by Abby Weeks
“Aisha,” Hunter said. “About last night. That never should have happened.”
“Don’t talk to me,” Aisha said.
“Listen. I don’t usually do things like that.”
“Usually?” Aisha said, dumbfounded. “You mean it’s happened before?”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about the world, missy. You’re going to learn soon enough I suppose, but still, that wasn’t right.”
“What do you mean, I’m going to learn?”
“Where we’re taking you, where you’ve decided to start your new life, it’s not Juneau or Fairbanks or Anchorage. It’s not one of the cities. It’s far away from them. I mean far.”
“I know that,” Aisha said.
“It’s a different world, Aisha. Different rules apply there.”
“You rape women there?”
“Shh,” Hunter said. “Don’t use that word.”
“Rape? Don’t say rape? Why not? That’s what happened.”
“Listen to me. You’re not in Washington anymore.”
“I know, I’m in Canada.”
“Technically, you’re back in the States. These are Alaskan waters now.”
“And you’re going to tell me that Alaska doesn’t have the same criminal code as the rest of the US?”
“Look,” Hunter said, “what happened last night, call it what you want, I know it wasn’t right. I’m not proud of it.”
“I would hope not.”
“But where we’re taking you, it’s not the world you knew, Aisha. The sooner you realize that, the better.”
Aisha could still feel the stickiness between her legs and in the crack of her ass. It had been the first time she’d been taken anally. It hadn’t hurt. She’d always thought it would, but it didn’t. Having two cocks in her at once hadn’t hurt either. But it did make her feel disgusting. It made her feel dirty, used, soiled.
Heath was beginning to wake up. Aisha got up to get away from him. She didn’t care that she was naked. She pulled the blanket up over herself and stood by the door. Heath and Hunter were both naked, their hard bodies moving limberly as they put away the beds.
“You sleep all right?” Heath said.
“Don’t talk to me,” Aisha said.
“Come on, baby. I told you.”
“What do you mean, you told me?”
“I told you I grew up in the far north. I told you that was always my true home, who I really was.”
“You never told me that would happen.”
Heath shrugged it off, as if what had happened the night before wasn’t anything she should be overly concerned about.
“Listen,” he said calmly. “There’s a major shortage of women where we’re going. It’s a wild place. A lot of things happen that shouldn’t. That’s the new reality for you. That’s what you’re going to be living with from now on. The sooner you learn to live with that fact, the better off you’ll be.”
“I don’t believe you,” Aisha said, her heart pounding.
“There are bigger things than this you’re going to have to believe in the very near future,” Heath said. “This is just the beginning.”
Aisha looked at Hunter for a hint of what Heath meant by that, but Hunter said nothing. He looked her right in the eye, his face deadly serious, but he didn’t say a word. He only nodded, very slightly.
*
Chapter 30
THE BOAT PULLED INTO JUNEAU that afternoon. It looked like a pretty town, built around the harbor, but Aisha wasn’t interested in sightseeing. She wasn’t interested in anything but finding a place to shower. The sooner she got Heath and Hunter’s filth off her skin, the better. Luckily the ferry terminal had showers that passengers could use for a small fee. She had to go to Heath and ask him for US money to pay for it. It made her sick that she had to ask him. He gave her a five dollar bill and it reminded her of how utterly reliant she was on Heath now. She couldn’t leave him. She couldn’t go to the authorities. She had nothing.
*
Chapter 31
THE SHIP OUT OF JUNEAU left that evening, just as it was getting dark. They’d eaten dinner at a fish place near the port. Aisha could see that things were getting more and more rugged. There were definitely no tourists here. The port was a functional place for moving lumber and ore and little else.
On the boat, Aisha went up on the deck by herself and watched the lights of another lonely town recede into the distance. It was a cold, clear night. The stars were just beginning to come out and when she saw them, they literally took her breath away. It was her first time getting a chance to see them and their beauty almost brought her to tears.
As she stared up at them, a man’s voice startled her back to the present. “They’re something, aren’t they?”
“Oh,” she said. She looked around quickly but couldn’t see who’d said the words on the dimly lit deck. And then she saw him—a tall dark silhouette with two bright yellow eyes staring right at her. He stepped out of the darkness and her jaw dropped. He was possibly the handsomest creature she’d ever set eyes on in her life. He was just over six feet tall, his limbs muscular and strong. He had an athletic build, like he was ready to pounce at a moment’s notice. His hair was dark and his stubble was rough. And there was something extremely unusual about his eyes. They were a golden yellow tint that she’d never seen in a man before. They almost didn’t look human. They reflected every ounce of light, as if they gathered up the faint light of the distant stars and amplified it. They stood out in the darkness. They looked more like the eyes of an animal than a man, but what animal? And then she remembered the eyes of the wolf she’d saved back at the clinic. The man had the eyes of a wolf.
“Beautiful,” she said.
She couldn’t stop looking at him. There was something so alluring about him, like a beautiful wild animal captured on film in the middle of a hunt, something majestic and rare and exhilarating.
Aisha wanted to say something to him. She was ordinarily shy but after the shock of the past few days, she needed something, some sort of connection, anything that made her feel safe and secure rather than lost and alone.
“My name is Aisha,” she said.
He smiled at her, but he didn’t approach any closer. He was a few feet away, taking her in with those strange, yellow eyes. Something gave her the impression that he could see better than most in the dark. He also seemed to breathe slowly and deeply, bringing a calmness over everything he did.
“What’s your name?”
He didn’t answer her immediately, but when he did, she noticed that his voice was incredibly deep. It almost rumbled when he spoke. It made her feel weak at the knees. She could close her eyes and listen to that voice all night long. That was a sound that would make her feel secure and safe and warm.
“You can call me Packer,” he said.
“Packer,” she repeated, allowing the name to roll off her tongue.
He smiled very slightly. It was a wicked smile. Aisha looked out at the ocean to avoid blushing. Packer turned. He was about to leave, and she spoke just to keep him there a moment longer. It wasn’t like her to flirt like this, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Were you visiting Juneau?”
He held up a leather-bound book. It looked like a very old bible. “I was looking for this.”
“What is it?”
“Just an old book of lore.”
“Oh,” Aisha said. “What sort of lore?”
“Just old, northern stuff. The native tribes up in the far north, they had a lot of interesting ideas.”
“Are you a historian?”
Packer laughed. “I can barely write my own name,” he said. “I’m no scholar.”
Aisha took a step toward him. She couldn’t resist. She wanted to get a clearer look at his face.
“So what do you do?”
She looked up at him. The light sparkled in his eyes like starlight reflecting in a deep pool of water.
“I hunt,” he said.
>
Aisha was transfixed. She gazed into his face and she thought she could just melt. She could look at him all night if he’d let her. Whatever it was about him, it made her feel something she’d never felt before in her entire life. It made her feel safe. The sound of Heath calling her name broke the spell.
“Aisha?” he called.
She turned around. Heath was making his way around the deck toward her. She looked back toward Packer but he was gone. It was as if he’d just disappeared. She hadn’t even heard him leave.
“What?” she said to Heath.
“Who was that you were talking to?”
“Just another passenger.”
Heath looked put out. “You’ve got to stay away from strange men in these parts,” he said. “It’s not like back home. People live by different rules up here.”
Aisha looked back at him defiantly. “So you keep saying.”
*
Chapter 32
THE RIDE TO WHITTIER WOULD take two days. It would take them up to the real part of Alaska, the part north of British Colombia. Aisha noticed the forests along the coast grow darker and colder. There was snow on the boughs of trees, and high snowcapped mountain peaks stood above everything. The views were breathtakingly beautiful from the deck, the air icy and clear. Aisha spent a lot of time up there, wrapped in blankets from their cabin. She hoped to run into Packer again, but she never did. She didn’t know where on the vessel he was hiding, probably his cabin. A few times she went up after dark and she was sure she saw his yellow eyes glistening in the starlight. But when she spoke, they disappeared.
Heath and Hunter didn’t try a repeat of what had happened on the other ship. She was grateful for that much. They again shared a small cabin, and she was forced to sleep between the two men, but they didn’t molest her in any way. In fact, the more nights that passed with her lying between the two men’s gently heaving chests, the more she grew used to it. There was almost a comfort in it. Even still, she vowed never to forgive them for violating her so terribly.
“What lore does Alaska have?” she asked them one evening when the three of them were lying on the bed. Heath was trying to sleep and Hunter was on her other side, writing in his journal.
“What do you mean?” Hunter said.
“The man I met up on deck, with the yellow eyes, he traveled all the way to Juneau for a book of lore.”
“Yellow eyes?” Hunter said.
Heath sat up and took notice.
“Yes,” Aisha said. “I thought they looked strange.”
“Describe him,” Hunter said.
Aisha was a little taken aback by the intensity of Hunter’s sudden questioning. “Well,” she stammered, “he was tall, dark, strong looking.”
“You said he had yellow eyes,” Heath said impatiently.
“Yes, almost like contacts. They reflected the starlight.”
“Animal eyes.”
“Yes,” Aisha said, bewildered. “Wolf eyes.”
Heath and Hunter looked at each other.
“What is it?” Aisha said.
“Did he tell you his name?”
Aisha couldn’t read them. What were they so suddenly concerned about? She didn’t know, but something about it disturbed her. She wasn’t sure why, but she found herself lying to them.
“He never told me his name.”
“You stay away from that man,” Heath said. “You hear me? You’re my woman. You stay the hell away from any flea-bitten shifter.”
“What?”
Heath looked at Hunter again.
“Nothing,” Heath said.
“Shifter?” Aisha repeated. “What’s that?”
“Forget it,” Hunter said. “You’ll find out all about them soon enough.”
“I want to find out about them right now.”
“They’re dangerous,” Heath said. “That’s all you need to know. Stay away from them.”
“Why are they dangerous?”
“They steal women, for one thing,” Heath said.
“Steal them?”
“A lot of women disappear up where we’re headed,” Hunter said. “They turn up dead. You want my advice, you’ll stay the hell away from any man you see with yellow eyes.”
“You guys sound crazy. What are they, bogeymen?”
“They’re not bogeymen. They’re rare, fewer every year, but they’re very real. You want to stay safe, you’ll stay away from men like that.”
“Because I’m so much safer with men like you.”
Heath sighed. “Get over that, will you?”
“Listen,” Hunter said. “I know you’re angry about what we did. I understand that. You have every right. That’s not the way things are done where you’re from, and you weren’t ready for it. We shouldn’t have rushed you.”
“Rushed me?”
“Look, what we did was harsh, but these other guys—these shifters—they’ll kill you. They’ll ravage you, rape you, and leave you dead in the forest. I’m not saying this for any reason other than that it’s the truth. Stay the hell away from them.”
*
Chapter 33
THE PORT AT WHITTIER WAS TINY. It was the smallest town they’d pulled into yet. Aisha learned that only a couple of hundred people lived in the town. It had a deep port suitable for passenger ferries that had been built by the military during World War II, but that was pretty much it. Back then, the government had been afraid of an invasion from the east. They’d built army barracks, a rail link, and the port. She wasn’t sure what the inhabitants did now. There didn’t seem to be much industry or commerce of any kind.
The views were stunning though. It was her first up-close look at her new home, and she was beginning to see why people put up with the cold, the intense remoteness, the loneliness of the far north. The air was clear and pure. She breathed it in deeply and felt as if it was cleaning out her lungs. The salt from the ocean mixed with the iciness to create air so refreshing it was like breathing pure life.
“What do you think?” Heath said when they were standing on the dock, waiting for Hunter to come off the boat with the land cruiser.
“You grew up here?” she said.
He nodded.
“How did you ever bring yourself to leave? It’s so beautiful.”
Heath smiled. He seemed pleased that she liked his homeland. As they waited, she spotted Packer. She caught her breath when she saw him. She’d been trying to find him ever since that first night. She didn’t point him out to Heath. Somehow, she knew that would only cause trouble. Packer was up on the deck of the boat staring down at her.
She didn’t know why, but with Packer watching, she found herself letting go of Heath’s gloved hand. She didn’t want Packer to see that she already belonged to another man. She looked back at him and their eyes locked. It was an intense moment. Something about his gaze made her feel alive and free.
“There he is,” Heath said.
Aisha came back to the present. Heath was pointing at Hunter who’d just driven the land cruiser off the boat. She walked with Heath toward the vehicle. When she looked back at the boat, Packer was still up on the deck looking down at her, watching her. There was something about that moment that told Aisha she’d see those yellow eyes again. She knew it.
*
Chapter 34
“THE FIRST THING WE NEED to do is fuel up,” Hunter said. “We have a long drive ahead of us.”
“What?” Aisha said. “I thought we were there.”
Hunter laughed. “Missy, we’ve got the hardest part of the trip still ahead. And the most dangerous.”
The drive ahead of them was a grueling twelve hours into the interior of Alaska. Their final destination wasn’t Whittier at all, but the remote town of Dead Wolf, two hundred miles north of Fairbanks. It was a drive of five hundred miles through brutally remote forest.
“We’ll head up through Anchorage, maybe bed down there tonight. Tomorrow we’ll drive the rest of the way. The road as far as Fairbanks is pre
tty safe, it’s paved. After that, things will get tougher.”
“Tougher,” Aisha said.
“Unpaved road, wild animal attacks, wolf packs, you name it.”
“Is it wise for us to head into that?”
“That’s what you’ve got me for,” Hunter said. “That’s the reason the company sends an escort. That last stretch of the journey. Without proper preparation, I don’t know if one in three new employees would make it.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Aisha didn’t know what to believe anymore. With all the talk of wild animals, shifters, and disappearing girls, her head was spinning.
*
Chapter 35
HUNTER DROVE THEM INTO ANCHORAGE. It took about an hour, and Aisha was surprised to find that it was a proper little city, complete with high-rise office buildings, a shopping mall, and a couple of blocks of commercial streets downtown. It wasn’t nearly as big as Seattle, but it was definitely the largest town they’d seen since leaving Vancouver Island back in Canada.
They checked into a motel close to the center of town, and for the first time in days, Aisha felt like exploring her surroundings. She walked out of the motel and down along one of the quiet streets of Alaska’s largest city. There were a few stores, all closed, but she looked in the windows at the merchandise.
While she walked she thought about Packer. Was he in Anchorage too? There was a good chance he was. There weren’t many other directions he could have headed from the port.
When she got back to the motel, Heath and Hunter were waiting for her. They drove to a diner across town for a bite to eat. Once they’d ordered, Hunter had some things he wanted to say to them.
“Heath, you know all this already.”
“I did my time in the north,” Heath said.
“Okay, but it’s important I go over it again. For you it will be new, Aisha, so listen carefully. If you have any questions, stop me and ask. I want to make sure everyone’s ready for what’s coming.”
“What’s coming?” Aisha said.
