Chapter 4
Krall
Morning comes, and I have never been so grateful to see daylight creeping over the horizon. It comes from the plains, sending beautiful rays spearing into the crevices of the mountains, and I feel its cleansing influence in my fucking soul.
That was the longest night of my life.
Tabby stayed awake for the duration. Only as the sun rises does she allow her heavy lids to close.
She is brave, she is protective, and I know we have done nothing to deserve her loyalty, but I am glad she gave it to us nonetheless because I have no doubt we would have perished otherwise.
“Get some sleep, baby,” I murmur, drawing her into my arms. She doesn’t resist, though I know she is not my biggest fan.
What kept us together in the dark night was nothing like love, or even lust. I feel as though she kept watch over the three of us the way a she-wolf might do over three strange cubs that were not hers.
She took pity on us, in other words, and we owe our lives to that pity.
Thorn is fast asleep already. I do not think he became brave in the night, I think he was exhausted by the possession and the paralysis and took refuge in sleep to stop seeing what he could not handle seeing.
Skor is quiet by my side. He is alert still, and I see his eyes slide over Tabby as she curls up in my lap and lets the morning rays warm her back.
It is a matter of seconds before she is snoring softly in my arms.
I did not want a young mate. I certainly did not want a witch, and yet here I am, tenderly cradling someone who is both those things, and who can only possibly represent trouble for me and my brothers for a long time to come.
Tabby is not a civilized thing. She is a wild creature raised in a wild place.
Those shades and shadows, evil things that crawled and hungered and hunted us—none of them seemed to frighten her.
She was at home around them and among them.
She spoke to them as if they were friends, or even family.
This place has dark tendrils, and they run through her.
Skor says nothing, but I feel the expectation in his gaze as he looks to me for the plan.
“We will rest long enough to eat,” I tell him. “And then we are getting her out of here.”
He nods, a quick, sharp snap of his head that indicates total agreement.
Tabby
I wake up to the feeling of being rocked.
At first I don’t know what the hell is happening.
I can’t seem to move my limbs. They are pressed tight to my body.
The motion is constant, and quite soothing, but very disorienting.
When I open my eyes, I see the landscape dancing in front of me, bouncing up and down in a repetitive rhythm.
I realize after a few very confusing seconds that I am being carried down the mountain.
In fact, I am so far down that we are now on shallow slopes that I don’t think I have ever set foot on in my life.
Their flatness invites a great many plants and things to root and blossom, so there are flowers around us when I open my eyes.
A cacophony of orange and purple greets me, along with the buzzing of bees that travel between the blooms, working industriously at their cores.
It’s quite a fascinating sight, and for a few long seconds I am distracted by watching a new strange world unfold around me.
Then I realize my own predicament a little more clearly.
I have been wrapped in a blanket, effectively swaddled, and tied to my mate.
Krall has me snugged against his back, my head on his left shoulder.
I draw in his scent with every breath. There’s rough musk and a sort of piquant tang that makes my pussy tingle.
Attraction to males is a thing that does not require any coherent or conscious thought.
In fact, it might even run contrary to good sense.
“She’s awake,” Thorn says.
“She is,” I agree.
“Good,” Krall grunts, not stopping for a second in his relentless pursuit of the flatlands.
I can see them over his shoulder, grassy plains that stretch on for miles at the edge of the desert we have yet to cross.
I wonder what grass will feel like on my paws. It looks soft from this great distance.
“Can I get down, please?”
Krall ignores me. I feel a pang of irritation. This man makes everything difficult. He adds resistance to absolutely every moment, entirely unnecessarily. He could just do what I am asking. It would not take a moment.
“Hey,” I say. “Lemme down. I need to pee.”
That last part is enough to get him to act right away.
He loosens the blanket ties and lets me slide down his tall body all the way to the ground below. My feet touch the scree and I know instantly I am already quite far from my home territory.
I follow instinct like a flash. I turn and I run as hard and as fast as I can back up the mountain. I do not want to be taken from the lands I know. There are ties they are trying to sever, and I will not allow it.
“Get her!”
Three powerful males are immediately on my tail.
Krall is too large and too fatigued from carrying me to effectively give chase, and Skor seems to have the bulk of the equipment, which takes him a moment to shed.
If it was just the two of them, I might actually be able to get away.
But there is a third mate, a younger, faster, more predatory creature and it is he who overhauls me and brings me down in the dusty pebbles of the lower slopes.
“Let me go!” I scream at the top of my lungs. There is no point trying to maintain dignity. They’re not going to allow me any. They are abducting me from my home.
“I’m sorry,” Thorn says as he holds me down. “I’m sorry.”
“I saved your life and this is what you do to me?” I weep and my tears find the dust, turning it into the very smallest pools of mud.
“I know,” he says. “And I am sorry, but I really can’t let you go.”
The others have caught up by now, big lumbering beasts that they are.
Skor snatches me up and holds me in front of his burningly intense blue eyes rimmed by dark lashes.
“Do not run from us, please,” he says. I expected him to be harsher, but he modulates his tone a little. “It’s dangerous, and we are eager to leave these lands.”
“I’m not eager to leave. That wasn’t the deal. That was never the deal. You are supposed to get to mate me for one night. Not take me away.”
“We are not going to leave you up there, to a place where all are consumed sooner or later,” Skor says. “We’re going to take you to civilization. We’re going to show you what life can really be like. You’re going to be very happy.”
“Where are we going?”
“It will take some time, because we are far from transport. But once we find it, we will be taking you to Eclipse City. It is the biggest shifter-led city in the continent. It has a wolf king. You will see the world through entirely new eyes there, trust me.”
But I don’t trust him. I may not be worldly. I may not have seen cities of wonders and kings who are wolves, but I know that when a man with this look in his eyes tells me to trust him, trusting him is the absolute very last thing I should ever do.
I feel the tug of my ancestral home pulling at me.
I am being commanded to return. I have to go back.
I have to. I feel panic rising in me at the prospect of being taken even farther away.
I quell it a little by telling myself I will escape these mates soon enough.
They will sleep tonight, and I will give them no reason not to trust me.
I will let them think I have submitted to them, and when I have a chance I will run all the way back home.
They will not dare follow me into another long night of darkness.
“You’ve been mated,” Skor says. “You belong to us now. It is really that simple.”
“You didn’t mate me,” I snap back. “You put your rod in the wrong hole and…” I trail off, blushing at my own coarseness.
Skor throws back his head and roars in laughter.
“Do you need a dose of my seed in your pussy? Would that help make the journey more pleasant?”
“Shut up,” I sulk. I do not like the feeling of being mocked, especially sexually.
“Don’t tease her,” Thorn chimes in. “She’s homesick. We know what that feels like.”
I feel a little pang of gratitude toward him, but it disappears when I remember he could have let me go.
He could have pretended that I ran too fast. He could have tripped or stumbled.
I could have been free now, making my way back up to the place I belong.
But he didn’t do any of those things. He caught me and he handed me back into captivity, and for that reason I cannot trust him or risk liking him for even a moment.
“It’s time to go,” Krall says, taking my hand in his.
He sets off down the hill again, and I am forced to follow him like a recalcitrant child.
I try to pull back, to get away, but his grip is firm and unyielding, and even picking my feet up entirely and just sliding across the rough ground is not enough to dissuade him. He just lets me drag.
“We do not respond well to temper tantrums,” he says. “So behave yourself or you will have skinned knees and road rash.”
“What’s road rash?”
“When you fall off a bike or something on a road and you get dragged and bits of you come off. It’s pretty bad,” Thorn says helpfully.
It sounds awful. I wonder how many other terrible things await me in a place where there are roads to worry about.
“Keep up,” Krall says, giving me a tug. “We’re going to make it to Last Stop before nightfall.”
“What’s Last Stop?”
“It’s a town at the end of the railway. It’s the last stop for most goods, deliveries, and everything else. Intrepid explorers use it as a kind of jumping off point to the proper wilds, and there’s a bar and a hotel, and a church, and a candy store.”