The Alpha's Concubine (Historical Shifter Romance)

by Claudia King

  Her fingers found Layon's fur shawl just as he lunged, tugging back as he leaped at the beast with the spear held out in front of him. He was too strong for her to stop him, but her grip sent him off balance. The thrust that had been aimed at the wolf's neck missed its mark, the dull tip of the spear grazing the creature's shoulder with a long gash. Dark blood spilled out through its fur.

  The wolf's howl of pain was deafening, so loud that Netya stumbled back in shock, the stones of the wall digging into her back. Whatever impulse had driven Layon to attack the creature abandoned him as it whirled around with anger in its eyes, teeth snapping at the bloodied tip of the spear. He tried to back away, jabbing at the wolf to keep its jaws at a safe distance, but with the wall behind them there was nowhere to go. A wild animal might have bolted in fear or thrown itself straight on to the spear in its anger, but within seconds the spurt of bestial aggression left their attacker. It paused, backing off, eyes studying its opponent, then twisted its head to the side and lunged.

  The wolf slid past Layon's panicked thrust with ease, jaws snapping shut around the shaft of the spear and clenching tight. With the sound of splintering wood it tore the weapon from his hands, hot breath snorting from its nostrils as it snapped the spear in half like it was a twig.

  Rough stone scraped Netya's palms as she scrambled backwards over the wall, trying uselessly to tug Layon after her as she lost her balance and toppled over, landing on her back on the other side. The wolf cleared the wall in a single leap. She didn't even manage to sit up before a heavy paw struck her in the centre of her chest, knocking her back down and driving the wind from her lungs.

  As she gasped for air she could hear Layon shouting nearby, calling for help, raising the alarm that the Moon People were here. Only a gracious wind would carry his voice all the way back to the village from where they were, but even if it did, there was no time left for help to arrive.

  Netya huddled on the ground in fear, the heavy breath of the wolf in her ears as it stood over her. A threatening growl rumbled in the back of its throat, warning her not to try and fight or run. At some point she had closed her eyes, but once she caught her breath she forced herself to open them and look at the beast standing over her. It was a monster. Huge and vicious and powerful. But its golden eyes watched her with intelligence. Intelligence, and perhaps even fear. An anxiety that mirrored Netya's own. For an instant she was able to see not just the enormous wolf that loomed over her, but another person. One who had been attacked, and had responded in kind.

  "I'm sorry," she said in quavering tones, looking at the creature's bleeding shoulder. "I didn't know he'd do that. I tried to stop him."

  The wolf stared at her, then raised its head and let out a low howl. Netya could not see what was happening on the other side of the wall, but she heard the drumming of heavy footfalls against the earth, the sound of fur whipping through the long grass. The rest of the Moon People had come back, and they were going after Layon.

  "Please don't hurt him!" Netya cried out, trying to climb to her knees, but the wolf pushed her back down with a growl.

  A male voice she did not recognise called out nearby, speaking words she could not understand. The stones on the wall rattled, and three more wolves jumped down to join the first. She did not know who had spoken, or what might be about to happen to her, but she was not dead yet. Perhaps the wolf was only waiting. Would her skull soon be adorning a wall somewhere, in whatever land the Moon People called home?

  Two more wolves mounted the wall further down, followed by a man. For a moment she thought it might be Layon, but this person was taller, broader, and his long hair was the colour of the night sky. A shiver ran through Netya's body as she realised that he was no man from her own village. He was one of the Moon People. Not a beast, but a person. At first glance he looked like any other hunter, his legs bound with fur moccasin boots and covered with a kilt of animal skins, a headband of soft leather keeping his hair back from his face. Aside from a necklace of animal teeth his thickly muscled chest was bare in spite of the cold wind. He seemed not to feel it at all, approaching her as though he wore the same thick coating of fur as the wolves around him. In his hand he held the head of the broken spear.

  Netya's eyes flitted desperately between the wolves surrounding her, but it was the man to whom she directed her pleading look. He was the only one she could appeal to. Was he their leader? And where was Layon? She heard his voice in the distance, still calling for help, but it was growing fainter. At least he had gotten away.

  The man looked at her, but his expression held no sympathy for her wide eyes. He looked her up and down, then knelt beside the wolf standing over her and put a hand on its flank, examining the gash Layon's spear had left. He leant in and murmured something into the creature's ear, but once again Netya could not make out his words. He seemed to have a strange cadence to his voice that sounded nothing like the way her own people spoke, and she only made out snatches of words that made no sense by themselves.

  The wolf snorted and bobbed its head, then stepped back. Netya didn't have time to feel relieved before her breath was taken away by what happened next. For a moment she thought the wolf was rearing up on its hind legs, but it wasn't just rearing, it was changing. Its body rippled with the same uncanny grace she had glimpsed in the shadows, fur seeming to melt away into the night as smooth skin and clothing of animal hides replaced it. Yet again the motion was so fast and so unnatural to Netya that she could barely make sense of what had happened. Just like all the other tales of the Moon People, this one was now real to her too.

  A sandy-haired girl stood where the wolf had been, close to Netya's own age by the look of her, but a little taller, her bare arms toned by labour and bronzed by the sun, just like the body of the man beside her.

  He spoke again, examining the wound that had remained on the young woman's arm even after she changed, and when she responded Netya finally realised that they were not simply talking in voices that sounded unfamiliar to her, but with words that her people did not use. Every now and again their speech sounded familiar, so close to Netya's own that she could almost make sense of it, but try as she might she couldn't wrap her thoughts around their exotic tongue.

  Two more of the wolves changed, taking on the bodies of men as they approached the one who Netya was now sure must be their leader. They bound the injured girl's shoulder with a strip of cloth, much to her apparent protest, but a concerned look and a few hard words from the leader silenced her, and she hung her head in shame.

  Netya was still recovering from the shock of everything she had just witnessed, her heart racing as the Moon People conversed in hurried tones. The leader pointed in the direction of the village, then gripped the arm of one of the other men and shook him roughly. As their eyes fell on her, Netya realised that she must be the topic of their conversation.

  She finally sat up, shivering as she curled her legs to her chest, looking to the leader once more. "Did you let Layon go?" She tried not to stammer. "Are there more of you going after him?"

  The Moon People fell silent. The leader looked at her for a long moment, then stepped forward and spoke.

  "We do not kill without need."

  She thought she saw his eyes move to the skulls on the wall for a moment, but perhaps it had just been her imagination.

  "You can speak like me?" she said.

  The leader did not respond. Instead he bent to pick her up by the arm and hauled her to her feet as if she weighed nothing. He turned to his people and rattled off another sharp set of instructions in his own tongue, then walked Netya to one of the wolves and pointed at its back.

  "You will ride. Hold tight, or you will fall. We will run all night. Your people will not be able to follow."

  Netya's stomach tightened. Riding a wild beast? She had never even considered such a thing. But before tonight, there were many things she had never considered.

  "Where will you take me?" she said.

  "With us."


  The leader turned away, gazing down the length of the wall as the two other men changed back into their wolf shapes, the injured girl climbing astride one of the huge creatures and taking a tight hold of his neck fur. As soon as she was safely in place, her bearer bounded away into the trees.

  Netya gave the leader one last desperate look. "I tried to stop Layon from hurting her."

  He met her eyes, his expression once again impassive. "And yet, she was hurt. Now ride. You will not be harmed, but if you run, we will catch you." Without another word his body changed, and a moment later an alpha among wolves stood before her, huge and dark, bright eyes burning into her as she stared at him.

  Feeling as though she was walking through some strange dream, Netya swung her leg over the back of the wolf beside her, trying to follow the lead of the wounded girl as she gripped the beast's fur and tried to tuck her legs in against its flanks. The feeling of a warm body reminded her for an instant of the way Layon had touched her, and her heart ached as she stared in the direction of the village. How long would it be before she saw it again?

  The musky scent of the wolf filled her nostrils, the heavy thud of its heartbeat pulsing against her thighs. Danger was no longer a distant fantasy for her. She was living it. The very creature she sat astride could kill her in an instant if it so desired.

  She didn't have long to think of home, or Layon, or where she might be going. The alpha howled, and her wolf broke into a trot, then a bound, and within moments she was clinging to the creature's neck for dear life, the farmlands and the wall of skulls disappearing into the night behind her as the trees whipped by in a blur.

  —3—

  The Wounded Girl

  They ran all night, just as the alpha had said. It was an anxious, exhausting, exhilarating experience for Netya. For the first hour she clung to the wolf so tight that her body was soon aching, terrified that the jolting motion of the creature beneath her would send her toppling head first into a patch of rocks or the trunk of a tree if she loosened her grip for even an instant.

  The cold wind stung her eyes until they were streaming. The wooded lands around her village thinned out, and soon she was already further than she had ever been from home. The last of the trees disappeared as the wolf pack streaked out across the open plains before them, nothing but endless grassland to be seen in every direction. Was this the edge of the world, where trees and water and animals stopped existing, and every direction held more of the same nothingness?

  The Moon People ran east, never altering their course. Eventually the plains became more uneven, rocky outcroppings breaking up the land as bushes and shrubs began to appear. It was only then that Netya realised she was no longer clinging to her wolf as tightly as she had been back in the woods. Every time she shifted or slipped the beast seemed to respond instinctively, catching her weight and rebalancing it so that she stayed firmly in the middle of its back. Stiff and aching, she finally allowed herself to sit upright. It was still an unnerving feeling to be moving so fast on the back of an animal, but once her fear of falling began to subside she found herself staring in wonder at the ground as it rushed by beneath her, almost enjoying the sensation of speeding through the night faster than she had ever imagined possible.

  The injured girl riding up ahead was no longer even holding on to her wolf with her hands. She sat upright with her hair streaming out behind her, straddling her companion with an ease that told Netya she had done this many times before.

  Just like the apprehension she had experienced as she approached the wall of skulls earlier that evening, Netya felt as if she was being dragged deeper and deeper into an unknown world full of secrets and danger. Had she been given the opportunity she would likely have turned back and run home, yet some small part of her was almost glad that she had been denied such a choice. She was experiencing things beyond her imagination, things beyond even the oldest and most fanciful tales of her people.

  As the hours wore on exhaustion began to take hold, and even Netya's racing thoughts could not keep her eyes open as the rush of adrenaline burned out in her veins and her aching body called for rest. It was impossible for her to sleep as she rode, but she slumped forward over the wolf's back and closed her eyes, warm fur shielding her cheek from the biting wind as she fell into a fitful doze.

  In her muddled snatches of wakefulness she saw the surroundings gradually changing. Just as she had suspected, the open land seemed to go on forever, but it was no longer barren and devoid of features. More than once she was jolted back to reality by the splash of cold water soaking into her moccasins as the wolves waded through streams. They climbed hills and descended through valleys, barely pausing for rest. Eventually she saw the silhouettes of trees in the distance, but they were a long way away.

  Rosy dawn was making its first greeting to the horizon when the wolves finally stopped, and a pair of human hands gripped Netya beneath the shoulders to ease her off the back of her bearer. In her sleepy daze she heard the murmur of voices nearby, the crackle of fire and the sounds of people awakening. For a moment her fear returned, and with a whimper she struggled in the arms of the man supporting her, but he held on tight until her protests stopped. She was too tired. Her body felt bruised and sore from the long ride, and more than anything she wanted to sleep.

  The man lifted her easily in his arms, carrying her somewhere away from the bright fire and the voices of the others. Wherever it was, it was warm. The wind was gone, and a bed of soft furs reached up to embrace her body as the man set her down. Netya welcomed it, and within minutes she had fallen into a deep sleep.

  Waking up was a surreal experience. She had slept outside of her mother's house before, but those times had been few and far between. She was used to wooden log walls and the cosy warmth of a nearby fire. The smell of cooking or the sounds of her sisters would awaken her, and she would reluctantly drag herself off her cot to help her mother prepare the morning meal while she waited for the fog of sleep to leave her mind.

  This time she awoke to a draft and the glow of evening sunlight shining through the animal hide wall of a tent. She clutched the warm fur beneath her, brow furrowing as she tried to snuggle back into it. Everything felt different. The brightness, the musty smells, the lack of noise. Even the air seemed different in this place. It was only then that Netya remembered where she was.

  Her eyes opened, blinking several times as the realisation jolted her awake. Her fingers tightened in the fur, breath quickening. Memories of the long journey rushed back, the wolves, the Moon People...

  She sat upright and froze when she saw another person in the tent along with her. It was the girl who had been injured the night before. She sat across from Netya tending the coals of a small fire. In her lap she was preparing what looked like a bowl of food, mixing the contents with a smooth, oval-shaped piece of stone. The girl looked at her curiously, continuing with her work as Netya took in her surroundings. The tent was not large, but it was filled with rustic furnishings. The furs she had slept on were decorated with wooden beads around the edges, stained with shades of red and blue and attached by roughly woven strings of animal hair. Dozens of hide pouches hung from a wooden frame on the other side of the tent, and a stack of bowls, pots, and stones for cooking sat alongside them. There were baskets woven from grass and filled with pieces of smoothed bone and wood ready to be carved into utensils or tools. Someone's clothing, a heavy set of fur and leather garments, lay draped to dry over another wooden rack near the tent's closed flap.

  Though Netya was not unused to seeing similar dwellings among her own people, this one seemed yet more functional and basic. The wooden furniture was lashed together from raw branches, not worked skilfully by a craftsman, and even the hides layered to form the walls of the tent were uneven and mismatched, as though they had been stitched together out of necessity rather than by design.

  "Where is this?" Netya said at last. It took a moment of silence before she remembered that the Moon People had spoken differently to h
er. "Do you understand my words?"

  "Yes," the girl said. "I know them well. That was why they sent me to tend to you." Her voice still held an unfamiliar cadence that sounded both sweet and strange to Netya's ears, but her language was clear and understandable.

  "How? I have never heard of anyone who speaks the way you do," Netya said.

  "Our people travel far. It is in our nature. With our wolves' legs we can run for many hours, see people and places a long way away. There are more of your kind far to the north. We learned to speak as they do in the time before I was born."

  Netya's curiosity perked. Once again she was reminded of the tickle of excitement she had experienced the night before, that sensation of delving into something unknown. She knew there were more of her people living in their own villages all across the wooded lands she called home, but she had never heard of any who came from the north. In one short night the world had become far larger than it was before.

  "But not all of us understand your words," the girl continued. "It is mostly only those of the highest rank. The senior pack members will be able to talk with you, but the others may be uncomfortable." She gave Netya a sympathetic look. "To them, you are one of our enemies. Some of them would have killed you if not for the word of our alpha."

  Netya's skin prickled. "I think my people would do the same to one of yours. I do not know why, but they see you as monsters."

  "And you don't?"

  Netya shook her head. "You frightened me last night, but you do not seem like a monster. Layon would have killed you, but you let him go, and you did not hurt me. I am sorry about what happened."

  The girl smiled and turned so that Netya could see her wounded arm. It was wounded no more. Her bronze skin had reddened, and it looked as though she would be left with a scar, but the painful gash was practically healed already.