“I’m working with what I have, sweetheart. Two impossible situations that will create dangerous conflict in the future. The very least I can do is find a compromise. I take these lost girls, I pump out all the drugs from their systems and whatever abusive upbringing they’ve been exposed to, and then I give them over to a shifter who I trust. You don’t believe me? Take a look at this video.”
He takes out his phone, and Makita and I crane over his shoulder as he flicks through a video section, landing on one dated 8th July, 2016. Almost a year ago. The video starts with a girl with long, jet black hair. Balthier appears to be the one recording, and the girl is sat opposite a man with a panther tag around his neck.
“Okay, Freda, this is Anton. Anton, this is Freda.” Balthier’s voice comes out loud, and the camera is shaky as he turns it to catch the both of them clearer. Freda is rather nervous when she says, “So you’re going to be the one taking care of me now?”
Anton gives her a shy smile, his brown eyes rippling in warmth. He leans forward. “Yes. If you’d let me. How’s your treatment going?”
Freda swallows something in her throat, like a lump of fear. “Good. I still… I still struggle. But there’s nothing for me. I can’t go back to the human world. I’ll just become that person again. Balthier says you’re a good person, but I know I can’t always take someone’s word for it.”
“I know.” Anton’s lips twitch, along with one of his eyebrows. “But I’d like you to get a second chance. To show you that you can find happiness. I know maybe a shifter community isn’t what you would expect, but the women that are there – they’re at peace. You can belong.”
A flicker of desperate hope blazes in Freda’s eyes, and she quickly hides part of her face in a shroud of blonde hair. “I’d… like that.”
The video continues running with more conversation, but Balthier stops it. “I have others like this, too. I’m serious. I’m taking these women, the ones with a disconnect from the world, the ones who have every reason to hate it – and I give them to idealists like Anton. People who take respect seriously.”
Except taking the women in the first place is the opposite of respect. Still, I sigh, something lodged in my lungs, a fish flitting in my stomach. I don’t know what I expected.
But I do realize that the world is complex, and depressingly so. I’ve unearthed enough awful stories, and raised a few beautiful ones, too. But this one is neither beautiful or horrible. It’s neither sad or fulfilling. It just is.
A story where there are no winners or losers. That hurts. I’ve known this, somewhere. That people are both good and bad, and can do bad things for the right reasons, or good things for the wrong reasons. That they can love their neighbors but loathe people from different countries. That they love their dog but would kick a cat, or care about their community, but not the rest of the world. They care deeply about their beliefs, but hate those who share different beliefs and opinions. It’s all exhausting, really. And this is exhausting.
Balthier sees me sink into myself, getting lost in the storm of my thoughts, and he loops a comforting arm around me. I don’t know if I want that arm around me, or to push it away. My body trembles, both in the confused lust it feels, as the unbalanced hormones inside me decide that they really like the presence of him, whilst my mind is choosing to shatter into little pieces.
It hits me, then. I know why this is upsetting me so much.
It’s upsetting me because I realize that if I do come out with the story, I’m going to fuck it up for the girls he’s rehabilitating. They might be lost into the system, they might be given away to shifters – but from the sounds of it, shifters are going to do this anyway. They’re going to take, whether I like it or not. These girls are going to be scooped up by bastards, whether I like it or not. People are just going to keep falling through the abyss. The knowledge hits me and weighs down my soul. My fingers, usually so eager to tap away at whatever crime-biting story I’ve discovered, feel numb and useless at my sides.
“Why can’t it just be so straightforward?” I ask. It’s a slight whine, it’s a useless question, but I need the words to try and channel out this sense of helplessness. “Why can’t people not be bastards?”
Balthier lets out a small chuckle, and I glare at him. “If the world was like that, we’d all be living in a utopia right now. But unfortunately, it’s not. But it’s good you feel strong enough that something should be done.”
Is it? It doesn’t feel good. It feels like my energy is wasted, and going nowhere. It feels like the truth is burning down my stories and the intent behind them.
If what Balthier is doing is true, I can’t let that knowledge out. The public will vilify the shifters more. The ones involved in the trafficking will do everything they can to oust Balthier himself and whoever he has working for him. And through the guise of good, I’ll actually inflict deeper evil. Because maybe people will be aware of this one ring, but the others will vanish into the city like smoke. And the pain will continue.
Sometimes it feels like it never stops.
Chapter Four
I still don’t know why Balthier even ended up attracted to me. I don’t stand out in a crowd, though he says, even when he suspected I was there for something else, there was a passionate kind of conviction about me that made me stand out.
Once I’ve signed the confidentiality agreement, I phone up Marvin and tell him I’m okay. It takes a bit of fast talking, but he’s at least convinced I’m not suffering, and he tells me that he’s still with that panther shifter, and so far things have been going great. My editors are relieved I’m okay, and the police who were alerted to my missing by my friends have received assurances as well. The official story I’m going with is that I was taken by some human traffickers, and Balthier helped break me out. I don’t know how this version of events will hold up, though we have a small paper trail that collaborates with it, and I simply ask to not be interviewed.
The thing is, I now feel slightly directionless in my life. Like there’s something missing. It wasn’t until Balthier dropped in one day, sharing more videos of what he’s done for the girl’s he’s getting out of evil’s clutches, that I start to appreciate it and him a lot more. He’s certainly not a bad person.
In a way, I miss him. I don’t miss the sliver of fear that came with my former incarceration, but I miss those smiles and the steady affection he showed.
I miss it to the point that when he tentatively invites me to return to Alaska (I was in Alaska, holy shit), I accept.
When I arrive over at that cabin a few weeks later, Makita is there as well. He’s free to go, but he wants to help Balthier in his operation. He wants to become a reverse pimp, funnily enough, and Balthier and I are encouraging him.
The dynamic that now exists between us confuses me. We’re free, but we don’t want to leave one another.
Inside my chest, something has grown, past anything I could have expected. Affection covers the secret lairs in my heart. My memories fondle over Makita and Balthier’s faces, their gruff and pleasant voices, and the odd gentleness we treat each other with.
It gets to the point where Makita simply asks out loud, as I’m sat on the sofa, watching television with Balthier after he flew in from a hard day’s work, “Are we in a relationship? Because… I don’t feel envy. Or, well, odd. Being here. And I’ve never tried out the idea of a, um, open relationship before. Yet we’re all just hanging out here like it’s nothing.”
“How Bohemian of us,” Balthier says, with a faint smile. His arm drapes around me, and the warmth of his touch sends shivery ripples of delight inside. He’s a little bit like a wild animal that is tame to my touch. A beast lurks under his skin, same with Makita, but he reins it under control in my presence. We still all enjoy the thrill of being dominated, of feeling the lights in us switch on, and our stomachs hum in anticipation.
“Look, the last relationship I was in was four years ago,” I say, inviting Makita to sit on the other side o
f me. When he does, I’m basically sandwiched between two incredibly hot men, with very little chance of escape. A blizzard swirls outside – the weather is perpetually murky at the moment, but the fires indoors and the central heating blaze merrily, keeping us warm despite the abysmal cold outside. “I’m no expert on these things either. But, despite Balthier being a bastard, I don’t know. I like you both. Maybe I even love you.” The word sticks in my throat for a moment, and I see the glint of surprise in their expressions. “But it just feels like the circumstances in how we met is wrong. So that wrongness will persist. If we… pursue this.”
There is a pregnant silence. “I know what you mean,” Makita says. “The way we met was wrong. It doesn’t matter we might have enjoyed it, somehow. It doesn’t make up for the fact it shouldn’t have happened.”
Balthier nods, and sighs. His pale gray eyes appear sorrowful, with a slice of guilt. “You think it will fail?”
I shake my head. “No. Maybe. I think it just depends how we approach it. So we get to know each other better. Treat each other right. And take things one day at a time. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t – oh well. At least we tried.”
The words stir confidence in me. The more I mull them over, the more convinced I am that they are true, and right. The two shifters nod after a time. We are bound by our shared memories, but we want to change the foundations we currently stand upon. Those foundations mean we’re all approaching this as free people, all with a knowledge of what each other does, a respect for it, and a will to assist.
It’s the best we can hope for, I think.
To consolidate the new deal we have, I reach over to kiss each of them on the lips. Makita’s thin, pale ones, Balthier’s plump, soft ones. We gauge the mood – and the desire for sex bubbles within me. It’s what I want, and I hope this time, we can do it without the thrill of fear, and just the presence of joy.
I can make new stories, not just ones hunting down atrocities or evil, but ones that leave good memories, and ones that help.
When I’m lowered onto the sofa, with Balthier leaning over me, kissing my wet, ready lips, and Makita gently taking off my clothes, I feel positive about the way things are turning out.
Maybe I still can make a difference. Not in the original way I expected, but the chance is there. If I can help those who need it more actively, rather than just putting a few pretty words in a newspaper, I might feel more satisfied, than to know that my words will be read and perhaps forgotten. Although sentences are still powerful under the right gazes. As for relationships, I might be happier to try things out with Balthier and Makita, and endorse their kindness with some of my own. Share our warmth together. Swap secrets with the way our lips touch. Find the weak points, and strengthen the strong ones.
I can’t do it alone.
Fingers brush my skin, sending fiery trails all along. Balthier’s lips press into my neck, making me groan and sigh, arching my back into the touch. Makita’s worked off my pants and panties by now, and is slowly kissing up my thigh, straight to that throbbing, hot and wet core which burns so hot, I’m surprised I haven’t spontaneously combusted yet.
When that mouth presses against my core, and a warm tongue flicks into my bundle of nerves, the electricity jolts through me, sending me almost insane with desire, though I hold it in as best as able, even as Balthier works his way down to my breasts, and caresses each one.
This day, I will lose myself to the two of them again. The next as well.
I will drown in sweet desire and ecstasy, and make them experience it in return. And I will do everything I can to make the wrong right, to find my way and place. And I’ll do it with these people, in my own manner. I’ll do it with words, and with actions.
Just as soon as I’m done enjoying this session…
Fighting The Wolf
~ Bonus Story ~
A Steamy Werewolf Shifter Romance
Valentina is down on her luck, really down. Her Olympic dreams of joining the elite gymnasts are dashed when she tears a ligament in her shoulder beyond repair. Worse, earth has recently been overtaken by a race of alien shifters, and she’s been chosen to become one.
Valentina is quickly and painfully turned in to a were and acquainted with the man who will introduce her to the violent, unforgiving society of were-animals. He’s everything she can’t stand; stubborn, presumptive, and so very male. He’s also inexcusably handsome and a powerful werewolf.
No matter how hard she fights it, Valentina is fiercely and constantly attracted to the wolf in him. She must either accept and give in to the attraction or choose an uncertain future running from everything he represents. At stake is her heart, her humanity, and the very existence of her home planet.
* * *
"Damn," Valentina whispered, a second of pained shock causing the expletive.
She'd just gotten a taste of what was in store, as a large female came down the line followed by a smaller female carrying a square metallic tray with mostly translucent chips in them. The woman slapped the flat chip on the back of Valentina's left hand. The slap itself, a little too powerful, wasn't the upsetting part. Watching the chip turn skin colored and then slowly sink in, causing the sensation of several needles burrowing into her flesh, took it.
Valentina stood, topless, in a line several people deep. Her line, however, was by far the shortest of the three. On her right another line snaked for a mile or so, made up of elderly folks and anyone with even the smallest disability. She couldn't look at them. It wasn't a good sign the weakest were grouped together. There was nothing she could do to help them. She couldn't even help herself.
Another line, this one to her left, was made up of average folks, the median age probably being thirty five. Some had guts, some were greying, but all were probably physically capable of running a mile if necessary. Mostly they looked like average joes. They had been allowed to retain their clothing.
Valentina's line was by far the most specific. Everyone was fit. Everyone looked like some form of athlete. Mostly, they were young, although a few of them could have been pushing fifty. They were a fifty that looked good though, a fifty actors and bodybuilders could strive to. The youngest of them were teens that clearly spent time in the weight room at the local high school, all long, thin muscles that stuck to just matured frames. They weren't gangly necessarily, but they weren't muscled as though they'd spent years training for a specific sport.
Valentina noted that they all wore the same expression on their faces, the same look of loss. Very few cried. Very few shook. They all looked like survivors of an apocalypse, resigned to the hopelessness of their existences. Shock, too, was visible. It was the filter that allowed them to keep putting one step in front of the other.
Valentina wondered if the shock would ever wear off or if they would simply incorporate it into their every waking breath. That is, if they lived long enough to take many more.
Like, she assumed, many others Valentina vacillated between anger that this had happened and embarrassment. Here they were, picking fights with one another, pointing nukes at one another and quibbling over whose atomic dick was bigger, sparring over the value of science, making themselves ripe targets for picking. How humbled she and her entire world had been when the invaders had landed, claimed earth as their own, and began packaging away people into their specific categories.
She still remembered watching the first shot ring out as a soldier pointed his sniper rifle at the unwelcome visitors. Before the bullet had left the barrel a young man had sprinted from the landing dock the ship had seamlessly rolled out, pulled the gun from the trained killer's hands, and hit him upside the head with it. In the blink of an eye, faster than the television could capture, his fellow shipmates had turned into beasts and taken an entire special unit down. What they did to them... Valentina would have scrubbed it from her memory with a wire brush if she had been able. The young man who had acted first had been shot in the arm, a ragged hole clearly visible if one didn't mind lo
oking at those things. The worst part was watching that hole surrounded by mangled flesh slowly start to knit itself back together. He wouldn't even have a scar.
Now, just two days later, Valentina stood in line waiting for her turn to be judged. If she was found wanting she was terrified of the mystery of what they would do to her. If she wasn't, she was pretty equally terrified.
She moved up in the queue, and could've sworn again. Even close to the head of the line she couldn't see anything to clue her in to what was happening to her fellows. Each of the three lines ended in a black curtain. Curtain, though, wasn't quite the right word. The bars and dangling fabric looked like a curtain, but when it fluttered just a bit in the wind, lit numbers and letters, some decipherable and some not, liquidly ran up the length of the textile. It was either magic or technology so advanced it may as well have been magic.
The man before her went into the fabric, completely disappearing from her view as though he'd vanished through a cascading, obliterating waterfall. She heard nothing and saw nothing of what became of him.
"In," a voice barked at her, a voice that must have been allowed to travel outside of the barrier. She took one deep breath, held it for a second, and pushed through the curtain. It felt like cool satin against her skin.
The room she entered was shadowy, each side made up of that misleadingly flimsy feeling fabric. She had a hunch that if a dagger was stabbed into that curtain it wouldn't tear or fray. The invaders all wore very similar material on their bodies around their necks, across their bellies, and on their thighs. That they sheathed the most vulnerable parts of them, the parts containing such things as major arteries and organs, in that fabric was a clear indication it probably wasn't just because they liked the satiny softness.
Bad, Very Bad Shifters- The Complete Mega Bundle Page 60
