by Aubrey Rose
I gripped my hands against my thighs to keep from clasping them. Alekk looked wounded. He tried to step forward, then his back leg crumpled to the ground. He stood up quickly, but I had seen the misstep.
The other soldier had seen it, too. He didn’t waste any time. Bounding forward, he lunged with snapping jaws.
Alekk cowered back, then at the last second rose to meet his attacker. With strong legs, he shoved off of the ground, sending the soldier flying above him and backwards, straight into the fire.
A collective gasp rose from the crowd along with the pained yelp of the soldier, and Alekk didn’t pause before lunging forward and biting the other wolf’s scruff. He yanked him out of the fire and tossed him through the air. The wolf flew and rolled, putting out the last flames that were on his tufted fur. A tendril of smoke rose from his blackened tail.
Alekk paced forward. As he walked, his body shifted back into a man’s. He stopped, naked and unashamed, and for the first time I saw the rest of his scar.
It spiraled across his hips and down one thigh, curling around his skin. I had imagined it as something added to his body, but instead it seemed to be carved inward into his skin. I gasped, my fingers curling into my palms in anger. For a moment, I wanted to run to him, to throw my arms around him. I wanted to kiss every inch of his scar, lick his wounds for him. He stood like a statue of a man: the very portrayal of strength. And yet, with the scar spiraling around his body, it looked as though he had been tied up.
The taut skin shone almost white for a moment, and then Alekk turned and faced down his attackers.
“I hope you’ve had enough exercise for the night,” Alekk said.
The soldiers groaned, and the one who’d been thrown in the fire slumped over in a posture of defeat.
“See that they get medical treatment,” Alekk said brusquely. He turned to me.
I almost reached out to him, but before I could decide what would be best, he’d grabbed me roughly by the arm and dragged me out into the clearing. He pulled my body in front of him. I could feel his naked body behind me, his chest pressed to my back.
“Now,” Alekk said, “If you will all excuse me, I have to exercise my bitch properly.”
A roar of laughter rose from the crowd of soldiers, and I ducked my head to avoid meeting the eyes of any of the shifters out there. Embarrassment burned through me as he walked me away, his hand gripping my neck in strict possession. He was making a spectacle out of having me as a slave.
Of course he is. It’s how he shows them that you’re his.
I breathed out a sigh of relief as we moved away from the large bonfire. I wanted to be alone with Alekk so we could speak in private. I wanted to know when he planned to stop this invasion.
If he truly wanted to avoid war, he needed to act soon. Or else we would reach my pack’s territory, and it would be too late for any act of peace.
Chapter Ten
Alekk paused at the entrance to his tent where two soldiers stood guard.
“I’ve no need of you tonight,” he said to them gruffly. “Go enjoy the bonfire.”
The soldiers left with smiles on their faces, looking eager to go and spar with the other soldiers who were drinking around the fire in the clearing.
At last, Alekk and I were alone. He fairly shoved me into the small tent, setting a small lantern on the side of the entrance. The dim light was just barely enough to illuminate the small space. Shadows played over his face.
The first tent he’d been in was huge, with space for a bonfire and many guards. This tent, though, was compact. There was no fire, and the air inside was just as chilly. For a brief second, I wanted to go back to the bonfire. There, at least, the fire would warm me.
“Are you alright?” I asked softly. I wasn’t sure if the blood on the side of his arm was his blood, or the blood from one of the soldiers he’d beaten. He seemed not to hear me.
“Alekk?” I asked again. He spun on me. I gasped as he gripped my shoulders, pulling my face close to his. I could smell alcohol on his breath. He’d been drinking, then. A pang of worry ran through my body, even as his touch made my body ache for him in that same familiar way.
“You want to be my bride?”
His voice was hoarse, and his hands ran roughly down my arms, pressing against my skin. With each touch came a flash of desire that sent my heart to pounding.
“Alekk—”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? To marry the Scarred Prince?” Alekk gestured down at his own body. I couldn’t help it. My eyes swept downward, paused, then moved back up. All of my breath was gone. His body looked deliciously strong.
“I want peace,” I said. It was meant to come out boldly, but in the tent it seemed like a whisper. My voice was absorbed into the pelts that made up the sides of the tent.
“Peace,” Alekk spat. “I wish I had ever known it.”
“Will you stop them?” I asked, looking up into his dazzling eyes. It was like looking into the mouth of a glacier. His gaze swallowed me up, turned me cold. My blood ran like chilled water through my veins.
“You ask for everything!”
Alekk pulled me up against his body. His cock stirred against my stomach.
“First, undress.”
“Please—” I only wanted to talk. No, that wasn’t true. I wanted more. But this—he seemed angry with me, or with something else. This wasn’t how I had imagined it.
“Fine, Princess. Do you want me to help you with undressing, too?”
His hands tore at my clothes, snapping the leather cords that held them together. I cried out, but he grabbed my arm tightly. My clothes fell away as scraps to the ground.
“Temptation,” he growled, and threw me down onto the bed of pelts. My hands scrabbled on the thick furs, but he flipped me over and pinned me back with a strength that surprised me. Even after seeing him fight two soldiers off, I was shocked to see how easily he handled my body. I was scared, yes. But I also knew that he wanted me. And I wanted him so badly that I couldn’t breathe.
His hands pressed against my shoulders. The bandage at the back of my neck rubbed at the place where I was branded, and I let out a gasp as the pain shot through my spine.
“Kinaya,” he said. His breath was hot with alcohol and the scent of juniper berries. He pressed his hand against my cheek and turned my face to his.
When he said my name, all of the fight went out of me. There was something deeper that drew me toward him, and I couldn’t resist his pull. His fingers traced my cheek, brushing away my red curls. He’d see soon there was no taming them. He might be able to tame me, but he’d never tame my frizz.
I smiled at the thought. He saw my smile and cocked his head curiously.
“Aren’t you scared of me, my princess?”
“No.”
“You said that you’ve never been with a man. Is that true?” he asked.
I steeled myself and looked up into his face. I didn’t know if he would want me, inexperienced as I was. But I wasn’t going to tell him whatever he wanted to hear.
“I don’t lie,” I said.
“Why have you come to me?” he asked. The words were almost a whisper, and his fingers continued to outline my face, as though he was looking at something else. As though he was looking past me, past my eyes and deep into me. The thought made my core ache with fresh desire.
“I’ve come to give myself to you,” I said, and my body arched slightly up to meet his. “To make peace between our people.”
That was true, but there was another reason, one that I couldn’t yet understand myself. I had already met Alekk in my dreams. Now, as he touched me, I knew that I had felt it before. In the long nights of sleep where I met the man who stayed in shadows. He had a name now.
He was Alekk.
In all my life, I had never believed in the signs that Granny Dee believed in. I thought that her premonitions came from her experience, from her skilled senses. I always thought that the idea of dream omens was a silly on
e. Not now.
Alekk’s cock twitched against my stomach and I moaned softly, needing him.
“You won’t fight me, then?” Alekk asked.
“You know that I won’t.”
His lips pressed against mine, softly at first. The shock of recognition that passed through me made me lift my mouth to meet his. This kiss—this was the kiss I’d felt before in my dreams. But now it was Alekk kissing me, Alekk on top of me, his lips seizing mine hungrily, kissing me harder and harder until he had taken away all of my breath. I gasped even as I pressed forward to kiss him back, wanting his touch more than I wanted air in my body. Every nerve of mine was quivering in sharp vibration.
This. Yes. This is what I want. This is what I need.
I’d said that I was here for peace, but I was truly here for him. Alekk. I needed him. My hands came up and touched him, uncertainly at first, then with an insistent need that I could not control, no, not even if I wanted to. And I didn’t want to. I wanted it, plain and simple. I wanted sex.
I wanted him.
His cock slid down and paused at my entrance. I could feel him, hard as steel, waiting, teasing me. I was soaked with desire, and my fingers clawed at his chest.
“Please,” I gasped. I couldn’t think anymore; the world was a dizzy mess. Inside the tent the lantern flickered and sent strange shadows up onto the side of the tent. It looked like a monster, but it was only the shadow of Alekk and I combined, our bodies twisted together.
“Oh, Kinaya,” Alekk moaned, and then he pushed himself into me.
The world disappeared. Everything was color and light, the sensations flashing through my mind in bright succession. I could feel Alekk inside of me, his cock tearing through my body in pleasure that burned as bright as a bonfire inside of me.
I’d forgotten to breathe, but when he pressed his lips again to mine I remembered and gasped out for air. My eyes opened and I saw his eyes bright and blue above my face. Sweat beaded his upper lip. I could sense that he was trying to control himself, to take it easy on me.
“Kinaya,” he murmured. I gripped his hips and pulled, and then he was thrusting deep into me, piercing me over and over again. I cried out, my legs wrapped around him, empty of everything except the delicious ecstasy of his fullness swelling inside of me and his hands caressing my breasts, my body, my hips.
“Kinaya, Kinaya,” he repeated, and rolled his hips to thrust once more. I cried out as he rocked into me, penetrating even farther. I twisted and matched his rhythm, rocking back to meet him. His arms wrapped around me, then, pinning me down hard on the pelts.
“I can’t control it,” he said, breathing hard above me. “I want you. Kinaya.”
“I’m here,” I said helplessly. I ached for him to thrust into me again, but my fingers tore uselessly at his arms. “Please. Alekk—”
“The guards are away,” he whispered. “You can shift now, if you want. There’s nobody around to smell you.”
I stared up into his face, terrified.
“Kinaya,” he whispered. “Be more than human. Let me see your other side.”
I had been clinging to my human form so tightly that it was hard for me to let any part of me unwind. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to let myself enter my shifter state without giving away too much of my scent.
There!
“Oh, God!” I cried out. The fierce desire that had burned inside of me suddenly flared up, ten times as sharp as before. In my shifter form, I could sense Alekk’s animal desire. I could sense too his strength, his need to protect, every emotion that I’d been blocking from him.
He rolled his hips, his thick cock filling me. In the blaze of my desire, I orgasmed instantly. My body shuddered and clenched around him, and I cried out incoherent gasps of pleasure. He was mine. Mine. Mine—
“Ahhh!”
Alekk felt it too. If I hadn’t been sure of it, I knew it then. He fell on top of me, his mouth tearing kiss after kiss from my lips. As he kissed me, he thrust harder and harder, working his swollen cock deep inside of me. It would never be deep enough. I wanted him to take me apart, to rip me to pieces and undo me.
I arched against him and he went wild, jackhammering his cock over and over again. Our bodies crashed together in desperate need, and our moans rose in the small tent. His hands were all over my body and I was gripping the pelts for dear life as he slammed into me, eyes wilder than a wolf’s.
The waves of my first orgasm had not receded yet before I felt his cock stretching me and felt his need pulsing through me as though it were my own. I focused my attention on his sensation, on the building pressure that was coming closer and closer with every rocking thrust of his. His breath came in thick pants, and I kissed his throat, licking the salt off of his skin. He growled and pinned me back at the hip.
“Alekk,” I moaned.
The pressure was too much. I felt the orgasm come through him, and it passed from his body to mine, shuddering me again and again in impossibly high waves of pleasure. Inside of my core I felt a burst of heat, and then the thrills of his orgasm made me spasm, my body tight around his shaft, milking him for every drop of what he had left. It was a white burst of pleasure through my nerves that left me trembling.
Alekk pressed a soft kiss on my forehead. His arms were shaky, and when he lay on top of me, I pulled him close. I wanted the pressure of his body on mine. We were one. He was mine, and I—I was completely his.
My head snapped up. I heard footsteps coming. Before he could say a word, I had pulled my wolf away, back deep into myself.
As a human, I couldn’t hear anything.
“It’s alright,” Alekk said. His heart was racing. I could feel the hard thuds against his chest. But the footsteps must have been far away.
“It’s alright, Kinaya” he repeated, and rolled over, pulling me into his embrace. I let myself curl against his chest, but I felt an emptiness now. Without my wolf side, I did not know his emotions. I could not sense the other side of him, not like I had been able to sense him when we were making love.
I wanted to ask him then if he had felt the Calling. If he was as bound to me as I was to him. But I couldn’t make myself say the words. If I had been able to shift, we would have been able to speak without words. Now, though, all I could do was press myself against him for warmth.
He pulled a furred pelt up over our bodies and turned down the lantern so that it was dark. Already I could sense him drawing away from me. He wasn’t the Alekk I had been with a moment ago. He was farther away. Distant. And yet from his gentle touches, I thought that he might feel the same way about me. I reached out and touched him at the neck, my fingers feeling the raised seam of his scar in the darkness.
We lay there under the pelt for a few minutes before he spoke. I was already half-asleep when he whispered my name.
“Kinaya?”
“Yes?” I couldn’t see him in the darkness, but I knew that his eyes were open. I nestled against his warm, strong body.
“You asked me if I would stop them. My soldiers. If I would make peace for you.”
My heart swelled, pressing against my ribcage as I waited for him to continue. Then three words—only three words, but they were better than any other three he could have given me.
“I will try,” Alekk said.
“Thank you,” I murmured. And that night I slept without any dreams at all.
Chapter Eleven
I woke up to the sound of a growl.
“Blaise!”
I sat up quickly. Alekk was half-kneeling. Blaise had a wolfbone blade at his throat.
“Don’t move,” my brother warned.
“Blaise, stop,” I said, speaking slowly. I felt as though I was in a dream, like I couldn’t move as quickly as normal. Blaise’s face was angry, and there was already blood on the knife’s blade. Had he cut Alekk already? A wolfbone blade was the most dangerous weapon to a shifter. It cut deep and shredded flesh, with no hope of healing.
“Kinaya, get u
p. Get dressed. We’re getting you out of here.”
“Stop it, Blaise,” I said. I swallowed, trying to get my senses. “You don’t need to do this.”
“Me? It’s you who doesn’t need to do this. You don’t need to sacrifice yourself to this beast, Kinaya.”
He put the wolfbone blade under Alekk’s chin and lifted his face up. His face was full of shocked recognition.
“It’s… it’s you.”
Alekk nodded once, slowly, his eyes tracking the blade.
“Yes.”
“Are you a messenger? Or an alpha?”
“One can be both,” Alekk said.
“The Scarred Prince? Going out to be a mere messenger? Do you think I’ll believe you when you say that?”
“It’s the most dangerous job in war. And I’m not scared of your pack,” Alekk growled.
“No? Maybe you should be. I got by your drunk guards without a problem. Only had to kill one of them.”
Alekk’s lip curled. I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t him who had been cut.
“Come on, Kinaya,” Blaise said, pulling back the pelt. I stood up, pulling my clothes back on.
Then he saw the blood on the sheets. I could see the wheels in his mind turning, understanding. He turned back to Alekk with hate in his eyes.
“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to her. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”
“I agree,” Alekk said calmly.
“Kinaya, go. I’ll handle him.” My brother gripped the wolfbone blade with white fingers.
“No,” I cried. “Blaise—”
“I don’t think you can handle me,” Alekk said. His words had a low growl running underneath them. He was trying to draw Blaise out into striking at him with anger. A wild strike. I could see how it would happen and I could not do anything.
“I can handle you just fine, you brute,” Blaise said. His anger was growing. I realized then that I didn’t need to stay human. If Blaise was here, there was no reason to try and hide my true nature. If we were going to run, it would be as wolves.
