The Hunted

by Jaid Black

  Her last coherent thought before the blackness overpowered her was that the stone dwellers were real.

  And that she’d never live to tell Dr. Kris Torrence about her breakthrough discovery.

  Chapter 4

  Her brow wrinkled in anxiety, Peggy’s eyes slowly flickered open and tried to adjust to the dim light of…wherever she was being held. Her brain had actually awoken a full five minutes ago, but she had yet to open her eyes. She was afraid to look, afraid to find out if she’d been dreaming or if she’d really been—

  “Please,” the voice of a female softly cried from behind her. “Please let me go home.” The voice was frightened, confused. A knot formed in Peggy’s throat. “I won’t tell anybody,” the female vowed, her tone desperate. “I swear I—”

  A muffled sound, followed immediately by silence, filled the dimly lit chamber. Peggy closed her eyes tightly, somehow realizing the female had been gagged.

  Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

  “Er dama våken?” a man’s voice inquired in a language Peggy had never heard before. She stilled her breathing, afraid for him to know she was awake. “Because I’d like to make it back to the village by this evening,” he muttered in heavily accented English.

  “I’ll go check,” another man answered, his words spoken in the same Old World accent. “The woman was still knocked out last I looked. But I’ll go check the other breeder again now.”

  Breeder? Peggy’s eyes shot open. Her heartbeat accelerated. Am I the breeder they are discussing? She quickly closed her eyes, hysterically trying to figure out a way to get away from the men.

  “Her breathing is too still,” the first man said. His tone was bored. As if he was used to dealing with terrified, captured females all the time. “She’s awake. Wants us to think she’s asleep—” Perspiration broke out on Peggy’s forehead. They knew she was awake. Oh god they knew— “but she’s definitely awake.”

  The second man chuckled. “She wasn’t easy to capture, that one. Wolf himself almost seized her out on the tundra last week, but the Barrow boy managed to get her out before his men could surround her.

  “Wolf?” the first man murmured. “He hunted her?”

  “Ja.” Yes. “He was very angry when he lost her.”

  “He wanted her for himself or to sell?”

  “I’ve no notion. It’s not my place to question a jarl’s son. You know that.”

  Silence.

  “Well then,” the first man murmured. “We best keep a good eye on her. Just to be safe.”

  Peggy swallowed over the lump in her throat. That was definitely not what she’d been wanting to hear.

  “Agreed,” the second man rumbled out. “If Wolf wants her, we’ll be able to barter her for a high sum.”

  The first man grunted. “We must take her back to our own people first. The men of our village should be able to barter for her first. If none are willing to pay the price we set, then we will barter her to the son of the opposing jarl.”

  “Agreed.”

  Peggy gasped when the animal furs that had been draped over her body were unceremoniously ripped off. Her skin chilled immediately, for she was wearing nothing but the thin white shift Benjamin’s mother had hand-stitched together for her. She instinctively curled into a ball, both out of fright and to shield her body from the strange men.

  “Be still, girl,” one of the men muttered as he squatted down beside her.

  Her breathing grew labored. Blood pounded in her ears.

  The tanned, heavily bearded face of a man in his late forties or early fifties drifted into her line of vision. Viewing him upside down on her back, all she could make out was clear blue eyes, a shaggy mane of black hair, and a full salt and pepper beard. “What do you want from me?” she breathed out.

  He shook his head on a grunt, letting her know he’d answer no questions so she needn’t ask them. He ignored her after that, causing her distress to grow more acute. “Hurry up and check her over, Rolf,” he barked out to a younger blonde man who was squatting down by Peggy’s feet. “Make sure she’s clean and then let us go.”

  Wide-eyed, Peggy’s already surging heart rate went wild when Rolf placed a tanned hand on either of her thighs and forced her legs apart. Oh god—somebody help me! she silently cried out, instinctively rearing up to free her legs in order to kick at him.

  She kicked Rolf squarely in the chin, causing him to yelp, then curse under his breath. She tried to roll away, tried to get up and run, but the black-haired man seized her shoulders from behind, locking them against the chilled stone ground in a movement that was as jarring as it was painful.

  “Enough!” the older man shouted. “If you do that again, you will be harnessed!”

  Harnessed? Oh god! Who are these people?

  Thinking quickly, Peggy stilled her body and forcibly calmed herself. The last thing she wanted, she told herself in near hysteria, was to be harnessed. She wasn’t precisely certain what that would entail, but it didn’t take an Einstein to figure out that it would be harder to escape if the men put a containment device of some sort on her.

  The older man grunted, appeased by Peggy’s seeming docility. He nodded to the blonde man, telling him without words to proceed.

  Peggy anxiously wetted her lips.

  “This won’t take too long,” Rolf muttered in his Old World accent, his hard expression letting her know the kick to the chin hadn’t been forgotten. “If you’re still and quiet.”

  She trembled when his rough, callused hands once again parted her thighs. Her breathing grew heavy and sporadic as the thin shift she wore was raised above her head. The shift was then placed over her eyes like a blindfold, making it so she couldn’t see who was doing what to her. She bit her lip from worry, embarrassed when the cold air hit her chest and made her nipples plump up.

  “Ja,” the older man laughed. His hands left her shoulders and trailed down to her breasts. He palmed both of them, kneading them and running his thumbs over the stiff nipples. “Jeg vil feire brystvortene hennes.”

  The two men exchanged chuckles, which worried Peggy. It was bad enough to endure having her body examined without permission, but when they were speaking of her in another language so she had no idea what they were saying about her…that was downright frightening.

  The older man continued playing with her breasts and nipples even as Rolf’s fingers began examining her pubic hair. His fingers sifted carefully through the trimmed, coppery triangle, so she rightly assumed she was being checked for lice. He spent a lot of time there, thoroughly examining her soft mons. By the time he finished, Peggy’s breathing had hitched, both from fright and from her body’s instinctive—and unavoidable—reaction to having her nipples plucked at.

  “She’s clean,” Rolf barked. Peggy let out a breath of relief, assuming that the fondling was over.

  “Is she a virgin?” the older man asked.

  “Let me look.”

  Peggy’s teeth sank into her lower lip as the tip of Rolf’s index finger found her hole. He slid into it slowly, then withdrew. “She’s too dry,” he said absently. His thumb settled on her clit and applied slow, lazy, circular pressure to it. “I’ll let you know in a minute.”

  Her eyes squeezed tightly shut from behind the blindfold. She could only pray that when Rolf discovered she was most definitely not a virgin that she’d be let go…

  A knot of worry and shame formed in Peggy’s belly as her body slowly became aroused by the steady fondling. One captor’s hands were kneading her breasts and plucking at her nipples, while the other captor’s hands were playing with her pussy. His thumb was working its dark magic on her clit, rubbing it and toying with it until her thighs began to softly tremble.

  Peggy’s head thrashed back and forth on the cold, earthen floor. She gritted her teeth, determined not to come.

  “Let it go, girl,” the older captor whispered in a thickly aroused voice. He fastened his knees around her head and secured it so she couldn’t thras
h it around anymore. “Let it go.”

  Unable to move, unable to protest, Peggy could no more stop herself from orgasming than she could stop night from turning into day. She knew it was inevitable, knew too that she might as well get it over with.

  Her breathing grew labored and her nipples stabbed upward, hitting the first captor in the palms. Blood rushed to her lower body, puffing up her cunt for the view of her second captor.

  On a growl, Rolf replaced his hand with his mouth. He drew her clit in between his lips and latched onto it, then suckled it vigorously until she was gasping.

  “Oh god.” Peggy broke on a groan, moaning as her body instinctively convulsed. The first captor continued to knead her breasts and run his thumbs over her stiff, aching nipples, while Rolf sucked on her clit, not stopping until she came a second time, harder and more violent than before.

  When she came down from the climactic high, mortification stole over her. What had been done to her was embarrassing enough, but to orgasm for men who had forced it on her was humiliating.

  She closed her eyes from behind the makeshift blindfold, feeling more shamed than she’d thought possible. Realistically she knew that her body had merely reacted instinctually, that the orgasm meant nothing beyond a response to a stimulus, yet the feeling of shame lingered nonetheless.

  Rolf reinserted his index finger into her pussy hole. This time it slid in easily, her moisture providing the necessary lubrication to probe her. Her nostrils flared from behind the blindfold. She could hardly wait for the asshole to discover that she wasn’t a virgin so she would be let go.

  “I don’t detect a hymen,” Rolf said. “She is no virgin.”

  Peggy’s eyes opened from behind the blindfold, blazing with righteous indignation at the bastards.

  “Good,” the older captor grunted, shocking Peggy. “Virgins don’t sell very well on the block.”

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat, righteous indignation quickly turning into acute fear.

  “True,” Rolf absently commented as he removed his index finger from her slit. “Virgin bodies don’t know how to worship a cock the way experienced pussies do.”

  Peggy closed her eyes from behind the blindfold, willing herself to breathe. So much for my theory of being let go, she thought, as the older captor continued playing with her stiff nipples.

  Chapter 5

  Peggy’s only consolation was that she hadn’t been raped—yet. She had no idea what the two men had in store for her, beyond the fact that they planned to sell her “on the block”. The situation felt as though it was growing grimmer by the moment. Namely because she hadn’t yet figured out a way to escape her captors.

  Pulling the polar bear furs she’d been given tightly around her body, Peggy glanced toward the other female captive in the party and noted the terrified quality of the woman’s wide-eyed, unblinking gaze. She’d been looking that way the entire trek, she thought, her blue eyes bulging above the gag in her mouth that prohibited screaming. Peggy closed her eyes briefly, fearing that the woman’s mind might have snapped.

  That was the last thing she wanted for the other captive. If the woman was out of it, it would make it harder for the two of them to communicate so they could escape together. And Peggy was determined that they would escape together. Lord only knows whether or not she’d be able to direct the authorities as to where to find this other woman if she managed to escape without her, so it was vital that the other captive went with her.

  The two females and their two captors had been riding across the tundra on dogsled for what felt like three days, but realistically had probably been but three hours. The climate seemed to be growing harsher, the snowfall more brisk and chilling.

  Peggy shivered from beneath the furs she was swaddled in. Can I escape with nothing but polar bear furs and secondhand shoes to clothe me? she warily asked herself. Does it matter?

  She knew it didn’t matter because she would try to escape regardless to how bad the circumstances surrounding any attempt might be. She didn’t plan to be around long enough to find out what these two horrid men had in store for her and the other woman. She especially had no desire to hang around long enough to find out what “the block” was. She had her guesses, none of them pretty.

  Peggy’s gaze flicked toward the two captors at the front of the dogsled. She immediately noted that they were embroiled in a fairly heated discussion in that odd tongue they spoke in. Now is the time…

  Nibbling on her lower lip, she quickly glanced back toward the other female captive seated beside her, thinking now was as good a time as any to try and establish communication with her. She discreetly reached toward the other woman, then placed a hand gently over hers—

  She snatched her hand back, her eyes wide. The other woman’s hand was as cold as a block of ice. Peggy’s breathing stilled as she narrowed her gaze at the woman’s wide blue eyes—eyes, she recalled, that hadn’t blinked in hours…

  Peggy screamed as she poked the other captive in the chest. The woman’s icy body slumped over, the sound of one of her frozen vertebrae snapping as easily as a chicken bone chilling Peggy to the bone. “Oh my god!” she hysterically wailed, feeling as though she might vomit. “She’s dead! Oh my god—she’s dead!”

  A stinging backhand across her face instantly quieted Peggy. She whimpered, her hand instinctively flying up to the cheek that had been slapped brutally enough to bust teeth. She was lucky, she thought as tears welled up in her eyes and the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth, that she had only garnered a cut to the inside of her mouth and that her teeth hadn’t been busted by the impact.

  “Shut up, woman!” Rolf spat in his Old World accent. “Or you will be gagged!” He glanced toward the dead captive, his expression irritated. “Throw her off the sled if you can’t stand the sight of her, otherwise wait until we stop and I’ll remove her. But do not,” he seethed through clenched teeth, “cry out like that again.”

  Peggy’s eyes widened at his callous disregard for human life. A woman had died—died!—and he was no more concerned about it than she imagined he would have been had one of the dogs of the sled team died. Actually, she thought bitterly, he’d probably be more upset if it had been one of the dogs instead of this nameless, faceless woman who was nothing but lost chattel to him.

  Her nostrils flared as she locked eyes with the disgusting excuse for a man. She had never hated anyone or anything more than she hated this man in this moment. She said nothing, just showed him her hatred through her narrowed, aqua gaze.

  When he broke her stare, she turned her head to the right and spat out a gob of blood that had accrued in her mouth. She watched the mingled blood and saliva land in the snow, staining the pristine white a crimson red. She idly wondered how much more of her blood would be spilled before she was free again.

  “Don’t try anything stupid,” Rolf murmured without looking back at her. “The last one who tried something stupid was your friend there.”

  Peggy’s eyes widened. She thought back to an incident that had occurred before the party of four had taken off by dogsled. The other woman, hysterical, had tried to run. It had been Rolf who had tracked her down, Rolf who had found her, Rolf who had put her on the sled so that she was already docily sitting there before Peggy had been brought out…

  He had known the other captive was dead, she thought, her breathing stilled. Oh god—he was the one who had made her that way!

  Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Rolf, probably not wanting to leave a trail behind, had loaded the woman’s dead body onto the sled so he could dispose of her later, when they were further out onto the desolate tundra.

  Nausea churned in Peggy’s stomach, threatening to expel itself. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down in the process. The last thing she wanted to do was vomit. She knew it would gain her nothing but another slap, or worse.

  Help me, God! she mentally screamed. Please help me!

  “What the…?”<
br />
  Peggy’s head shot up at the sound of Rolf’s perplexed voice. Her eyes narrowed at the back of his head as she tried to discern what the matter was.

  “Damn it!” the other captor bellowed. “Damn Valkraads!”

  “How many?” Rolf calmly asked, his hands reaching toward and picking up a crossbow.

  “One, two maybe.”

  “Then we can take them.”

  Their speech reverted to the foreign tongue after that, ensuring that Peggy was kept in the dark. She had no idea what a Valkraad was, nor could she see any other people or animals in the immediate vicinity to clue her in as to what was going on.

  Peggy teeth sank into her bottom lip, her heartbeat accelerating. It occurred to her that now, while the two men were distracted, might be her only chance at escape…

  A deafening war cry startled her, causing her to gasp. The snowbanks seemed to come alive then as four men camouflaged by polar bear skins seemingly exploded from out of the tundra itself. Her eyes widened as she watched the armed men stampede toward the dogsled on foot, preparing to cut it off at the pass by any means necessary.

  Oh god, Peggy thought, her eyes wide and breathing labored. Who were these men? Her salvation or the bringers of an even worse fate?

  A tall, heavily muscled male threw off his polar bear fur as he gave his war cry, simultaneously revealing that he wore nothing beneath it save tight buckskin trousers that looked almost Native American in origin and a pair of tough leather boots. His tanned, muscular chest was completely bare, his sunny blonde hair flying against the wind as his icy blue eyes narrowed at her captors.

  Peggy froze, her mind in complete shock. How could the man’s body withstand such frigid temperatures? How could—forget it, Peggy, just run! Run! Run! Run!

  Her muscles corded, her body in fight-or-flight mode, Peggy jumped from the ongoing dogsled and landed on her face, simultaneously knocking the wind from her gut.

  Fight it, Peggy! Get up and run!

  Under ordinary circumstances she doubted she would have been able to rebound so quickly, but then these circumstances were hardly ordinary. She shot up to her feet, gasping for air even as she took off, fleeing under the dark skies of the cold tundra.