Chapter 5 #2
“Please open the window.”
He cracks it, which doesn’t help at all. If anything, it stirs up the smells and makes them more pungent somehow by giving them small air currents to drift on. I think about hurling myself through the window, but force myself to be patient. My time will come, and it is not yet.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask the question, not because I care about the answer, but because I want them to think I give a damn. If they know I plan to run away, they will keep a tight watch.
“We’re going to go on the train. We’re going to go to Eclipse City.”
“Why?”
“Because we want you to see the wonders of the world.”
The door opens and shuts behind me. Thorn has come up. He casts a look at Skor that I find interesting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was suspicious about something.
“I don’t want to see the wonders of the world. I want to go…” I pause, stopping myself from saying that I want to go back to the mountain.
I have to pretend I’m interested in their plan. “What’s in the city?”
“So many wonders,” Thorn says, enthusiastic. “If you liked the candy store, imagine a place with a thousand candy stores stretching for hundreds of miles. And they don’t just sell candy. They sell things even better than candy. They sell everything you could imagine.”
“Wow,” I say. “And what else?”
“And there is a royal castle where the king lives with his mate and their two mates.”
“Okay. And what else?”
“So many technological wonders,” he says. “There are machines everywhere, ones that fly and ones that drive. You will never be short of entertainment.”
“And that is where we are going to live?”
“Yes,” Krall says as he too enters the room. “Eclipse City will be where we raise our pups. It is the best place for them. The safest for young wolves. There are many places in this world where our kind is hunted. In Eclipse, we are exalted.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Wolves rule Eclipse.”
“Wow,” I say, hoping I sound suitably impressed and maybe even excited. “I’m hungry.”
“Stew is on,” Krall says.
No sooner does he say that than a human carrying a big tray with a loaf of bread, a hunk of butter, and a big pot of stew that just barely covers the sweaty scent of the man himself appears. I try not to recoil in disgust too visibly.
I am relieved when he leaves the tray in Krall’s hands. Krall carries it across to the table at the corner of the room, and distributes the bowls on the side to each of us.
It’s a really big, very full stew.
“What’s the animal?”
“Cow, I think.”
We don’t have cows in the mountains. We have sheep and goats and hares and such, but cows are too big and need too much grass and water to survive up there.
The meat is juicy and somehow kind of sweet as well.
There are root vegetables and florets of something, and the butter is so buttery and the bread is very bread-y.
It’s delicious. I consume as much of it as I can until my stomach feels sort of taut.
I almost wish I hadn’t eaten so much candy, and that’s a frankly insane thing to wish.
Candy is the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, and I am pretty sure I would do crime to get more.
Having pretended to give a damn about their plans, and pretended to like the stew, I go about pretending to go to sleep.
I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want to be in this room. There are so many smells here from people who stayed here before. It makes me uncomfortable. I bet humans can’t smell the mattress, but I can.
“I am going to sleep on the floor,” I say. “That bed is disgusting. It smells like it’s been full of animals for years.”
“We’ll put a blanket down for you.”
“Please don’t,” I say.
Krall gives me a look, as if I am spoiled or something, but I’m asking to sleep on the floor, so that leaves the bed to him, which he should appreciate.
“Your old bones are getting lucky,” I say.
Thorn squeaks with amusement. Krall glowers at me for a moment.
“True,” he says. “And they need a bath.”
Settling down in this room feels uncomfortable. I have never felt so captive. Last night I did battle against the shades. Tonight, I look at the moon out the window and yearn to do so again. I’d rather be torn into a thousand pieces than sleep here in this stinking little chamber.
I am almost asleep when I am woken by a slight movement near me. I am grateful for it at first, because without it I would lose my opportunity for escape, but when I see it is Skor, I feel my lower belly become immediately tense.
He looks down at me, then crouches next to me.
We are alone, in the sense that the other two are fast asleep, and I feel that crackle of energy between us, stronger now than I felt it on the mountain.
I was distracted then. I’m not now. I can feel him in a way I do not feel the others.
There’s power in him, the same way there’s power in me.
“What are you?” I whisper.
He smirks broadly and handsomely, giving me excited chills.
“Tell me. Are you like me?”
“Quiet,” he rumbles softly. “The others are sleeping, and we should not wake them. They need their rest, and you need what I am about to do to you.”
I lay back and try to be somewhat quiet. I don’t want to wake everyone up and have to deal with Krall’s issues. He’s going to be grumpy. Old man needs his sleep.
He lowers his head between my thighs, hikes up my skirt, and puts his mouth to my pussy. I gasp, but he reaches up a hand to cover my mouth.
“Quiet,” he repeats. “The others are sleeping. Do you need me to gag you?”
“Nu uh,” I whimper back down.
He begins feeding on my pussy, giving me slow, long laps of his tongue and then exploring the swollen folds of my sex before finally letting the very tip of his tongue do slow circles around the hungry little bud at the apex of my thighs.
“Fuck,” I moan to myself. “Oh, my…”
My legs are trembling, and it is so hard to stay silent as he works his wicked magic between my legs.
I thought for certain I would not be able to take another cock tonight.
I thought I was too freshly deflowered, too brutally ravaged, but he is making me crave his cock inside me, even though I know it will hurt.
He rises above me, and I feel the hard diamond of his cock pressing at my lips.
My lower belly clenches with anticipation as I ready myself to be taken again.
There’s fear in my heart, but that fear does not matter because I was made to be bred and used, and I know that in this moment as much as I have ever known anything.
“Shhhhh, baby girl,” he murmurs against my mouth as he sinks inside me, moving slowly at first, spreading me open bit by bit. I am soaked with need, and I know I will be releasing more eggs. He is forcing another ovulation back to back, and there is nothing I can do about it because he owns me.
Skor mates me thoroughly, knotting inside me and making sure his seed has advantage in the dark of night. The others are still asleep as we lie locked together on the floor, my aching sex stretched tight around his thick flesh.
I think I hate him, but more than that, I am afraid of him. Whatever is inside him is dark and wants to be inside me as much as he does.
It withdraws along with him, and leaves me soaked in seed on the floor.
I will carry him back to the mountains, along with whatever is wrong with him.
This time I do not sleep. This time I stay awake and I wait until I hear his breathing along with the others.
Finally, in the true depths of the night, I realize that I am entirely and completely alone in the sense all three of the others are asleep. Krall and Thorn have taken the bed. Skor is lying across the foot of it, too. It’s quite cute, actually.
For a brief, mad moment, I wonder about crawling up there between all of them and just getting comfortable. I can imagine being held and snuggled between three strong male bodies, being at the very center of their worlds.
I push the imagining away almost instantly. That’s a dangerous way to think. That will ensure I never return to the mountain wilds.
I get up and tiptoe to the window, slipping out of it quite easily. We are on the second floor, but there is a ridge running along the first floor to provide a sort of verandah roof. I slide to that, then let myself slip down the gentle curve of the roof, and then drop to the ground.
My instincts are sharp. I can smell the mountains. I should shift immediately and rush to them. I would have done that hours ago, except the wind is also bringing me another scent. The scent of candy. It would not hurt to take a little more before I leave.
I don’t think about the fact that what I am doing is stealing. I don’t want to think about that. There’s no such thing as theft in the mountains, not really anyway. Resources are there for everybody to take as they need.
The candy shop door is closed and locked. That stumps me for a second. Then I walk around the back. There’s another door there, also locked. I try the handle a few times, getting increasingly irritated.
I’m not supposed to do magic things, but I suppose I’m not really supposed to be doing any of this. I am operating outside of rules. My father’s pack law does not apply here, and I do not acknowledge the authority of my so-called mates, nor the humans who inhabit these lower lands.
I tap my knuckles to the door and whisper the word: Knock.
The door swings open obligingly, and I am in the back of the store in an instant, sating my desires with two hands. There is so much to consume. Big bars of chocolate, and even bigger round hard candy on sticks. There are little gummy chews that taste delightfully sour, and…
Click clack.
I hear a metallic sound. I’ve never heard it before, but something tells my deepest instincts not to ignore it.
“Turn around slowly, dearie.”
I do as I am told.