by Aubrey Rose
Alekk waved me forward. I stepped closer to where he was sitting. He reached out one hand to me. I took it.
“Ah!”
I yelped as he yanked me forward. His fingers had burned where they had touched my palm. I fell to my knees in front of him and he grasped me by the shoulders, looking into my eyes. Another fierce wave of heat swept through my body. I wanted to shift out of my pure human form. Despite my fear, I wanted to know what it would feel like if he touched me when I had all of my senses.
Then he let go of me and it was gone, only a memory that I could not believe.
His face was only inches from mine and for a brief moment the world around me spun. I could see nothing but his eyes, the dark pupils swallowing up the irises almost entirely.
I inhaled and steadied myself on my knees.
“Princess,” he said. “You are mine now.”
“What did you brand me with?” I asked.
“You haven’t seen our symbol?” He turned his head so that I could see his neck. A swirled pattern, like three claw marks, slashed in a curve. This was the brand on his neck.
On my neck, too. I swallowed. He had pushed aside his robes, and I could see the beginning of his scar. The white seam curved down under the black fabric. I thought about when I would see all of it, when I would see him naked. A flush rose on my cheeks, and I pushed the thought aside.
“It’s permanent?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“Why do you brand the shifters in your pack?”
“It represents the struggle we go through as pack members. I’m curious, Princess,” he asked, his voice changing tone, “how did you track me?”
I raised my gaze to his.
"By climbing trees."
He smiled. And oh, Lord, when he smiled at me my nerves rang out with tension. I could not trust him, and yet I wanted to.
"Clever girl, aren’t you?”
He looked at me with approval and my skin tightened at the back of my neck.
“I’m not that clever,” I said. “I only know the territory well.”
“That makes you a better alpha than most,” he said. Again I flushed with pride, then tamped down the feeling.
“Thank you,” I said quietly.
"Let me see you as you really are, Princess."
I frowned.
"I'm really this," I said, not understanding.
"No, as a wolf. Change for me.”
I shook my head slightly.
I won't do it. I won’t shift.
I was scared he’d see too much of me.
And I was scared I’d feel the Calling.
“Alekk!”
A soldier called from just outside the entrance. Alekk growled, letting go of me. I breathed out a sigh of relief.
“What is it?”
The soldier came into the room, his head bowed.
“A question, sir, about tomorrow’s travel arrangements.”
“Ah, yes. Tell Rikash I will be there in a moment.”
The soldier nodded and left. Alekk turned back to me. There was a hint of softness in his eyes, but as he gripped my wrist it disappeared.
“You are one of my slaves now, Princess. Do not disobey me.”
“I can’t trust you,” I said, letting the defiance come out in my voice.
“Good.”
“Good?” I gaped at him.
“You’d be a fool to trust me after this. So I’m glad you’re no fool.”
“Why should I obey? You won’t even tell me— ”
“You don't have a choice. My sisters will kill you if you don’t obey me.”
“Then why are you protecting me?”
His eyes narrowed. He walked to the tent entrance.
“I cannot answer that for you, Princess. We will talk later. Sleep, if you can. It is a long day of travel tomorrow.”
Without another word, leaving me with a searing heat that swirled around in my body with nowhere to go, he left.
Chapter Three
I got woken up in the middle of the night. At first, I’d forgotten where I was. The back of my neck ached, and I reached back sleepily. When I touched the bandage, the sharp pain brought me out of sleep.
“Come on!”
I blinked in the darkness. There was someone else in the tent with me, shaking me awake. Slowly, my eyes refocused. My mind recognized the voice. It was the escort from before, the one who had put salve on my neck.
“Leah?”
“Come on!”
She jerked my arm and I stumbled out of the bed of pelts.
“What is it?”
"I found a way for you to escape. Quick. You must come with me.”
I resisted.
“Wait,” I said.
“There is no waiting. We only have a short while.”
“Hold on!” I said. I grasped her forearms. "I can't.”
“The prince has called his guards away to speak with them,” she said hurriedly. “If you were able to sneak into the camp, you should be able to sneak away from the camp. The scouts are not moving tonight.”
For a moment, I considered her plan. Her eyes were frightened. For me? I felt a thrill of fear rise in my chest. I took a deep breath to calm myself down.
“I have important work to do here,” I said carefully. “I must stay here."
"You'll be tortured. Stupid human, don’t you realize?"
She slapped her hand on my blisters. Pain shot through my shoulders and I cried out in pain.
"Do you think this is bad?” She leaned forward and stared into my eyes, grasping the sides of my arms. “This is only the first sip of pain. They'll drown you in it."
“I can’t leave him,” I said, swallowing hard. I had to stay. There was more to this than I knew. I had to stay here and talk with Alekk again. If I had to suffer to get that information, then I would have to suffer. I was determined to figure out Alex's secret. What I’d felt between us…
“You think he loves you?”
My eyes snapped to Leah. Her braids dangled in the dim light, framing her face like dark curtains.
“He doesn’t. He’s using you.” She explained it to me condescendingly. Slowly. Like she might talk to a child.
“I can’t leave him,” I said.
“You’re nothing to him. You’re a human.” She spat the word out like it was dog shit.
I stared up and spoke slowly, trying not to shift in my anger.
“I. Can’t. Leave. Him.”
“Did you plan to kill him? By walking into his camp naked?” Leah scoffed. “You’d have had a better time if you’d killed yourself at the edge of our army.”
“Why are you trying to help me?” I stared at her baldly. There was no reason an escort to the prince would be helping a human to sneak out. I wanted to know why she would risk her life by helping me.
“What? You don’t trust me?” Leah squinted at me.
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I only want to know why you’re so willing to help a human prisoner escape.”
Leah leaned so far forward that I could smell her breath, the undeniable alcoholic scent mixed with juniper. In the chill of the air, it was white like mist. Her eyes gleamed with darkness.
“They do bad things in this pack,” she said. “The sisters, they’re the worst. You don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into.”
I swallowed hard.
“So you just feel bad for me? That’s why you want to help me escape?”
“Yes! If you don’t want to leave, then don’t!” She stared at me like I was insane for staying.
“Why don’t you leave?” I asked.
She looked at me for a moment, then pulled her skirts up. I gasped.
Her right leg looked normal. But her left leg was scarred so deeply that the flesh was puckered inward. It was a long scar that ran from her ankle up past her knee. The white skin shone even in the dim light.
“I tried once,” she said. “This is how they made sure I didn’t try again.�
�
My chest muscles tightened, and for a moment I didn’t breathe. Then I let out a shaky breath.
“You’re saying it yourself—they’ll hurt me if they find me. You want me to risk that to escape?” I shook my head, feeling the bandage over the brand irritate the edges. It hurt, but not nearly as much as what Leah had gone through.
“This is what they do to their females,” she said. “Have you seen what they do to their humans?”
“No,” I said. “I haven’t seen any humans in this camp.”
“And you won’t, either,” Leah said. “There isn’t a human that’s lasted more than a week in our pack without being destroyed. And I mean destroyed. Torn to pieces—”
She raised her head and sniffed, alert to some unseen threat. I sniffed too, by instinct, but I couldn’t smell anything in my purebred form.
“Your chance is gone,” she said, turning to me. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re stuck here now.”
“Stuck,” I agreed. Even if the coast was clear, I was stuck here. Stuck to Alekk.
Chapter Four
It was in the morning when I woke again, this time to a guard shaking me by the shoulder. I jolted upright with a start. I’d been dreaming of Blaise and Alekk fighting, their jaws locked at each other’s throats. An infinite circle of death…
“Up,” he said, thrusting a clump of fabric at me. “Here. Put this on.”
“What—”
“The prince will want to see you,” he said. “He’s been at work since nightfall. Up, I say!”
He smacked me on my ass, and I yelped as I leapt off of the be of pelts. I clutched the dress to my chest. I wanted to talk to Leah again. She’d helped me understand a few things about the pack. I wanted to ask her about the sisters, if they were as controlling as they seemed.
“Is Leah—”
“No questions,” he grunted.
Fine. Then he would be no help. I quickly put on the dress. It wasn’t even a dress, not by any reasonable definition of a dress. The scraps of fabric—soft pelts, I realized, probably deer—were triangles that covered less of me than it showed. By the time I’d adjusted the strapped leather, I looked like I was wearing a bikini version of a cavewoman’s outfit. Kind of like that old movie with Raquel Welsh. I could barely knot the leather strap around my waist.
The guard watched as I dressed. I could feel his eyes on my skin, sticky and unclean.
I walked back to the large tent with the guard at my side. I saw soldiers marching from one end of the camp to the other. They were putting out the fires and packing up the tents. So they would be moving today.
Moving towards my pack. Where my family and friends had lived. I wondered if they would be scared and running. I wondered what my parents would do once they realized I’d left.
The guard shoved me forward, and I pulled one of the pelts open to step inside the tent.
Although the atmosphere outside was one of strict martial obedience, inside the tent it seemed considerably more relaxed. There were a half dozen soldiers milling around, eating over what looked like maps of the territory. Leah was there, too, sitting next to Alekk.
Alekk. I watched his profile as he spoke to one of the soldiers, gesturing casually with the cup in his hand. He looked tired; lines creased his face as he spoke slowly. Leah’s eyes tracked his every movement. When he finished speaking, her lips curled up into a laugh that did not touch her eyes.
The fire at the back of the tent was going strong, and I sighed, grateful to be warm even in this skimpy outfit. The soldiers were eating from plates of steaming food. My stomach rumbled.
“Sir?” the guard ventured.
Alekk’s head turned and his ice-blue eyes flickered with worry, then turned hard.
“I brought you your human,” the guard said, pushing me forward. “I thought you might like some flesh before you sleep.”
He hadn’t slept all night? I wondered what they had been discussing. His sisters weren’t in the tent.
Alekk looked at me, licking his lips. His gaze was cold, so cold that even in the warmed tent, a shiver of goosebumps rose on my skin. His first glance at me had been kind. Concerned, even. But now there was none of that on his face.
“Come here, girl,” he said loudly. The other soldiers in the tent turned to look at me. Leah glared hatefully my way. I wondered how much of her jealousy was feigned and how much was real. Alekk curled a finger and I stepped forward obediently.
“Good. A nice looking one, isn’t she?” he asked nobody in particular. I heard one of the soldiers behind me growl, but that was all. I couldn’t smell anything from Alekk, and his face was so blank that I couldn’t tell what he was going to do by reading his expressions. He leaned forward in his chair and grabbed me by the wrist, pulling me forward so hard that I lost my balance. I fell on top of his lap, his arms gripping me as I landed, and again I felt it—
—that familiar sensation—
—a longing, a burning sensation that ran through my body and made me dizzy.
The same thing had happened when he’d grabbed me in the storage shed. Only the feeling now was muted, like a dulled version of itself. I didn’t have any of my wolf senses, but if I had been even a little bit shifted, I knew that I would feel it in full force.
I wanted to let myself go, to let my wolf out, but I couldn’t with all these men around. I needed to talk to Alekk first. I needed to know why he’d lied to his sisters.
“Kneel in front of me,” Alekk said, pushing me to the ground. He began to undo his buckle.
When he’d branded me, I’d felt true fear. Fear of pain, fear of permanent damage. But this fear… this fear had a different name.
I had never had sex. I’d never even so much as kissed a guy. The thought of him taking my virginity now, in front of a crowd of soldiers, made my entire body recoil. My pulse pounded in my ears.
His eyes burned blue as he loosened his belt. I stared up at him in stark terror from the ground. My body felt numb. I wasn’t sure how much of the sensation he’d gotten when he’d touched me, but there must have been something. Surely he would have said something. Surely he wouldn’t take me here. I told myself this, even as I began to realize that no matter what I wanted, he was going to use me as his slave.
Any hint of kindness had gone from his face. It was only hateful now, hard and hateful, and I wanted to scream as he pushed down his pants and exposed his cock in front of everyone inside the tent. Leah, the soldiers… everyone was staring at us. And Alekk was staring at me.
His cock was already erect, but as he stroked it, it continued to grow, twitching under his fingers. I gulped. I’d never seen… no, never imagined…
“Are you ready to prove what a good slave you’ll be to me?” Alekk asked. He grinned menacingly.
“Do you want her to warm up first?” one of the soldiers asked jokingly. “I’ve got something she can practice on.”
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want her to pull a muscle,” another one said. A rumble of laughter shivered my nerves. All of this was a game to them.
No, not quite a game. I watched Alekk as he stroked himself slowly. It wasn’t a game to him.
“This one is mine,” Alekk said. “Mark you. Don’t touch her for yourselves.”
“You get all the fun,” one soldier grumbled.
“There’ll be plenty of fun to have later,” Alekk said. “Once we’re in our new territory. But for now, this one is mine and mine alone.” His blue eyes gleamed in the firelight.
I swallowed, looking at his already swollen shaft. What was he doing?
“Come now, girl,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
I began to get up, but he waved his hand at me.
“On your knees. Between my legs. I want you to suck my cock.”
I stumbled forward uncertainly.
“Prove your worth,” he hissed to me again.
Trembling, I lowered my mouth to his straining erection.
I didn’t know what to expect when I pressed m
y lips against his head. But the shock that ran through my body was a physical reaction, not just a mental one. There was something pulling me forward that I couldn’t see or understand. When my lips touched his skin, there was that same feeling. I gasped, my lips parting.
His hand was on the back of my neck just above the brand, and he pushed down, thrusting upward as he did. I choked as his hard cock hit the back of my throat. Pain flared through the skin of my neck as it tightened where the edges of the brand were. Oh, God. Oh, God.
Panic seized me, and I raised my hands, pushing away at the base of his cock.
Immediately I felt the pressure release. I looked up to see him staring forcefully at me. His hand pulled my head back slowly, then forced it back down onto his cock. The pain from the brand still burned brightly, but I was distracted by whether or not I was performing correctly for him.
“Good,” he growled. “Grip it there. Yes. Perfect.”
I realized then that he was covering for my inexperience. I did what he said, gripping his cock at the base. I tried desperately to ignore the stares of the soldiers surrounding us. I knew that seeing them watch me would only make it worse. I dipped my head down, letting his hand guide me. My eyes were clenched shut.
Even as a human, I could smell his musk. It was wild, a rich scent that filled my nostrils as he pressed my head down.
His cock had filled my mouth before I had a chance to even react. And now, my body was reacting.
I would have thought that I would be sickened or disgusted. Still, the thought of what I was doing was uncomfortable. But the sensation—
Oh, God, the sensation was amazing. My body was beginning to ache with desire. I had to clamp my legs close together, otherwise the soldiers would see that I was getting wet under the skimpy pelts I was wearing.
No, not wet. Soaked.
The feeling of his cock sliding over my lips, the dark wild scent of his groin, the pressure of his hand on my neck… it aroused me like nothing ever had. No dream of mine, hell, not even a daydream, could have prepared me for this kind of desire. As I moved my head up and down, listening to him guide me, all I could feel was the intense pressure of desire coursing through me.
The pain on the back of my neck was forgotten in the bright burst of desire as I felt his heartbeat pulse on my lips. I could feel it, feel the pumping of blood in his shaft, and it only made me want him more.
