by Selena Scott
She wasn’t prepared for the two hundred pounds of man that tumbled to the ground and took her with him. He rolled her so that they lay on their sides in a springy pile of fallen pine needles.
“What… the… fuck… woman,” he gasped between breaths that were so ragged he thought they were trying to kill him.
“What?” she asked, propping herself up on an elbow and looking down at him.
He couldn’t help but draw her down for a kiss. He could taste himself on her tongue and it made him wild for her. They kissed and kissed. Time spun out as he kissed the breath out of her.
When he pulled back from her, her eyes were heavy-lidded and full of lust for him. He kissed her on each eyelid. Someday he wanted a stone he could wear around his neck the exact color of her green eyes.
“So they don’t give blow jobs in Herta?”
“Blow jobs…” he tried to place her strange vocabulary words. “Ah. Interesting name since there is little to no blowing involved. But yes, some women do. Never like that, though, my little queen.” He pulled her close and kissed her senseless again. “You destroyed me. I’ll never be the same.”
“Good.” Her eyes blazed with something that Alec couldn’t quite place.
He pulled back and traced a hand over top of her soft blonde hair. “I’m not complaining here, but what was that all about?”
She didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about and she didn’t avoid the question. No matter how much she might have wanted to. “I guess I just wanted to give you a gift. To say thank you. For staying with us.” With me.
“Ah.” Understanding washed over him. “I would have told you sooner had I known of your method of showing appreciation.”
She laughed and tried to roll away. He pinned her down and dropped his lips to her Milla-smelling neck. When he lifted his eyes they both tried to speak at once, and they both had something akin to worry lining their faces.
Milla spoke first. “Thank you. Really. For not letting us go into that alone.”
He nodded. “I should have mentioned it. But I knew I wasn’t going to leave you alone to that plan since we first bathed together in the river.”
“You mean since we first slept together?”
“No. I mean since we spent the day down at the river while we gave Ansel and Ruby space. I really met you that day. I didn’t want that woman to go into battle alone.”
His words seemed to hit her all at once and Milla knew she’d have to save some of them for later; there was no way she could process them all right now. One part of what he said shone through the brightest. “I wouldn’t have been alone. Ansel and Ruby would have been with me.”
Alec shook his head. “No. You don’t understand how a battle works. If you love someone, the way Ansel loves Ruby, you protect them over your own life. Even over the cause for which you fight. Ansel loves you two, but he can’t be in two places at once. You would have been on your own.” He saw her expression and correctly interpreted it. “And I’m sure you’re a fierce warrior, but the odds of getting out alive are vastly increased if you have someone like me to help watch your back.”
Milla fell silent, her thoughts whirring. “Is that why you travel alone? Fight alone?”
He nodded. “I used to travel with my father and my sister, Valentina. But when I was fifteen, we unexpectedly came upon a troop of soldiers with a caravan of new shifters over in the south mountains. We didn’t have time to make a plan, there were dozens of soldiers and just three of us. We were all very skilled fighters, even as young as Valentina and I were. But one of the soldiers, panicking in the melee, set off a small explosive device. It nearly blew Valentina to bits. Both my father and I sprang to her aid.” Alec paused, and when he spoke again his voice was low and full of gravel. “He was shot in the back with a spear as he knelt at her side.”
Milla swallowed her gasp, knowing that it wouldn’t help matters at all. But she couldn’t help but band her arms around Alec’s back, drag him down on top of her for a hug that was too tight. Neither of them cared, they both needed it. “Oh, John.”
“He didn’t suffer,” Alec said as he broke the hug and leaned over her again. His hand trailed absently over Milla’s cheek. “The spear punctured his heart. He was dead before he hit the ground. But Valentina and I suffered a very great deal. We… snapped. There wasn’t a caravan in a hundred miles that was safe from us. We must have freed hundreds of new shifters in those years.”
Milla slipped her fingers into his, completely enthralled by his story. Not lost enough, though, to forget that not two hours ago she’d accused him of not caring enough about the welfare of shifters. God, she was such an asshole sometimes.
“But it bothered us so much that we couldn’t do much of anything for the shifters who’d already been broken. It’s too hard to free them. They’re hypnotized or something. They won’t come with someone who isn’t their master.” A look of extreme frustration washed over him. “Valentina and I traveled together for years. But maybe a decade ago, I was injured in the fray.” He gestured absently to one of the many layered scars on his back. “It was bad. Valentina was utterly horrified. She blamed herself.” He gave Milla a crooked little smile. “And it was kind of her fault. But not really. I’d made the choice to be there. I was a good enough fighter to not have put myself in that situation. But she wouldn’t hear it. She’d never go into battle with me again. It was too hard, too much of a division of concentration. She was too scared of losing me.”
Milla frowned. “So she ended up losing you in a different way. How often do you see one another?”
“Every few months or so. But you’re right. It’s not the same as traveling together. I miss her. It’s a lonely life. But at least I know she’s alive.”
Milla started to ask a question and then bit it back. Alec raised an eyebrow at her as if to say, since when do you hold back? Milla rolled her eyes at him but conceded the point. If her question was rude, so be it. She was kind of rude.
“Why do you live this life then? This lonely life. You and Valentina could have land somewhere. Raise animals and… I don’t know, find spouses.”
Alec pulled back from her as if she’d deeply insulted him. He sat up and scraped a hand over his stubble.
“I’m not trying to insult you–” She sat up, too.
“Because shifters don’t have a choice, Milla. They’re enslaved against their will. So I don’t have a choice either. I fight for their freedom. That will be my life. As long as this is the life of a shifter here on Herta.”
Milla was a harsh woman. Made up of black and whites. She wasn’t subtle or particularly sweet. She’d always assumed that when she fell in love, it would be like a slap in the face. There’d be no way around it. It would just be and she’d have to learn how to accept it or not.
But as Milla looked at this warrior’s back as he sat facing the night, scratching the back of his head in frustration, that was not what happened to her. Love for him opened slowly inside of her, almost tenderly. Like a baby bird hatching in springtime. It was the most delicate feeling she’d ever had. Not because it might shatter or tear or dissolve, but delicate because of its intricate design. Her love for him had as many dips and hollows, as many spiraling irregularities, as a crystal of snow in the winter. She realized two things at once. She loved him deeply. And it was not going to be simple.
That was fine. She loved a challenge.
“I understand, John. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult your integrity. I get it. I… admire it.”
He looked back at her and she wasn’t even sure he’d heard her. There was an intensity in his eyes that took her aback. “Milla, your ability to heal, how far does it extend?”
She narrowed her eyes, surprised at the abrupt change in topic. “Well, it hasn’t been tested to its limits, for obvious reasons. But I regrew a finger once.” She held up the pinky finger on her left hand. “And when we were younger, maybe twelve or so, Kain and I were play fighting and I slipped
off the roof. I couldn’t move my legs or arms for a few minutes, but after that, I’d healed just fine.”
“Are you the only one in your family with the skill? I’d heard that shifters heal faster than humans, but I’ve never seen anything like that.” He nodded toward her hand that had been cut in front of him all those days ago.
“No, we’re all good healers. Ansel is the worst. It’ll take him maybe a half an hour to heal what would take me only a couple of minutes. Kain is the best. You can drag a blade along his skin and it heals almost as fast as you can cut.”
“And in your bear form?”
“Even faster. For all of us.” Her voice was clipped. As a woman who hadn’t been allowed to shift in over ten days, she didn’t even want to talk about her bear form. She was crawling out of her skin to shift. So she didn’t let herself think about it. “We should get back.”
“Yes,” he agreed before he reached back and pulled her over his lap. “We will. After I’ve repaid my debt to you.”
A half smile quirked Milla’s face as her stomach flipped. “It’s not a debt if it was given as a gift.”
He nodded. “Then allow me to give you a gift.”
She didn’t argue.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Milla hated the main city the second it came into sight. Its location in Herta corresponded to New York City on earth. They were approaching from the northwest and would have to ferry across to get to the isle where Griff was apparently being kept.
They’d spent most of the last five days planning for the next seven hours of their lives and Milla’s stomach flipped with each step they took closer. She could see the city across the river and more disgustingly, she could smell it. After so much time in the wilderness, the scent of teeming civilization had Milla wrinkling her nose. But there was a new scent there as well. It was a strange rotting scent. She looked at Ansel to see him wrinkling his nose just as hard.
Milla and Ansel were struggling. Their bodies needed to shift. And more than that, Herta was getting to them. Over the last few days, the closer they’d gotten to the main city, there had been strange spells where neither had felt like themselves. They’d felt loopy and ornery. Confused or out of place. Both of them had the nagging feeling that there was somewhere they were supposed to be. Alec recognized the signs and was careful to warn them what was happening. The city was calling to them. The nature of Herta was attempting to break them. To shift them into their bear forms where they could be fully submitted. If they shifted now, they were likely to become as docile as the rest of the shifters who’d come through the gates.
That was another thing that worried the group. The gates. There were so few of them. It was pure luck that a few years before, Alec had found one a day’s hike south from the city. It was the closest gate they had back to their world. It meant that they were going to have to be in complete stealth mode when they left the city or risk being overtaken by the Emperor’s soldiers.
Milla pushed all the things that could potentially go wrong out of her head as the small wooden ferry rowed them across the river and toward the isle of the main city. They’d ditched all of their gear and clothes that identified them as from earth. As they’d passed alongside a few villages on the way, Alec had bartered and traded for all of them to have similar clothes as he. Worn clothes of canvas and hemp. Milla wore a soft cap over her head to hide her short haircut, which Alec had insisted would draw attention to them. All of them wore small ruck sacks across their backs with just enough supplies to get them to the southern gate once they had Griff.
Milla, Ansel, and a very nervous Ruby all exchanged mystified looks as they approached the shore of the city. Alec had a raggedy cap covering his hair, worn low over his eyes. He’d seemed to have shrunk a good three inches in his clothes and when he stepped off the ferry, it was with a noticeable limp in his left leg.
He was disguising himself, Milla realized. In a world with no phones or internet, no photos of any kind, his face wouldn’t be outright recognizable as the infamous outlaw that he was. And all the other modifications he’d just made would go a long way toward hiding who he was. He appeared older, more fragile, not a threat at all.
Milla, for her part, attempted to appear a bit less imperious than she usually did. She noticed the way the women around her walked through the world and tried to emulate it. Chin down, eyes cast toward the ground, shoulders forward, avoiding contact with most men.
Alec caught her eye and sent her a quick grin as he watched her act. “There’s no hiding who you really are, little queen. Even with your eyes cast down, you still look like you’re about to crush a rival monarch under your boot heel.”
Milla frowned at him but there was a sparkle in her eye. That sparkle didn’t last long as she inauspiciously took in her surroundings.
The city had no high rises. But it did have shack on shack on shack with thatched roofs and donkeys tied out front. There was smoke rising from chimneys here and there. She wrinkled her nose against the horrible rotting scent as a strong whiff passed her by. It seemed to be coming from a rather beautiful horse. Beautiful in coloring, not in stature. The horse loped in the rhythmic gait of a broken animal. The poor creature’s hair, brindle in pattern, was shiny and brushed, but its eyes were almost dead as it dragged a cart holding its owner down the street.
Ansel caught Milla’s eye and horror zinged between them. They’d seen their first broken shifter. That poor shifter, in its animal form and forced to drag a cart. The meaning of the rotting scent washed over her all at once. That was the scent of a broken shifter. An enslaved shifter.
Her resolve hardened. She didn’t know Griff. But no one deserved this fate. Especially not someone who was related to sweet, kind Ruby. Ruby who had kept up on every leg of this journey. Who never complained. Who would clearly give her life for her brother’s. Milla’s resolve became diamond hard. She could feel Alec’s eyes on the side of her face but she didn’t look up.
It took a long time for them to walk down to the south side of the island, where the main square was. It was where Alec had seen Griff displayed before.
“The Emperor puts him out once a day. As a way of humiliating him. Hoping to break him publicly. It’s a message to any shifters who might be thinking about resisting.”
His words echoed in Milla’s head as they walked down the island, skirting around humans and shifters alike. There was haggling and gossiping going on around them. People selling wares and baking bread. People rushing from place to place. It was very much like Manhattan and Milla found herself hating it.
“Where does the Emperor live?” Milla asked when they were about twenty minutes from the square and twenty minutes from the first leg of their plan.
Alec guided her around a larger man who was trying to sell them crappy knives. “Under the city. There’s a series of tunnels.”
Milla thought of the subway system in New York. “That’s strange. Don’t most Emperors like to reign over the city? Show off their wealth and status with some fancy castle?”
Alec’s eyebrows raised for a second. “Maybe. But he’s not a real monarch. He’s the most recent in a long line of thieves and thugs who vie to be the most powerful person in the main city. He was called the Emperor when he was just a gang leader, slitting throats on the north end of the island. It’s not like he’s the head of any kind of government. It’s just a name.”
“But the people here fear him.”
“He’s a monster. He’ll murder humans and shifters alike. He’s been amassing shifters recently. A show of power. He makes them do horrible things. They’re like his personal army. The Griffin would be the feather in his cap.”
Milla gritted her teeth. Not. Gonna. Happen.
They came to the edge of the square and it was happening. Stage one. Ansel drew Ruby toward him in a passionate kiss. None of them liked that they had to send Ruby in on her own. But there it was, it was the only way to alert Griff as to what was happening.
There was a stream of
people who’d come to see the Griffin; they waited for him in the square. The Emperor allowed people to get close, to say whatever they wanted. It was a humiliation tactic. Ruby would be able to get close enough to Griff to alert him to what was about to go down.
Ruby looked up into Ansel’s eyes. She was about to see her brother for the first time in over a year. A preternatural calm came over her. She had one job to do in this plan of theirs, and she was about to do the crap out of it.
The three of them watched her go. With her ratty clothes and her hair covered, she immediately blended in to the group. A bell sounded over the square announcing midday, and a metal gate creaked open from one of the stone walls that lined the square.
“That’s the Emperor,” Alec spoke in Milla’s ear and she followed his gaze toward the top of one of the stone walls. A man, older than she’d expected, sat there. His face was drawn in an ugly, self-satisfied expression. His hair was mostly silvered and he held one arm in front of him in a sling. He’d obviously been fighting recently.
Milla knew that any moment, Alec was going to scale the back of the opposite wall, forty yards from the emperor. There was a small cubby hole there that he would be able to hide behind and still shoot arrows.
Her stomach clenched hard as the wrought iron gate directly below the Emperor finished raising. Guards in black hats marched somewhat sloppily out into the square. They didn’t look trained, and she reminded herself that they weren’t. They were just cronies of the Emperor. Citizens he’d either enticed or bullied into serving him. There were six guards total, marching in twos. And the ones in the middle flanked a man in chains.
Milla looked closer. God. A boy in chains. He was just nineteen years old. Dark-haired and muscular. There was barely even stubble on his cheek yet. He was bare-chested and Milla saw an intricate patchwork of raised red welts over his back as the guards hauled him up onto a wooden platform where they linked the chains at his waist to a metal loop. She saw in disgust that he also wore a leather mask over his face. To keep him from speaking? To further humiliate him? She had no idea.
