by Abby Weeks
They would allow Aisha to be a whore for them, but nothing more. She would be a prisoner, a slave, and they would use her till they no longer had any use for her.
The crowd passed the inn, and Aisha looked to her left to see Tilly and Hilda standing on the porch, watching the procession in horror. They were terrified. They had nothing against the handmaidens. They were only too aware that if the men could do this to Aisha, they could easily turn around and do it to them too. In fact, that was half the point. Everything the men were going to do to Aisha was meant as a clear threat to the women of the community. It was part of how they maintained such rigid control over them.
Aisha wanted to run to her friends. She knew they would have stepped in and helped her if there was anything they could possibly have done for her. But she knew that it could only get Hilda and Tilly in trouble to be associated with her now. She was a danger to them. Friendship with her could bring down the wrath of the mob.
She turned to face forward and tried to walk with as much poise and dignity as she could muster. It was difficult. She was naked, being jeered at, and she had a collar and leash attached to her neck. She didn’t know what the men intended to do to her when they got her to the brothel. But if there was one thing she could control, it was her reaction, her response to this brutality.
She walked toward the brothel, and as she approached it, she saw that some of the men had run ahead and were already working on reopening the old building that had been shut down for so many years. Aisha wondered how long exactly it had been since the last of the handmaidens had left this place. She saw now what her mother must have gone through. She saw why she would have fled this region, never to return. She even thought she could understand why her mother might have left her all alone to the care of the City of Seattle. Maybe she’d been so damaged, so emotionally scarred by her treatment at the hands of these men, that she couldn’t see herself raising a child. Or maybe she thought that any child she had would be safer not knowing her, not knowing about shifters and handmaidens and the harsh, brutal place they came from.
She looked up at the boarded windows of the brothel and wondered which of them her mother had looked out of and plotted her escape to freedom. Had she been pregnant with Aisha when she escaped? Had it been because of that pregnancy that she’d gained the courage to leave this place? Aisha doubted she’d ever have answers to such questions.
The men had to pry some nailed boards from in front of the door before they could open it. Someone used an axe handle as a lever.
As the men worked on the door, Aisha looked up beyond the guard tower out to the road.
Someone was approaching!
*
Chapter 19
COMING DOWN THE ROAD, approaching the gates of the town, were four men. They were tall, strong, with broad chests and athletic builds. Their hair was dark and reached their shoulders. They all had dark stubble on their faces. Even from the distance, Aisha could see their yellow eyes glowing in anger.
She knew who they were.
The crowd of men was still busy working on prying open the brothel door, but when someone noticed the four shifters approaching the gates, he got the other men’s attention.
“Hey,” he called, “Harry, look who’s coming our way.”
The crowd of men stopped what they were doing and turned toward the shifters.
Aisha could see that there was a guard posted on the tower, and he had his rifle trained on the shifters.
“Hold it right there,” the guard called out from on top of the tower.
The four brothers looked up at him. They stopped.
“We’re here for the handmaiden,” one of them called out. Aisha didn’t recognize the voice. It wasn’t Packer’s. If it was possible, this voice was even deeper than Packer’s. It must have been one of his brothers.
The guard in the tower didn’t know what to do. He looked back at Harry, who seemed to be the one in command of the situation.
“Give them a warning shot,” Harry called out. “If they take one step closer, take them out.”
The man with the rifle fired. The bullet landed in front of where the four brothers were standing, raising a splash of snow as it thudded into the dirt.
The four brothers didn’t react. They remained completely calm. They stood where they were and looked at each other. Aisha knew they were silently communicating with each other. They turned to face forward.
“Shoot again,” Harry shouted.
Aisha was amazed at the speed at which the next events took place. Even as the guard in the tower was raising his rifle to his shoulder, the four brothers started running toward the town. They didn’t run as men ran, but faster and lower to the ground. They were in human form, rushing forward like muscular sprinters. The guard fired and the bullet hit exactly where the brother who’d spoken had been standing but it was already too late. The shifters were halfway to the guard tower by then.
She saw Packer running with his brothers, and she could see then why they’d never left this place. This was their home, and when they were in action like this, they were the most magnificent, majestic sight she’d ever seen in her life.
The brother who’d spoken to the guard leapt from the ground and grabbed hold of one of the four wooden posts that supported the guard tower. The momentum of his body hitting the post shook the entire tower and almost knocked it over. He climbed the tower rapidly as the other three continued to rush toward the crowd.
The men were bewildered. There were well over fifty men in this mob and only four shifters, but the men were unprepared. Each man knew in his heart that he was no match for the four brothers. Every single one of them, even those with rifles slung across their backs or axes in their hands, was scared.
Aisha could smell their fear. She knew the brothers could too.
Some of the men turned and ran. Others stood their ground and braced for impact.
Up on the tower, Aisha watched as Packer’s brother lifted the guard over his head and flung him over the edge. The man dropped thirty feet in a second and hit the ground with a bone-crushing thud. The brother leapt down after him, landing close to where the guard had fallen, and continued sprinting toward the crowd.
Packer was the first of the shifters to hit the men. He hunched down just before impact and knocked Harry through the air. Harry flew backwards and slid across the snow. Another man swung an axe and Packer blocked it with his forearm. The handle of the axe cracked where it struck Packer. Packer grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him a few inches from the ground. Another man swung a rifle at Packer’s back, holding it by the barrel. Packer caught the flying rifle with his free hand and pulled it from the man who’d swung it. He jabbed it into the gut of the man he was holding by the neck and dropped him, then jabbed the other end into the man who’d attacked him with it.
The brother next to Packer skidded into the crowd, knocking four men off their feet as he slid under them. Even as the men were still falling, the shifter was up and in the air. He landed on more men, knocking down another four.
The third shifter hit Chopper in the face with a head butt, and Aisha saw the blood of Chopper’s broken nose splash onto the snow.
The shifter who’d climbed the guard tower had caught up at this point. Somehow, Aisha got the impression he was the oldest of the four brothers. He went straight for Heath, who was standing with his back to the door of the brothel. The shifter lifted Heath by the shoulders and flung him into the door, knocking it off its hinges. Heath fell into the brothel and tried to get to his feet and run away. He wasn’t fast enough. The shifter was on him, throwing him against one of the interior walls of the brothel, sending Heath’s limp body through the timber frame of the wall.
Aisha was amazed. In a matter of minutes, the shifters had cleared their way through the fifty men, sending those who were still able to stand fleeing for cover.
The brothers looked at the mess of men on the ground.
Packer approached Aisha.
>
“This is the girl,” he said to his brothers.
The brothers all looked at her intensely, their yellow eyes burning with a fierceness that Aisha didn’t know how to interpret. She’d never felt so naked in her life. She wasn’t wearing any clothes of course, but her vulnerability seemed to extend far beyond that. These men were able to read every part of her. They could tell from her scent that she was scared, that she’d been terrified and humiliated by what the men of the town might have done to her, but they could also tell that she was aroused by their thrilling, masculine, powerful presence. She could tell the same of them. She knew none of them had ever even seen a woman capable of mating with them before, and now here was one, right in front of their eyes, completely naked.
The brother who’d climbed the tower spoke up.
“I’m Logan,” he said. “These are my brothers. I believe you’ve met Packer.”
Aisha nodded.
“Packer, you’ve got to find her male,” Logan said.
Packer nodded. “Where is he?” Packer said. “Where’s the man who claims you?”
“Claims me?”
“The one who brought you here on the boat. The one you’re with.”
“Your brother threw him in there,” Aisha said, motioning toward the brothel.
Packer walked into the brothel and came back out with Heath, holding him by the collar of his shirt the way a cat might carry its young by the scruff of the neck. He threw him onto the ground.
“Do I have to fight you?” Packer said to Heath.
“What?” Heath said, his hands in front of his face, shielding him from whatever attack was going to come.
“Do you lay claim to this female?” Packer said. “Because if you do, I’ll fight you to the death.”
Heath looked up at Packer, then at his three brothers.
“Don’t look at them,” Packer said. “It would be you and me, alone.”
Heath coughed. He had to cover his mouth with his sleeve. He looked at Aisha. Aisha looked down at him. She had nothing left to say to him. Despite the four years she’d spent with Heath, she felt toward him as she would toward a complete stranger.
“No,” Heath said. “I don’t claim her. I hate her. You can have her.”
Packer spat on the ground at Heath’s feet. “Coward,” he said.
Logan put his hand on Packer’s shoulder. “Calm down, brother,” he said. Then he turned to address the crowd. “Does any man among you lay claim to this female?”
There wasn’t a sound from any of the men. Aisha thought back to what had happened inside the inn, when dozens of them had sucked and licked every inch of her body and brought her to orgasm. Her cheeks flushed in shame. She hated the memory of it.
“All right,” Logan said. “Let’s get out of this place. The stench is getting to me.”
Packer stepped forward and opened the collar on her neck. “I ought to kill whoever put this on you,” he said.
Aisha looked at him and covered her breasts with her hand.
Harry was on the ground, and he cleared his throat and coughed. When he spoke, Aisha could tell how scared he was from the timbre of his voice.
“You think you’re going to get away with this?” he said to the four shifters.
The shifters only smiled at him. Then Packer lifted Aisha into his arms, as he had the night before in the forest, and they turned and began running out of the town.
*
Chapter 20
FOR AISHA, THE SENSATION OF being carried was a foreign one. She felt like a child, yet even as a child no one had ever been there to carry her. Now, Packer was holding her like a baby in his arms. He was running fast along the road that led out of the village, and the frigid winter air was rushing past her like an icy torrent.
When they were out of sight of the town, they stopped running. There was an opening into the forest and they went through it. Once they were a few yards into the forest, the trees were so thick and the forest so dense that they wouldn’t be seen from the road if anyone followed, not that they thought anyone would.
“Where are we going?” Aisha said.
“To our home,” Packer said.
“Won’t they find us there?”
“They’ve never found it yet,” Packer said.
Aisha looked from Packer to the other three brothers. They were all looking at her like she was the most interesting, attractive thing they’d ever seen in their lives. Their eyes were glued to her body. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do.
“You’re going to have to excuse those three,” Packer said. “They haven’t seen a handmaiden in twenty years.”
Aisha blushed. She wasn’t used to being thought of as anything special. Now she had four brothers looking at her like she was the last woman in the world, which she sort of was, at least to them.
“You should introduce all of us,” one of the brothers Aisha hadn’t met yet said.
“Calm down,” Packer said. “You’re going to scare her off.”
“You’re going to scare her off,” the brother said. “You’re all over her.”
Aisha laughed and then put her hand over her mouth and stopped herself. She was embarrassed. All four of the brothers were so interested in her, she could see them getting into a fight over it.
Packer sighed. “You’ve met Logan,” he said. “He’s our oldest brother.”
“The Alpha, you might say,” Logan said.
The other three laughed. “You might say,” Packer said. “Logan likes to think he’s the alpha because he’s oldest.”
Aisha rose her eyebrows as she eyed Logan. “Well,” she said, “he is the one who climbed that guard tower.”
Logan nodded at her. He liked that she’d noticed that. He took off his coat and gave it to her. “You should put this on,” he said. “You’ll be getting cold.”
Aisha gladly took the coat. Everything about this situation was surreal, but it was slightly more manageable if she at least had some clothing to cover her body with.
“Aren’t you the gentleman,” Packer said.
Logan shrugged. “Better than you three, just staring at her naked body like teenagers.”
“These two,” Packer continued, “are our younger brothers, Hardy and Tucker.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” Aisha said, pulling Logan’s coat tightly around herself.
“You must be overwhelmed by everything you’ve been through,” Tucker said.
Aisha smiled at him. He looked mischievous. He was obviously the youngest brother.
“You all didn’t see what they did to me, did you?” Aisha said.
“We didn’t see it,” Logan said, “but we sensed it. That’s why we came when we came.”
Aisha was mortified. She sat down on a rock and buried her face in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Packer said.
“I’m just so ashamed,” she said. “What those men did to me, where I come from, only a whore would allow herself to be used like that.”
Packer put his hand on her shoulder. The other three brothers all looked at her with compassion.
“Try not to let it get to you,” Hardy said. “The humans have been treating our females like that for a century. They’ve done far worse. For some reason, handmaidens drive them crazy. It’s unseemly. I don’t know how they can live with themselves when they know they’ve acted so terribly to a human.”
“Have you ever seen them do worse?”
All four brothers nodded. There was a gravity and sadness to their expressions.
Aisha looked into Hardy’s eyes for the first time. He was the second to youngest of the three brothers, and he reminded Aisha of a movie actor or pop singer. He had the refined clean-cut looks that would have made him famous back home. He could have been an underwear model or an actor or anything he wanted. He didn’t have the same rugged manliness that Logan and Packer had. Aisha thought he was probably a little older than twenty. Tucker was probably her age, just about twenty. Logan was
probably thirty, and Packer just a year or two younger than him. The brothers had been born in two pairs it seemed, Logan and Packer first, and Hardy and Tucker almost ten years later. Aisha wondered if they all had the same parents or if they were just half-brothers.
“We’re half-brothers,” Hardy said. “And thank you, I always thought I was the handsomest of the four of us.”
Aisha’s face went bright red. “You can read my mind?” she said.
“Not exactly,” Logan said, hitting Hardy on the back of the head. “We can communicate a lot with our minds, but not everything.”
Aisha was so embarrassed. “So you know if I’m attracted to you?” she said, cringing.
“Don’t worry about that,” Packer said. “Of course we know. But I’m sure you know that we’re drawn to you far more desperately than you could ever imagine.”
“We crave you,” Logan said, not a hint of embarrassment or humor in his voice.
“Really?” Aisha said.
“Really,” Hardy said. “Now let’s get moving. I can hear a chopper coming.”
Hardy and Tucker began making their way through the forest. Logan went back to make sure no one was following them and to clear their tracks.
Aisha looked at Packer shyly.
“You sure you don’t mind carrying me?” she said.
“It’s my pleasure,” he said, smiling at her.
“How far is it?”
“Not far. Twenty miles maybe.”
“Twenty miles!”
Packer laughed. “I know that’s a long way for you town-dwellers.”
“I’m not a town-dweller,” Aisha said, thinking back to what the men had tried to do to her.
“Not anymore you’re not,” Packer said.
“I can try walking some of the way,” she offered.
“You’ll be able to run quite fast soon,” Packer said. “As more and more of your handmaiden abilities are awakened, you’re going to be able to do things you never dreamed of. A whole new world is going to open up to you.”
