Chapter 47
FORTY-SEVEN
VIVIENNE
“Well, there she is—our Moon Widow,” Harris sneered, as I was dragged out into the Moon Glade by the two Alpha guards. He, like the other males in the Glade, were stripped to the waist. The women were all fully clothed—they wouldn’t be Shifting since only males Weres have wolves.
I noticed that all the males were taking care to stay in the shade of the trees, leaving the middle of the Glade empty.
As long as they stayed out of the direct moonlight, they wouldn’t be forced to Shift.
However, if even one beam of silver full-moon light hit their bare skin, their wolf would come out whether they wanted it to or not.
The moon hadn’t risen yet, so everyone was safe…for now.
The crowd parted and I kept the stained drop cloth wrapped tight around me as I was half pushed/half dragged into the center of the circle that had formed around Harris.
I could feel the eyes of the Pack members on me.
They were staring at me—no doubt wondering what I had done to be treated this way.
Unfortunately, they were about to find out.
“That’s right—bring her up there,” Harris called, making a motion with one hand. “It’s time for everyone to see her shame.”
I felt cold as they dragged me to the middle of the circle they had formed but I felt even worse when I saw that Harris had a huge portable movie screen set up right behind him.
“Now then,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the murmurs and speculation. “I think it’s time everyone knows what our esteemed Moon Widow has been up to these past few weeks.”
“Harris, please,” I said in a low voice. “Please, just let Kor and me go. You can have the pack—hell, you can have Wolverton Manor and all of Carter’s cars if you want. Just let us go free and we’ll never bother you again!”
His face twisted into an ugly sneer.
“Let you go after how you treated me? After that young pup broke my finger in front of the whole fucking town? I don’t think so! And don’t try to bribe me—I’ll get everything I want and more before I’m through with you.”
He turned to someone in the crowd and made a motion.
“Play it!” he said.
It was full dark by then so there was no difficulty in making out what was happening on the screen. I saw, to my horror, that Harris had made a kind of slide show of every single private act Kor and I had done together.
He had pictures of us in bed together…pictures of us on the hiking trails with me on my knees to suck Kor off. There were almost as many pictures—clearly taken through my bedroom window—of Kor going down on me. Plus many, many pictures of us talking and laughing and kissing.
I wanted the ground to swallow me up. It made me sick that our love had been turned into such a tawdry porn show for everyone in the whole town to see. I had never felt such abject shame—I thought I might never recover from it.
Finally, the slide-show ended. Now the eyes on me were no longer curious—they were openly hostile.
“What a slut!” I heard a familiar voice say. I turned my head and saw it was Mrs. Browder, glaring at me. “No wonder he refused my Cynthia-Ann,” she said. “He was screwing the Moon Widow the whole time!”
Then all around me, people began to talk.
“Slut!”
“Whore!”
“Jezebel!”
“Disgusting!”
With every word hurled at me, I felt myself shrinking and growing smaller. But I didn’t want to let them make me feel small and ashamed. My love for Kor and his love for me was a beautiful thing. Just because they’d perverted it didn’t mean I still didn’t love him.
I made an effort to stand straight and hold my chin high. I looked straight ahead, refusing to make eye contact with anyone in the crowd. And I swore to myself if I ever got out of this miserable little town I was never, ever coming back!
“All right, you all saw it!” Harris shouted above the boos and jeers of the crowd. “This filthy slut shamed the memory of our honored Pack Leader! She pretended to be so high and mighty—called herself a ‘Moon Widow’ but all the time she was screwing Carter Jamison’s nephew!”
The boos and jeers got even louder, and someone threw something at me that was wet and smelly. It splattered on the white canvas I had wrapped around my body and left a gooey red stain right in the middle of my chest.
A rotten tomato—that’s what it was, I thought, looking down at it. Would this nightmare never end? I was actually beginning to think I was dreaming again—how else could I be caught in such a horrible, compromising position?
“Enough, enough!” Harris called, raising his hands to quiet the crowd. “Now that we know what a slut, Lady Jamison is, we need to think of a proper punishment.”
“Stone her!” someone in the crowd shouted. “That’s the rightful penalty for adultery!”
“But I didn’t commit adultery!” I cried. “Carter is dead! I never did anything while he was alive.”
“You dishonored his memory!” someone else shouted.
“You befouled the sacred name of Moon Widow,” Harris growled at me. “And you must be punished for it!”
“Fine.” I lifted my chin and glared at him. “Punish me—I don’t care. But leave Kor out of it. None of this is his fault. I…I seduced him. Everything you saw—it’s all on me. He never wanted me until…until I offered myself to him.”
“That’s not true!” The new voice coming from just beyond the crowd made me whip my head around.
It was Kor—he was tied securely with thick ropes and bound in silver chains, which I knew weakened any Were. But he was glaring at the crowd defiantly as the four Alphas tasked with holding him dragged him forward.
“Ah, it’s the pup.” An evil grin spread across Harris Murdoch’s face. “What was that you were saying just a minute ago?” he asked Kor. “When our Moon Widow was admitting that she seduced you?”
“Vivienne never seduced me,” Kor said, glaring at Harris. “I wanted her from the first minute I saw her and there’s a reason why!”
Harris frowned.
“What are you talking about? A reason besides you being a horny young pup?”
“Yes!” Kor said shortly, ignoring the jab. “Many of you know that there was a prophecy that a woman with gold-ringed eyes would give a male of the Jamison line many heirs—that was the reason that Vivienne was sold to my Uncle Carter in the first place.”
“But she failed!” someone shouted. “She never gave him any heirs!”
“Because he was the wrong Jamison!” Kor snapped. “I’ve been reading in his library—researching our genealogy and the lineage of the Jamison line. If you read the prophecy, you’ll see that what the soothsayer actually said was this:
One shall come to meet the lass
Gold ringed eyes shall come to pass
He the younger of the two
Her womb shall quicken for him true
At once the Mate-Bond will attach
Heart-to-heart the two will latch
Many heirs for him she’ll bear
Their love is lasting, true, and fair.”
“So?” Harris glared at him. “So you found a poem in your uncle’s library—who cares?”
“You should, because what it means is that Vivienne was given as a bride to the wrong Jamison,” Kor repeated.
“The prophecy says that a woman with gold-ringed eyes would give many heirs to a younger male of the Jamison Line and that there would be an instant connection between them—a Mate-Bond.” He looked at me, his heart in his eyes.
“I felt that connection the very first time I saw Vivienne’s face.
And I’m younger than her—which my Uncle Carter wasn’t.
He was much older. He was the wrong Jamison.
It wasn’t until I came along that the prophecy could be fulfilled! ”
There were murmurs among the crowd as people considered this new information. I was shocked myself. I knew that Kor had been researching his family tree—could what he said really be true? Had he been waiting to tell me when we had finally gotten away from Blackridge?
But Harris Murdoch’s face didn’t change—in fact, if anything, his expression grew crueler.
“Who cares about a bunch of poetry—it’s all nonsense!” he shouted. “The facts of the matter are that these two have been fucking each other and defiling the memory of our esteemed Pack Leader. And for that, they must be punished!”
A cry went up and someone shouted,
“Stone them!” again.
Then the crowd took up the chant.
“Stone them…stone them…stone them…”
I saw people stooping and picking up rocks from the ground and I felt like I might be sick. I was cold all over and I started to shake. Oh Goddess of the moon, were they really going to kill us?
But apparently, Harris Murdoch had something else in mind.
“Enough!” he shouted at them all. “We’re not going to stone them—I have a better idea! We’re going to make them pay for what they’ve done.”
“This is low, even for you, Harris,” Kor snarled at him. “Tying me up and punishing me just because you know I’ll beat you at the Alpha Challenge.”
“Oh, there’s no Alpha Challenge tonight, pup,” Harris said casually. “There’s no need—the Pack already voted me in as the new Pack Leader.”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” Kor growled.
“As a matter of fact, it is.” Harris made a show of studying his grimy fingernails.
“Because as the new Pack Leader, I get to decide what punishment to give the two of you. And I think I’ve thought up a fitting one that everyone can agree on.
” He turned to me and put one finger under my chin, lifting my face so he could leer at me.
“Just wait until you find out what it is—you’re going to love it. ”
I felt like someone had dumped a whole bucketful of ice cubes into the pit of my stomach.
“Harris, I swear to the Moon Goddess, if you touch me I’m going to puke all over you,” I said in a low voice.
Harris made a face.
“Touch you? Oh, did you think I still wanted to claim you as my Omega now that I’m the Pack Leader?”
“I…you said…” I shook my head, confused.
“You’re used goods, Moon Widow,” he snarled at me. “After everything I saw you do with that pup, I wouldn’t stick my dick in you if you were the last cunt on Earth!”
I recoiled from his savagery and Kor surged forward, his face a mask of fury.
“Let her go! Don’t touch her!” he shouted. “I swear by the Moon Goddess herself if you hurt her, I’ll kill you!”
“Oh, I’m not going to hurt her.” Harris raised both grubby palms in a “hands off” gesture and took a step back from me. Then he turned his leering grin on Kor. “You’re the one who’s going to do that.”