Chapter 9 #2
“Oh, you are joking!?” Krall lets out a laugh that doesn’t sound all that amused. “This is a temper tantrum because you don’t want to do as you’re told? Don’t want to follow rules like, hm, I don’t know, don’t turn us in to human authorities telling them we’re trafficking you?”
“When you put it that way…” I can’t bring myself to look at him. I stare at the floor and wish I could fall through it.
Krall reaches out, grips my chin, and lifts my head so I am forced to look at him.
“You understand you are in trouble,” he says. “Skor may have mated you, may have used some magical means to bind you, but you can be sure both Thorn and I will be punishing you too. What you did on the train is enough to be very sore for a very long time.”
I look over his shoulder and make eye contact with Thorn. He looks serious and a little grim.
“Are you mad at me?” I address the question to him.
“I know why you’re doing this,” he says. “But you can’t do it. Krall’s right. Humans can’t be involved with us. It’s dangerous. There are so many forces hostile to wolves in this world. That’s why we’re trying to get to Eclipse City. That’s where we will definitely be safe.”
“Okay. Well. I am new to this,” I say. “I never had mates before, and I never really had anyone tell me what to do before either. Back in the mountains, I looked after myself.”
“You don’t look after yourself anymore,” Krall growls. “We do. If you let us.”
“Skor…”
“Yes, I know, he used magic on you. Doesn’t change the fundamental issue, which is you did something very bad back in the train. You betrayed us, and you’re going to be punished for it once we reach Larchford. That’s for us, and for you.”
“Fine,” I say.
“And you won’t have that attitude,” Krall says.
I think I hate them. All they really care about is dominating me and making me submit to them. They’re not listening to how dangerous Skor is, and their need to punish me for the train incident is greater than anything else.
“We’re going to get some rest,” Krall says. “You better not go anywhere, or I swear to every god there is, you will regret it.”
Krall and Thorn get some sleep. Krall sleeps up against the door, and Thorn sleeps under the window. I’m not going to be able to get past either one of them. Instead, I get to sit around and think about what is going to happen to me, and how much trouble I am in.
The sound of an engine rouses them sometime late in the afternoon. I guess I must have fallen asleep too, only because I have the sense of waking up. I have had a very hard few days, and am exhausted.
“Stay here,” Krall says, going outside.
I watch through the door as he approaches Skor, who is getting out of the car.
He’s changed clothes since I last saw him.
He’s no longer dressed like a warrior. Instead he is wearing a white shirt and dark pants.
He’s dressing human. It looks weird. His hair is slicked back from his forehead.
He’s transformed in some way. Like he’s put on an even more fake mask.
The car is interesting to look at. It’s bright red.
Not a color I’d pick to be inconspicuous in the middle of a field.
I saw a few cars in Broken Belly, low-slung wheeled things sort of like trains.
The car is of less attention to me than the fact that as Skor gets out of it, Krall grabs him by the front of his shirt and punches him in the face. Hard.
“Oh, my!” I gasp in delight.
“What?” Thorn asks.
“He just punched Skor,” I say.
“Shit,” Thorn says, joining me at the cracked door.
“You’re not going to go out there?”
“Absolutely not,” he grins. “If they kill each other, I get you all to myself.”
Skor
My head rings from the blow I saw coming, but did nothing to stop. Best to let the old man get his shot in.
“I told you to never, ever do that again,” Krall snarls in my face. “You promised I wouldn’t have to cover for you.”
“There’s only one way to control a magic creature, and that’s with more magic.”
“She said you made her fuck you.”
“We all make her fuck us,” I say. My jaw is throbbing. The taste of blood is in my mouth. It takes all my self-control not to punch him back, but I know that pretending to maintain composure is better. It will make him feel as though he is the one who is out of control.
“Not with magic, Skor. It’s not supposed to be like this. We’re going to Eclipse City. We’re going where there’s technology and money and a royal family we can serve, and…”
I let him give me the rundown again, how he plans for us to all go off to Eclipse and become glorified porters for the royal pack there. He’s forgetting that was never the plan for Thorn or me. Once we got our mates, we had other plans.
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have used magic. She was just so infuriating. I wanted to teach her a lesson after the way she disrespected you, and us back on the train. I was the one with her. She needed to be punished.”
He calms down almost instantly, nodding. “She did,” he says. “And I’m going to make sure I do it too.”
Of course he is. She’s been fucked to within an inch of her life, used for our sexual gratification time and time again, and he’s going to punish her because he has to be the one to do it. It’s not good enough that I railed her.
“Now?” I say. “Or later, when we are in a built-up area?”
He scowls. “Now.”
This is too damn easy.
Tabby
I really thought Skor was going to hit him back, or at least give him some kind of fight. But all he does is say a couple of things and suddenly Krall is spinning on his heel and coming back toward the hut.
I scuttle away from the door as he opens it and comes in, glowering at me.
“I am going to deal with you right now,” he says. “For what happened on the train. We’ll do what needs to be done, put it behind us, and move on, understood?”
I look up into his dangerous, craggy face, and I feel a flush of fear and something else. Excitement? No. It can’t be that. That would be sick.
“Thorn, go cut me some switches,” he says. “There’re willow trees on the embankment.”
Thorn hesitates. “Why?”
“Because I am going to talk to our mate about getting us arrested,” he says.
“You are so weak,” I say.
His eyes narrow. His temper sparks. He crosses over to me swiftly and picks me up under my arms, pressing me back against the wall, my feet not touching the floor.
“What did you say?” He asks the question softly, as if warning me to not dare repeat myself.
“I said you’re weak. You got cucked by Skor, who used magic and you went out and hit him and he sent you right back in here to hit me. Weak.”
He stares me in the eyes and I feel the tension between us.
His raw dominance is an energy that is almost as strong as magic though it is undeniably mundane.
He and I are the most different of all my mates.
Thorn is younger, like me. Skor is magic, like me.
But there is a gulf between Krall and me that I do not think either of us can cross.
It stretches out in the silence where he thought he knew what he was supposed to do with me, but is no longer certain.
“Fuck,” he curses, putting me back down again.
I can’t believe that worked. I stare over his shoulder at Thorn, who shrugs.
Skor opens the door, looking confused. He obviously expected me to be screaming by now as Krall thrashed me and fucked me and did all sorts of terrible things that would make me hate him. There’s a game being played here, and we’re all taking part.
“Ready to go?” he says.
He’s so fucking smooth. When his plan falls apart, he slides away from it like a snake, not taking any ownership of the fact he almost certainly intended to cause chaos again. I want to hate him, but he’s so damn good at being what he is—evil.
“Yes,” Krall says. “You drive. Thorn up front with you. Stay armed, Thorn. Tabby, you ride in the rear with me.”
Krall gets us all into the vehicle, and Skor plays it like he’s not pissed that things aren’t going fucking crazy, and I keep my mouth shut about his magic use because one of the first rules of magic, one I’ve known for a very long time, is that you don’t talk about it.
Skor wants to play in the shadows? Fine.
I’ve been doing battle with dark beasts my entire life.
We drive from the field onto a road, a long lacing band of tarmac that winds through the countryside in a frankly strange and unsettling way. There are goat paths in the mountains, but it is disturbing to see that a whole world can be cut in two by one long line of drivable surface.
I look out the window, trying to gather my thoughts, make my plans.
The mountains are receding even further in the distance, but I am not panicking about it as much as I might have before.
I feel them inside me now. They speak to me.
They whisper to me. They can take me from the mountains, but they cannot take the mountains out of me.
“Open the windows,” Krall suggests. “We need some fresh air.”
Skor does so, making the front windows slide down, and introducing a noisy blowing of air through the vehicle, which is moving at a pace that makes the train seem sedate. Two days ago I would have panicked, but now I understand the world differently.
“What else do you see?” Krall murmurs the question to me. He is speaking at a volume clearly designed to ensure nobody else in the car can hear him. This is a conversation meant just for him and me, a conspiratorial moment that I embrace because fuck Skor.
“What do you mean?”
“You think Skor is manipulating the situation? You have seen him use magic? What else should I know? What else have I missed?”