Three
“You are going to die in here, Micha,”
the Boss of the Death Hunt purrs. I’m standing inside an old cafeteria with fourteen men facing me while he stands behind the closed door behind me. A small open window at the top of it allows him to talk freely.
“But first I’m going to breed you. You will be raped until your body is broken and torn, until your vagina is ripped to your ass, and you are down on your knees, begging me to forgive you for being a Shadow whore.”
“I will never beg,”
I say as I scan for a weapon. But there is nothing in here except worn, grubby tables and benches too big for me to wield. Perhaps there is something behind the glass counter at the back, but I’ll never get there before the men grab me.
“Oh, you will.”
He chuckles. “Maybe not today… Maybe not tomorrow or the week after. Maybe not even this year or the next…”
My blood runs cold at his promise of time. I try to tell myself Varius will save me before then, that he’ll burn the world down to get me back, but he can’t feel the blood bond. He has no idea where I am. Antonio brought me here via a teleportation circle. We could be anywhere in the world if his witch is good enough.
“Eventually,”
Antonio says, “you’ll scream for me to kill you. But for now… I just want to hear you scream.”
On that signal, the men rush forward.
They move jerkily, their legs twisting at awkward angles. Their hips clicking in ways they are not supposed to. One moves almost sideways, his bent torso speaking of a spine that isn’t right. Isn’t human.
They leap onto the tables and scramble towards me on their hands and knees, crawling and jumping from one table to the next. They move like spiders, like centipedes, like all the creepy crawlers I was terrified of as a kid.
Realizing they’ve been experimented on, treated like lab rats without mercy, I take a step back in horror.
They’re his own men… His own Family…
So what the hel is he going to do to me?
The one in front looks at me with the eyes of a sadist. They are nothing but dark-violet pits of promised pain, like he needs to hurt something to stop his own agony. And the only thing he can hurt in this prison is me.
My heart jolts, but I don’t follow it. I stand my ground and curl my fists. I raise both my arms, ready to fight for my life as he barrels towards me.
Antonio’s laughter increases behind me, and my stomach churns, then hardens.
Then drops like a fucking stone.
Because I know why he’s laughing, and I’m trying not to let it infect me.
But the fourteen men in front of me aren’t just men.
They’re werewolves.
And I’m nothing but a witch without magic, with zero hope of fighting them all off.
“You’ll want to take this,”
Antonio says lightheartedly. A second later, a small vial of pink liquid flies past me, tossed through the window of the locked door behind me. I don’t turn my head to watch it. I don’t even glance at it with my eyes. And I sure as hel don’t move to catch it even though I know it will save me from so much pain because what he’s tossed me is a V, a succubus drug that’ll alter the size of my vagina so I can take their monster cocks without damage.
But fuck Antonio and his goals.
Fuck taking a potion that’ll allow me to be bred without dying – their werewolf cocks too big to fit without killing me.
He ate my baby in front of me, and I will die before I give him another to eat.
Not that he’ll let me die. Not today. Not before I’m bred.
I will merely be brutalized until I’m at death’s door. Their cocks will rip apart my vagina, their thrusts will bludgeon my organs, and their weight will snap my spine as they lie on top of me while their heavy hands break my arms and legs as they pin me down.
My life will fade from internal bleeding or maybe from choking. Then I’ll be healed, the potion will be forced down my throat, and I will be thrown back in here for round two.
I’m not naive enough to think my defiance will make any difference to being gang-raped, that I can change anything by fighting back, but fuck. Antonio. Up. His. Arrogant. Ass.
So I let the vial hit the vinyl floor just in front of me. It bounces, then skids under the table Sadist has just reached. The darkness in his violet eyes ignites, and he lunges for me while still in his human form.
Grabbing his arms as he reaches for me, I pull him with me. I fall backwards into a roll. Hitting the floor, I kick him hard in the chest, using the momentum to throw him over my head. He crashes into the locked door behind me, but he doesn’t cry out in pain. Doesn’t make any sounds at all. Jumping to my feet, I dash forward, meeting the other men head-on.
My focus sharpens on two of them: one with a dozen scars across his face and shaggy black hair, the other with white skin and blond hair cropped short. They are on the floor, and they’re howling in agony, their bones snapping, their skin tearing as they shift into their werewolf forms.
This is the only time they’re vulnerable.
I dart between the tables. The men are only a few yards in front of me. Scar’s head snaps up on a growl as he drags himself onto his hands and knees. Agony brightens his blue eyes as black fur sprouts all over his body, but I know he can’t fight back. Not while his nerves are breaking off and reconnecting, while his tendons, muscles, and ligaments are being ripped away from bone. The shift of a wolf is a brutal experience, a curse from the gods over an ancient sin.
But for me, it’s a chance to grab a weapon.
A chance to possibly buy myself enough time for Varius to save me.
Jumping sideways into the air, my eyes focused on the bone sticking out of Scar’s left shoulder, I kick off a nearby table. Cartwheeling over him, I wrap my fingers under the head of it and grip tight.
Crack!
His flesh rips. His tendons tear completely. And I land on the bench opposite with his bloody humerus in my hand. As he howls with venomous rage, I spin around and slam the middle of the bone onto the edge of the table. My weapon splinters in two just as a man lunges at me from across the table.
Dropping into the splits, I press my forehead to my knee. The newcomer flies over me and crashes into the howling wolf behind me. I roll beneath the table, tucking my legs to end up in a crouch, then scramble out the other side.
Another man stands a few strides away, frozen in shock. The fucker clearly isn’t used to his prey fighting back. I’m up and on him before his eyes have even finished widening, stabbing both of the bones into the sides of his neck. The jagged edges cut deep. He gurgles as I rip them free. Bright red streams spray out in two high-pressured fountains, his carotid arteries severed.
I slash the bones across his neck as he drops to his knees, and his head tilts back. The flesh gapes open, the muscles no longer intact enough to hold it. I turn towards Scar and the blond man beside him, hoping to kill them before they can finish their change.
Jumping, I roll across the table I ducked under earlier, knee Scar in the face as he tries to stand, then throw one of my ‘knives’ like a spear at Blondie’s face. He can’t move out of the way, and it slices through his eye and into his brain. As he drops dead, I grab a bone sticking out of Scar’s leg and yank as hard as I can.
He screams, but the bone doesn’t rip free this time. A blur on my right forces me to leave it as I turn to meet my newest attacker. I dodge his wild swings but only barely, his twisted body making it hard for me to predict where his fists will land.
Another man appears in the row beside us, ready to climb over the table and help his mate. I kick the bench hard and slide the whole fucking thing into him. It does nothing to hurt him, but it trips him up and buys me enough time to deal with my first attacker.
Ducking beneath his arms, I stab him rapidly with my bone-knife. I’m not aiming for a specific spot, not trying to drop him with one nicely timed strike. I’m stabbing hard and fast, hitting anywhere I can get, and letting his blood pour out like a flipped hourglass.
A blare of warning erupts across the hairs on the back of my neck. I can feel another attacker rushing towards me, but before I can twist around, Hourglass punches me in the face with a meaty fist. My head snaps to the left as I’m tackled forward. I stab the hairy arms wrapped around my torso, but the moment he releases me, a punch from a third man rattles my brain. I stagger into a table as I try to shake the stars free, but someone grabs me by the back of the neck, lifts me high into the air, and then slams me face-first onto the floor.
The air rushes out of my lungs. My teeth feel like they’ve been embedded into my skull or perhaps down my throat, choking me, and my brain feels like it’s exploded behind my eyes. My weapon is wrenched out of my hand. I’m vaguely aware of being lifted, turned around, and my back slammed onto a table. My legs dangle over the edge. And then I’m gasping, my eyes shooting open wide as both my makeshift knives are plunged through both my wrists.
I clench my jaw, refusing to cry out in pain, refusing to show any weakness to these assholes. But tears burn behind my eyes, and screams rail at the cage inside my chest with the knowledge of what’s about to happen. I turn my head to my left to find Sadist peering down at me, one hand on the bone he just stabbed into my arm.
My heart rate kicks up at the cruel, twisted promise in his violet eyes.
Releasing the bone, he rounds the table to my feet. I kick out at him as he approaches, but he just grabs my knees and forces my legs apart. He steps between them as the other men crowd around us.
Terror flashes through me, but I’m trying so hard to fight it, to stop it from freezing me where I lay.
“I’m not going to shift when I fuck you,”
Sadist says. “I’m going to drag this out for hours.” He leans down and licks his way up my throat. When he gets to my cheek, I jerk my head towards him. My teeth chomp down around his tongue like it’s a steak. The taste of copper explodes in my mouth as he jerks back, but I know I have only managed to bite off the tip; the piece of severed flesh is small enough for me to swallow.
He sneers down at me. A crazy smile spreads across his lips. Blood pours down his chin as he sticks his mutilated tongue out. “Good. You swallow like a whore,”
he says, his words only slightly slurred.
Straightening, Sadist moves his attention to my legs. He has his hands still on my knees, pinning them to the edge of the table. I can’t kick out at him. Can’t defend myself.
My heart rate starts going wild.
He looks at me with a smirk, imagining no doubt how he’s about to have me.
My body starts to shake, and I can’t stop it.
Can’t stop the terror.
The disgust.
The shame.
He’s going to rape me, defile me, dirty me.
And I can’t stop him.
He trails his hands up from my knees to my hips, then down to my ass. He squeezes me as he presses his hard cock against my pussy.
I’ve never felt more helpless.
More afraid.
There’s a difference between being raped and fighting for your life.
A knife against your skin is a clear attack, and it tells you that death is the darkest outcome. We can’t fight off death, so we don’t blame ourselves when it comes.
But a cock…
A cock makes you feel like you did something wrong, like you made the wrong choice, trusted the wrong person, walked home the wrong way.
A cock makes you feel dirty and dehumanized. It tells you there is something coming that’s worse than death.
A thousand thoughts ram into me – if I should’ve tried to stab the guy who tackled me in the face rather than in his arms, if I should’ve dodged left instead of right, if I should have turned the knives on myself and left them with only a corpse to rape.
Or maybe I should’ve made a better decision all the way back in the Shadow home. When I should’ve screamed for Sau. When I should’ve hid in the basement with my little sister and cowered with the others. Or maybe I should have run after Varius tortured me so badly I lost my magic. Or perhaps when I first learned I was to be sold to him...
How many bad decisions did I make to get here?
How many different choices could have saved me?
How many –
Don’t!
I grit my teeth.
Force those thoughts down.
Pulling on my training as an assassin, I keep my mind sharp, keep it above the fear and shame wanting to drag me beneath the waves.
You are a Black, I remind myself.
And a fucking Shadow.
And if I can get them to hurt me badly enough, Antonio might step in to save my precious womb.
So I close my eyes briefly and breathe out.
He won’t let me die today.
As Sadist grabs my shirt and starts ripping it in half, I snap my eyes open. Determined and prepared for the pain, I rip my right arm up as fast and as hard as I can. It shoots up a couple of inches, agony flaying all the nerves in my wrist. I slide up the bone-knife pinning me to the table, but then my flesh slams into the head of the bone, and I scream as the pain increases.
There is a brief second of resistance as my momentum meets the weight of the embedded knife. Sadist’s head snaps towards my arm, watching it move with a mixture of both shock and lust.
And then the bone is being ripped out of the table. My arm is flying free. Arcing through the air, in front of Sadist’s face. He sneers down at me, but then his eyes widen as I wrap my ankles around the back of his neck and yank his head towards me. I swing my arm back the way it came, and the sharp slice of the bone still sticking out of me stabs him in the cheek.
With a wet slurp, it explodes out the other side.
He screams, and I kick him off me. I twist towards my left, hoping to get my other arm free. But the fingers on my right hand won’t move, the tendons severed, and too many hands are already reaching for me, grabbing me in vice-like grips and yanking me back down.
The bone-knives are ripped from my arms and tossed aside, replaced by heavy palms I can’t use as weapons. More men grab my thrashing feet, and although I get a good few kicks in, they eventually wrestle me down. They yank my legs apart, and Scar steps between them in his werewolf form, one arm hanging loose, no bone to give it shape.
But before he can touch me, he’s shoved aside by Sadist as he regains his composure, the promise in his violet eyes burning bright.
My pulse skitters wildly in my throat, but I meet his gaze without cowering. His eyes drop to my exposed chest as blood pours from his mouth.
“Tourniquet her wounds,”
he snaps, his words escaping through the two holes in his cheeks. “We don’t want her bleeding out and getting off that easy, now do we boys?”
There are harsh grunts and snarls of agreement. Then my arms are wrapped, the pressure applied, and a weight settles on my chest, making it hard to breathe.
For there is a difference in fighting for your life…
It isn’t as dirty as being raped.