Claiming Valeria

by Rebecca Rivard

  She dropped her gaze. “Sim,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Jace sped with Merry to the other side of the island, Hunter close behind him. His heart was full as he cradled the little girl’s stiff body. He’d thought Takira’s daughter dead. Never in a million years had he thought he’d get to hold her again. Whatever Adric had had to pay Okeanos to get her, it was worth it.

  He smiled into the big golden-brown eyes so like his sister’s. “Welcome back, sweetheart.”

  She gazed back expressionlessly. That bothered him, but he attributed it to whatever Okeanos had done to her. Then the stiffness wore off and she shifted to jaguar in his arms, swiping at his face with her claws so that he almost dropped her.

  He caught her by the scruff of her neck and gave her a shake. “Settle down, damn it.”

  Her upper lip pulled back in a fierce little snarl.

  “You’re an earth shifter,” he snapped, exasperated. “You belong with us.”

  She shook off her clothes, which had twisted themselves around her body, and shifted back to girl. He bobbled her in his arms, almost dropping her a second time.

  “I want my mama,” she wailed.

  “For God’s sake,” Hunter muttered. “Shut her up before she brings a sentry down on us.”

  “What do you expect?” Jace growled back. “She’s just a cub.”

  Hunter had volunteered for this; he’d known what it entailed. Jace and Adric had agreed that since Hunter had made the first contact with Okeanos, he was a good choice. Besides, the man was a true wolf, his animal close to the surface, worth two or three lesser soldiers. Two men were all Adric had been willing to send. Any more risked detection by the Rock Run sentries.

  As it was, he and Hunter were passing themselves off as humans, having rented a local’s boat and picked up used clothes at a human thrift store to conceal their scent.

  But Hunter was right. Jace tried softening his voice. “Hush, now,” he told Merry. “Don’t you remember your Uncle Jace?”

  She sniffed and nodded, her large, golden-brown eyes shimmering with tears. “Please, Uncle Jace. Don’t let Senhor Petros hurt my mama. He’s a bad man.”

  “He’s not going to hurt her.”

  But he couldn’t meet her eyes as he said it. He didn’t know what Okeanos wanted with Valeria da Costa, but it wasn’t good.

  Merry’s nose crinkled, and he knew she scented his lie. She relaxed just long enough for him to think she’d resigned herself to coming with him, and then wrenched herself out of his arms and dashed toward the trees. He leapt forward, catching her up again, but she went crazy, screaming and twisting in his arms, until he was forced to use his crystal to compel calm on her. He had nowhere near Adric’s Gift with the quartz, but because Merry was a close relation and young to boot, he was able to quiet her enough that she ceased fighting him, her screams changing to heart-rending sobs.

  He gazed down at her helplessly. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in a Rock Run matter. But as he looked at Merry’s small, sad face, all he could think of was his sister Takira and how she’d died.

  It was obvious that the da Costa woman hadn’t gone willingly with Okeanos. And it didn’t take a genius to know what the man intended.

  How could he, Jace, stand by and let another woman be raped, maybe even worse? It was Takira all over again.

  He bit out a curse so sharp that Merry flinched even in her semi-tranquilized state. “I’m going after the Rock Run woman,” he told Hunter. “You’re welcome to wait here—I know it’s not what you agreed to do.”

  The other man stared at him. “Are you fucking crazy?”

  “Probably.” Jace waded into the water and dropped Merry into the small fishing boat they’d rented. “Don’t move,” he ordered, “if you want me to help your mama.”

  She scrambled onto a seat and nodded, her face solemn.

  As Jace started the motor, Hunter leapt into the boat with a wolf’s rangy grace.

  “Thanks,” Jace told him. “I can use your help. I don’t know how many men Okeanos has with him.”

  Hunter grunted. “I’m not along to help. I’ll stay with the cub in the boat. Damned if I’ll let you strand me on an island in Rock Run territory.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jace growled and aimed the boat in the direction Okeanos had gone.

  * * *

  The top speed of a bull shark was twenty-five miles per hour. Rui hurtled through the water as swiftly as his straining muscles could propel him, but it still wasn’t fast enough. He was old enough to have attended a number of bacchas. He’d seen men and women in the grip of the Delírio, and worse, seen how it changed a person over time. Sooner or later they lost all sense of right and wrong, caring only about seeking pleasure…and meting out pain.

  Okeanos must have crossed that line years ago. The idea of Valeria and little Merry being subjected to his whims had Rui nearly crazed with rage and terror.

  Inside, his animal was even worse, growling and gnashing its teeth, threatening to mow down anything in its path to get to the mate.

  Blood, it muttered. Death.

  Rui ruthlessly subdued it. I promise, he’s a dead man. But we have to stay calm.

  His animal rumbled angrily but subsided, recognizing that Rui was correct.

  He reached the middle island and waited impatiently for Tiago, whose dolphin couldn’t match Rui’s speed. The youth had earned his grudging respect. When Tiago had run rather than face the music, Rui had been disappointed, even a little contemptuous. But apparently he’d grown some balls in the past month if he’d been willing to face his brother for Valeria’s sake.

  Tiago arrived and flicked his snout toward a narrow beach. This way.

  Rui shot forward again, then abruptly halted as he scented Valeria’s blood on a school of small fish streaming past him. She was on the island, as Tiago had said—and bleeding.

  Fury and the worst kind of fear roiled in his gut: hot, black, urgent. He lurched toward the shore, overshooting his mark and scraping his belly on the grit and pebbles littering the small strip of land. Fortunately, the shark’s tough skin protected him. He lost precious seconds changing back to his human form, but Tiago was right behind him.

  And then a sentry shot out of the river, shifting from dolphin to woman. It was Eliana. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “Get Dion,” Rui rapped out. “Or Luis, if you can’t find Dion. Tell them Petros Okeanos has taken Valeria and Merry prisoner and they’re on this island somewhere.” Once on the island, they could easily follow his and Tiago’s scent.

  Eliana didn’t waste time with further questions, simply dove back into the river, changing back to her dolphin a few yards out.

  “This way.” Tiago indicated a narrow path through the trees.

  Rui set off at a run. Within a few steps, he’d picked up Valeria’s scent, as strong as if she’d drawn a neon trail, overlaid by Okeanos’s darker masculine spoor. He didn’t scent Merry, which scared him, but his whole body thrummed with the need to get to his mate. He raced down the path.

  A quarter mile in, they reached a clearing dominated by a tall pin oak. Rui halted. “She’s here.”

  “That’s the dryad’s tree.” Tiago jogged up behind him. “There’s some kind of door in the trunk that Okeanos and the others use to enter the den, but I don’t know the secret.”

  Rui swore under his breath. He ran his hands over the bark, refusing to believe he could be this close to Valeria and not be able to help her. When he couldn’t find even the slightest crack, he slammed his fist against the trunk.

  “Open, damn you.”

  Nothing happened. He changed his tone. For Valeria, he’d plead. Hell, if he thought it would help, he’d crawl on his belly through the cold, dark wastes of Hades.

  “Please. I’m begging you. Open for me.”

  Still nothing.

  He caught a fresh whiff of Valeria, acrid with fear. His chest constricted.

  He slammed his palms agai
nst the oak’s ridged trunk. “Let me in, damn you.”

  A bird startled in the branches above and shot into the sky. The oak’s leaves rustled and he glanced up hopefully, but saw nothing.

  “Tell her,” he rasped at Tiago. “Tell the dryad to let us in.”

  “I can try—but I haven’t actually met her.”

  “I thought you were friends.”

  “Not exactly.” The younger man’s expression was sheepish. “She doesn’t like fada.”

  “Deus.” Rui dragged a hand over his face. “All right. Just—do whatever you can.”

  “Senhorita?” Tiago cupped his mouth and directed his voice to the oak’s crown. “We know you’re up there. We’re trying to rescue a friend of ours—a woman from Rock Run. Please ask your tree to open.”

  Rui held his breath, praying the shy forest dweller would help them. Everything went still, as if the very trees were holding their breath along with him, but nothing happened.

  Tiago tried again. “Please, miss. I swear we mean you no harm. Just let us inside and as soon as we have our friend, we’ll leave you in peace.”

  Still nothing. Rui took a step back, his brain working furiously. He didn’t have the power to command the tree to open, but Queen Cleia might; she was a powerful fae. Unfortunately, it could take hours to track her down and bring her back here.

  Meanwhile, Okeanos and his fucking den would have Valeria and Merry in their power.

  He pressed his fists to his face. Think, damn it. There had to be a way to get to them.

  Then he heard Valeria scream.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Valeria halted on the bottom step. Four naked men sprawled on cushions in the dimly lit cave, glasses in hand. The air reeked of wine and lust.

  Petros roughly urged her forward, and she lurched the final step onto the cave floor. She eyed the four men warily.

  “Meet Jorge”—Petros indicated a barrel-chested man with hard brown eyes—“and Benny.” He pointed to a younger man with a long, soulful face. “They’re originally from Rock Run, but we met a few years ago near Crete. The other men are from my clan, Orius and Mys.”

  She’d heard of Jorge and Benny. Supposedly they were weak, broken from their time as Cleia’s lovers.

  They didn’t seem weak now. These were large, powerful males in their prime, eyeing her like the unprotected female she was. Both of their primary animals were dolphins—and anyone who truly knew dolphins knew they were far from the cute and cuddly mammals portrayed on human TV, that they could be sexually aggressive to the point of rape.

  At Petros’s introduction, Jorge nodded curtly, all the while watching her from beneath lowered lids. Benny raised his glass in a mocking salute.

  Orius and Mys didn’t even deign to acknowledge her, just gazed at her naked body, their eyes crawling with an unholy lust.

  Ordinarily her nudity wouldn’t have bothered her, but these men made her feel like a slab of meat. She shrank into herself, hunching her shoulders and squeezing her thighs together. Behind her back, her hands clenched together so tightly her fingertips went numb.

  Petros chuckled. “It won’t be so bad, glika.” He stroked her nape. “You might even like it.”

  She hunched even more but didn’t reply. His fingers slid lower, and she tensed for whatever was coming, but all he did was release her bonds. She shook out her hands, grateful for that much at least.

  But then, what did he have to lose? The doorway had closed behind them, trapping her in the cave with five large fada males. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Petros crossed to a table by the wall and filled a glass with wine. “Here. Drink this.”

  She took a cautious sniff of the dark red liquid. The wine had an unpleasant, sickly-sweet odor, and she guessed it had been mixed with some kind of drug.

  She glanced at the other men. They watched her avidly, even Jorge and Benny. Bastards. They must have heard she was Rui’s mate.

  She sent Benny a pleading look. “Help me,” she whispered in Portuguese.

  He merely lifted a brow.

  “They’re with me,” Petros informed her. “All the men here agree that the old ways should never have been abandoned, starting with the baccha. The fada are turning into tame little house pets, doing the fae’s bidding. Hell, your own alpha mated with a fae. And the women, well, they need to be taught their proper place.”

  He raised the glass to the other men. “To Dionysus.”

  “To Dionysus,” they returned as one.

  They all took a drink, and then Petros brought the glass to her lips again. “Now drink.”

  She took a tentative sip. The wine was cloyingly sweet, with an undertone of bitterness; it left an unpleasant coat on her tongue.

  Petros kept the glass against her lips. “All of it,” he ordered.

  A cold bead of sweat trickled down her spine. She stared into the drugged wine, wishing she dared refuse. But she was outnumbered five to one.

  “Drink it,” he said evenly. “Or I’ll whip you bloody—and pour it down your unconscious throat. The choice is yours.”

  She drained the glass, then thrust it back at him with a defiant tilt of her chin. “Here.”

  He took it and placed it on the table. “I can see you require training on the proper way to speak to your lord and master. We’ll work on that. But first…” He trailed off, his gaze on her face, obviously waiting for the drug to take effect.

  She glanced at the other men again. They were all sitting upright now, watching and waiting as well—alert, aggressive predators. Unnerved, she rubbed her palms over her upper arms.

  It started as a not-unpleasant heat in the pit of her stomach. Then the drug exploded in her brain. She gasped and staggered. Someone gave a huff of laughter, but she barely heard it as the preparation raced through her veins, bringing an excruciating awareness of every nerve fiber, every tiny cell.

  She dropped to her knees, hands to her head. “What,” she wheezed, “in Deus’s name—did you give me?”

  “My own recipe,” Petros informed her. “Don’t fight it. The pain will soon change, become a sensual agony that only another’s touch can relieve. You’ll be desperate for a man, any man…like a bitch in heat. What do you think do Mar will do when he finds you’ve fucked all five of us?”

  “Não,” Valeria moaned. “You—filho da puta.”

  “Enough.” Petros grabbed her by the hair and jerked her head back.

  She screamed as the pain knifed through her, magnified a thousand times. It felt as if her skull was being ripped off.

  He eyed her sternly. “I think we need to show you what that mouth of yours is for.” He released her hair to take his cock in hand and press it to her lips. “Suck me, woman.”

  Still reeling, she didn’t respond quickly enough and he raised a threatening hand. She sucked in a breath, knowing she couldn’t take another bout of that agonizing pain. She opened her mouth and took him inside.

  To one side of her, Orius and Mys paired off. From the corner of her eye she could see the larger Orius force the smaller Mys onto all fours, covering him like a dog. Jorge and Benny closed in on her, stroking, petting…

  Already the pain was transmuting into pleasure. Jorge squeezed her nipples and she moaned with desire, even as tears of humiliation pricked her eyes. Benny knelt beside her and slapped her ass, and she moaned again as the blow vibrated in her cunt.

  He leaned close to bite her neck, hard enough to make her jerk with pain, but again the sting was edged with pleasure. “You like that,” he growled, his breath hot against her nape.

  She suppressed a sob as Benny slapped her again, then slid his hand between her legs. She clenched her thighs on him, ashamed at her need but desperate for touch there—any touch.

  Meanwhile, Petros gripped the back of her head. “Take it,” he ordered as he rammed his cock against the back of her throat.

  She gagged and then caught his rhythm, swallowing in time to his thrusts so that she wouldn’t suffoc
ate.

  It was too intense. The men stroking and pinching and slapping. The man slamming into her mouth, his scent pungent, overpowering. The drug making everything an excruciating pleasure/pain. She grasped Petros’s thighs to steady herself and blinked up at him woozily.

  What would he do if she passed out? The thought seemed to come from far away.

  Suddenly he cursed and jerked himself from her mouth with an audible pop. The other men jumped away as well and, caught off balance, she fell to the floor. She curled into a ball, aware someone was whimpering: a sad, desperate sound. It took her a few seconds to realize it was herself.

  A roar echoed through the cavern. She pressed a fist to her mouth and watched, dazed, as a large, enraged man threw himself at Petros.

  She blinked and shook her head. “Rui?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The oak dryad scowled down at the forest floor. Somehow the Greek fada had discovered the words that forced her tree to open the passage to the caves below. She hadn’t liked it but assumed he had Rock Run’s permission. The bargain was, the local fada left her in peace with her trees and forest creatures, and in return she allowed them to run free on what she thought of as her island.

  But the Greek shifter hadn’t even had the courtesy to thank her. Alesia had been raised to treat the fada with caution, so the men had only glimpsed her once. Her skin had prickled at how the leader had eyed her body, lingering on her legs, bare beneath a short summer tunic, and then giving her a smile that was all teeth. After that, she stayed well away from them.

  And now they’d brought one of their own females to participate in their drunken rites—and she wasn’t the first.

  Her mother was right; shapeshifters were little better than animals.

  But something in her tugged at the sight of the fada female, forced by the cold-eyed male down into their dark, smelly den. At first she’d assumed the woman had come willingly, like the ones before her. If the man slapped her around a little, well, wasn’t that what fada women liked?