18. Aurelia
Chapter 18
It was the longest day of my fucking life, and with a past like mine, that was saying something.
I didn’t give in. That was the one win I could claim for the day. I did not reach down and slip my hands between us to capture his hard length. I didn’t devour his lips or sink my teeth deep into his neck to mark him. I didn’t even gyrate against his unbelievable body to relieve the tension. I sat still in broody silence and stared out at nothing, silently dripping with pleasure as the horse jostled our bodies against each other.
We did stop once, as he’d said we would, but it was for a quick meal and a bathroom break before we were back on the road. He didn’t let me ride with Hadriel. He didn’t even take off the saddle so I could ride behind him. Nope, I was back in his lap, leaning against his chest, both hands in his shirt to have skin-to-skin contact and pretending like it was a normal thing to need to touch someone so badly.
Now, with dusk fast approaching and my body feeling like it was a jigsaw puzzle with the pieces put back in all the wrong places, we finally stopped. He gave me a curt command to dismount.
“Can’t.” It was the first word I’d uttered since our argument.
“What?” he asked as the rest of the pack dismounted and began making camp.
“I can’t dismount. My body is too stiff. I’d fall off.”
“Why didn’t you tell me—“ He cut himself off in angry frustration. His fingers dug into my back, both crushing me close and clearly displaying his annoyance with me. “Fine. Hang on.”
His hand slid down to my butt as he stood in the stirrups, pulling me up with him. He leaned forward, bracing one hand on the saddle and keeping my chest flush with his before swinging his leg over the horse and basically jumping off. He landed gracefully, both arms around me now, one under my butt and the other across my back.
I waited for him to put me down onto my feet so I could stretch or bend or just fall down and stay there. Instead, he ensured my legs were still wrapped around him as he followed the others to the right and into a little clearing.
“Don’t you worry about how it looks when the alpha carries a prisoner around like this?” I asked in bewilderment. “Or rides with her like you were. Or...” I thought back to when he carried me through the camp, his cock stuck inside me, our activities incredibly obvious. “Or walking around in the middle of fucking?”
“No. They trust that I’ll do my duty.”
“But they’re not concerned about the moral dilemma of fornicating with the enemy?”
“No, because of what I just said.”
That didn’t make sense to me at all. They were pretending to be the good guys, but they were cool with an alpha participating in morally gray activities? I mean... fucking the enemy? They should not be okay with it. They really shouldn’t. I mean, I wasn’t okay with it.
And maybe that was actually the crux of the problem. Because Granny had filled me with stories of alphas capturing women and using them to their liking. That wasn’t new. The issue was I liked it. Not rationally, obviously. Logically, I was not okay with any of this. I did not want my body intimately reacting to the man who had abducted me, killed my family, threatened my community, and was unlawfully keeping me prisoner. It was wrong, ass-backwards, and it was seriously, unequivocally fucked up. I just wished my stupid body would get on board!
He reached what seemed like a random spot and stopped, delicately uncoiling my feet from around his waist and setting me down gently. Weston was back to the chivalrous gentlemen so at odds with the vicious alpha marching me to my doom.
His hot and cold routine had me spinning in circles. I couldn’t handle the dichotomy of him hating me one moment and treating me like gold the next. I didn’t know what to do with Weston, the kind, caring man. It weakened my resolve to hate him and then I was left angry and hurt when he switched back to being Alpha. I was left ashamed and embarrassed when I remembered he was the bad guy.
I wanted to scream in frustration. My nerves were frayed from being in his proximity for so long without relieving the overwhelming sexual tension.
Or hell, maybe I wanted to cry. My heart hurt from the revelations about Granny and my village, I was scared about my future, and felt beyond frustrated that these people would not believe the product wasn’t dangerous.
Basically, I was not handling this abduction very well. Not even a little. I was at my breaking point. Someone was going to go down with the ship. It would not be me.
“You’re no better than Granny, you know that?” I shouted as he steadied me, standing close and with the utmost patience even though I could see a crowd of people standing by, waiting for his direction. I jabbed him with a finger. “You’re really sweet and amazing some of the time, but otherwise, you’re a huge asshole. Just like Granny, apparently. She gave me gifts and made me sticky buns. And then, yes, she punished me, but only when I broke the rules. You said she was keeping me caged? Well, what are you doing? And let’s not even go into you hate-fucking your prisoner. You’re using me just like she did. The only difference is you’re just doing it for your own pleasure.”
I winced as I said it, my heart feeling ragged. I doubled down on my anger to compensate.
“She kept me in the village to make product, and now you’ve captured me with the intent to kill me so I’ll stop. She at least consulted me about the product. She listened to me about it. You? Not a chance. I’ve proven it is not dangerous. You’ve seen my village; you know it isn’t running rampant with addiction and death. Yet you will not listen to me about its properties. You want to kill me, and come hell or high water, you plan on doing it. So how different are you, really? I said it before and I’ll say it again, Alpha, you are not the good guy in this story. And like when you worked for this king and queen, stealing people and ruining families, you’re not the powerful guy who is just. You’re just the guy with power.”
He leaned down until he was directly in my face, his body coiled tightly and his breath coming quickly. The air heated between us with his wavering restraint, his lips inches from mine but coming no closer. He was barely in control of himself.
I was not in control of myself. Not at all.
“She gave you presents to keep you happy. She punished you to keep you in line. She spent all her time manipulating you, obviously so. I have not done any of that. I don’t give two shits if you’re unhappy. As far as how I’m handling you, I have my reasons.”
“Screwing a prisoner you constantly threaten with death is a pretty immoral fucking situation.”
“If I was forcing her, sure. I’m not forcing you. You screw me of your own free will.”
My face burned red and I balled my fists, my core pounding and the energy between us zipping with fire. We were so close our breaths mingled. Our chests rose and fell quickly, each of us teetering on the edge.
“You do care if I’m unhappy,” I ground out, fighting fire with fire. “You make that abundantly clear when you put in the effort to make sure I come. Repeatedly.”
His gaze burned into mine. Lust sparked hotter between us, growing like a brush fire. Passion coiled within me as my unbearably wet core throbbed.
He didn’t respond. Instead, he about-faced and walked away, taking his heat and mouth-watering scent with him. He started barking orders at his people with cool efficiency. His authority and command couldn’t be rivaled. It wasn’t only his magic, but an obvious natural talent. A love for his pack. I realized that I admired him for it, for the way his people revered him. For the community he fostered and unity he nourished.
I stood alone in the aftermath, suddenly chilled and silently nursing the sting of his dismissal. I was so horribly turned around. Upside-down. Confused. Despite our situation, it felt like he was chipping away at my hatred of him. The more I learned about the alpha and his people, the more I grew to like them. The more I forgot about the precarious situation I was in.
Was this how captives ended up falling for their captors? Would he show me just enough kindness, ply me with orgasms, and slowly sap my will to survive as he delivered me to my doom?
Weston
Tingles fired along my nerve endings as I directed the pack to setup a perimeter and organize the camp. My heart thundered in my chest, trying to hold onto my control. It took all the restraint I could muster to not turn back and make her see that no way in hell was I like Granny. I had repented for the life I’d lived in this kingdom and now paid close attention to the leadership I followed, needing to respect them and trust their morals.
But when it came down to it, she was right, wasn’t she? She hadn’t gotten a say in her fate—not when she was under Granny’s influence, and not now. When she tried to talk to me about her creations, I could only think of the towns and cities I’d seen destroyed, the lives I’d seen lost. Personal lives, of those close to the pack. That she wouldn’t even contemplate any of that being her fault...
I saw red. Every time.
“Well, you wanted her to talk to you. You got what you asked for,” my wolf said accusingly.
I’d tried to re-engage her after our argument, desperate to return to our easy yet poignant conversation where I’d shared parts of my past that I didn’t usually talk about anymore. I’d breathed a sigh of relief when she’d understood my pain, connected to her in that moment in a way I’d never connected with anyone else.
She hadn’t taken the bait. I’d mentioned the various flora we’d passed, pointed out colorful birds, even commented on the cheese she had when we’d stopped to eat and rest. Nothing.
The bitch of it was, I respected the hell out of her stoic silence. No one else would’ve so thoroughly ignored me. She was traveling on my fucking lap, with her fingers tracing the grooves of my sides, chest and stomach, and she didn’t bother with so much as a grunt. It was as infuriating as it was commendable. She had a backbone of steel when she needed to.
I was so fucked. So hopelessly, unbelievably fucked where it concerned her. How could I even pretend at this point? Her light touch had kept me enraptured. My arm around her had never slackened, keeping her close, my cock constantly hard as she jostled on my lap. Occasionally I caught myself rubbing her back with my thumb or resting my lips against her shoulder and breathing in her scent. She must’ve noticed my lapse in control, but she never said anything.
“Of course she noticed,” my wolf said. “Didn’t you hear the part of her many accusations where she accused you of using her body? She probably thought you were making her ride with you so that you could manhandle her.”
“So that I could manhandle her?” I answered in incredulous frustration. “She was the one with her hands on me. She didn’t say a word about that.”
“And she also doesn’t know what’s causing that. You’re keeping important things from her, just like Granny did.”
I gritted my teeth and stopped where I was. Dante halted his approach and quirked his brow as I stared at the ground in frustrated rage.
“She doesn’t know she has an animal, and because of that, she wouldn’t understand true mates. She can’t have access to her animal right now because she’d probably want to shift, and we don’t have time to walk her through it. It’s dangerous to shift without help. She could die. Even if she didn’t, she’d need time to acclimate. Time we don’t have.”
“What if she consented to avoid shifting until we could help her?”
“Then she’d probably try to run and the enemy who escaped today would easily scoop her up. You know all this! You know it as well as I do. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” he spat.
“Only our regard for her has changed,” I said, suddenly exhausted. “The death toll hasn’t. What her products have done hasn’t. We have changed, nothing else.”
And I’d give anything to change back, to shrug off my contradictions and go back to being resolute in the knowledge that performing our duty was just and needed. That we were, in fact, doing the right thing.
“What do you need, Dante?” I asked crisply.
His pitying expression cleared. The pack had been watching, had seen my struggles with this. I half wondered if I’d been lying to Aurelia when I said they trusted me to do my duty. Was that still the case?
Did I trust myself to do my duty?
“We’ve got company.” He shifted and waited for me to do the same.
I hurried out of my clothes and made way for my wolf. His heightened senses surveyed the area as he followed Dante. The dappled sunlight played against the crushed leaves littering the forest floor. Richly textured bark adorned the towering trees around us as my wolf cut between the trunks. Various scents drifted by. The earthy, musty scent of rich, dense soil competed with the stale aroma of an old rodent den. Sage mosses clung to sharp rocks, shining with moisture as they neared what would become a perimeter line.
A familiar scent caused my wolf’s hackles to rise and he burst ahead of Dante. Fresh, as though it had just been laid, was a territory marking announcing the presence of the enemy. This one I recognized as one of the prisoners that had worked her way free earlier that day. Two others I didn’t know, indicating our former prisoner had clearly been joined by a larger pack. They’d followed us.
My wolf sent communication through the pack bond, pushing certain wolves out to the perimeter to relay what they found. He roamed a little farther, catching another marking with one of the same scents and two others. Another, just beyond. They were trying to entice us farther and farther out.
A moment later, my pack members all came back with the same findings. The enemy was trying to draw us out, spreading out our people, leaving gaping holes in which they could push through. A disorganized pack would fall for the bait, recognizing the enemy by the few they knew and going on a chase. With us scattered, the enemy could dart in and grab their prize.
It was as obvious as it was rudimentary. Only untrained or untested alphas would fall for something so obvious.
“How could they think this would work?” I asked as my wolf brought everyone back in and tightened up our defenses. We’d pull the perimeter in a little and cut down the space between sentries. The rest of the pack would cluster in the middle, keeping Aurelia at the center. “We hit their village hard and fast with an excellent strategy. They should know the experience level they are dealing with from that alone.”
“They walked out of our line earlier today and disappeared without a trace. You might’ve been checking on our true mate, but the rest of the pack was on hand. Standing around. Didn’t matter. We didn’t even smell them on the trail as they left their little breadcrumbs for their packmates. They might very well think this would work. Now they know it won’t. An enemy can still learn something from a failed attempt. The question is, what will they do now?”
Those were all good points.
My wolf headed to check in at each new station of the perimeter. We had to ensure there were no holes in the defenses. When he was done, and after a final check to make sure all was well and there were no new markings, he headed toward the supplies. We’d need to organize those in a way that protected the animals and the carts. A raid had the potential to be just as devastating as an attack.
As he did, he said, “When we get back, you are to make good with our true mate. She is hurting. You’ve ripped her life apart. It is your duty to support and help her. Stop pissing her off and chasing her away.”
If only our circumstances didn’t make that so damn difficult.