
“Hmm.” Gabel walked behind his desk and tapped some papers there, frowning down at them. “That is not helpful, either. The black collar with no lead attached to it troubles me the most.”
Like I cared.
“But he’s also a male with a mate, and pups, and a pack, and his own concerns, so it’s possible he’s just pulled in many directions,” Gabel mused. “I think it’s time to summon him for a visit so I can get a look at those collars myself.”
This Goes Both Ways
Planning the fete for Anders’ arrival was left to Brian and the other she-wolves. Gabel told me not to trouble myself with it, even though with his Mark, it was sort of my responsibility to oversee such things.
“Leave it to the others,” Gabel told me. “It doesn’t concern you.”
It did concern me, and I didn’t care for how he told me it didn’t. He waited, and I chewed on my suspicions of what he was up to. What if everything ended up a mess, and he planned on laying it at my feet because I hadn’t overseen it? But he told me once more to leave it alone, and went as far as to summon Gardenia up to his office.
“You’ll work with your cousin,” Gabel told her, “Gianna has other things to do. Anders’ arrival is on you.”
Gardenia smirked at him. “You won’t be disappointed, Alpha.”
“I know,” Gabel replied. He bid her leave and told me, “Buttercup, the scent of jealousy.”
“I’m not jealous.” I snapped, although I was, because that damn little voice in the back of my head told me I should care about Platinum.
In bed, as long as I was naked, he didn’t touch me, or even glance at me, and I sensed only the barest interest from him. His presence, though, was unavoidable. I got out of bed, I dressed, I showered, I ate. He always watched. Watching, watching, watching, waiting for—weakness? A flinch? A question? He would refresh my drinks, serve me food from large platters as males did for their mates, and offer me the best of everything IronMoon had to offer.
Every morning he told me I looked lovely and complimented something about me, which lured Platinum to him like a bee to honey.
She found every excuse to be around Gabel, or talk to him about the most trivial detail of Anders’ visit, and although the house always seemed choked with echoes of her perfume, Cook seemed to be right: Gabel was just courteous to the she-wolves, like he had no idea how to tell them when they were behaving badly or crossing boundaries.
It was like living with an alligator. He drifted in the river waiting for some stupid zebra to come along, and then he’d strike. And I was the zebra.
My only escape was my scrying room, but the Moon rebuffed me. She wasn’t ignoring me, but She kept Her Eye closed. Oracles couldn’t scry for themselves, because the future was always in flux, and any vision we got would be instantly rendered useless, but we could meditate and invite wisdom. But a week of being gently ignored, and stalked by a river gator wore thin.
I bumped into Platinum on the stairs the day before Anders’ arrival.
She smirked at me. “Alpha Anders will be here tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“Alpha Gabel has asked me to be at his side,” she said oh-so-sweetly.
What?
Had I missed Gabel’s betrayal and deluded myself? Was pain such deranged nectar to him that no rules made sense? Had he been standing there acting so calm because he did not care and was so flagrant? I should have sensed the Bond fighting and howling at him, but there hadn’t been anything. I should have sensed his pleasure. I had sensed both before, in the car.
Gabel would humiliate me with Platinum in public. Forget private betrayals and sacrilege. My arm would match his, but he’d be hand in hand with Platinum.
The alligator had struck. I laughed at my own stupidity. Gabel had just been playing with his prey.
Then a new pain came along. Sharp, intense, the sort of pain that will kill. The sort of pain that you can’t endure, that you have to find help, or die from the source.
When he came to bed, he told me, “Anders will be here at ten. I expect you there.”
I lay on my side, staring at the wall and counting each little nub of texture, praying for the sharp pain to ease. “Fine.”
“We will see what collars he is wearing.”
Indeed.
“Have you met Anders before?”
“No.” The mild-toned conversation gnawed on my control. My soul leaked pain into his, but I had to hold it out of his grasp. He wanted rage, a fight, something, and whatever that something was, I couldn’t give it to him. I needed space to breathe, and there wasn’t any, no matter how hard I pushed back against the crushing pain, it overwhelmed me like an avalanche.
“Any questions about how we do things here?”
“No.”
“No questions at all?” he pressed, daring me to say something. “You seem upset.”
“I am not upset.” Maybe if I told myself often enough I wasn’t upset, my soul would start to believe it.
“Gardenia told you she was going to be on my arm?”
“Of course. She could not wait to inform me of the good news.”
“Good news?”
Stupid, stupid girl. She was off having a triumphant giggle like a little fool, not realizing she was his toy as much as I was, and he’d turn on her too. They deserved each other. “By all means. Inflict yourself upon her and spare me. She gets you, and I don’t have to deal with you. I consider that good news.”
He withdrew a degree, and the pain backed off a bit, freeing up my brain for a little more thinking and a little less enduring. If he hadn’t had any faith and didn’t believe, I’d have understood his desire to test Her power. But he did believe, and he had just asked me ride the Tides for him, and he still spit on Her gift to us? Worse, he’d do it with that... thing. He’d humiliate and debase his whole pack in front of another Alpha he believed wasn’t behaving according to the rules.
Hypocrite.
Contempt widened the space around me. My contempt for how he had just swaggered in and chosen me like a cow at market. My contempt for how he thought he was going to be the King-Alpha. My contempt for how he thought he could bring me to my knees. My contempt for how he thought he owned my soul, and the right to bring me pleasure or pain when it suited him to do either. That he thought something sacred could be his toy.
I flipped over onto my back. He tensed in response.
I owned Gabel as much as he owned me.
Everyone else in that pack he could boss around, punish, frighten, terrify. He could do those things to me, too. I couldn’t change the soul I shared with him, the connection that forced me to want him, but he didn’t own my feelings. He owned my instincts. No amount of force or brutality would get me to feel less contempt for him. I could fear him, but I didn’t have to respect him.
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