Claimed (Bound Mates #2)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

A nya

“Chug! Chug! Chug!”

Beer is being poured down my throat, which I have opened to allow the fizzy forgetting juice to pour into me. I hate the taste of beer, but I love the way it feels once I have a buzz on.

This is a hell of a party.

I am having the best time.

I’m not technically old enough to drink, but nobody here cares about that anyway. Everybody at this party is an outcast one way or another. We don’t care about the law.

We’re in a shed in the middle of the Midwest. It smells like… well, to the casual observer, it probably smells like a bunch of wet dogs have been sleeping here. It looks like it too. I don’t care. The place is going to get more trashed before we’re done. Doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

I was a good girl. I got a scholarship to a good college. I made all the right choices. I made my mom proud. And then I left home and… I guess I fell in with a bad crowd.

“Steve-P! Steve-P!” They are shouting someone else’s name now. Steve’s not chugging a beer. He’s doing something much more unsavory with a Christmas ornament. I don’t know what that guy’s fascination with sticking things up his butt is, but he seems to find the attention moreish. He’s not humiliated at all as he drops his trousers.

Outside the barn, there’s a grill with a few steaks on it. They’re for me and a few of the other girls. All the guys have theirs raw. I can’t stomach raw meat yet, no matter how many times they tell me it tastes better that way.

There’s a part of my mind that knows that this is an absolute dumpster fire of a situation, that I should be back at the college I dropped out of months ago. Pangs of guilt assail me, sharp even through the beer haze. My mom would be so disappointed if she knew I wasn’t going. I’ve been avoiding her calls because I don’t want to lie to her. I send a text sometimes, so she knows I’m alive.

I’ll call her soon.

I keep promising myself I’ll do that tomorrow.

I’ll call her tomorrow.

I won’t tell her I’m not in college. She won’t understand. My whole life, she’s made it clear how lucky I am to have the life I do. She made sure I got the best education I could get. She sacrificed to ensure I could do extracurriculars that would help on a college application.

With my guilt assuaged, I let my mind turn to how I ended up here.

She kept me close my entire life, but she had to let me go once it came time to go to college. Or she at least chose to. It was strange actually. She used to talk about me going to school in-state so I could stay home, but she changed her mind right as applications were going in. I’d been begging her for months, and figured I finally got through to her.

I couldn’t focus once I got to school. I wanted to. I tried. But the second I got to college, something in me just told me to roam. I couldn’t ignore it. It was imperative. Like a bird flying south for the winter. I tried to go to classes, but it was impossible to just sit there like I was still some kid when every part of me needed to go.

So I went. I don’t even remember making the decision to go. One moment I was getting ready to go to class, the next I was on a bus to God knows where.

And that’s when I met my friends.

One of them was on the second bus I hopped. It was a girl who sat next to me and talked to me until I thought my ears were going to fall off. She said she was going to visit her cousin who lived in the woods, and she invited me to come with her.

I wasn’t actually going anywhere, so I agreed. There was something about her that made me feel like I could trust her, a kind of unhinged wildness that I felt inside myself. I’ve spent a lifetime hiding who and what I am. But when I met her, and her friends, I didn’t have to hide anything I was. Not for a second. They’re criminal, they’re fucked up, and they do stuff that requires trips to the hospital time and time again, but they never judge me, and they understand me.

They’re my friends, my tribe, my pack.

I stumble over to some stacked bales of hay where my best friend is waiting for me. She’s drinking a can of beer.

“We’re going to run soon,” she says.

“I won’t be running anywhere,” I remind her.

“You should let Rex fuck you,” Laura says. “He could unlock who you really are.”

“Rex isn’t my mate. It won’t work.”

She smirks, because she knew damn well that me fucking Rex wouldn’t do anything besides get me laid.

“It would stop you from being a virgin, at least.”

“I don’t mind being a virgin.”

“That’s because you don’t know what you’re missing,” she teases. “I can’t do it less than twice a day now. Mark and I fuck so hard, the normal way, and the other way.”

I don’t even want to ask what counts as the ‘other’ way for Laura and Mark. There are so many options, including ones I’m sure have never appeared on any website.

“Steve, get that fucking thing out of your ass, we have shit to do tonight!”

A deep, dominant voice booms out over the party, quieting the yapping that has been going on in all corners. Steve actually looks a little shamefaced as he stops trying to cram the damn ornament up his butt and pulls his pants up.

Trent’s here.

He’s the leader, basically. He’s the one who makes sure everybody stays in line, and beats the hell out of anybody who won’t. He’s capable of some very fucked-up things. I guess I’m scared of him.

He shaves half his head, and lets the other side grow long over his shoulder. He’s wearing a leather jacket that isn’t zipped up, and hangs open, displaying his chest and torso. Both are covered in tattoos.

He’s absolutely ripped, so muscular it’s crazy. He ripples when he so much as draws on a cigarette. The girls all stare at him, even the ones who are mated. He just has big alpha energy.

I was intimidated by him when I first met him. I still am, if I’m to be honest. I stay out of his way, which isn’t hard. Aside from giving me the green light when I first came out this way, and welcoming me into his tribe, he’s left me alone. And he’s made sure that the others are treating me okay and not putting any pressure on me. I’m one of the younger members, and there are quite a few single older guys around. Trent is thirty, and the oldest of us all.

Every eye in the place is on him right now. He commands our collective attention easily, naturally. There’s a certain adoration from us all, not quite like love, but something more animal. We trust him implicitly. We’d follow him anywhere. And we’d do as he said.

“Alright! Let’s do this!”

Trent throws back his head and whoops. Immediately the other dozen or so of us reply to his call. Sounds of excited, drunk people fill the barn and reverberate off the walls.

“We’re going to celebrate the full moon, bitches!”

As the words full moon come out of his mouth, they warp as his face begins to change shape, lengthen, and become furry. No matter how many times I see this happen, it’s always incredible. It happens quickly, but dramatically.

One moment the big, tattooed guy is holding us in thrall, the next there’s a massive wolf in the middle of the circle, surrounded by almost a dozen others. A couple of the other girls and I haven’t been able to shift because we haven’t met our mates yet. Female shifters don’t actually shift until their fated mate finds them.

The pack of wolves circles in the middle of the barn for a moment, some of the subordinate wolves licking at Trent’s face. There’s a lot of whining and excitement.

Trent allows it for a moment or two, then turns tail and heads out of the barn at full speed, the pack streaming out behind him in an incredible display of animal alacrity.

I’m so deeply jealous. I wish I could do that. I wish I didn’t have to wait for some fated mate’s magic cock to unlock my ability to shift. It’s so unfair, but it’s the way it works for whatever stupid reason. Some people say it’s because it protects us from being discovered by normal men, keeps our true natures and identities from being known. Males start being able to shift around thirteen, but they often end up outcast.

It feels like I’m never going to shift. Sometimes I wonder if I actually have it in me, or if they were just kind enough to take me in. It’s quiet in the barn now. The others and I pick up the red Solo cups and pick at the remnants of what’s left from the barbecue. The pack will hunt tonight. They’ll take down a deer, they’ll feed, and they’ll come back and pass out in a big naked pile.

I guess I might as well go to bed.

Everybody sleeps up in the hayloft when they stay here. I bought a sleeping bag, because being pricked by the bits of hay all over doesn’t feel great. Even with the bag I’m probably going to have lots of little pricks and bites. Worth it.

This is real freedom, I tell myself as I start cleaning up. For some reason, my mom comes to mind again. I keep thinking of her tonight. I wonder why. It almost makes me want to go and call her now, but I don’t have reception out here. I’d have to get a ride into the nearest town to get cell service again.

Maybe she wouldn’t be mad about this. She was always hovering when I was growing up, because she grew up as an orphan and it made her super protective of me. But I think she knew I had to get out on my own, and even though this isn’t the education I was supposed to be getting, it’s still an education. Every day brings some new revelation. I’ve found that I make friends kind of easily, and that people like me for who I am. When you’ve spent a lifetime trying to fit in, doing your best to pretend to be normal, it’s a relief to find out that maybe none of that was ever necessary.

My mom might lose her mind if she knew I was asleep in the loft of an old hay barn with a bunch of shifter strangers, or maybe she’d be proud that she produced someone who can handle herself in a place like this. I’m stronger than I thought. I’m more adaptable than I thought. And I’m going to survive no matter what.

Creeeeaakkkkk.

My eyes are closing when the sound of one of the barn doors opening downstairs makes them fly open. The other girls are asleep already. We’re camped out around the loft in various places, each according to where we are most comfortable.

The pack hasn’t gotten back yet. They wouldn’t come back in a creaking, creeping way. They’d return with full noise. I feel as though someone is in the barn with us, but I can’t see down off the loft and something in my body tells me not to move.

Everyone else is asleep, I think. They don’t stir. I don’t make the mistake of making myself stand out. I stay very, very still, I hardly breathe, and I keep my ears pricked. There are footsteps down there for sure. Someone is in the barn with us. Someone who isn’t part of the pack. Someone who doesn’t belong.

I suddenly realize I have no way of defending myself. I don’t have any weapons. The pack doesn’t really need them. Suddenly, I wish they’d left a guard or two to stay back with us. There’s nobody here.

It’s with real relief that I hear the footsteps retreat and the door creak a little as it’s returned to the closed position. I stay alert for as long as I can, but in the end I fall asleep in fitful spurts and starts, only waking up when the pack returns around daybreak. They collapse downstairs, and I finally feel safe enough to actually sleep.

I wake up late in the afternoon, to a breakfast of beer and cigarette smoke.

I don’t mention the intruder in the night. I’m not even certain it really happened anymore.

Everybody is chill today, lying out on the grass outside the barn relaxing in the sun and drinking. A few couples sneak off into the bushes, or back into the barn to mate. Sex isn’t a big deal here, but it always happens in mated pairs. That’s just how we are.

A car stops on the road up from the hill. It’s probably about a mile away, but we all notice it. Nobody stops up there unless they’re cops looking for someone. The guys like to get in trouble from time to time, as do some of the girls. So it’s not completely rare that the police do come. It’s just also never good news.

The guys on the outside of the gathering perk up. They’re not officially on watch, but they’re also not , not on watch, if that makes sense. The pack always hangs out in a way that seems chill and disorganized, but has a definite order to it. Single females, like me, tend to be in the middle and at the back. The single males are on the outskirts, with the mated males and their mates on the inside of them, then the alpha at the center with his closest boys.

Trent gets up, lazily, but with intention. He stretches and moves toward the road. There’s an incline he has to go up, which is always a slight problem. I know he’d like to move us all somewhere where there’s higher ground, but we’ve got the barn to stay in for free-ninety-nine, and that’s an attractive price for all of us.

A few of the guys and girls make themselves scarce, using the barn as visual cover as they slink off into the shadows.

A tall man is coming down the hill toward Trent. He’s wearing a long black overcoat and has thick dark hair that flows down over his head in a mane. He looks older. Not old, but definitely old-er. Maybe forty or something. He looks powerful and rich. He doesn’t look like he belongs out here in the middle of nowhere. I can see silver rings flashing on his hands from a distance. This guy is money and danger.

Something about him makes my stomach do a twisty flip, like I’m in trouble. I have no idea why I’m having that reaction, but it is immediate and definite and primal.

I find myself slipping back through the pack just like the others who thought someone was coming for them did.

“I am looking for Anya.”

I hear him say my name in a thick Russian accent. My heart skips a beat, then starts to race. He has the same accent as my mother. Part of me wants to go toward him, but another part of me is suddenly absolutely drowning in guilt. Did she get so worried about not hearing from me that she sent some guy after me? And now he’s found me here? Nowhere near my college? Fuck. Oh, fucking hell. She’s going to be so disappointed in me.

“Nobody called Anya here,” Trent lies smoothly.

I breathe a little sigh of relief. I should have known he wouldn’t give me up to some random guy in a suit. Nobody else will either. I can feel everybody closing ranks. One of the guys pulls me up behind him, creating a human shield.

“I know she is here. I have news about her mother.”

He says the one thing that will always bring me out of hiding.

I knew from the beginning he had something to do with Mom. His accent was the final piece of the puzzle, but even before he spoke, I felt his significance. I can feel his energy reaching out for me even before I move. It feels as though he is somehow speaking to me without words, pulling at me though he cannot possibly be sure I am actually here.

I step out from behind my guard, approaching curiously through the pack. Trent reaches out with a hand, makes a gesture to indicate I should stay behind him. I do as he wishes, stopping a few yards away from the Russian man.

“I’m Anya,” I say.

He looks at me, and I feel a wave of energy rush over me. This man is a complete stranger, and his aura is foreign too. There’s something about him that makes the muscles in my belly clench tight, my pulse spike, my adrenaline flow. I suddenly want to run, but I don’t know whether it is away from him, or toward him.

“I need you to come with me,” he says.

“Uh. No?” Trent cuts in. “What do you want, man?”

The stranger looks at me, ignoring Trent entirely. “Your mother is dead, Anya.”

I take a step back, as those shocking, horrible, awful words wash over me, leaving me cold.

“My mother isn’t dead. She’s in Houston.”

“She got sick. Sometimes these things don’t take long.”

He is Russian, and he is blunt. His words shock me deeply. My first thought is that he’s trying to play some kind of game with me, trick me somehow.

“I don’t believe you. I’m going to call my mom.”

I can’t call her from here. I need to go into town. Someone needs to take me to the nearest reception spot.

“I am going to take you to her, so you do not have to believe me.”

“You’re not taking me anywhere. I’m not going with you.”

I am freaking out now. There are tears in my eyes. Even the idea of my mom being gone is too much to bear. I hate this guy, whoever the fuck he is. What an absolute asshole to come here and fucking lie to me.

“Leave her alone, man,” Trent says.

The boys are circling us. I might not mated to any of them, but I am part of the pack. They will protect me with their bodies, and maybe with their lives. I don’t want that to happen, but I also don’t want to go with this terrifying stranger.

“Please, just go,” I tell him. “If you stay, you’ll be hurt.”

The stranger laughs as if I’ve made a joke.

“I am not going to get hurt. You will be, if you don’t listen and come with me.”

That threat pisses the boys off even more. They snarl and step up to him even more. They haven’t shifted as yet, but I know that’s not far away. This man in front of me doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into. He deserves what’s coming for trying to freak me out, but still, I feel a little sorry for him.

I know my mother had a hard time when she was in Russia. She knew a lot of bad people. Obviously one of them has come all this way to fuck with her, and with me. But he’s not counting on my friends.

“Get out of here,” Trent growls. “You’re not welcome.”

“I’ll leave when I have what’s mine,” the Russian says, his eyes still fixed on me.

He is brutally handsome, but the things he has said and done in the few moments I have known him turn that handsomeness into a mask to be feared. My entire body is in turmoil, so many emotions going in so many different directions.

I take several steps back as I am pulled away from him. Every single male and several females of the pack are coming forward. Nobody likes this man’s energy. Everybody recognizes him as a threat.

“Children, you are making a mistake,” he says.

That’s the final straw. None of us are children, and Trent has no patience whatsoever for being disrespected.

The guy isn’t going to leave. He’s clearly rich and powerful and the sort of person who is used to getting what he wants. The pack has lost patience.

“Turn around and walk away.”

I’m impressed that Trent is nice enough to give that very last warning. Of course, the stranger doesn’t know what he’s up against. He has no idea who he is messing with. He sees a bunch of kids in a field getting into trouble and thinks he can tell us what to do. He’s about to find out just how wrong he is. If he knew anything about us, he’d be worried by the fact that a lot of the guys are starting to get undressed, kicking off nice shoes, pulling off shirts they’re going to want later. Some of them are even straight up taking their pants off.

I’m a little concerned that he’s not reacting to that, actually, because by normal person standards, a bunch of guys getting close to naked in the middle of a field should ring alarm bells. It doesn’t seem to.

He doesn’t even say anything in response to Trent’s last order. He just stands there, looking for all the world like he owns the place. And that is the final, final, absolute last straw.

Bare flesh bursts into massive rippling pelts of fur. Smirking smiles turn into massive bared canines. The pack shifts almost simultaneously.

They’re going to rip this guy apart if he doesn’t submit to them.

Maybe if he curls up in a ball and pisses himself, they might leave him with nothing more than a few bites. Blood is going to be shed, and this guy is going to learn a lesson about the world at large being bigger and weirder than he ever imagined it could be. He’s going to come out of this forever psychologically changed, and probably physically scarred—but that’s it.

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot make someone a shifter by biting them. That’s a vampire thing. I keep forgetting to ask if vampires are real. Now’s probably not the time either.

I wait to hear the shrieking and the begging and the squealing and everything that comes with a man suddenly finding himself absolutely surrounded by the world’s most dangerous predators.

For a second, I see him surrounded by the pack, and then I can’t see anything. The wall of fur and fang is too dense. I hear snapping jaws, growling, snarling, but no begging, no panic. Instead there’s a sound, a cross between a bark and a snarl that gets my attention.

The energy changes. I feel it before I know what’s happened, before the very same wolves fighting to protect me suddenly start flying around me like squirrels being tossed by a vicious dog. I am caught by a wall of muscle as one of them spins toward me, doing its best to avoid crushing me, massive paws dancing around me, the side of his flank pushing me out of the fray.

In the middle of the pack is a new wolf. A much larger, much more intensely dominant shifted beast.

“Fuck,” I whisper to myself.

The man who I thought was a rich idiot about to have his throat ripped out is the most incredibly large and entirely dangerous creature any of us have ever beheld. He’s at least one and a half times larger than any of the others, his eyes are ice fucking blue, and his pelt is jet black with a few stripes of silver here and there around his muzzle. He is an incredible creature, and I cannot stop staring at him.

The pack has backed off. They’re as wary and impressed as I am. I’ve heard that when you become your wolf self, you can be much more brutal than usual, but there is also all sorts of animal signaling that happens that makes it much less likely to get into an actual fight.

The wolves in the pack submit to Trent because everything about him is dominant. The same thing is happening now with this stranger. Something about him is activating the submissive fawn response in the pack. I watch them crouch down in front of him, whining. Some of them even roll over where they are lying and show their bellies. Even Trent bows his head.

In an instant, I have lost my pack’s protection. I am standing in the midst of what amounts to a battlefield of fallen soldiers.

The stranger shifts back into his human form. He is now naked in front of me, and of course my eyes are drawn to the weighty meat between his legs. I’ve seen penises before, of course, but nothing like his. It’s an absolute weapon.

He clears his throat, and I yank my eyes away from his private area, knowing that I’m staring like a freak, and that this is the very last thing that matters right now. This shifter wants to abduct me, and there’s nothing my pack can do about it.

“Anya,” he says.

My name is like a release cue. He knows my name. He wants me. He’s coming for me.

I turn, and I run as fast as I can. The barn sits on rolling acres of farmland adjacent to a forest, which I always thought was really picturesque, but now even the few dozen yards seem like a bare open desert to sprint through before there’s any kind of cover.

I am pretty fast, and he has to get through a pile of submissive wolves, so I almost get to the verge of the woods before a large naked Russian man brings me down in a tackle. He tries to soften it, I think, but there’s only so soft something like that can be, and I get a mouth full of grass before I am rolled over and picked up like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder.

“Let me go! Let me fucking go!” I kick and flail for all I am worth, but it does nothing. He’s strong. He has that alpha shifter strength that makes resisting him almost impossible. But he’s not entirely invulnerable. He is naked. There’s got to be something I can do with that. I try to knee him somewhere vulnerable, but he flips me back over onto my stomach and pins me face down on the ground.

My pants are pulled down by a big, dominant hand. I let out a scream that nobody responds to. Then several hard, painful slaps are laid across my cheeks. He’s spanking me for daring to fight him, or for being ready to run, or just because he fucking wants to. I don’t know. I just know that it hurts like hell.

“Get off me!”

“Stop being a spoiled little girl and listen,” he growls down at me. “I have important news, and I had to track you halfway across the country to find you, because you are not in college.”

He spanks me again, several times, as if punishing me for not being in school.

“Your mother had no idea where you were, no idea what you were doing, no idea that you were here, unsupervised with dangerous feral wolves, criminals with outstanding warrants.”

“Their warrants are pretty epic, right?” I shoot the snarky words back, and get another set of slaps on my ass for my trouble. The pain is starting to settle into a duller heat now, a general warmth that makes some of the sharpness feel less, well, sharp.

He pauses for a moment, then I hear a rustle. He has ripped a branch from a nearby sapling. I look over my shoulder as he strips the leaves from it with one rough pass of his hand, then he holds it short and starts whipping my ass with it.

“You will learn not to speak to me so rudely,” he says matter-of-factly, as if he has some right to do this, and worse, as if he has some intention of continuing to do it. “You have been raised in this country, fatherless. Lilly did her best, I am sure, but there are many lessons you have yet to learn, Anya.”

I would tell him to fuck off, but I am too busy wailing as my ass burns with the intensity of the whipping he is now giving me, that lash making my flesh burn with the devilish little lines laid down by the switch.

“What do you want from me!”

He pauses for a moment. “I want you to behave yourself in a manner befitting your position. And I want you to listen, because I have important things to tell you.”

I remember what he said at the beginning. That my mother is dead. That’s just not possible. She was fine last time I saw her, and she’s not even very old. She had me when she was in her early twenties. She’s not even fifty yet.

I start struggling again. I don’t want to hear what he says. I don’t want it to be true. It can’t be true. If I can get away from him, then it isn’t true. I push up to my knees and try to scramble away, but he grabs my pants and holds me down there between my legs, keeping me in place against my will.

“Let me fucking go!”

Alexei

She is a dramatic, passionate, and rebellious little thing. A proper she-wolf would have submitted when the rest of the pack did, but no, of course Lilly’s daughter had to keep up her defiance long after everybody else knew surrender was the best option.

Her reddened cheeks frame her sweet lips, lightly furred and entirely on display for me in the position she has chosen to assume. I’ve exposed her, but she is doing nothing to guard her modesty. Instead she is doing her absolute best to give me the best view in the house.

This is not how I imagined I would find Lilly’s daughter. I thought I would find her at the university where she was supposed to be, for starters.

The pack she is with isn’t even a proper pack. It is a collection of strays with a pseudo-alpha who wouldn’t even qualify as a beta among mine. Seeing Anya in this state makes me absolutely certain that she has suffered for being raised without a father. I know Lilly did her best, but this spoiled little whelp needs to be taken in hand.

I notice something else about the state of her. Something I am trying very hard to ignore. I did not strip her to leer at her. I wanted her bare because bare is the only way to properly punish a girl. Now that I have her in this state of undress, I cannot ignore her arousal. She is wet. Soaked. The insides of her thighs glisten with need as I hold her helplessly in place and make her face the consequences of her actions.

I am fighting my own instincts and urges in this moment. The desire to mate her is intense, of course. More than it usually is. I put it down to the intense emotion of losing Lilly and now finding her delinquent daughter. The urge to sink my cock deep inside her tight, wet little cunt is almost overwhelming.

“Let me go!”

I twitch the switch in my hand, letting my wrist do the work to whip her ass again. I would never have put her in this position myself, but the fact that she has managed to do it herself is quite pleasing. Right now it is the only pleasing thing about her.

“I am not going to let you go. Stop fighting.”

“No!”

She’s panicked and she needs to be fucked. My cock is rock hard right now, and the urge to rise up and mate her like I know she needs to be mated is almost impossible to resist, but I restrain myself. There are more important things that have to happen first.

“Yes,” I growl. “Or I will do something to you with this switch that you will regret.”

“Let me go!”

She repeats herself, not listening to me. I line the switch up again. This time it’s not going horizontally across her ass. This time it’s oriented vertically up and down. I flick my wrist and the whippy branch catches her between her spread cheeks, catching not only the tight little bud of her asshole, but her pussy lips as well. It’s a harsh treatment for a virgin, but I have no intention of backing down. I’m going to whip her until she submits.

It’s clear she’s never been made to give in before, and that isn’t good for her. It’s not good for me either, in the attempt to handle her. There are more important things to do than continuing to stripe her perfect ass and gorgeous pussy. More important things than burying my cock deep inside her and showing her precisely what she really is.

I am almost maddened by the urge to fuck her. My self-control is hanging by a thread. I have not felt this much lust in years, perhaps ever. I know what that might mean, but I can’t think about that.

Her whines and cries increase in intensity until finally she does what I want her to do: she submits. She softens, she whimpers, and she stops fighting me.

The moment her energy shifts, I soften. I pull her close to me, and I snug her underwear up over her sore ass. I need her covered, though the thin layer of fabric does absolutely nothing to dull her scent.

Anya

This man has whipped me so intimately. I hate him. I fear him. I want him. I want him more than I have ever wanted anybody in my life. Lust is charging through my body, making me wet and willing, even though I am sure I loathe him more than I have ever loathed anybody.

He makes things worse by picking me up, as if I am some kind of creature to be owned.

I wish more than ever that I could take my wolf form. If I could, I’d bite him so damn hard. I’d make him pay for every bit of humiliating pain he just put me through. I would never do what the rest of the pack did and just roll over and submit to him. I don’t think he’s that special. I just think he’s big and mean. I’m a girl, which means my whole life has been full of big and mean things. I’m not impressed.

The Russian throws me over his shoulder and starts carrying me off to his car. I panic immediately. Whatever he just did to me in the field is going to be so much worse if he gets to do it to me in private. If he takes me to a second location, he’s going to… I don’t know. I just know the words ‘second location’ are the worst two words a female abductee will probably never hear.

I start squirming, kicking, fighting harder than before. I almost get free several times. It’s hard to keep me on his shoulder, no matter how strong he is. My wriggling and writhing is working.

“Stop fighting. You are making a scene,” he says, his accent thickening with annoyance. “I am trying to help you, silly girl.”

“Helllllppppppp!”

I shriek at the top of my lungs.

But nobody comes to help. The pack is staying well clear of all of us.

My hands are free. I smack his ass as hard as I can. It’s like hitting a round drum of pure steel. It does absolutely nothing to him as far as I can tell. He doesn’t even flinch, let alone make a satisfying sound.

What he does is smack my ass back, what feels like just as hard, maybe more. I am not stoic. Not even a little. I scream at the top of my lungs as pure pain flashes through me. Even clothed, that slap hurt like hell over all those lashes and previous spanks.

“Stop your dramatics,” he growls at me. “I am helping you.”

My mother told me all about the dangerous Russians. I know the marks they left on her. I know that she was never the same after what happened to her in those orphanages, and I know she got the hell out of Russia as soon as she could, back before I was born.

I know for a fact that there is no way this man is trying to help me. Whatever he is trying say or do, it’s fucked up. I can feel the danger deep inside me, all mixed up with that annoying lust that won’t go away because I have never been fucked and my stupid body is reacting to this Russian alpha wolf. He’s not my mate. He’s too old. He’s too mean. He’s too… too fucking everything.

“We don’t have any money! There’s no point abducting me!”

“Quiet,” he orders.

I can’t be quiet, and I am not quiet. I spend the next five minutes going absolutely nuts as I am carried across a field, back into the barn to collect my things, which the pack gathers for him as if he owns everybody there, and then off to a car that has been waiting nearby.

The car is more like a villain SUV, and it contains a bunch of burly Russian henchmen, all of whom look like they’ve been carved out of cold marble. Dark haired, light eyed, and absolutely chiseled. Any one of these guys could have given Trent a run for his money. I used to think he was the most impressive specimen of wolf-kind I’ve ever encountered. Now I’m starting to realize he’s not much more than a country dirtbag. A nice country dirtbag, but still not anything compared to these international alphas.

“There’s no money in this,” I repeat myself as I am put into the back in the double seat in the middle between the three in front and three in the rear. “You’re wasting your time.”

The Russian sits next to me, boxing me in, and starts going through my bag, pulling out clothes and tossing some over the front of the seat. He’s into everything, including my underwear. It’s humiliating, having those garments spread all over the back seat of this vehicle. There’s a pair of pink panties on the floor, and one of my bras is over the back of the seat.

“What are you doing?”

“We will need to get you an appropriate dress for the funeral,” he says.

The word funeral makes my stomach sink and my heart do a double beat. Is he serious? There’s no way.

“You are starting to freak me out.”

He looks at me, really looks at me. I look at him properly for the first time, not getting just a vague sense of him, but taking in all his features. He has a very square, powerful face with a prominent brow ridge. His eyes are like flint, two brilliant staring jewels that make me feel as though he is looking through me even more than he did my bag. I feel as though he’s taking me apart in ways I didn’t know I could come apart. He’s brutal, he’s intelligent, and he’s a complete stranger who somehow seems to know me.

“You should listen to me,” he says. “I am sorry to tell you bad news, but it is true. Your mother has passed.”

“That’s not possible,” I say. “That literally cannot be true. I can’t be here. I can’t listen to this. I have to get the hell out of here.”

The vehicle is already in motion, but that doesn’t matter. What happens next is like a bull in a china shop; I am scrambling and flailing and yanking at handles and windows. None of it works, and everybody tries to restrain me, but I am like a wild animal. God, I wish I was a wild animal. I wish I didn’t have to feel anything.

Right now, in this moment, I am panicking. I am terrified for my safety, and even more scared for my mother.

“What did to you do to her? What did you fucking do?” I hit out with all my strength, making contact with these awful strangers as best I can, but only succeeding in really hurting my knuckles. Then I discover something that thrills me and terrifies everybody else. The big sliding door wasn’t locked, and I manage to get it open. It slides open and I dive for the berm, even though we’re going at some speed. The driver hits the brakes, which is good because hitting the road fast feels pretty bad. There’s the impact, which isn’t great, and then there’s the feeling of bits of my skin being eroded by the gravel as I roll around on it.

“Are you crazy?”

The Russian is on top of me, hauling me up from the ground without any care for potential injuries. I don’t know if anything is broken, because everything feels broken. It was pretty dumb, I guess, because jumping out of a moving vehicle is the same as incapacitating yourself. Can’t really run when it feels like every single one of your bones is a certain kind of broken.

After I whine at a pained pitch, he checks me over without much in the way of tenderness, glowering at me the entire time.

“That was stupid,” he snarls. “That was the stupidest thing I have ever seen. How dare you make me watch you die just days after I watched Lilly die.”

“What?”

I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline from my escape attempt, or the fact that my brain is finally starting to consider the possibility he is not lying, but something in his tone rings true.

“Are you serious? Is my mother dead?”

Alexei

The question breaks my heart. Anya is wild, unpredictable, strong, and very, very lucky. I don’t know how she survived that completely mad attempt at escape. If it weren’t for the soul-shattering realization she is finally coming to, I would punish her all over again.

“Yes, little wolf. I am sorry. Your mother was ill. She hid it from you because she did not want you to worry, but it was worse than she knew.”

Anya looks at me for a long moment. She is covered in scrapes and cuts and bruises, and she is wearing clothes that need to be washed. She is a messy little whelp and she needs to be taken care of—even more so now that she has finally understood what I have directly told her multiple times already.

She bursts into tears, a reasonable response. It gives me the chance to pick her up, put her back into the vehicle, and this time make sure the child safety locks are on. I cradle her in my lap as we continue on our way back to the house Lilly owned.

Finally, she starts to ask sensible questions.

“Who are you?”

“I was a friend of your mother’s when she was young. She called me when she found out she was very ill and asked me to find you.”

“But who are you?” Anya asks the question again.

“I am a friend,” I say. “I am a businessman, from Russia.”

“You’re an alpha,” she says. “You made my pack submit.”

“Yes, well, alphas are common,” I say. I do not want to tell her that I am the leader of the largest and most powerful pack in Russia. She has enough to worry about as it is, and this is not about me. I will ensure that she is safe and sound, and then I will go back to my life. The truth is every moment with her is eroding my self-control. I want to be deep inside her. I want to ravage her so completely her animal self comes tearing out of her and she becomes a pure and unchained version of herself.

But she is Lilly’s daughter, and Lilly did not ask me to come and fuck her only daughter. I am here to do the right thing, and the wrong thing could have consequences for the rest of our lives. I am going to keep myself in check, I am going to get this girl back into college, and I am going to return to my pack knowing that I did the right thing.

She shifts in my lap, her soft, round rear pressing against elements of my anatomy. I will myself to not get hard. I fail. I shift her on my lap so there’s less pressure on my cock, but there’s no real way to remain unaffected by her.

She is driving me absolutely mad with desire. I have to think about Lilly. I have to remind myself that I am a good alpha, and this female is too young for me to mate. She’s young enough to be my daughter. I’m here to protect and guide her, and nothing else.

My cock twitches.

I suppress my urges.

The drive takes well over a day. Anya cries herself to sleep in my arms, then wakes up, eats some food, cries, then falls asleep again. Some news is so bad that everything else becomes irrelevant. Just breathing is enough.

We finally reach the place she calls home. It is not a grand dwelling. It is a simple two-bedroom house in the middle of a very small town with one church and a liquor store. There are no schools, but there is a school bus.

I know Lilly escaped Russia in hopes of a better life, but I do not know how this qualified as one. I know she tried. I hope she found peace here, in this little house with hand-painted ceramics. Every inch of this place is a testament to her dedication to homeyness. I can see that she treasured this humble home as much as I did my castle.

The living room now contains an oak coffin, in which Lilly is lying in state. Anya approaches with a miserable, horrified reverence. I made these arrangements, knowing she would need to see her mother. If she simply disappeared, there would always be some part of Anya that couldn’t believe it.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” Anya says softly. “I wish I could have been here for you. I should have been here for you. I failed you.”

“You did no such thing,” I intervene. “You did what you were supposed to do. You went out and lived as she wanted you to.”

“Not as she wanted me to. She thought I was in college, but I dropped out.” Anya looks up at me. “Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”

“I think she has already done so,” I say, ignoring the logical impossibility of post-mortem forgiveness. Sometimes people need to be reassured, and I want to make this tragedy more bearable.

“She really died,” Anya says. “I can’t believe she really died. What’s going to happen to this place? What am I going to do with all her things? What am I going to… do?”

I wrap my arms around her as she once again breaks into tears. I wish I could alleviate this pain, but it has to be felt, and there is nothing I can do to stop what has already happened.