The Hunted

by Jaid Black

  She supposed she shouldn’t care why.

  Peggy bit her lip, briefly contemplating the insane thought of lowering her mouth to his stiff cock and latching her lips around it. To comfort him? To give him pleasure? She hadn’t a clue.

  Sighing at her troubled thoughts and equally disturbing compulsions, she flipped over onto her side, her back to him, and released a ragged breath. This was ridiculous. What she had contemplated doing to him was downright obscene given the circumstances.

  Peggy’s nostrils flared, anger coursing through her. She would not succumb to that man ever again, she vowed. If he meant to rape her, then he would have to do just that. Never again would she willingly spread her thighs for him. Never again would she allow him to fondle her without a fight. This was her life, damn it! She wasn’t going to give it up, wasn’t going to forget who she was, just because it seemed more expedient at the moment.

  Stay focused, Peggy. Stay focused…

  “You belong to me now.”

  Peggy’s breathing stilled at the sound of those softly spoken, matter-of-fact words. She bit her lip, comprehending the fact that he’d never let her go easily. For whatever reason—breeding, sex, whatever—this man wanted her. And he meant to keep her.

  Geirwolf rolled onto his side, his muscular, dragon-tattooed arm draping over her body. She swallowed roughly when his fingers found the soft coppery curls between her thighs and began to idly sift through them.

  “I hope you accept this soon,” he murmured in that Old World accent. He placed a kiss on her shoulder. “I would not have you unhappy.”

  Peggy said nothing, though she felt like crying. How would she ever escape him? she wondered. How could she ever hope to elude a man who never left her side?

  There was a long silence and then, “If you would not have me unhappy,” she whispered to him, “you would free me.”

  His fingers stilled in her pussy hair. “I will make you happier than you thought possible, Peggy Brannigan.” The words would have sounded arrogant coming from anyone else, but from him they sounded like a mere statement of fact. His fingers resumed their lazy exploration of her intimate curls. “This is a promise.”

  Peggy bit her lip. She thought back on the customs of the ancient Vikings, particularly about their method for acquiring brides. Panic bubbled up inside, constricting her throat.

  Way back when if a Viking marauder coveted a woman he simply stole her away, keeping her as a captive until she’d fallen in love with him and no longer desired to leave him. Only then, when he was certain of her devotion, was she allowed to roam about unattended, her freedom semi-restored.

  Peggy took a deep breath and expelled it. She prayed to God the custom had been lost in antiquity to the stone-dwellers.

  * * * * *

  Who were these people that had taken her captive? Peggy wondered for what felt to be the millionth time as Geirwolf helped her from the dogsled. Their journey, she had been told, was over now, yet she couldn’t make out the beginnings of a village anywhere within viewing distance.

  She took a thorough look around, noting that the climate had grown harsher, snowier, than the climate she’d been stolen from. What was going to happen to her now? she asked herself. Had she been brought here as a breeder, as Sara had indicated, or as something else entirely?

  “Let’s move,” Geirwolf barked to his men. “I want us out of sight as quickly as possible.”

  Peggy’s eyebrows rose. She offered her captor no resistance when he took her by the arm and guided her toward what appeared to be an empty snowbank, but wasn’t. Her brow furrowed as she watched the heavily muscled Aevar grit his teeth, his muscles bulging, while he manipulated a snowbank that was no snowbank. Instead it was a well-concealed, ice-coated stone door leading to only who knows where. The door eventually gave, and Aevar quit gritting his teeth.

  She was intrigued despite herself. Peggy estimated that they were deep into the belly of the Arctic by now—perhaps still in Alaska, perhaps not. Wherever they were, it was in a climate so harsh, so remote and seemingly uninhabitable, that nobody ever bothered to venture here let alone build villages in so rough an atmosphere.

  She swallowed over the lump in her throat. Apparently the stone-dwellers lived in villages that went below the ground or were carved out of caves. She couldn’t imagine what else the stone door could possibly lead to.

  Peggy took a deep breath, realizing at once that nobody would ever think to look for her here.

  She chewed on her bottom lip. They wouldn’t even know that here existed.

  Chapter 8

  Gawking at her surroundings, Peggy couldn’t seem to close her gaping jaw as they walked through the ice-coated stone door and into another world, a world that looked as though it had been frozen in time a thousand and some odd years ago, never to be touched by the hands of progress. Or what outsiders would consider to be progress at any rate.

  The narrow passage they had been walking through abruptly widened, and an entire civilization previously unknown to her was revealed. Throughout the mammoth underground cave, which was lit by lanterns, smaller caverns had been dug out of the walls. To the left were a series of small merchant dens where citizens were even now bartering for goods, and to the right there were about six grocer dens, all of them specializing in the selling of different foods.

  All of these fascinating bartering dens were sealed off from the corridor she was walking through by doors, the doors actually being no more than black iron bars that were lifted up and out of the way during hours of commerce.

  Peggy’s brow furrowed as an odd awareness went through her. Something, she thought anxiously, was troubling about this scene. Something she couldn’t quite pinpoint. She was tired, she realized, so maybe it would take a while before she figured it—

  She gulped. Her eyes widened.

  Oh. My. God.

  Peggy’s jaw about unglued when it dawned on her that every woman in the vicinity—every woman!—was either totally naked or, at minimum, topless. No way! she thought angrily. No way am I walking around like this!

  “Is this,” she hissed, her nostrils flaring, “some kind of a sick joke?”

  Aevar chuckled, immediately recognizing the source of Peggy’s distress.

  She came to an abrupt halt and spun around. She took a moment to glare Aevar into silence, then turned her narrowed gaze to her captor. “I’m not kidding!” she said in a venomous whisper. “I refuse to walk around like that!”

  Geirwolf frowned. “It’s the accepted dress for females amongst our people.”

  “What dress? They are naked!” Peggy’s eyes widened in horror as she quickly glanced around, her anxiety-ridden gaze drinking in the sight of so many nude women. She turned back to Geirwolf, her aqua eyes pleading. “I feel like I’m going to be sick. I can’t do this. I absolutely cannot walk around like that.”

  His eyes softened a bit. “All will be well.”

  “All will be well?” Her nostrils flared to wicked proportions. “All will not be well!” she spat. “I am a scientist, not a…a…stripper!”

  His gaze hardened, telling her without words that, insofar as he was concerned, the subject was not up for negotiation. “You will learn to accept this.”

  “Why did you take me?” she breathed out, her voice desperate. Her breathing grew labored as acute panic settled in. Her hand balled into a fist. “Why don’t you let me go?”

  “Peggy…”

  But she had no interest in whatever it was her captor had been about to say. “Go away!” she screeched, batting at the hand that was trying to rest on her shoulder in a gesture of reassurance. “Go away!”

  In an instinctive action born of fear and self-preservation, Peggy dashed around Geirwolf before he could catch her and ran toward the stone door leading back to the outside. Her heart felt as though it was going to beat out of her chest as her arms and legs pumped like mad, trying to outrun him.

  “Help me!” she screamed, not for the benefit of those inside
who she knew would offer no assistance, but in the futile hope that somebody on the outside world would hear her. It was a small chance at best, but the only real one she had. “Please help me! I was stolen by a crazy man!” she wailed as she ran toward the door. “Please somebody help me!”

  Peggy ran smack into a male she didn’t recognize, knocking the wind out of her as she tumbled backward to the ground. She gasped for air, panic enveloping her again when Geirwolf and Aevar plucked her off of the ground.

  The other two men who had rode with them out on the tundra were there too, men whose names she didn’t know—men whose names she had no desire to know. They spoke to Geirwolf in their common tongue, so she had no idea what they were saying to him.

  Peggy screamed as loudly as she could, her arms and legs flailing madly as the men picked her up and carried her away. “Please somebody help me!” she cried, tears welling up in her eyes. “Oh god—please!”

  It took all four of them to restrain her, a testament to the adrenaline coursing through her blood. She’d never felt so panicked and out of control as she felt at this moment.

  For the first time since this surreal situation had begun, it dawned on Peggy that these men would never let her go alive…

  Unless outsiders came in and forced them to release her.

  * * * * *

  Geirwolf ran a hand over his stubbly jaw, then wearily plopped down onto the tavern bench. He thanked Hilda, the tavern master’s wife, when she set a mug of hot tea and whiskey before him. He threw a silencing look at his brother Aevar, who was still busy chuckling over Peggy’s screaming and kicking episode.

  “’Twas amusing,” Aevar sniffed, his tone defensive.

  Geirwolf frowned. “Mayhap to you, but not to me. She called me a crazy man. Did you hear her speak thusly of me?”

  The two brothers continued their conversation in Old Norwegian, the untainted version of it that was centuries old and more familiar to them than English. Old Norwegian was a tongue so different from modern Norwegian that nobody in the motherland would even recognize it in the present day.

  The English spoken by their people, on the other hand, was of the modern variety, taught to them by captured American brides. Hence, when males of the Valkraad clan spoke in English, it tended to be through a romanticized, feminine view of the world. A fact their mother often had a laugh about.

  Aevar snorted. “She is distraught. She will come to accept you in time. You know this, Wolf.”

  Geirwolf said nothing to that, merely frowned at his hot tea and whiskey. “I just hope the trainers aren’t too tough on her. I don’t want her spirit broken, only amenable.”

  “The trainers know what they are about, brother. Many of them are married women who have been dealing with captive brides for years.”

  “True.”

  Aevar grinned. “Hurry up and breed her and then she can leave the breeding stalls. Mayhap you won’t worry about her fragile—” He coughed into his hand, knowing it was a ridiculous word to describe Peggy given today’s outburst—“spirit. If she’s always near to you, that is.”

  Geirwolf gave him a semi-smile. “I’ll let her settle in.” His expression grew thoughtful, serious. “But,” he murmured, “I’ll begin as soon as the ceremonial words are spoken.”

  Chapter 9

  Peggy was certain she had died and gone to hell. Gone were her clothes, gone were her shoes, gone was her dignity, gone was her life, period. In its place was Hell with a capital H.

  Upon awakening from the effects of the sleeping agent she’d been given last night to help calm her, the first thing Peggy noticed was that she had been bathed without her knowledge or consent and was now completely naked. Even her pubic hair had been trimmed into a tiny triangle, the coppery arrow pointing down to her hooded clit. The rest of her mons was as smooth as baby skin.

  The second thing she noticed was that her feet were painted with intricate designs in a henna-based pigment. She had no idea why this had been done to her and harbored a strong suspicion that she wouldn’t like the answer.

  The third thing Peggy noticed upon waking was that she was being corralled in an area with a bunch of other naked women, some of them English-speaking and weeping in the way she felt like doing, some of them giddy and speaking that odd tongue she couldn’t place. All of them had henna designs etched into their feet. Again, the anthropologist in her screamed, this didn’t bode well.

  Especially since in some cultures, such as India, painted feet often preceded marriage ceremonies. Shit.

  “Good morn, everyone.”

  Peggy’s head shot up at the sound of the feminine voice. Her gaze immediately honed in on the speaker, noting her to be in her late thirties or early forties. The woman was naked like the rest of the females in the corral, her pubic hair trimmed down into a tiny blonde triangle. Also like the other females, her feet were painted. The only noticeable difference insofar as Peggy could see was that the speaker was wearing gold arm bangles around either bicep, whereas the other captives hadn’t been adorned with them.

  “My name is Ivara,” the speaker continued in that same accent as Geirwolf’s, “and I, along with the help of two other Valkraad women, will be helping…err…how do you say?…prepare you for your new lives.”

  Peggy frowned. This definitely did not bode well.

  “Please stand up.” The speaker smiled warmly. “I would like for everyone to introduce themselves.”

  Peggy blinked. She had been kidnapped, drugged, and otherwise humiliated, yet she was supposed to stand up and introduce herself as if nothing was amiss? Yeah. Right.

  “I said stand up.” Ivara’s smile dissolved, replaced with a harsher expression when none of the English-speaking females took to their feet. Peggy snorted at that, wondering what kind of reception this woman had possibly expected from them.

  Ivara narrowed her eyes at the English-speaking women, Peggy included. “I repeat,” she said softly, motioning toward a male guard without breaking eye contact, “stand up.” The guard, a huge, thickly muscled male close to seven feet in height, raised his hand, revealing the bullwhip he held. He lashed it once on the ground for effect, the severe sound shocking.

  Peggy’s eyes widened. She scurried to her feet.

  Shit.

  “Very good.” Ivara smiled warmly again, her earlier irritation seemingly forgotten. “Now, you will introduce yourselves to me and to your other trainers. When we have finished, I will then tell you more about what will be expected of you in New Norway.”

  New Norway, Peggy thought as she nibbled on her lower lip. So she had been right—this society was some offshoot of the ancient Viking lineage. If she’d been studying this culture as an anthropologist, she would have been fascinated. As a captive, however, all she felt was unadulterated fear.

  Peggy listened with half an ear as the captives introduced themselves one by one. When it was her turn to speak, she muttered out a half-hearted “my name is Peggy,” then spoke no more. Apparently she’d said enough, for the whip-wielding giant didn’t make any moves to hit her.

  Before long Ivara was speaking again. “Every female in this area has been claimed as a Valkraad bride.” Her smile was proud. “Of this, you should feel fortunate—”

  “Fortunate!” an English-speaking captive spat out, interrupting the trainer. A beautiful caramel-colored woman of what looked to be mixed Afro-European lineage, her light brown eyes were as frantic as her speech. “Well, I don’t! And I want to go home!”

  Ivara’s eyes narrowed at the recalcitrant captive. The whip-wielding giant took a step forward, but Ivara held up a palm and shook her head. She muttered something in her tongue to the giant, who apparently grumbled his agreement. “Michelle, is it?”

  But Michelle didn’t answer. She was too busy crying. Peggy reached out and took the young woman’s hand, noting that she couldn’t be more than nineteen. “It’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Just stand by me and relax. We’ll figure something out.”

  Iva
ra’s eyebrows rose. Peggy could tell the trainer was wondering what she had said to Michelle to calm her. Michelle was now standing close to Peggy, quiet and semi-collected, though still sniffling.

  “Well,” Ivara said to Peggy, her gaze a bit suspicious. “I see you are a quick study.” She shared a look Peggy didn’t know the meaning of with the whip-wielder behind her, then turned back to the crying captive. “Michelle,” she said softly, “I realize this is difficult for you. At least right now. But things will look up.”

  Michelle said nothing. She huddled her nude body closer to Peggy’s and continued sniffling. Peggy put her arm around her, offering silent comfort.

  “It’s best,” Ivara continued, “for you to accept your fate and adjust to the new life waiting here for you in New Norway.” Her gaze remained fixed on Michelle, though Peggy realized the trainer was speaking to all of the female captives.

  Ivara was silent for a moment, but finally smiled warmly to the captives and continued her speech. “I had thought to begin by telling you of what your future mates will expect in their wives, yet I see now that topic must wait.” She sighed, and oddly enough, Peggy was fairly certain the action was genuine. Whatever it was Ivara was about to tell them, it appeared that she held no desire to do so. Peggy gulped.

  “A happy fate awaits every woman here in the breeding stalls,” Ivara began. She stopped when the English-speaking captives, Peggy included, gasped at her words.

  “Breeding stalls?” Michelle murmured to Peggy, her gaze unblinking. “Oh my god.”

  Peggy swallowed against the lump in her throat. Her thoughts exactly.

  “Unless,” Ivara said firmly, “you refuse to accept your fate.” She whispered something to the giant behind her, then turned back to the captives. “I want everyone to form a single file line. We will begin this morn’s instruction by visiting first the Commons and then the Dungeon of Shame.” She turned around, then cocked her head to look at the captives from over her shoulder. “I think it’s best,” she said softly, “if you see what becomes of recalcitrant brides.”