by H. D. Gordon
A deep chuckle sounded behind me. “It was a long, hot day,” he said. “I thought you might want to take a swim.” He paused. “Wait… Who else keeps getting naked around you?”
“None of your business,” I grumbled.
“Come swim with me, little Wolf.”
I gritted my teeth. “No.”
“Why not?”
Anger flooded me at the ignorance of the question. I turned on my heels and stalked toward the pool, my fists bundled tight at my sides. “Why not?” I said. “You’re joking, right? What is it that you’re not understanding here? You’re a Hound, I’m a Dog. Why in all the realms would I ever want to get naked and swim in the forest with you?”
Treading water, his shoulders and golden-brown hair shimmering in the sunlight, he said, “I didn’t say you had to get naked, but you’re definitely welcome to.”
“I will never willingly let you touch me,” I told him. “You’re wasting your time if that’s what your goal is.”
The Head Hound held up both scarred and golden hands. “Okay,” he said, his blue eyes serious… but not in the aggressive, mean way they had been with the others all day in training. “I got it,” he added. “But it was a really long and really hot day… So… will you swim with me?”
I looked at him like he was stupid. “Are you asking me, or telling me? Do I have a choice in the matter, Captain Ryker?”
Without hesitation, he nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You have a choice in the matter.”
In answer, I spun on my heels once more and stalked away.
The Hound did not call after me.
Of course, the easiest way back down to the section of seaside that was designated for the Dogs was to leap over The Cascades again. Fear still spiraled in my stomach as I approached the ledge, where I could see Dogs bathing below, but it was not as intense as the day before. Probably because I was too damn tired to care.
Without bothering to strip off my clothes, (which needed a good wash, anyway) I leapt over the side of The Cascades and felt my stomach rise before making impact with the blessed water.
As I kicked toward the surface, an image of Ryker’s lean and muscular body glittering with the water of that pool flashed through my head.
By the time I’d finished bathing, I was able to stifle that unwanted image.
Mostly.
Kalene and Oren were waiting for me as I climbed out of the water. I’d shifted into my Wolf form because unlike everyone else around here, I did not particularly like to go around naked in my skin suit. Both the female and male laughed when they saw me.
Oren nudged Kalene playfully and nodded down at me, where I stood on all fours shaking out my thick brown fur. “Bear-killer is shy,” said the male.
Kalene grinned. “Did you see the way she whooped Peni this morning, Oren?” she said. “I’d watch it if I were you.”
“Bear-killer likes me,” Oren argued. “I stopped her from splattering into Wolf-meat at The Cliffs this morning.”
I gave them the Wolves’ equivalent of an eye roll and padded away to get dressed and dried, deciding that I needed to take on the task of building myself a shelter as soon as possible. That, and I needed to take my meager winnings from my last fight and purchase some personal items and new clothing.
Until I had a relatively private place to stumble back to, I would not be repeating the behaviors of last night. Before my body could sustain any more physical exertion, however, I needed to sit my sore ass down. Drink some water, eat some meat, take a breather. Or two.
The night bugs were just starting to call out their presence as I crossed the beach and headed toward the base of a mountain where Kalene had informed me a small path led back into a palm grove that was good for collecting items for my shelter.
I made it up the path and found the grove. It was quiet here, no naked Wolves or cawing seabirds. The sandy ground had yielded to tall grasses, and I slipped into them, easily concealed there in my Wolf form.
I passed out just as soon as I set my head between my paws.
I awoke in an unknown location.
The air smelled different here. My body was no longer encased in tall, soft grasses, and when my ears swiveled around on my head, they could not detect the sound of the nearby ocean lapping relentlessly at the shore.
My eyes snapped open and I held very still, assessing my surroundings. Rather than smelling like sea and sunshine, the air smelled damp and earthy, and was cooler than I thought it ought to be given the season.
Once my mind was firing on all cylinders, I saw that I was in some sort of cave.
A match struck somewhere in the darkness beside me, and I was on all four paws in an instant, my teeth bared and a vicious growl emanating from my throat.
“Easy, little Wolf,” said a familiar voice, and the flare of a flame lit up Ryker’s handsome face. He nodded over my shoulder. “I brought you some clothing if you want to shift.”
In answer, I only lowered my head between my front paws and made sure every fang in my mouth was on display as I growled again.
“Or don’t,” he said, and shrugged. “You could always drop the walls around your mind and speak to me that way… I actually prefer it. It’s much more… intimate.”
Cursing silently, I shifted just so that I could tell him off. His blue eyes watched every move I made as I yanked the shirt he’d brought me down over my head, not caring that my body was bare to him for a brief moment.
As the hem over the shirt fell down to my thighs, and I saw his gaze go from blue to glowing Wolf-Gold, traveling the length of me and back again, there was nothing I could do to keep the blush from rising to my cheeks.
“How the hell did I get here?” I snapped.
Ryker the Hound’s eyes glowed for a moment longer as they lingered on my bare legs. “I brought you here,” he said, and his voice was deep, low. “You were very tired. You didn’t stir one bit.”
I tossed my hands up. “Oh, okay, cool. For a second I thought you might have done something totally creepy.”
Ryker set about building a small fire in the center of the cavern, and he looked back at me over his wide shoulder. “Are you mad because I pushed you at training today?” he asked. “I had to. You don’t want the others to think I favor you... Even if I do.”
“Really? And why is that? Why do you favor me?”
The Hound moved so swiftly that I hardly had time to draw a breath and he was in front of me. His scent wrapped around me with the proximity, an essence of sunshine and seaside. With his height and the wide muscles of his chest and shoulders, I felt very much like I was standing within the shadow he cast, a ring of space that I wasn’t at all comfortable in.
And the seriousness of his handsome face, the intensity in his blue eyes.
It terrified me.
No, if I was being entirely honest, thrilled was probably a more accurate word. Terrified was just what I should have been.
“I find you attractive, little Wolf,” the Hound told me, his gaze going to my lips, then back up to meet my eyes. “You must know that you’re rather beautiful, and beyond that, there’s this… fire within you. It seems to captivate me, and now, I can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to have you as my lover. All that fire… How you must burn...” With this last word, his blue eyes flared Wolf-Gold once more.
And something akin to flame swirled duplicitously in my midsection.
I took a step back from him. Then another. Some small part of me whispered that I should run. Another, traitorous part of me, was again pulling up that image of his golden body wading in that turquoise pool, of the way his strong hands had felt working the Wolfsbane into my back, these thoughts causing that heat at my middle to stoke and spread.
Sensing my discomfort, (if that’s what one should call it) the Hound retreated, returning to his work on the small fire he was building in the center of the cavern. I almost sighed in relief, but managed to keep my reaction to his words mostly neutral.
; “I brought you here,” the Hound told me as he kindled a flame within his woodpile and blew air on it, making the embers burn and glow, “because I thought you might want a safe place to sleep. After today, I didn’t think you’d want to build your own shelter. We’re not far from the beach, but no one really knows about this place.”
I glanced around, looking at the space but not really seeing it. At last, I found my voice. “I’ll never be your lover,” I said. “I told you, you’re wasting your time.”
The Hound had finished building the fire and now busied himself laying out several thick blankets nearby. Once he was done, he sat down atop them and began removing items from a burlap sack. “Okay, little Wolf,” he told me, and smiled wolfishly, “but I brought food and wine, and you can join me in having some, if you want.”
I almost stomped out of that cave. I really did. If I had, things might’ve turned out entirely different. But then the bastard pulled out a hunk of cured ham that was as large as my head and a loaf of fresh bread that was a delicacy to any Dog’s diet. When he popped the cork out of a bottle that released the sweet smell of good wine into the air… I huffed out a breath and took a seat on the blankets beside him.
23
The next day, Ryker trained the Dogs to death again on The Cliffs, the playful and challenging expression he wore with me in private no where to be seen. That night, I found him waiting at the entrance to the cave again with another bag of food and wine, as well as some other items that might make my ‘stay more comfortable’, as he put it.
I thanked him very much, but informed him that his efforts were useless, as slavery was an inherently uncomfortable situation.
To this, he’d only nodded and placed the items he’d brought along the cave wall, as if I would change my mind later. I’d narrowed my eyes at him, because I knew he was probably right. You’d be amazed at what a person would do for basic commissary after being deprived for so long.
When the Hound waved his hand for me to join him once more on the blankets, I only sighed and obeyed. I’d decided the night prior that if he was determined to let me eat his food and drink his wine then that was his own stupid decision. Despite the fact that my traitorous body might find his attractive, I vowed that I would never let him touch me. Not like that. Not for all the cured ham and fine wine in the world.
They could force me to shift and fight for my life in front of crowds of people, but I would never allow my body to be used the way they used Goldie’s. I’d kill and die before I let that happen.
Thoughts of Goldie made my shoulders slump a fraction as I shoved a piece of bread in my mouth and flicked a couple pebbles across the cave floor.
“What’s on your mind, little Wolf?” Ryker asked me on the fourth or fifth day in a row where he’d trained the Dogs in the morning and visited my cave with food in the evening. The bastard was clever, because the food and wine he brought was as varied as it was delicious, and never in my life had I sustainably eaten so well. It had less than a week, and I was already seeing a change in my body. My curves were beginning to fill in more fully, my cheeks appearing less hollowed out.
Dogs ate the mush that was provided them, or hunted game in the rivers and woods. We drank moonshine that could singe the hair off a male’s upper lip, and water from the streams and rivers that fed the earth.
We did not eat aged cheeses, flaky breads, and seasoned meats. We didn’t sit on blankets in caves and sip wine from glasses that clinked when held together. We sure as shit didn’t do these things with Hounds.
And, yet, here we were… Him, too stubborn or stupid to leave me be, and me, too gluttonous about food and wine to deny him the opportunity. Or that’s what I told myself, anyway.
I realized he’d asked me a question, and opted for the truth. “I was thinking about my friend, Goldie,” I said, and actually looked at him, which I’d been adamant about avoiding since we’d began this evening charade. “I was wondering where she is, what she’s doing… If she’s okay.”
The Hound leaned forward from where he’d been leaning back against the cave wall. His handsome face was all fine angles and shadows in the dimness of the cavern, and the firelight beside us danced along his golden skin. His blue eyes were intense as they held mine, and his voice was unnervingly gentle. “I wish I could tell you she’s in good hands,” he told me, “but the male who bought her is… not known for his kindness.”
My jaw clenched. “And neither are you,” I countered.
The Hound held up both hands. “Fair enough,” he said. “But not every rumor that’s whispered is true.”
I tried not to let his words crush me. Suddenly the fine wine and food in my belly felt rancid. “Then the same could be said of this Adriel,” I argued, clinging to the thread of hope that Goldie had landed somewhere better than where we’d come from. “Maybe not everything they whisper about him is true.”
But even as I said it, the memory of the red-eyed Mixbreed male standing in the forest in Dogshead, murdering that other male right in front of me and then drinking his blood, the revulsion and horror that had coursed through me at the thought of that creature owning Goldie… A shiver ran down my spine, and there was nothing I could do to stop the goosebumps that broke out along my skin.
When Ryker’s warm but calloused hand fell gently on my forearm, soothing away some of the chill that had formed there, for all of two heartbeats, I forgot to hate him.
Then I jerked my arm away, angry anew. “How could you let him buy her then?” I snapped. “If you like me so damned much, why didn’t you buy Goldie, too? Rather than let her be sold to that—that monster?”
And as soon as the words spilled out of my mouth, I knew that this was the real reason I hated the male beside me so fiercely. It was not the fact that he was the right hand of the Wolf who held the leash attached to the collar around my neck. It was not even the fact that he was apparently a bastard to every other Dog in the world save for me. It was that he kept pretending to be decent, but he had not stepped in when the person I loved the most was sold to a known sadist, and a Mixbreed to boot.
There was no stronger stereotype in all the realms than that of the shadiness and shiftiness of Mixbreeds. They were crooks, liars, cheats, and killers. They had no loyalty to anyone but themselves, and they fit in nowhere. It was said that the mixture of races had led to the deterioration of the Mixbreed’s soul, and as such, not many of them were ever born. To lend to the creation of a Mixbreed was not just taboo; it was considered an abomination.
And this was the fate that had befallen Goldie. Whether or not her purchase by the Mixbreed was Ryker’s fault, I still blamed him for it.
“First of all,” the Hound said slowly, “I didn’t know the other female—Goldie, meant so much to you. I also hadn’t been aware that Mekhi was going to try to purchase her, otherwise I would have tried to stop him… And, third, you can at least take comfort in the fact that Mekhi would not have been much of a better owner than Adriel. They’re both shitheads… Lastly, if I recall correctly, it was your interactions with Mekhi that put Goldie on his radar. I think we both know he tried to buy her to punish you.”
He may as well have punched me right in the stomach. My mouth snapped shut. We ate the rest of the meal in silence. When he slipped out of the cave that evening, for the first time since he began these visits, he did not bid me goodnight.
I did not expect him to return.
But he did.
Night after night after night.
We didn’t speak about Goldie again, and I spent many moons refusing to even look at him or acknowledge his presence while I stuffed my face with the delicacies he brought. The fights in The Ring were on an offseason at the moment, as all the Dogs in the realm were preparing for The Games at the end of the summer. Vampires and Wolves and other various creatures would travel from thousands of miles away, from all over the world, to come and take part in the festivities.
On top of that, Reagan Ramsey was hosting the event this yea
r. The entire city of Marisol was preparing for The Games. Bets were already being placed and merchandise sold. This year, Ramsey had promised the world, The Games would be bigger and better than ever.
The only thing I cared about was what that meant for a Dog.
About a month or so into his visits, I worked up the nerve to ask Ryker.
He folded a hand behind his head, the muscles in his arm and chest flexing, leaning back against the cave wall, and grinned lazily at me. “She speaks,” he said.
I gave him an unimpressed look and waited.
At last, he sighed, plucked a grape from the bunch he’d brought us, and popped it into his mouth. I watched indifferently as his fine jaw worked. “Ramsey is expecting a large turnout for The Games,” he told me. “He’s put a lot of money into assuring that it’s so. But the fights… they’ll be different this time around, too.”
“Different how?”
“Some of you won’t just be fighting in Wolf form. There will also be unique match-ups and pairings, and surely some unexpected surprises… That’s all I know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sure it is.”
The Hound moved so quickly and so unexpectedly that I had no time to defend against it. One moment, he’d been leaning lazily back against the cave wall. The next, he was hovering over me, having made me lay down on the blankets, my back flat on the cave floor, his large and hard body aligned with my own, poised only inches above me.
All I could see was the sapphire of his eyes, the intensity in them. All I could smell was the scent of sunshine and seaside. And all I could hear was the pounding of my heart within my chest.
“Do you enjoy getting a rise out of me, little Wolf?” the Hound asked me, his voice low and almost threatening.
I knew I should shove him away. But I couldn’t seem to make myself lift my hands to his wide chest and do so. And with his thick, muscular arms braced on either side of me near my shoulders, my arms were pretty much pinned, anyway.
