Taken by the Pack: Wolf Shifter Menage (The Wolfpack Trilogy Book 2)
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Taken by the Pack
Abby Weeks
Copyright © 2015 Abby Weeks
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This work is presented by the author.
To get in touch please contact:
abby@type‐writer.net
ISBN 978‐1‐927947‐45‐6
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Quote
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Back Matter
*
“ALL ART IS EROTIC.”
Gustav Klimt, 1862‐1918
*
“EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD IS ABOUT SEX EXCEPT SEX. SEX IS ABOUT POWER.”
Oscar Wilde, 1854‐1900
*
Chapter 1
AISHA SPENT THE NEXT FEW days mostly alone. She took care of Heath, who was gradually coming back to full strength. In the mornings she would have coffee with Hilda and Tilly. In the evenings she would help out with serving at the bar. The men didn’t give her much of a hard time. It was as if they could sense that she wasn’t up for it. Hilda and Tilly could sense it too. They’d have a glass of wine with her at the end of the shift, but no one said much.
She didn’t speak to them of any of the things Ma Hetty had told her. She wasn’t sure how to bring them up. And more importantly, she wasn’t sure she wanted to bring them up. She didn’t know if any of it was true and it was too much for her to think about. She just went about her work quietly, and in the afternoons she fed Heath stew and nursed him back to health.
The truth was, she was struggling intensely with everything Ma Hetty had said. It went against every fiber of her body. She’d hated being an orphan, but at least she’d known what it entailed. She’d grown used to it. It was her reality. Now she was learning that her mother was a girl from this town, that she was a handmaiden, that she’d been driven out of town for being a different species! It was too much. She had to set the information aside and not even think about it. She’d literally melt down if she allowed herself to obsess over it.
“Are you all right?” Tilly said on the fourth morning after the meeting with Ma Hetty.
“I’m fine,” Aisha said.
“You seem quiet lately.”
Aisha smiled. She was genuinely glad of Tilly’s friendship. “It’s just been a big change, moving here, taking care of Heath, trying to start a new life.”
“If you need to talk, you know you can always come to me,” Tilly said.
Hilda walked into the bar with a high stack of clean plates in her arms. “That goes for me too,” she said. “Whatever you need, child, you come to us. We’re your family here in this godforsaken place.”
Aisha smiled. “I do have one question,” she said.
“What is it?”
“I saw that there’s an old brothel down the street. What’s the story there?”
Hilda looked cautiously at Tilly. It seemed to be a sensitive subject. Hilda sighed. It was clear she didn’t relish the subject. When she spoke, she spoke almost apologetically.
“There’s a lot of history to this country,” she said to Aisha. “A lot of things that happened in the past that we’re not particularly proud of. Things that happened that shouldn’t have happened.”
“Like what?”
“Remember we told you about the shifters?” Hilda said.
Aisha nodded.
“Well, there was a time when people, normal people, thought the shifters were a threat.”
“I can imagine,” Aisha said.
“Yes, well, they can turn into animals. That was one thing. But the really big issue people had with them was that they were dangerous to normal women.”
“In what way?” Aisha wanted to see if Hilda’s version would match up with Ma Hetty’s. She still wasn’t sure what she could believe about this place.
“Girls would get tempted into the woods by the shifters. You’ve seen Packer. You can see how alluring they are.”
“I can,” Aisha said, but she didn’t have any of the mirth or lightheartedness she’d had the last time she’d spoken of him. She was deadly serious now.
“Well, the shifters would kill the women. They’d ravage them. They’d make them pregnant. Whatever they did, it was too much for an ordinary woman to withstand. The women died. Especially if they got pregnant.”
“So the people rose up against the shifters.”
“They did. They hunted them mercilessly. Drove them deep into the forests, high into the mountains. In the first half of the century, they killed so many shifters that they were almost wiped out.”
“And what about the female shifters?”
“Well, the females had never been targeted so heavily. Female shifters can’t shift, you see. So they weren’t as much of a threat. And they also couldn’t survive the winters out in the wilderness the way the males could. I think more of the females died of exposure trying to hide from the townsfolk than from being caught.”
“And if they were caught?”
“Killed, often they were killed. It’s a sorry tale, Aisha. They’d string the women up from the nearest tree.”
“Sometimes they did a lot worse,” Tilly said. “They raped the handmaidens, the female shifters, till they died.”
Aisha grimaced.
“Anyway, eventually, when the shifters were almost completely wiped out and people weren’t quite as afraid of them as they used to be, they started a new policy toward the females. Rather than string them up and hang them, they brought them into the village to live as humans. If the handmaiden settled in the village and gave sex to the human men, she was allowed to live in the brothel.”
“As a whore?” Aisha said.
“You see why we women stick so closely together,” Tilly said.
“It’s true,” Hilda said. “We all saw what happened to the handmaidens. That’s why we look out for each other. We saw that if the men of this town could be so brutal toward them, they could do the same to us.”
“It’s happened to normal women too,” Tilly said.
Normal women, Aisha thought. The words stung. If everything Ma Hetty had said was true, if Aisha really was a handmaiden, then the term normal woman no longer applied to her. She was an outsider, an outcast. She supposed that was what she’d been her whole life anyway.
“It’s true,” Hilda sa
id. “There was a while there, all a man had to do was call a girl a handmaiden and the next thing she knew, there was a gang at her door looking to rape her.”
“That’s why you all try so hard to influence the men.”
“We have no choice,” Hilda said. “They could turn on us in a second. Unless we’re giving them what they want, keeping them happy, we could find ourselves locked up in that old brothel, and there isn’t a thing anyone in the world would do about it. The authorities down in Fairbanks and Anchorage and Juneau, they wouldn’t know or care if something like that happened up here.”
“And what about the handmaidens now?”
Hilda looked sad. “None left,” she said.
“Last ones were run out when I was a little girl,” Tilly said.
Aisha nodded. There was a lot that still didn’t make sense, but everything Tilly and Hilda told her seemed to match up with what Ma Hetty had said.
“Just one more question,” she said.
“Sure,” Hilda said.
“If the townspeople killed the shifters, then why is Packer still around?”
Hilda nodded. “After the shifters were gone, that’s when we realized just how necessary they were.”
“It’s like any food chain,” Tilly said. “You remove a predator, and things get out of proportion.”
“A hundred years ago,” Hilda said, “there were hundreds of shifters in the country around these parts. They lived in small communities with their handmaidens, they raised children, and they kept nature in balance. After they’d been killed off, the wolf population began to grow. Slowly at first, and then rapidly. Today there are twenty times as many wolves as there used to be, and they’re far more aggressive than they ever were before. You saw it yourself on the ride here. What happened to Heath, that wouldn’t have happened before.”
“The people realized they needed the shifters.”
“Yes, but it’s too late. Without the shifters, these forests are going to be overrun by wolves. It was the shifters that kept them in check, they were the alpha predator.”
“Why is it too late?” Aisha said.
“No handmaidens,” Tilly said.
“It’s true,” Hilda said, sadly. “We killed or chased off the last of the handmaidens years ago. There are four shifters who live around the town. The townsfolk had to go high up into the mountains to find them, and begged them to return.”
“And they returned?”
“Not at first, but when they saw how many people were being killed, they came back. They defend the town now. Four brothers. Packer is one of them. Without them, the town couldn’t survive.”
“And they have no females?” Aisha said.
Hilda shook her head. “If you ask me, the people of this town don’t deserve the protection they get. They killed off the shifters, drove away the handmaidens. They’re lucky those four brothers are so forgiving.”
*
Chapter 2
“HOW ARE YOU FEELING?” Aisha said when she got back up to the room. She had some chicken soup for him and a glass of beer.
“Better,” Heath said. “A lot better.”
“That’s great,” Aisha said.
The doctor had visited daily to change Heath’s bandages, but Aisha still hadn’t seen what he looked like beneath them.
“Do you think you can eat?” she said.
“I think so.”
Aisha went over to the bed and sat next to him. She tried to look at him lovingly, as the man she was going to marry one day, but she just couldn’t do it. She hadn’t forgiven him for the way he’d shared her with Hunter, and she hadn’t forgiven him for the way he’d treated her for so long back in Washington. She was beginning to feel like it was as good a time as any to confront him about some of the things he’d done to her in the past, in particular, his cheating.
“When do you think I’ll be able to take off these bandages for good?” Heath said.
Aisha looked at them. “It’s been a week,” she said. “I’d say you could take them off pretty soon. What does the doctor say?”
“I haven’t spoken of it to him.”
“Have you seen the scarring?” Aisha said.
Heath shook his head. “Are you worried about it?” he said.
“The scarring?”
“Yeah, are you afraid I’m going to look disgusting?”
“Of course not,” Aisha said.
Heath grimaced. He didn’t believe her. Aisha felt pity for him. He was going to be mutilated for the rest of his life, and he knew it. She didn’t want him to blame her for it though. She’d killed the wolf that mauled him, and she’d done nothing but take care of him and nurse him since the attack.
“Prove it,” Heath said.
“What?”
“Prove you still love me,” he said.
Aisha was shocked. Heath wasn’t even up on his feet yet and already he was acting cruelly toward her. What would he be like when he really recovered? He struggled to get out of the bed and that scared Aisha.
“What do you mean, honey?”
“I mean, help me take these bandages off.”
“Are you sure? Don’t you want to wait till you’ve spoken to the doctor first?”
“I’ve done nothing but wait all week. It’s time for them to come off.”
Aisha took a deep breath. She didn’t relish the idea of seeing the raw wounds.
Heath started unwrapping the bandage on his left arm. He was doing it a little too vigorously, and Aisha was afraid he’d hurt himself.
“Hold on,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
She began unwinding the layers of the bandage. With each layer, she had a mounting sense of apprehension. What would his arm look like when she got to the end?
She pulled off the last layer, and when she saw Heath’s arm she gasped. It was terrible, even worse than she could have imagined. She looked up into his face and immediately looked away. She didn’t want him to see how horrified she was.
A knot of emotion caught in her throat, and she struggled to hold back tears.
She looked at Heath again. He was looking down at his arm, the expression on his face completely blank.
His arm looked like it had been mangled in a machine. The scarring was horrific. He looked like a burn victim. The flesh had rippled and twisted like clay. Aisha could hardly stand to look at it.
“Do the other,” Heath said.
“What?”
He looked right at her. “Do the other.”
She began unwrapping the other arm. She did it more slowly than the first, dreading coming to the end.
“They really ripped me up,” Heath said. “Fucking mutts.”
The second arm was even worse than the first. Aisha wondered how it was even possible. The wolf’s teeth had reached all the way to raw bone. The stitching that Aisha had done hastily in the land cruiser was still there, she knew it would have to come out soon. She hoped it would be the doctor who took care of that rather than her.
She looked at Heath again. His face was a wall of grim determination.
“Now my face,” he said.
“Heath,” Aisha said.
He was staring at his arms, transfixed. He didn’t look up at her.
“Do it,” he said.
Slowly, with complete dread, she began unwrapping the bandage around his head. As it slipped away, she could no longer conceal her horror. His face was no longer even recognizable. He was monstrous.
“I can see it on your face,” he said.
“What?” she said, struggling not to cry.
“You hate me now. You fucking hate me now.”
“Heath,” she said, tears choking her up.
“You hate me. I can tell. You’re going to leave me first chance you get.”
That was unfair. It was completely unfair. She’d done nothing to make him fear that. If anything, he was the one who’d jeopardized the relationship, cheating on her back in Washington every chance he got.
“You�
��re the one who … ,” she said, stammering.
“What? Say it.”
“You’re the one who shared me.”
“I knew you were going to throw that back in my face. First chance you get, first sign of weakness, and you pounce. You’re worse than a jackal, Aisha.”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
She found it difficult to look at his face, but she forced herself. One of his eyes didn’t open. The flesh above the other drooped down, the muscles in his brow completely severed. His left cheek had been gashed so deeply, she’d been able to see his teeth through it back in the land cruiser. She’d managed to block out that detail till now, but seeing it again brought back the memory. She felt like throwing up. His lips had been destroyed, what little of them that was left forming a jagged border around his mouth that looked more like open, wounded flesh than proper lips. He was hideous. There was no other way to say it. His face had been destroyed by the wolf.
“I’m talking about you leaving me,” he said. “You women are all the same. You attach yourselves to men like leeches when you think there’s something in it for you. Now that you see I’m wounded, you’re going to drop me like a rock.”
“I’m not,” Aisha pleaded. “I swear I’m not.”
“Get over here,” Heath said.
She approached him cautiously, afraid to look directly in his face. He didn’t even look like himself anymore.
“So you’re saying that me looking like this doesn’t make you want to drop me?”
Aisha looked straight at him. What could she say? He looked frightful. Of course she couldn’t see him now the way she’d seen him before, but the truth was, it wasn’t because of his scars that she didn’t love him, it was because of the way he’d treated her in the past. If he’d been loving and supportive to her from the beginning, no amount of scars could have ever changed the love and loyalty she would show him through anything. But the way things were, she didn’t love him. She didn’t love him before the scars, and she didn’t love him now that he was so brutally disfigured.
But she couldn’t say that to him. She couldn’t bring herself to admit it. She wasn’t ready yet to admit to herself that her relationship with Heath was a hollow sham.
“When I look at you,” she said, “all I feel is complete love.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Heath said.