Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
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Savages
By
Loki Renard
Copyright © 2018 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard
Copyright © 2018 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher.
Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.
www.StormyNightPublications.com
Renard, Loki
Savages
Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson
Images by Period Images, iStock/Lorado, 123RF/Mauro Rodrigues,
and 123RF/Andrew Poplavsky
This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual
activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for
adults.
Chapter One
An innocent wandering in the woods, I am unaware of the
danger I am in. Pale eyes flash through the undergrowth, but I
don’t feel the predator’s gaze until it is too late. Powerful muscles
propel hunters toward me. These are real men, men who live by wit
and brawn. These are the savages of the wilds and soon they will
be upon me. I will be theirs and there is nothing I can do to stop
them, even if I wanted to.
“Riley, have you taken your medicine?” The question is
shouted through our apartment, a tiny little box set among a
thousand other tiny little boxes in a tower in the middle of the city.
What city? Maybe we knew once. Doesn’t really matter anymore.
Names are for when there’s more than one of a thing, and there’s
only one city left.
“Yes, Mama,” I shriek back dutifully.
The answer is actually no. I haven’t taken my medicine, and
it’s not medicine. It’s sedatives. Because I am a bad girl, and bad
girls must be kept quiet.
“Where are you?” Her voice floats to me through the wall. I
roll my eyes at the question. There are only two rooms in this
apartment. How many places could I possibly be?
She comes bustling into the room and sighs when she finds
me at the window. She doesn’t like the way I sit there and read and
look out to the few hints of green I can spot behind the high rise of
the walls—the canopy of the wilds.
“You could stand to lose some weight, Riley. You should
get back on the treadmill and stop reading all those books. They’re
bad for you. Who reads anymore, honestly.” Her exasperation is
real. And she’s right. Almost nobody reads anymore. We watch
everything. It’s easier. The only reason I can read is because my
dad taught me a long time ago and I never lost the skill.
I’m not fat. I’m just not four anymore. I could lose all the
weight in the world and it wouldn’t make me her little girl again.
I’ve committed the biggest sin I ever could have perpetrated in my
mother’s eyes—I’ve grown up.
“I don’t think you have taken your medication,” she says,
unhappy. “You’re reading. You never read when you’re on your
medication. You watch the shows like a normal girl.”
I sigh and swing my legs off the window seat. “You want
me to watch a show, Mama?”
“Yes, good girl,” she smiles. “And you can have another
dose of your pills too. You always feel better when you take your
medication.”
They think I’m excitable because I keep wanting to leave
the house. That’s considered pretty damn weird by city dweller
standards. ‘Outside’ is practically a curse word here. When I was
younger, I kept trying to go out and explore. My dad thought it was
great. My mom, not so much. The moment he was gone, she took
me to the doctor and got me on my medication.
The sedatives are designed to keep me calm throughout the
day. They work most of the time, until I stop taking them, and then
I get the old urges again. The same desire I’ve had since I was a
little girl and my father told me all about the world beyond the city
walls.
He used to lead small expeditions out into the wilds, just a
few miles outside the walls. They used to be popular. Rich city folk
would pay him lots of money to take them into the wilds and they
would return with exciting stories to be told over and over again at
all the best parties.
My mother would become hysterical back then, insisting
that he was filling my head with dangerous nonsense. In the end,
their conflict was resolved when he led a small expedition that
didn’t come back. There was no search. He was just… gone.
The tours dried up then, we had no money saved and we
ended up here, in cramped social housing. I hate it, but it has room
for a treadmill and a wall screen, so that’s all we need.
But it’s not all I need. I’ve known for a long time that I need
to see the wilds where my father was lost for myself. I need to
leave the city. And I’m going to. Now. Right. Fucking. Now.
I don’t know what it is about today in particular that makes
everything come to a head. Maybe it’s because my nineteenth
birthday was last week, and I’ve been remembering how excited
I’d been when I turned eighteen. Finally I was an adult. I was going
to live my life… except I haven’t lived anything here in my
mother’s apartment. My world hasn’t changed one bit since I
became an adult. I can’t even move and get my own place. There
are no more places. This apartment will become mine when my
mother passes on, a long time from now. Then these eight walls
will become mine until I follow her.
I find that depressing.
The city beyond our door doesn’t hold much interest for me
anymore. I have been in every single part of it a thousand times
over. It is only twenty-five square miles in total, and no matter how
high you build, that’s still an area you can walk around multiple
times a day.
Some people get circling sickness, where they can’t help
but pace the wall over and over again. We’re trapped in here, but
only because we choose to be. The wilds are right there, and
anyone can go into them if they please. It’s just we don’t, because
people who go into the wilds don’t come back.
I don’t own many things. There’s not room for them, but I
do own a little pack. It’s pink and it’s small, because my father
bought it for me when I was small. The straps are extendable
though, and it’s big enough to hold a few supplies. Water, some
cookies. Stuff like that. I can’t remember everything he told me
about preparing for an expedition, but I know water is a big one.
“Riley? What are you doing?” My mother stands next to
me, wringing her hands as I put stuff in my bag. I think she already
knows. I don’t like upsetting her, but it’s starting to occur to me
that she doesn’t really care so much about upsetting me.
“I’m going to go for a walk in the woods.”
“Riley, no.” Her eyes fill with tears. “Take your medication.
You’ll feel better once you have the pills.”
“I’ll be back soon, Mama. It’s not dangerous just outside
the walls. There’s city patrols there sometimes anyway. You have
to go way out to run into trouble. And I won’t do that.”
“That’s what your father said. There are savages out there,
Riley. Dangerous men. They will ravage you and kill you!”
Her warnings would have held more weight if she hadn’t
been predicting that I’d be ravaged and killed by practically
everything I’ve ever encountered in my life. I wanted a kitten,
once. She said it would climb onto my face and murder me in my
sleep by suffocating me with its fur.
She is fearful of everything, and for a long time, I was too. I
have wasted so much of my life already worrying about things that
never went wrong. Maybe there are people in the wilds. I hope
there are. My father is out there too, somewhere. My mother says
he’s dead, but I bet he isn’t. He wasn’t the kind of man to die.
“I’m going to call the doctor!”
While she does that, I leave the house. The doctor isn’t
going to do anything. Nor are the police. There’s nothing illegal
about leaving the city. The place is overcrowded as it is. Nobody
minds jettisoning a few unproductive people to the wild every now
and then.
She’ll settle down when she sees that I’m back. I’m just
going to go for a little walk, give myself a taste of what I’ve been
yearning for all these years. If I don’t do it now, then when will I
do it?
The city has several gates to the wilds. The nearest one is
about a twenty-minute walk from my apartment block. The
buildings rise so high around me that it’s hard to get much sun
when it’s not directly overhead, so the morning light is struggling
to reach the ground.
With every step, I get a little more nervous and a little more
excited. Nobody does this. Nobody. I’m going to probably be the
first to leave in months, if not years.
The gate is really just a reinforced door. It’s underwhelming
in its construction, and if it were anywhere else besides standing in
this great wall, it would be entirely unremarkable.
Just looking at it gives me a rush of pure adrenaline. This is
the door my father likely went through nine years ago. I am
literally following in his footsteps now.
The gate is manned, of course. A small booth contains a
guard watching the stories on a small screen. He doesn’t even
notice I’m there until I knock politely.
“Hello?”
“Ungh?” he grunts, not taking his eyes from the screen.
“Excuse me, I’d like to go out.”
“Out?” The guard’s brows rise as he tears his gaze away
from the latest story. “Are you sure?”
“Very.”
“Where is your escort?”
“I’m not taking one.”
“How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Old enough to go out,” I say, reminding him that
he legally can’t stop me.
“This is not recommended,” he says with a sigh. “There has
been a standing travel warning against leaving the city for the past
decade. If you find yourself in a dangerous situation out there, city
resources will not be deployed. It is entirely the responsibility of
the person leaving the city to assure their survival. Quarantine will
be required upon return.”
He sounds like he’s reading off a script, because he is.
There’s documentation for everything.
“Present your ID.”
I hand my ID card to him. He nods and puts it on his desk.
“You’re not going to give that back?”
“We’ll add it to the records of the missing.”
“I’m not going missing. I’m going for a walk.”
“Uh huh.” His eyes are already back on the screen. “That
door will be open for another thirty seconds. There’s an airlock and
then another door. You need to clear both in under a minute before
they automatically lock again.”
“And how do I get back in?”
He twists his lips. “Knock.”
There’s a buzzing sound and the door in front of me slides
open. Like he said, there’s another one behind it. I step forward
into the chamber, and I prepare myself to leave the city.
The first door closes… the second opens. Finally, I see.
Chapter Two
For the first time in my life, I am beyond the walls that have
contained me. The wilds stretch out before me, low scrubby bushes
and short grass that quickly rise into climaxed forest a few dozen
feet away. I let out a laugh of freedom and run toward the wilds.
The feeling is incredible. It is as though I have left a place
where I could never truly move at all, and found one where there is
more space than I know what to do with. Is this how it was for my
father? I can only imagine so.
He must have felt so smothered and constricted. He must
have felt hemmed in by these walls that seem to get closer and
closer together every year, and he must have felt pure relief when
he was released out here into this great space.
The city is behind me. I don’t even bother to turn to look at
it. I have looked at nothing else for nineteen years. Now I will see
the world of the wild. Now my eyes will only fall on that which is
new and alive.
I rush into the embrace of the unknown. Instantly, forest
surrounds me, cool breeze playing through the trees. I can’t believe
more people don’t want to come out here and experience this.
Everything in the city is so crowded. Out here, there is space upon
space. A butterfly flits past, sunlight reflecting from dancing wings.
When I am tired of dashing through the trees, I sit down and
stare at the world around me, feel how simple it is, and yet how
complex. Everything is alive out here. In the city most things are
dead. Concrete and wood walls. Carpets. Tile. It’s all dead. But out
here everything is alive. Even the dirt beneath my feet. I can see
ants crawling through it.
My phone has been blinking with messages since I left the
house. Suddenly, I feel its silence. The absence of vibration against
my thigh. I take it out and look at the message on the screen.
Out of service
It’s weird. This thing has all the knowledge of the world on
it. I can contact anybody I know. It’s made of metal and earth
elements that have been forced to think on my behalf—but
suddenly it’s no more useful than any other rock. I turn it off to
preserve the battery. I’m not sure how far I’ve come, but I’m pretty
sure I know the way back.
The wilderness draws me deeper. I’m not sure who has cut
this path and worn the bushes and grass away from it, but it winds
through the prettiest places. I find a little pond where frogs frolic,
and a clearing where mushrooms grow. I am vaguely aware of time
passing, but it’s not like the city, where every minute is counted
and hoarded. Out here, time passes in a sort of languid stroll. I feel
as though I have all the time in the world as my feet carry me,
fascination fueling my discoveries. Hours go by and I barely notice
them. But soon the world itself tells me it is time to return. The
light is starting to fade. The bright colors are dimming into their
shadow forms.
It should be easy enough to get back to the city. I can follow
the path I came down. I do so, for a while, but as I walk I begin to
notice that the path forks here and there and I do not know which
of the forks I took in the beginning. I felt as though I knew my
way, but now I’m not entirely sure. Perhaps I should climb a tree.
If I do that, I can see the city walls and head in the correct
direction.
The trees tower above, many times my height. Their lowest
branches are far over my head, and their trunks are too wide to try
to shimmy up. I walk around looking for a tree with a more
convenient configuration, but I have little success. The trees that
are short enough to be climbable don’t offer any kind of a view.
Perhaps if I climb one of the shorter ones, I can wriggle my way
onto a taller one.
I’ve not had to contemplate these types of problems before.
I’m enjoying the challenge. I will have a real story to post online
when I return. The entire city will hear about this!
Just as I am looking for a tree to try to climb, the ground
starts to rumble beneath my feet. I feel the sound before I hear it, a
deep growl that seems to come from the very core of everything.
I’ve never heard anything like it in my life, but there’s a part of my
being, the part knitted in the many thousands of years before there
were cities, that knows to be afraid.
I turn around to find myself near face to face with a bear.
The animal is only a few feet away. I recognize it from the
books my father used to show me. He used to point at the pictures
and I would point at his heart and we would both laugh.
This bear is nothing like the books. They entirely failed to
convey the monstrous size of such a creature. It is so much larger
than I am. The city has always made me feel small, but now I feel
small in an entirely different way. I am a morsel of meat, with
nothing to defend myself. This bear is a machine of meat and bone,
made to kill with sharp claws and flashing teeth. What am I to this
thing that reeks of rotting berries and death?
Maybe I should back away, or run. I stop and I stare. It’s
not a choice. It’s just what my body does. My mind has fled.
There’s no rationality anymore. There’s just me and this
manifestation of the worst of the wilds.
The bear’s head is larger than my entire torso. It could bite
me in two without trouble. I know I am being menaced by a
creature of flesh and blood but it is so out of my realm of
experience, all I see is a monster of mythical proportions.
Its dark shining eyes meet mine. I feel its anger. It is furious
with me. I don’t belong here. I have gone where I should not have
gone. I have done what I should not have done, and the punishment
is death. A thought forces its way into my head: Mom was right.
The bear roars, its mouth opening so wide I feel as though I
could fit inside in one bite. Its teeth are long and yellow, great
scimitars of bone. The canines are like a cat’s except a thousand
times larger. This is no domesticated creature. This is the kind of
animal we have been fleeing from since the dawn of my species. I
stand as humans have stood before predators for thousands of years
—frozen. I can’t move. My feet are stuck to the ground as it runs
toward me, four paws pounding the ground that shakes beneath me.
The world is trembling and I tremble with it.
Finally, my body sounds the alarm. I scream. It is a pathetic
sound lost in the bear’s charge.
Heavy flesh strikes me from the side, sends me flying. I
expect to feel claws rending my flesh, but it isn’t the bear that hits
me. The beast is still ahead of me. Something large and powerful
and brave has come from behind me and thrown me out of the way.
I stare up and meet the most brilliant blue eyes I have ever
seen. They flash with as much fire as the bear’s. They lock on me
only for a fraction of a second, but I feel my body light up with an
energy I have never felt before.
He turns away from me, faces the bear, and runs toward it.
He is not alone. I sit in the dirt as three other men rush after him.
They are wearing leather pants and tall boots that protect all the
way to the knee, but their upper bodies are bare and muscular.
They gleam with oil, shining in the shafts of light that makes its
way between the leaves above. Their skin is tattooed heavily,
marked across their shoulders and chests. No two tattoos are the
same, but the bright blue markings are consistent across their
bodies.
Four of them face the bear, spears held at the ready. It is not
an even battle. The bear has twice as many claws at least, and teeth
besides.
Surely they cannot best such a beast. Surely we will all fall
to its fury. I am too terrified to move. I cannot take my eyes from
this scene. This is violence as I have never seen it before.
The bear halts its charge, several hundred pounds skidding
to a halt in a cloud of soil and leaves. It rears up, standing eight feet
high and it bellows rage to the skies. My innards reverberate with
the sound. I am frightened to my very marrow.
The men are not.
They roar back, four full-throated expressions of pure
animal rage.
The bear stops and falls back to four feet. It seems
confused. There is an almost comical moment as it staggers back a
step before remembering that it is a bear. It charges again, swiping
with its great paw. It catches the leader, the man who first looked
upon me. I scream as its claws slash through his flesh as if it were
butter. All four men deploy their spears into the bear’s face and
throat. There is blood absolutely everywhere.
The altercation is over in seconds. The bear turns and runs
into the forest, crashing away with two spears still hanging from it.
They have wounded it, and it has wounded at least one of them.
The leader. He staggers a step or two before being grabbed by two
of the others. I hear him growl, then see him push them away,
refusing their help.
“Get the girl,” he growls, his voice deep and rough.
They all turn to me. Suddenly I pity the bear. As their dark
eyes fall on me I feel their primal power. These are men unlike
those in the city. These are men so different from any man I have
ever seen before that I barely recognize them as men at all.
They are so much bigger, so much stronger. Their muscles
ripple and they have barely any fat on them at all, which makes
their faces hard and their bodies utterly incredible to behold.
Looking at them, I can see how a man is made, thick slabs of
muscle attached to one another in sinewy bands.
There is silence between us, broken only by my panting in
fear. The leader is bloody, his flesh hanging like cured meat from
the left side of his chest and arm, but he barely pays attention to it.
He approaches me, his dark hair hanging about his face, framing
ice blue eyes.
He has to be in pain, but he doesn’t show it. Not a bit of it.
“Are you injured?”
“No. But you are. Let me help you.”
I climb to my feet, reach down and tear at my clothes,
ripping the silk from my skirt to bind his wounds. “Please, let me
help you. You’re hurt.”
He blinks as I reach up to his arm, then slaps my hand
away.
“I do not need your dress scraps, girl. Name?”
“I’m Riley,” I say. “Riley Jones.”
“Clan Jones?” He addresses the others. “I know no Clan
Jones.”
“It’s a city name.” The man who answers him has short
hair. He speaks with an accent like mine. It does not have the rough
hard intonation of the leader, who sounds foreign in the most
delicious way.
“Yes,” I say. “I’m from the city. I just came out for a walk
and this bear attacked me. I don’t even know why.”
“She came out for a walk,” one of the others laughs. “A
walk!”
Chapter Three
My first impression of the four muscular blue-tattooed men
is starting to become a little more specific. There is the leader, he
with the bright eyes and the long dark hair. He is the tallest, with
the hardest jaw. He is built powerfully, his body is lean, and there
is little in the way of fat on him. I know that because I can see the
layers of his flesh thanks to his wounds. If I had to guess at his age,
I would say that he is around thirty.
The one who spoke, the city man, is the shortest, but he is
still a good foot taller than I am. His body has a limber strength to
it, and his tattoos look the freshest. He does not have as many as
the others. He is perhaps a couple of years older than I am. He has
reddish brown hair and the kind of brown eyes that go with it, deep
amber. Unlike me, he does not have the freckles of a true redhead.
The other two are unique in their own ways. One has long
dark hair tied back at the nape of his neck. He has sharper features,
high intelligent brows that seem almost permanently raised in a
skeptical way. Something about him makes me shiver as his silvergray gaze finds mine.
The other has curling brown hair. He is broad chested and
his face is perhaps the most handsome of them all. His eyes are
almond shaped and deep brown, surrounded by long dark lashes,
his nose is flatter and broader than the others, his skin is of a deeper
hue. The blue of the tattoos flashes against the caramel tones to
impressive effect. He has the most tattoos of all of them. They run
down over both his arms and across his chest. His smile is broad as
he catches my impressed gaze. He winks and a little thrill rushes
through me.
“I am Maverick,” the leader introduces himself. “These
others are Hans, Ice, and Stryker.”
Stryker is not a city name, but the city boy wears it. I
wonder how he got it. I wonder how he got out here. He piques my
curiosity more than any of the others. They belong here. He
doesn’t.
Hans is the one with the darker skin and the tattoos. His
smile is all that is keeping me from panicking. His eyes hold a kind
of dancing mischief that lightens my mood.
I would feel safe, but for Ice. He makes the hair rise on the
back of my neck. He is well named. When I look at him, I feel
chilled to my soul.
These men, they are more rare and incredible than the bear
they just ran off. These are the savages we whisper of in the city.
Quite literally, the men my mother warned me about. Their names
are foreign and yet familiar. They come from the long ago, before
we fell into history.
I have not skimped on my education. I know of these
savages. I have studied them since I was a child. Their strength and
handsome visages are due to the fact that they are the survivors of
all nations, a genetic mix of all human lineages that braved the
encroaching wilds even as history came to an end.
I am smaller, paler, and of the red and blonde coloring of
the city. It’s hard to believe we are of the same species, but they
and I are the same animal.
The city has become inbred over time. There was talk, once
or twice, about bringing in some savage blood to reduce the risk of
diseases that come from inbreeding, but then it was decided that it
would simply be easier to stop breeding altogether. Most young
women, including myself, are fitted with a device that suppresses
fertility.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I say, my niceties feeling hollow
and shallow out here. “Thank you for saving me.”
“You shouldn’t have come here,” Maverick says, his voice
heavy with judgement. “It’s fall. The bears are hungry. The game is
scarce. That means you are the game.”
Not just to the bear, I think. These powerful muscular men
are looking at me with a range of expressions that all amount to one
thing: hunger.
“I’m sorry,” I tremble. “Please, let me help you. You’re
bleeding.”
Maverick shrugs. “It’s nothing. Women lose more on their
moon time.”
“But not usually all at once, and our flesh doesn’t get ripped
open.”
“These are just grazes.”
He is cut to ribbons and he doesn’t care. I stare, the fabric in
my hand, wanting to help him as he helped me. Instead he bleeds
and glowers at me, as if I have done something wrong.
“They need spirit and fire, not silk from a runaway.” He
glances at his men and then nods toward me with a jerk of his head.
“Ice, Hans. Take her.”
The two men advance on me. I back away, not knowing
what they have in mind for me, but sensing that I will not like it.
Maverick has given the order as if I am nothing more than an
inanimate object.
“Come here, girl,” Hans encourages me. I’m distracted by
his rippling muscles, the soft lilted accent of his voice. He must be
from far, far away. Each of these men seems to be of quite different
origins. They are all built differently, in the formation of their
physiques and the features of their faces. To my eyes, used to the
pale slim men of the city, they are like wild gods.
I back away from them, sensing that I can’t let them touch
me. Part of my mind hearkens back to the ancient story of
Persephone in the underworld. She wasn’t trapped in hell until she
ate the fruit there. The fruit in this situation isn’t food, it’s these
men. They are the produce of this wild world, and I can sense they
want to claim me for their own.
It is too much for an innocent like me to handle. My
mother’s hysterical warnings rush in my ears. What will they do to
me if they capture me? Terrible things, I am sure. Savages do not
follow proper laws or city customs. They do as they please.
“No, wait. I have to get back home, my mother will be
worried about me…”
Ice, the one with the pale eyes, lunges forward and takes
hold of me by the wrist, pulling me close with a powerful motion
that leaves me stumbling into his chest. My body makes contact
with his and I feel the hard lines of his unyielding form pressed
hard against my soft curves.
He looks down at me, his lips curled into a smile that holds
some cruelty I don’t understand.
“There’s no going back, girl. You’re ours now.”
“What? No! Why?”
“We bled for you. We defended your life from the bear
spirit. We have sacrificed flesh and forest soul for you. You are
ours.” Ice’s voice is gravelly and husky, incredibly compelling. His
eyes are like two silver discs, locked on mine. I can’t walk away.
My feet become rooted all over again.
“Yours? For what?”
“For whatever we please.”
“No, I have to go.” The panic rises and I begin backing
further away. “My mother is waiting for me. I told her I would be
back by dark.”
“There is one hour until the dusk comes. When it does,
bears will be the least of your problems. The big cats are already
stirring. They will not begin eating you immediately as the bear
would. They will break your spine and play with you for hours
before you die.”
Ice’s soft words detail horror unlike I could ever have
imagined.
“Take her already! My wounds need the fire,” Maverick
growls.
Hans grabs my other wrist. His hand is massive and closes
around my arm entirely.
“Come,” he says, his broad smile a welcome relief from the
terror of Ice’s words. “We have food.”
Food. At least that’s an invitation of some kind. It makes
this feel a little less like abduction.
Held between two savages, I have no choice but to head
further into the woods. I know my mother will be fretting, but there
is nothing I can do about that. Hans has his hand wrapped around
my arm and though he smiles when I look at him, I am as firmly
secured as I would be if I was shackled and chained.
Maverick walks swiftly with Stryker by his side. Ice flanks
me, as if he is concerned that I will somehow break Hans’ hold and
disappear into the woods. After what I just saw loom in the form of
a bear, I have no intention of throwing myself back into the wilds. I
am as frightened as I have ever been.
I press closer to Hans’ side. He is massive and I feel
protected in his shadow. There is still threat around me. I’m not
safe with them. Ice said it: I am theirs. For whatever they please.
I wonder what they will please to do with me? My mother
says all men want is a woman to cook and clean and wash
everything. I can’t imagine they have all that much to wash. Pants,
maybe. How long could it possibly take to wash four pairs of
pants? As for cooking, I’m hardly talented in that department. My
mother never liked the kitchen being used. She said it would make
it dirty. We mostly eat delivery food. I can’t imagine what kind of
food they eat. Roots, perhaps. Berries, maybe.
There are no deliveries out this far, that’s for sure. There’s
nothing but endless forest and the monsters that lurk in it.
“How far away is your house?”
“Far,” Hans says simply.
My feet are starting to get sore. I have been walking for two
hours already and the longer we walk, the more tired and sore I get.
“She is limping,” Ice says suddenly. “Get her up before her
feet go out.”
Hans scoops me up off my feet and hauls me into his arms.
I am suddenly held against his strong body, his muscular torso
moving against my body as he cradles me. I am so close to him I
can smell his scent. He smells of the forest, and of man. He smells
musky, like smoke and flame and fermented fruit. I draw in a deep
breath, enjoying this scent that is unlike anything I have ever
experienced before.
After a few dozen paces, he swings me around onto his
back. I let out a squeal as he propels me through the air, keeping a
firm hold on my arms until I latch on behind him like a baby
monkey on its mother, grabbing hold out of instinct. I wrap my legs
around his powerful waist and he puts his hands back to my thighs,
holding me up against his body.
This triggers some faint memory very deep in my mind. I
feel as if I’ve done this before, as if I’ve been carried this way. Not
by my mother, for sure. I find myself snuggling closer to Hans,
pressing my face into the curve of his neck, resting my chin on his
shoulder.
I don’t know this man, but he has protected me and made
me safe. He has relieved me of the pain of my feet. I am safe with
him. I know that in my very core. I’m not so sure about the others.
Stryker must have left the city to live out in the wilds. The only
people who do that, aside from my father, of course, are criminals.
If you break the law badly enough you are given a choice: death or
exile. There is something about Stryker that makes me think he
chose exile. He hasn’t looked over his shoulder at me even once.
He seems more interested in Maverick, concerned by the wounds.
At least someone has sense. Maverick is leaving a trail of
blood. Hans steps over the droplets without a word. The man’s
wounds should be bound. He is bleeding on purpose, almost as if
he is punishing himself for something.
“Why won’t he treat the wounds?”
“The open air is best for them,” Hans says. “Until they can
be cleaned, bandages only trap dirt inside. They are not so deep. No
arteries cut. He will survive.”
His injuries are my fault. I feel deeply guilty. I should be
the one who is hurt, but instead it is that handsome, brave man who
bears the wounds.
We walk until the light begins to fade. The woods sound
different now. The birds stop chirping. Everything gets quiet. Ice
lights a torch and so does Stryker. We keep moving through the
gathering shadows. Hans’ motion beneath me is soothing and
calming and after a while my eyes begin to close with exhaustion.
“Here we are. Home.”
I open my eyes to see where they live.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Whatever it was, it
wasn’t this. It’s not a home. It’s just a bit of forest that isn’t as
dense as the rest of it. There is a hut, of sorts. It is constructed out
of bits of tree, branches woven and stacked together to form a small
house-type structure with a dirt floor. There is no door.
A fire burns a few feet away from the house. It is
surrounded by mud and stones. And that is it. There’s no more to
this place. There are some sharpened sticks stuck into the dirt
around the perimeter of the clearing, some kind of way to dissuade
the wild animals, maybe. But knowing there are bears and big cats
out in these woods, I am not reassured by the camp. It’s far from
secure. There is nothing between us and the wild animals than a
few twigs and that is not nearly enough.
“You live here?”
“When we hunt, we build camps as we go.” Hans slides his
hands from my thighs and I slip to the ground.
“This isn’t the city,” Stryker says. “You’re going to have to
learn to live wild.”
There is an edge to his voice. Something I don’t like. He’s
not pleased I’m here. He doesn’t want me like the others do. Even
Maverick is casting a heated glance at me right now as I stand there
quivering between the three savages and the wild man.
“Let me clean those wounds,” Stryker says, clapping
Maverick on his good shoulder. “They will leave good scars.”
He and Maverick move toward the fire. I watch, eyes wide
as Maverick sits cross-legged next to the flames. His brawny body
is lit so handsomely, but the wounds are too and I cannot look for
long. I have to close my eyes and look away as my stomach twists
with guilt and fear.
“I don’t want to learn to live wild,” I say softly. “I want to
go home.”
“This is home now.” Hans is the only one who hears me. He
puts his hands on my shoulders and squeezes gently. He seems to
know precisely how to calm me. I lean back against him and close
my eyes a little, feeling his strength.
I should be at home. I should be getting ready for bed,
drinking the hot chocolate my mother makes me every night. I
should be checking my messages, sending others. I should be
dreaming of these wilds. I shouldn’t be in them.
Chapter Four
“Come and sit,” Hans says. “You need water.”
He leads me into the hut. As my eyes adjust to the darker
interior, I see that there are no beds. There’s just a platform made
from branches and covered in moss. Over top of that are animal
furs and wool laid out in the shape of one big bed. It looks cozy to
my tired eyes.
“Sit.” He points to the platform. I sit down and look up at
him. These men are all so tall.
“You all sleep on this?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Together?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.” I can’t begin to imagine how that works. Do they all
snuggle up like a pile of puppies? I can’t see that. They don’t seem
like the snuggling sort of men.
“It is easier to build one sleeping place than four,” he
explains. “And it is harder for an animal to take one of us if we are
together.”
That makes sense. My little bed in my little room in the city
is better appointed and more comfortable, and I don’t have to
worry about any long-toothed monsters roaring out of the shadows.
I wish I was there.
“Will you take me back to the city, please?” I ask as nicely
as possible. My lower lip trembles and my eyes fill with tears.
Home. I need to be home. I wish I had listened to my mother. I
could be safe and comfortable right now. I could be eating fried
leftovers and watching something on the Citylink network. It’s
about seven p.m. The news would be done by now, and the old
comedies would be playing. The one about the friends who live in
one of the old cities that doesn’t exist anymore. A documentary
about a paleontologist who has an on again, off again relationship
with a waitress. It is an excellent show that has withstood the test
of time. I wonder if Ross and Rachel will ever be together. I
wonder if I will ever see home again.
Hans crouches down in front of me, his deep brown eyes
holding mine. He puts his hand over both my hands. “You belong
to us now. It is the law of the wild. If you save a life, you own that
life. You see Stryker and Maverick?”
“Yes…”
“Maverick found Stryker near death in a ravine. He had
fallen in. Maverick saved him, and Stryker became one of us, just
as you will be. Now he wears the marks of our clan, and he hunts
with us to bring meat to the tribe.”
“There’s a tribe?”
“Many days’ walk from here. You will meet them when we
return in a moon cycle’s time.”
I don’t want to meet the tribe. I want to go home to the city.
That’s where my tribe lives.
While I sit there slumped with the misery of being in a
strange and frightening place, he has reached under the bed
platform where there are several sacks. They have very little, these
men. My mother’s apartment is full of things. Every surface is
covered in items with deep sentimental value. She refuses to throw
anything away. Everything has memories, she says. Except my
father’s things. She threw most all of them away after he
disappeared.
While I muse, he has picked up a furry bag full of liquid. I
can hear it sloshing around. He opens another bag and pulls out an
earthenware pottery cup. He pours some of the liquid into it, then
hands me the mug.
I take a sniff. It doesn’t smell bad at all. It smells sort of
rich and very fermented, like sauerkraut if it weren’t made of
cabbage.
“Stryker says that there isn’t any drink in the city, so be
careful.”
“There’s plenty of drink in the city. We have water and fruit
juices…”
“Strong drink,” Hans says, his voice rumbling with humor.
“It dulls the senses and calms nerves. You are worried. This will
help.”
I take a little sip. It has a tangy taste, rich and full. It is the
most delicious thing I have ever tasted. I drink more deeply,
greedily. He is right that I am thirsty. He reaches for the cup, but I
pull back and drain it to the bottom.
Hans snorts and takes the cup from me. “You like it.”
“Yes. I’m still thirsty. May I have some more, please?”
“Later,” he says.
I can feel warmth trickling down my throat and into my
stomach. That warmth spreads through my belly and into my limbs.
It finds my mind and makes it lighter and clearer. A smile rises to
my lips as I look at this handsome man standing before me. This is
one of the savages my mother warned me about. He has not cut my
throat, or ravaged me—whatever that may mean. She never
bothered to explain further than that.
“This is just one room,” I say. “You sleep here, and you
must cook out by the fire, but where is the bathroom?”
“We bathe in rivers.”
“But, uhm, where do you toilet?”
He points to a rusty old spade sitting by the door of the hut.
“You take that, you dig a hole, you go.”
“Dig a hole?”
“At least a foot deep. Don’t go alone though. You do not
know these woods well enough. You should take one of us with
you when you need to go.”
I can’t help but cringe at the idea of taking one of these men
and digging a hole to toilet in. It seems embarrassing and
undignified, but what other option is there out here?
So much of what these men have is hewn from the natural
world, but now he has shown me the spade, I begin to notice that
they have a few implements of the old world. There used to be
great roads that passed through these lands, houses and towns and
many cities. As civilization receded, nature reclaimed the human
domain. Now when we watch the footage of the world as it once
was, I can barely believe it.
“What are you doing?” Ice steps into the hut. When his steel
gaze meets mine, I lower my eyes instinctively. There is something
about the man that frightens me. He is not safe. An air of cool
menace rolls off him with every glance and word.
“Just giving her something to drink,” Hans says.
“Plying her with alcohol,” Ice laughs. “You don’t have to
do that. She is ours already. We can take her as we please.”
I don’t like how he speaks about me. There’s something so
possessive and arrogant about him and when he looks at me I don’t
feel as though I am a person at all.
“I’m not yours,” I say. “I’m mine. You can’t own people.”
Ice’s eyes narrow at my challenge. He sets his jaw and I feel
a thrill rush through me. He doesn’t like being defied, but I like to
defy more than anything else in the world. I have never been
obedient or easy. My mother has often despaired of it.
“You have no choice,” he says. “You can’t find your way
back to the city now, and we won’t take you.”
“I could find my way back if I wanted.”
He makes my temper flare. The drink Hans gave me has
loosened my inhibitions and now I am not so scared to tell this man
with the silver eyes what I think of him and his ownership.
“I’m a free woman. From the city. I’m not a savage. You
can’t just take me. I’ll go back when I want to!”
“Oh, will you? Let’s see how prepared you are for your
great journey through the wilds.”
He reaches over my head and yanks the pack off my back. I
shout for him to give it back, but he holds it high and opens it
without my consent. How fucking dare he! He pulls each of the
items out and throws them down on the bed. It doesn’t take long.
He laughs at each and every item.
“Two sugar cakes and enough water to last perhaps a day.
Do you know what would have happened if we had not crossed
your path?”
“No,” I say, stubborn and angry.
“You would have perished painfully within the week if the
bear had not taken you. You would have gotten hungry and tried to
eat something poisonous and likely died vomiting the lining of
your stomach up for birds to feast upon. The forest is a living thing.
She does not take mercy on the unprepared.”
I recoil from him. He speaks with such vicious words. They
frighten me. He frightens me.
“What is this?”
He pulls out Roger. Roger is a small stuffed rabbit. My
father gave him to me before I left. He is only about five inches tall
and his once white fur is yellowed from a lifetime of experience.
One of his beady eyes is gone, but I sewed a thread eye in place so
he could still see. I take him everywhere.
“Give that back to me, now!” There is anguish in my voice
as I make the demand. So much so that Hans turns to Ice.
“Give her the toy.”
Ice smirks and returns Roger to me. “You are childish,” he
declares with scorn. “You packed as if you were a cartoon
character running away from home. This is the real world. And you
are a woman, not a little girl.”
“I know I’m a woman,” I hiss. He has thoroughly aroused
my temper now. I have never in my life hit anyone, but I would
love to slap his mercilessly hard cheek right now. He has made me
furious by insulting me to my face, making me feel simultaneously
small and ashamed for being small.
“Leave her be, Ice,” Hans says. “She faced a bear alone
today. If she wants her bunny, she can have it.”
Ice sneers. I cannot contain myself. My foot draws back and
is in motion before I can stop it. I kick his ankle hard, though my
rubber-soled shoe hardly packs much force. I know I can’t hurt a
man like this, a warrior who faces bears. But I can show my
displeasure in a physical way, and I can let him know I will not be
bullied.
He rounds on me with a growl. A real growl, like an animal
would make. Hans grabs me and hauls me behind his broad body.
“Leave her, Ice. She doesn’t know what she’s doing.”
“She doesn’t know she just kicked me? Get out of my way.
I will teach her what she needs to know.”
I try to step out to face him, but Hans’ strong arm keeps me
back.
“You will teach me nothing! You will take me back to the
city.”
“Oh, I will take you, girl. I will take you long and hard until
you scream.”
I stare at him. What does he mean? His words make no
sense to me, but they are delivered with a rough male growl that
makes every hair on the back of my neck stand up, and causes a
peculiar quiver to wriggle through my belly.
“Keep it quiet in there!” a voice booms from outside the
hut.
Everybody falls silent and still in an instant. Maverick’s
voice has a resonant quality of command that does not allow for
disobedience. I fall back behind Hans. Ice looks away from me in
disdain and Hans relaxes a little. The fight is over, for now, but
both Ice and I cast little disdainful and angry glances at one another
in the silence that follows.
I slip past Hans and look outside the hut to see what is
happening. As the dusk begins to settle into darkness, Stryker is
stitching Maverick’s wounds.
Maverick sits cross-legged, staring into the fire without
reaction as time and time again the needle pushes through his flesh
and the thread draws the edges of the wounds closed. Stryker’s
fingers move with practiced alacrity, and his supplies come from a
green case with a red cross upon it. There is nothing primitive
about what Stryker is doing. These are the same techniques city
doctors use to suture wounds.
“How does he know how to do that?” I whisper the
question, afraid to distract them again.
“Stryker is a doctor,” Ice says.
I startle as he comes up behind me, his tall body looming
over mine. I look to Hans for reassurance. He is on the other side,
pouring himself a drink from the skin. He does not seem worried
that Ice is now upon me.
“A doctor from the city out here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“That is not my story to tell.”
I look up into his eyes and wonder what story is his to tell.
Our conflict is not resolved, but he seems to have put it aside at
Maverick’s loud request.
Again, my thoughts turn to home. If only one of them
would escort me, I am sure my mother would give them a fine
reward. Maybe that will tempt them to let me go.
“If you take me back, I will make sure you are paid.”
“With what?”
“We have money. My mother’s family is very rich.” I’m
lying, but he can’t know that.
“Money,” Ice snorts. “And what would we do with money,
bunny? Could we eat it?”
“You could use it to trade,” I say, my lip curling up in a
mirror of his sneer. “You don’t have to live like animals.”
“We choose to live this way,” he growls.
“Well, that’s stupid.” I know it’s a rude thing to say, but he
has taunted me as much as I have taunted him.
This time he does not reply with words. He responds with
force. I don’t see his hand in motion, but I feel the impact of his
large, hard palm against my ass, his fingers extended so he catches
all of my left cheek and some of my right in a hard slap that lifts
me onto my toes and sends me skittering away with a cry of pain.
Stryker turns his head toward me with a vicious look of
annoyance.
“Quiet!” he insists.
“He hit me!”
“You will be hit a great deal more if you are not silent,”
Maverick growls, not moving as Stryker’s needle is pushed through
the ragged edges of his skin.
Ice looks at me triumphantly. My rear is stinging with the
force of the slap and I am utterly horrified. He struck me! How
could he? What kind of man does such a thing to a woman? And
why are none of the others coming to my defense?
My mother was right. These savages are dangerous and
cruel and I think they do have plans to harm me after all. I have to
get away, take my chances with the bears…
“She’s going to bolt,” Hans says, seeing my darting eyes.
“Grab her.”
He’s right. I am about to dash into the darkness, away from
these cruel men who say they own me. I appreciate their help in
rescuing me, but I do not belong to them.
Ice reaches out and catches me before my feet can move,
grabbing me not by the arm, but by the back of the neck. His long
fingers clamp either side of my spine, and he draws me inexorably
backwards.
Feeling trapped, I start to panic. I lash out, my arms and
legs flailing as I throw all caution to the wind and cry out at the top
of my voice, begging to be let go. I don’t want to be here. I don’t
want to be with them. I want to be home. I scream all that and more
as hot tears start to fall.
“Shut her up!” I hear Stryker growl in the background.
They can’t shut me up. If they want to take me as their
captive, they’re going to have to listen to me scream, because I
can’t take this. I don’t know how to be around one civilized man,
let alone four savage brutes. I don’t understand this world of theirs.
I am more frightened now than I was when the bear attacked.
I am whirled around. Something warm and hard presses
against the length of my body. It is him. Ice. His arms are around
me. Tight. It’s not a hug or a tender embrace, though it feels
reminiscent of both. It’s a… I don’t even know how to describe it.
He is holding me so securely that I can’t panic or fight or cry. I am
squished and held and forcefully settled.
Ice keeps me there in that grasp, my face pressed against his
hard chest. I can just barely breathe, but the calmer I get, the easier
it becomes.
“Settle down,” he croons, his gravelly tones running
through my body.
He is the one who angered me. He is the one who hit me. I
don’t understand how he is also the one who is comforting me and
making this better, but he is. I feel my muscles relaxing as he draws
me back into the hut and lies down, pulling me down onto the skins
with him.
I am lying with a man.
I stay utterly still, barely daring to breathe. He turns me
around so that he is behind me, his arms around me. I stare at the
wall of the hut, listening to the silence that suddenly descends in
the wake of my chaos. Every muscle in my body is tense and stiff
as he holds me without speaking, one arm under my head, the other
over my waist, locking me against his hard body.
“She freezes just like a rabbit,” he rumbles against the back
of my head, talking about me with Hans. I can see Hans hovering at
the very corner of my peripheral vision. I wish it was him who had
me. I would be safe with him. I am not safe with Ice.
“You’re frightening her,” Hans says, his easy tones making
it possible for me to draw breath.
“She’s not frightened enough,” Ice says. “She kicked me.”
“Frightened animals lash out,” Hans says, as if he is
reminding Ice of something.
“True,” Ice admits. His arms relax a fraction. “At least she
has settled.”
I’m not settled. I’m scared. And something else. Something
I don’t fully understand. I can feel tingles running through my
body, concentrating low in my belly. Ice affects me in an
incredible, unprecedented way, and that scares me as much as his
cold comments on the forest and the things that live in it. I am
reacting to him in a way I’ve never reacted to any man before.
There’s a warmth very low in my belly, a tingle between my
thighs. I want… something. I want him. I just don’t know precisely
what I want him to do.
Before I can work out what it is I need, Maverick rises from
the fire. He has been sutured to suit Stryker’s satisfaction, neat
stitches running in the tracks the bear made on his skin. He has
been mended like a sexy quilt.
“Bring me the girl.”
Ice sits up, picks me up with him, and places me on my feet.
I find myself standing beneath Maverick’s dominant gaze. He must
be in terrible pain, but he is still not showing it.
He looks down at me with those eyes that are so much
richer in hue than any I have seen before. His gaze is blue like the
most beautiful lake. “Understand, Riley. You are ours now. There
is no going back to the world you once knew. It is gone and there is
no time for mourning.”
That makes no sense to me. The world is still there. I have
only been gone a few hours. I am a citizen of the city. Of course I
can go back to it. But he won’t let me.
I start to whimper. His merciless decision frightens me to
my core. I don’t belong with these men. I am not one of them. I am
a city girl with city needs. I am soft and I need to return.
“Hush,” he says, his voice low and resonant. “You must
begin to learn our ways immediately. First of all, you must not gasp
or scream. When you make those pathetic sounds you draw
predators. There are many big cats that hunt monkeys. We are
nothing but large apes to them and screeching draws their attention.
We must move through the forest as silently as possible, speak in
low tones. Do you understand?”
I nod and swallow, unable to find my voice. He is
impressive. They all are, but after what I have seen him do and
endure, he has my admiration and respect. I don’t think I can be
like him though. I don’t have the strength. I am not brave enough. I
need my comforts, my soft bedding, walls that protect me from the
outside world and give me space to imagine all the things outside
the realm of my small rooms. The forest fills my senses, anchors
me in this very immediate, brutal reality. There is no room for
dreams or fantasies here.
“Please, sir,” I say, finding my most polite words. “If you
could take me home…”
“No.”
A flat refusal. I open my mouth, but close it again when I
realize there is nothing to say or do about it. He has refused. So
either I must stay with them, or take my chances against the
wilderness, both the animals and the poisonous plants and the sheer
distance. I do not know how to live out here. I need protection.
“I have shed blood, so I will take you first.”
I have no idea what he is talking about. Take me? What
does that mean? The other three men go and sit by the fire, leaving
me inside the hut with their wounded leader.
“Sit,” he says, pointing to the bedding. I do as I am told,
perching on the edge uncomfortably as he lowers his large,
powerful body toward me. I lean back until I am lying on my back,
this great leader of savages poised over me.
He is looking at me in a way that makes that tingle between
my thighs burst into life all over again. I’ve felt this way a few
times before in my life. Usually it goes away on its own.
Sometimes I have to rub the spot until it hits a peak and subsides.
I’ve never felt it this strongly though.
Maverick’s hand slides between my thighs. His fingers run
slowly up the inside of my leg. The skirt I’m wearing rides up
beneath his fingers and I find myself holding my breath as little
tingles emanate where his hand has been.
“What are you doing!?” I slap his hand away, scandalized
by his bold touch.
“You are ours,” he growls, cupping the soft mound of my
panty-clad sex. “And we will use you.”
My eyes go wide. I stare at him in utter shock. Is that what
they have been talking about all this time? Sex? I’m familiar with
the general outline of the concept of course, but sex just isn’t done
in the city. Certainly not with other people anyway. It’s regarded as
very gauche and unsophisticated to copulate.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that is what these savages
want from me, but I am. Surprised, and confused. The fingers
pressed against my lower lips are revealing something I didn’t
know. His fingers slip back and forth with gentle motions, sliding
over the fabric easily. I don’t know how, but the gusset of my
underwear is soaked.
“Oh, my…” My voice comes in one of those whimpers I am
not allowed to make. “What… what are you doing?”
He looks at me, his brows raised. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head. I mean, I know something, of course. I’m
not ignorant, but I didn’t know a man would want to touch me like
this—and I didn’t know it would feel this good when he did.
“What do you know about your cunt, Riley?”
He called it my cunt. My face flares with red
embarrassment and arousal.
“I go toilet there, and I have my monthly. Neither of those
things should be of any interest to you.”
“Do you know why you bleed monthly?”
“Yes, because a woman is made to suffer.”
He looks at me with a small frown. “Has nobody told you
about the ways of men and women?”
I shake my head.
He sits up and whistles. The men rise from the fire and
come to stand at the entrance of the hut, curious expressions on
their handsome faces. I feel embarrassed and small as they crowd
around.
“She does not know what her body is for. How is that
possible?”
The question makes me feel foolish and ignorant. I know
what my body is for. I just don’t know what he is talking about. My
mother told me that some men would have perverted intentions
toward me, but I never thought I would meet one, let alone be his
captive.
“The city doesn’t put much stock in breeding,” Stryker says.
“And most everything sexual is censored. She might actually not
know. Most parents teach their offspring, but if her mother
didn’t…”
“Teenagers don’t talk in the city?”
“Not in person. Online. Communication is censored. So…”
“A virgin,” Ice says, his smile broad and predatory.
“Maverick, you have a prize.”
“Breaking virgins is no work for a wounded man,”
Maverick says, sliding his hand from between my thighs. “Hans.
You are the most patient among us. You will train her.”
I look into those dark eyes and feel myself blush as Hans
gives me a wicked grin with an impish edge. Whatever he has in
store for me, I get the impression I will enjoy it.
“Why Hans?” Ice speaks up, his voice rough. He looks
displeased. “Hans will spoil her. He will not teach her what it
means to belong to us fully. Hans lets his women talk back to him.
They are rarely submissive. I will not have our mate be spoiled
from the outset. She should be broken to our will properly. Trained
properly.”
I bite my lower lip and slide a little further away from Ice. I
don’t fully understand what he is talking about, but the words
submissive and broken leap out.
“Hans will take her,” Maverick repeats himself, glowering
at the need to. I get the impression he does not like being defied or
questioned by the others. “We do not need a broken girl.”
“As you wish,” Ice says in a low growl. He turns on his heel
and goes back to the fire. Stryker goes with him.
“Listen to Hans,” Maverick tells me. “And do as he says.
He will be kind, I know.”
He leaves too, and then it is just Hans and me. I look at this
heavily tattooed man, so handsome and kind and yet also so
dangerous too. I am nervous. I know he is going to do something to
me, I’m just not sure what.
“Lie down on your stomach,” Hans says.
I obey, a little frightened of what might be coming, but
knowing I have no choice. When I am laid out on the soft furs,
Hans begins to run his hands over my back, rubbing my muscles in
slow circles. It is a kind, relaxing touch and I feel myself giving
into it with a soft sigh.
“What do you know about how babies are made?”
“Well, if a man and a woman want a baby…”
“Yes,” he encourages me.
“They go to the bureau of licensing and they make an
application. If they’re successful, they will be issued a permit to
procreate, which is valid for a period of one year.”
Hans’ hands still on my back. “What?”
“It’s a license,” I explain. “So they can legally procreate.”
He makes a sound of disbelief, but lets the moment slide.
“And then what do they do?”
“Then they go home, and they cook a great many hot
meals,” I say, remembering what I have been told. “And in the
course of the year, a baby will be delivered.”
“Delivered?”
“Yes,” I say. I have very strong memories of my mother
talking about how it was when I was delivered. It was a difficult
delivery. I don’t know if she was home at the time, but all these
years later she still becomes quite pale when she speaks on the
subject.
“What do you know about sex?”
“It’s something people used to do, but civilized people
don’t do it.”
“We’re going to do it,” Hans says, his hands sliding from
my back to find my bottom.
“Sex?”
“Sex,” he says as his hand massages my lower cheeks with
nice gentle strokes. “I’m going to fuck you.”
A little thrill of excitement runs through me. Everything he
has done to me feels good, and I think sex will feel good too. Hans
isn’t the kind of man to hurt me. His large hands caress me into a
state of calm, which helps me to relax. His palms run from my rear,
all the way up my back to my neck and then slide back down again
to my thighs. My clothes are beginning to feel like an impedance to
feeling even better. The material between him and me needs to go.
Slowly, he begins to peel my clothing from me. My panties
are pulled down my thighs, a thin barrier to virginity removed by
large hands that take care not to tear the delicate fabric. Those are
the only ones I have and he seems to understand that as he tosses
them down next to me. They land near my face, a pile of crumpled
silky fabric soaked with my scent. Seeing them brings this home all
the more. I am going to be fucked by a man—taken by a savage. I
am going to do something no good city girl should ever do. I am
going to let him fuck me.
He leaves the skirt on. It’s not in his way as he picks me up
from the bed and turns me around to face him, wrapped in his arms
as he presses his face toward me and kisses me. I’ve seen this in the
old stories. I never thought I would know what it is like to have
strong arms wrapped around me, and a man’s lips against mine.
The kiss deepens. My mouth opens out of some old instinct
and I feel his tongue warm against my own. His hands roam my
body, caressing my hips, my breasts. He is gentle and sensual, but I
feel the raw power of his potential with every move he makes.
They have chosen the largest of the savages to take me, and
I do not know if he will show me mercy. He sits on the very edge
of the platform and moves me so I am sitting on his lap, facing
toward him, my legs spread lewdly around his waist. His pants are
open and there is something very hard and very male between us.
His cock is hard against my belly. I am almost afraid to look
down at it. I have never seen one in the real world before. I cannot
imagine what a beast it must be, but I already know it extends
much further up the length of my stomach than I could imagine.
Still kissing me, Hans takes my hand and guides it down
between us. I touch his flesh and find it hard and hot against my
fingertips. At first I am scared, but as he keeps kissing me, I gain
the courage to explore his manhood, wrapping my hand around it
and feeling the parts of it against my palm. It is like a great fleshy
spear. There is a tapered tip that is softer than the rest of it. Nature
has made this instrument for plundering women, and I know it will
soon be inside me—but I don’t entirely understand how I will open
myself for it.
“It’s too big,” I whimper against his mouth.
“It’s not,” he reassures me, stroking my back with one hand.
“You were made to take cocks. Your body knows what to do.”
My body is betraying me in waves of desire that are making
this illegal act more alluring than I can describe.
His fingers are between my legs, stroking my soft lower
lips. I feel that wetness that I have not often felt before.
“Are you ready, little rabbit?”
A thick finger dips inside my sex, parting my lips and
stirring the wet juices within.
I nod. I am ready. I need this. Whatever is to come, my
body is demanding it.
He lifts me up as if I weigh nothing at all, and positions my
wet sex over the spear of his cock. The two are made to go
together, I know that, but there is still a moment of fear as I feel
how very thick and hard he is, and how much bigger than my pussy
he seems to be.
Gently, slowly, Hans draws me down on his hard spear. I
hold on to his massive shoulders, look deep into his dark eyes. I
need him so badly. I need him for comfort. I need him for
reassurance. I need every inch of his rock-hard cock to keep
stretching me open in these slow degrees.
There is pain, little sharp moments that hurt, but there is
pleasure too. As I am stretched, my walls grip his hardness and my
juices make me slicker so I slide ever more easily down the cock of
this great brutal savage who is taking me.
Finally, after what feels like a mile of thick cock has slid
inside me, my bottom touches his thighs. I am sitting on his cock;
he has filled me as deep as my virginal pussy can go.
He holds me there and kisses me, caressing my back and
my breasts, his strong fingers finding my nipples too, pinching the
little pink buds in a way that sends shocks to the core of me and
heightens the arousal all the more.
Then he takes hold of my hips and begins to rock me back
and forth on his cock, drawing out a little way and then pushing
back in. The pleasure makes my toes curl, as my wet pussy is taken
time and time again, that thick rod working in and out of me.
“Does that feel good, little rabbit?”
“Yes,” I moan against his mouth. “Oh, god, yes.”
There is a rumbling chuckle from behind us, and I am
suddenly reminded that I am being watched. Three other men are
seeing my pussy spread around this hard cock for the first time. I
am being publicly deflowered and there is nothing I can do about it.
Hans’ hands reach for my cheeks and spread them lewdly. I
feel cool air on my bottom hole and on my pussy too. He is holding
me on display, lifting me up enough that everyone can see him
sliding in and out of my little hole.
“Her lips grip him so tightly,” someone says. I think it
might be Stryker. I don’t know their voices very well yet.
I let out a little whimper and squirm, embarrassed by what
they’re seeing, but knowing I can’t stop them from watching.
“She’s tight,” Hans confirms, making my pussy clench all
the more.
I whimper as it starts to get painful. I am a little tense, and it
makes the sting of losing my virginity more intense than before.
“Relax,” he soothes, pulling me down deep on his cock. He
pulls my hips forward and grinds me against his hard pubic bone,
my clit hard against the ridge. I have rubbed my clit before, but
never like this. Little wails of excitement escape me as he shows
me what my pussy is truly for, and how my clit can be stimulated
by the body of a large, rough, savage man.
Soon Hans begins to stroke harder and faster, drawing me
up and down on his cock with more insistent motions. Now I am
being fucked. Now his cock is demanding everything from me.
There’s no more patient caresses or allowances for my recent
virginal state. He is a savage, with savage desires and my body will
satisfy his lust.
I bounce on his dick like the bunny they call me, my bottom
slapping against his thighs with every stroke until it starts to sting.
“We’re all going to fuck you,” he says. “We’re all going to
fill you with our cum. And if you’re a good girl, you’ll enjoy it.”
“What if I’m bad?” I gasp the question as he pounds me, his
muscles rippling as he lifts me up and down, taking total control of
my body.
“You’ll probably still enjoy it,” he winks, one hand leaving
my hips to slap my ass hard enough to make me yowl.
Hans leans back on the bed, still keeping me on his cock,
but giving me position above him.
The others have gathered around closer. I feel their hands
on my body, rubbing my ass, caressing my back, finding my
breasts and rubbing them as I sit on Hans’ dick.
“Fuck him, girl.” A slap to my bottom urges me. I recognize
Maverick’s voice as he commands me to work my pussy on the
thick cock still deep inside me.
I lean forward a little and urge my hips into action. It feels
different, now that I am in control. I move more slowly, feeling
every inch of him as I slide myself back and forth along the thick
rod.
“Good girl,” Maverick praises from behind me. “You have
a very pretty pussy, little rabbit. Let me see it come.” He raises his
voice a little more. “Fill her up, Hans. Make her drip.”
Hans grabs me and rolls me over onto my back. Now I feel
small, with his great muscular frame covering mine. He begins to
fuck me from the top, his cock slamming between my thighs. I am
pinned against the bed, taking every rough thrust he has for my
tender pussy, ground back against the furs as I am ravaged
thoroughly by this savage man whose cock is like a hot sword
inside me.
I scream, forgetting that I’m supposed to be silent. I can’t be
quiet. He is pounding my pussy, slamming his cock into me over
and over and my pussy is gripping him through every rough stroke.
He cries out and thrusts himself deep inside me, holding
himself in place. There’s a flood of warmth inside me and then,
when he pulls his cock out, it comes out of me too, a hot trickle of
masculine seed.
The savages let out a cry of triumph as they see how my
aching pussy has been marked. I lie there, my city skirt lewdly
tangled about my waist, my legs spread, my cum-soaked slit on
display.
He pushes his cock back along the seam of my pussy, but
not inside me. The head of his cock finds my clit and he uses it to
massage his cum into that tingling bud of pleasure. I was close to a
climax when he was inside me, but now that this beautiful brute is
rubbing my greedy little bud, I can’t hold back. I start to come
almost immediately, my legs shaking as he pins me down and
keeps the pressure on my clit, wet hot motions of his cock rubbing
round it until one orgasm turns to two, heat and pleasure rushing
through my body in equal measure.
“She’s a bit sore,” Hans says when I am done convulsing
with pure pleasure. He lies down next to me and gathers my
exhausted frame up close to his body. “We should give her a day to
recover.”
There is a growling rumble from those who wished to also
have me, but they take mercy upon me.
They smell of the rich fermented drink as they settle around
us. Maverick takes up a place next to me. Stryker slips in behind
him. Ice lies behind Hans. The hut is full and cozy with all five of
us inside.
I fall asleep tucked up in Hans’ arms. There are strong men
all around me. The threat of the wilderness outside recedes. The
long-toothed creatures are prowling, but I have my savages
protecting me and I am safe.
Chapter Five
The morning has come, and the savages are at work. I sit up
in the bed platform and watch as they affix shards of old metal and
stone to long pieces of wood.
“What is happening?” I ask Hans the question. He is the
closest to me, and after what we did last night, he is the man I am
closest to in all the world.
“We are preparing to hunt.”
“What are you going to hunt?”
“The bear.”
“The same bear that attacked us?”
“Yes.”
They are short with me, focused on the task at hand. Hans
and Maverick are using knives to sharpen fresh spears.
“Why can’t we just leave the bear alone? It’s dangerous. It
already wounded Maverick. It could kill us this time.”
“You angered the bear and now it is hurt,” Ice says. “We
will have to kill it before it kills others. Wounded predators become
man-eaters. It was bleeding yesterday. Today we will hunt it down
and finish it off.”
It sounds cruel. The bear tried to harm me, and it did wound
Maverick, but chasing after it to kill it doesn’t seem fair.
“I can’t fight a bear.”
“No. You will follow after us and do as we say. It is
important that you obey us precisely. Other predators will have
picked up the trail of blood. We may not be the only ones looking
for a meal.”
“We’re going to eat it?”
“Bear meat is good meat,” Hans says. “It will feed the tribe
for many days. Maverick will take the head. He will earn his trophy
and wear the skin.”
It sounds violent and cruel and I don’t want to be a part of
it.
“I don’t want to hunt the bear.”
“Understandable. You are not prepared for a hunt, but we
can’t leave you alone,” Hans repeats himself patiently. “You will
come with us.”
“No. Just take me home.”
He ignores my request and returns to his work, preparing an
instrument of death. I don’t understand why we are doing this. The
bear was wounded, but so was Maverick, and they are going to kill
him. How could they know that the bear won’t heal too?
“What is the problem?” Maverick is apparently aware of my
whining.
“She does not want to hunt.”
“She has no choice,” Maverick says bluntly. He doesn’t
even look at me. He speaks as though I’m not there.
“Just take me back to the city. I won’t ever come back into
the forest, I promise.”
“You see, Hans has spoiled her already,” Ice growls. “She
has no sense of obedience.”
Maverick nods, his eyes cool on me. “You must obey us.
Instantly and without question.”
“I don’t want to…”
He reaches out and grabs me by the back of the head, taking
a thick handful of my hair. Before I know what is happening, he
has dragged me to the hut and pushed me face down into the furs.
My skirt flies up.
“Hand me the soaked leather.”
A strap has been sitting in a bucket overnight. I saw Ice put
it there when we got into camp. I didn’t know what it was before,
but as his brawny hand brings the wet leather down across my
underwear-clad ass, I tense. And then I scream. A single lash of the
leather sends a bolt of pure pain through my body. Tears well in
my eyes as whimpers and whines of helplessness escape me.
“Easy!” Stryker pushes his way in between Maverick and
me. “She’s from the city. She’s probably never been disciplined in
her life.”
Stryker has not so much as smiled at me since I met him. I
am shocked that he is the one defending me now.
“Out of my way, Stryker,” Maverick orders.
“You will break her,” he insists. “She is not like the women
of our tribe. Her skin is soft. You will make her bleed with that.”
“She has to learn.”
“Not like this,” Stryker says. “If you hurt her, you will ruin
her.”
“Pain never ruined a woman.”
“Yes, it did.” I hear a growl in Stryker’s voice.
“You are protecting her because she is one of your tribe.
You should be loyal to us now, Stryker. You wear our marks.”
“I am loyal,” Stryker said. “But she is a city girl and should
be returned.”
Yes! That is what I want. Stryker understands what the
others seem to refuse to understand. I don’t belong out here. I can’t
take this harsh lifestyle. I definitely can’t take the brutal soaked
lash that has left a mark that still burns even now.
I don’t dare get up and earn even more of Maverick’s ire, so
I lie there face down and let Stryker argue for me.
“We’re not giving her back. Get out of my way.”
“Kick my ass if you need to,” Stryker tells Maverick. “But
she’s had enough.”
“One lash is not enough for disobedience.”
“Look at her skin! It is already welted!”
“Out of my way, city boy.”
There is derision in Maverick’s tone. I shrink further into
the furs, realizing that Stryker is lower rank because of where he
comes from and probably so am I.
“Stryker.” It is Hans who speaks. “Maverick isn’t going to
break her.”
“You will do it without knowing it,” Stryker argues. There’s
a certain desperation to his voice that makes me wonder what he is
thinking of, what he has seen before.
I sneak a peek behind me. Stryker is standing there, his legs
spread wide in a defensive protective stance. Maverick is looming
over him, that leather lash still in his hand. Ice is standing off to the
side, smirking as if all this amuses him, and Hans is about to get
between Maverick and Stryker, protecting Stryker just as Stryker is
protecting me.
“Both of you get out of my way before I beat you,”
Maverick growls. “She will take three strokes for her
disobedience.”
Two more? I don’t know if I can take that. I begin to
whimper and cry again, to plead for his mercy.
Maverick pushes Stryker out of the way, takes hold of my
hair and turns my face so that I have to look at him. His eyes search
my miserable face, and I know he wants the truth.
“Is Stryker right? Will you break beneath my lash?”
“Yes,” I whimper, soft and scared. Maverick is a dangerous
savage, a man who could utterly break me within minutes. I do not
have the strength to resist him, or the will. “I’m sorry I was
disobedient. I didn’t know…”
“What didn’t you know?”
“I didn’t know there would be consequences.”
“Stay in position,” he says, releasing my hair.
I do as I am told, tears running down my face.
The lash rises into the air and cuts down across my flesh
again. I scream, but a moment later I realize that it has not landed
nearly as harshly. He has used a fraction of the strength he used on
the first stroke, and though this one stings, I am not racked with the
same pain. That’s not to say my ass isn’t on fire, and that there
aren’t tears in my eyes. I am sore and I am sad and I am very sorry
for myself.
“Don’t make me regret my mercy,” Maverick says. He pulls
me up from the bed, holds me by the shoulders and looks deep into
my eyes. “Obedience, Riley. Above all things. Understand?”
I give him a small nod.
“You will follow in Stryker’s steps. Where his foot lands,
so will yours. If you deviate even one inch from his path, I will
whip you and there will be no mercy.”
I nod emphatically. I don’t trust my voice. Maverick is
terrifying. Even now, with his flesh held together with medical line,
he is the undisputed leader of this group.
“Give her a knife,” Ice says.
“Why?” Maverick turns toward Ice. All these men seem to
have their own ideas as to how I should be treated.
“She may need to defend herself.”
“The only thing she is likely to do with a knife is sink it into
one of us,” Maverick says. “Stryker can protect her.”
I stay silent as they make their preparations for the hunt.
Maverick appoints Hans and Ice to take the lead. With his wounds
he has lost mobility and speed. Stryker will follow Hans and Ice. I
will go behind them and Maverick will take up the rear. My rear.
“Shoes,” Maverick says before we leave. “She cannot wear
those things. Stryker, wrap her feet.”
Stryker takes me over to the hut and removes my shoes.
Sitting on my rear that has been lashed with Maverick’s leather is
not comfortable, but I know better than to complain now, as
Stryker tosses my little plastic-heeled shoes away and reaches for a
bag beneath the sleeping platform. He pulls out leather and two soft
pieces of fur. I watch curiously as first the layer of fur, then the
outer leather are fitted to my feet, each of which wrap around my
feet and rise a short way up my calves. He secures them by
wrapping long leather cords around my feet and ankles, creating a
pair of short boots in minutes. I watch, quite stunned at his alacrity
and the ability these men have of taking simple things and turning
them into useful items.
“Stand up,” he said. “Comfortable?”
I stand, and find that it is a lot like walking in bare feet. My
toes aren’t squeezed into my shoes anymore, and there’s no blisterinducing rubbing around my heels.
“Yes,” I say, allowing myself a smile. “Comfortable.”
My mother would be horrified to see me wearing these.
Animal skins on my feet, held with leather twine. They look
barbaric, but they are one of the most comfortable things I have
ever worn in my life.
“Good,” Stryker says. “Come. We are losing daylight.”
The sun has really only just risen, but the savages are
impatient.
We head into the bush, going back in the direction we came.
All the walking we did the night before is going to be done again. I
am not used to this amount of exercise, and though I do my best to
keep up, as one hour turns into two, I find it impossible. My legs
are burning, my joints ache. I am so tired, but the men don’t seem
to notice. We haven’t eaten. A water skin has been passed around,
and I have had a couple of sips from it, but it is not enough.
I don’t dare say anything. After Maverick’s lash and his
insistence that I do as I am told, I know that I will be punished for
failing to keep up with them.
I stumble over a root and fall to my hands and knees, the
skin on both grazing. Before Maverick can chastise me, I struggle
back up to my feet and hurry after Stryker. They don’t break their
stride one bit. The mood has changed over the last half hour or so.
They are getting closer to the trail and every single one of them is
hunting for hints of the bear. I think they have forgotten about me
entirely. Though I am in their midst, I am not one of them.
“Paw,” Ice hisses.
They gather around to look at the mud, crouching down
next to it, inspecting it in every way. They find other prints, notice
that one is more shallow than the others. From that, they conclude
that the bear is injured in a shoulder.
“Blood,” Hans says, pointing to the insects that are
swarming around the little droplets, carrying the bear’s essence
away to their dens and burrows. Nothing is wasted in this forest.
Even the blood of a fleeing predator sustains life.
I am relieved to have a break for a moment. It has been two
hours and we have marched faster and harder than ever in my life.
“Quick. This way!”
They head off, not at a walk, but at a lope. I scurry to try to
catch up with them, but I can’t. My muscles are tired, I have no
energy. I stumble over another root and darkness swallows me.
Chapter Six
I wake, cradled in someone’s arms. I am being carried.
“She needs to be fed and watered,” Stryker is lecturing off
to the side. “She cannot hunt as we do. She is weak.”
There is a rumble of agreement from the group at large.
“We should take her back to the city before she wakes.”
“No.”
It is Maverick who refuses flatly.
“You will kill her out here,” Stryker replies. “I cannot
explain how weak city women are. They do no exercise at all. Most
of them never leave their huts. If they do, it is to walk a few steps
to the public transport.”
“She will grow strong with proper care, as you did,”
Maverick says.
“I was not weak. I was ready to come out here. She
wandered into the woods.”
“I am not giving her back, and that is final,” Maverick
growls. “She kept pace with us for a good time. I do not think she
is as weak as you say.”
Darkness swallows me again.
When I wake the next time, I am wrapped in furs. There is a
fire crackling nearby and when I open my eyes I see stars high in
the sky. The air is cooler than it was before. I can feel it on my
nose, but the rest of me is so bundled up and warm that I am in no
discomfort at all.
After a moment or two, I realize that I am not alone. I am
being held. There are two strong tattooed arms wrapped around my
fur-clad waist. I look up and see Hans’ face above mine.
“Hello,” he says with a smile.
“Hey,” I say shyly, burrowing into the furs a little more.
“How are you feeling, my little rabbit?”
I smile. I like him calling me his little rabbit.
“I’m okay. I just got tired.”
“Is she awake? Feed her.” It is Maverick. I hear his
dominant rumble nearby.
Hans picks me up, still wrapped in warm animal skins, and
carries me over to the fire, where all things happen.
They have obviously been at work preparing food. There is
a big green leaf shining as if it has been washed, and atop it are
several food items. There is meat, and there are roots and berries,
and at the corner, the sugar cookies I packed but didn’t have a
chance to consume.
Hans sits down with me in his lap, offers me water and the
selection of food and tells me to eat. I am hungry and thirsty and I
don’t hesitate one bit. Usually sugar would be of most interest to
me, but the meat is rich and calls my name. I start with a chunk of
that, cooked to rare perfection.
They watch me intently, all four of them looking at me as if
a girl eating is the most fascinating thing they have ever seen in
their lives. It only serves to make me feel more shy.
“Aren’t you going to eat too?”
“We fed already,” Stryker says. “This is for you.”
I finish every bit of food on the leaf, and when I am done
my belly is full and I feel much better. There is a peace at having
eaten a meal that satisfies completely.
I avoid looking at them, knowing I’m probably in trouble.
Maverick must be so mad at me. I ruined their hunt.
“I’m sorry I ruined your hunt.”
“No need to be sorry,” Hans replies. “You walked until you
fell. You did as much as you could do.”
“I’m sorry,” Stryker murmurs next to me. “I’ll try to
convince them to take you back. You don’t belong out here.”
I agree with him, but his words also make me sad for a
reason I can’t quite explain. Maybe it’s because I wish I did belong
out here. I don’t like being sad and weak and afraid. Maverick
doesn’t respect me now. Ice never did. Hans is perhaps the only
one who seems to like me as I am, but he would have let Maverick
beat me without interference.
“I don’t want to go back.”
I speak the words softly, but I mean them.
“You were worked to exhaustion today,” Stryker says. “It
will happen again. We can slow the hunt, but this life is hard. You
will get sick and there will be no cures, no relief. It is not as it is in
the city, where illness is inconvenience and injury is rare. This life
hurts, Riley. It is painful and it will not end in a comfortable coma
bed. You will pay the price for your place in the wild a hundred
times over.”
“Stop trying to frighten her,” Maverick says. “She wants to
stay. Come here, little rabbit.”
They are all calling me that now.
I slide from the furs and feel the chill of the night air on my
skin. The warmth of the fire emanates only from one side.
“When I am mended, I will take you as you should be
taken,” he says as he reaches out with his good arm and draws me
down into his lap. “You are ours. The bear delivered you to us, and
I will not give you up for anything in this world or the next.”
He speaks with passion and decision and I feel his
possession. I am his. That is the end of it. We do not know one
another well. We come from separate worlds. I do not know what it
is like to be him, and he does not know what it is like to be me, but
we see something in one another, a sameness that bonds us in spite
of our limited knowledge.
I sit on his thigh and he wraps the good arm around my
waist, holding me tight against his hard body. I am not cold
anymore. I am cradled against him, the heat of his body keeping
me warm. While I shiver, he is shirtless. These men are all far more
acclimated to the weather than I am and don’t seem to notice the
way the coolness nips and bites at their extremities. I curl up
against him, enjoying the feeling of being held by a man. I never
knew it was possible to feel this way, to be protected and cared for
by another human so much bigger and stronger.
I can’t keep my eyes off the stitches in his chest and arm.
Stryker did a good job, but Maverick will bear the scars of that
encounter until he dies.
“I am sorry you were wounded.”
“It was the price to have you,” Maverick says. “I pay it
gladly.”
He’s not putting on a brave face. He means it. There is a
sincerity in his tone that tells me he does not see the world as I do. I
have been taught to stay far away from things that hurt.
But pain is not something to be avoided. To him, it is
something that must be paid. It makes sense. In the wilds nothing is
free. The city gives us everything we need as a matter of right. But
here there are no such rights. There is only what a person can
endure, can take, can hold. If you put it in your mouth, it’s yours,
but that’s it. There are no great deposits of wealth. Every creature
takes what it needs and little more.
“I hope I am worth it,” I say softly.
“You are,” he says. “You have the red hair of the firebird,
beautiful skin, and eyes that flash bright green. You left the city
and sought us out. Your feet were guided by fate. You are worth it
many times over.”
He runs his fingers through my hair and looks deep into my
eyes. His gaze does things to me, makes my heart beat faster and
my palms sweat. I am afraid of him in the best way possible. He
has a brutality and a power that it is wise to fear, and that makes
my flesh quiver.
I want him. I need him. These men have woken something
in me that calls to be sated. I am no longer hungry for food, but I
am utterly ravenous for him.
Maverick seems to sense my desire. I see his gaze spark and
his arms tighten around me. “You are going to be worth it so many
times over. You have much to learn, and we have much to teach.”
“Such as?” My hips squirm with the question.
“It is time you learned to please a man,” he says, easing me
to the ground slowly. My knees touch the ground, warm from the
fire and I look up into Maverick’s face. This position is perfect in a
way I cannot explain. I feel a sense of belonging I have never felt
before as he reaches down and settles me into position between his
powerful legs.
“How can I please you from down here?”
He smiles warmly. “Such an innocent little rabbit. Take my
cock out.”
I do as I am told, working awkwardly at the binding of his
pants. He strokes my hair and waits patiently. They are quite
resistant to the efforts of my slim fingers until Maverick helps me
out, his thick digits pulling the flaps of his pants open, the leather
binding crisscrossed over his thick rod.
His cock is not the same as Hans’. It seems thicker, and the
head is larger. Veins run in thick ridges over the shaft and his darkfurred balls swing low. His manhood is a monster, and as I look at
it, I see it twitch and throb in the cool air.
“Wrap your hand around the base,” Maverick says, giving
me a gentle but firm order. I do as I am told, taking hold of that
hard flesh that is still so foreign to me. I wonder at how differently
men are made. I am all soft flesh and tender petals down there, but
he is hard and his spear is ready to impale me.
I feel a trickle of moisture between my lower lips as I feel
his skin against mine. It’s smooth and totally unyielding, and I find
my fingers stroking up and down the length of it out of sheer
fascination.
“Put your mouth on it.”
I give him an uncertain look, then sort of mush my face
against his dick.
There is a burst of laughter from somewhere behind me as
Ice and to a lesser extent, Hans and Stryker laugh at me and my
ineptitude.
“Open your mouth first,” Maverick says patiently, his blue
eyes kind as he reaches down and runs his fingers through my hair,
gentling me in my embarrassment.
“Oh,” I blush. “You mean, inside my mouth.”
It is a strange request, but everything is strange. I part my
lips and let my mouth slide over the thick head of his member. I
don’t know why he wants this, but I want to please him, and the
moment his cock breaches my mouth I hear a groan of pleasure
escape him.
I learn instantly that he likes this, the touch of my soft
tongue against his hard manly rod. It is still strange, but it feels
good even to me. To put his cock in my mouth is perverted I’m
sure. City dwellers would be horrified if they could see me on my
knees like this, taking a savage’s cock inside my mouth.
“Deeper,” he growls. “More.”
His hunger is rising quickly. I try to do as he says, but my
mouth is not nearly as deep as his cock is long and I can only take
the first few inches between my lips. When he sinks his cock inside
my pussy, he’ll fill me completely, but right now the hot wet
chalice of my mouth can only give him partial pleasure.
“Use your tongue,” he urges, his strong fingers curling in
my hair. He draws my head further down and I find that I can take
him a little deeper. The thick head of his cock finds the back of my
throat and stays there for a moment before drawing out.
I can see the savagery in his eyes. He wants to thrust
roughly inside me, no matter what hole he is taking.
Maverick kisses me passionately. I open myself to him and
I feel him push inside me. His cock is thick and hard and it gleams
with my female juices of arousal.
He fucks me there on the ground in front of the fire, before
the eyes of the other men. They watch as his hips pound against
mine, his hard pubic bone punishing my clit with every single
thrust, my ass grinding against the ground. He hoists my legs above
his shoulders, lifting my hips off the ground. I am suspended from
his great fists as he saws his massive cock in and out of me,
stretching my greedy walls with his rod.
I am not just being fucked. As Maverick takes my body to
the limits of pleasure, I am learning what men are. In all this world,
there is nothing so awe-inspiring or so dangerous as a human male
at his peak. There is no beast that can best him, because he has wits
and cunning to set traps for those creatures that come at him with
tooth and claw. He is capable of cold villainy, merciless pursuit.
There is no limit to what a man unleashed can do.
The men in the city are not men. They are neutered versions
of males. I understand why Stryker left and why he roams with the
wild ones. There is no life in the city. We exist there and wait until
we die.
I have not been a woman. I have been a perpetual juvenile.
Even as an adult I have been raised to think myself small, to be
amused with bright, shiny, irrelevant things. I have not felt true
desire, because there was never anything in my world worth
desiring.
Until now. These men light a need in me that has been
dormant for far too long. The feminine power of my unleashed
sexuality calls them and they respond. My pussy grips Maverick
with desperate desire. I need him inside me, I need his essence
flowing into mine. It opens me in a million ways and transforms
my experience of existence.
I am glowing with pleasure, it flows through every cell in
my body. I am free in a way I never knew I could be, and as I get
closer and closer to my climax I feel my breath coming quicker and
faster, my toes curling, the roots of my hair tingling. There isn’t a
part of me untouched by the pleasure Maverick commands.
He cries out, a ragged male sound of triumph and release.
He thrusts deep and hard inside me and I know he’s spending his
seed. The knowledge sends me over the edge, the complete
branding of my sex, his ownership a tangible thing as he pulls out
and the warm liquid spills between my thighs.
Maverick is finished with me, but I am not done. My desire
demands more. The other men are circling in the firelight, waiting
for their turn. I have had Hans. I have had Maverick. Only Stryker
and Ice are left.
Ice outranks Stryker. There is an order to these men. Stryker
is at the bottom of them all, but it is him I want. He is the one who
offered protected from Maverick. Ice is not my friend. Ice is my
tormentor. I fear him too much to have him enter my body.
“Have her,” Ice says, ending the tension as he slaps
Stryker’s shoulder. “The wet seconds should be yours, city boy.”
Stryker has tried to be so refined with me until now. He is
the only one among them with any real understanding of how taboo
their actions are. In the city, sex is close to forbidden. Unprotected
sex is literally illegal. He knows that taking me this way is
tantamount to a crime.
Our shared bond of knowledge only makes the act more
decadent as he turns me over onto my hands and knees. He plans to
rut me like an animal. My wet, slick, sticky pussy accepts his cock
in a hard thrust and we both cry out in shared ecstasy as his rod
plunders my pussy, pushing out the cum Maverick left deep inside
me in a pounding effort to leave his own seed in its place.
Chapter Seven
Our coital bliss has led to us falling asleep in a pile, all
cuddled up together next to the fire. We didn’t even make it as far
as the hut. I am wrapped between Maverick and Stryker when we
are startled by the roar of a furious beast.
Maverick’s arms wrap around me tightly. He is around me,
protecting me as we all go from the depths of sleep to total
alertness in the blink of an eye. Every single one of the men grabs
his spear. Maverick hikes me up to my feet and keeps an arm
around me. Their eyes are locked on the forest around us. They can
tell where the animal is. All I see is darkness beyond the light of
the fire, but they see more than I do. Their senses are keener and
more practiced.
“It’s hunting us,” Ice murmurs so softly as to nearly be
inaudible. “Must have caught our scent.”
“It’s a female,” Maverick murmurs back.
A rumble passes through the men, as if the bear’s gender
means something. I don’t understand that part of it. What I do
understand is that the bear is nearby and so too is great danger. It
must have found and followed our trail.
The men seem excited by the prospect of the wounded
predator circling the camp in the dark. I am terrified.
“Stay by the fire,” Maverick murmurs in my ear. “Take
this.”
He hands me his spear. I look at it with wide eyes, having
no idea what I should do with this. Maverick takes another spear,
gestures to the others, and draws the men toward the edge of the
encampment. They are going to go after the bear. They are going to
kill it.
They disappear beyond my field of view and after a few
seconds of pure silence, I hear the bear bellow again. I close my
eyes against the sound. In that cry I feel its pain and its anguish. I
feel its rage. They mean to kill it, and it means to kill them.
My knuckles are white from gripping the spear. Every
second seems to last an hour. I want to rush toward them, but I
know I’m useless to them. What could I possibly do against the
might of a wounded bear?
The sound of bushes and small trees snapping heralds the
answer to the question. The ground beneath my feet rumbles as the
bear bursts from the edge of the forest—and makes its way directly
toward me.
I know this is an animal, but it seems like a monster, or
spirit. There is something supernatural about its lumbering form
speeding across the ground as it comes crashing through the camp,
driven mad by the pain of its wounds. None of the men can help me
now. They are behind it and no man can run as fast as a ferocious
bear can.
Its eyes have been fixed on me from the moment it came
through the trees. I know deep in my gut that it wants me. It has
been tracking me. The men are irrelevant. This is between the bear
and me, and I must face the terror and fury of it.
It comes directly for me, ignoring the shouts that come from
behind it. The savages are trying to get its attention. They’re trying
to distract it by throwing knives and rocks, but the bear has me in
her sights. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is coming
for me.
I take the shaft of the spear and hold it firm and shut my
eyes. A furious growl assaults my ears, and a sharp sting across my
face, along with a rush of air. I am thrown backwards, gripping the
spear between my hands as that flimsy piece of wood can somehow
best the bear.
There is a heavy impact, a sickening crunch that I will later
realize is the sound of stone on bone. I wait for death, but when it
does not come I risk opening my eyes and I see that the bear has
thrown itself onto the sharp point of the wood, right into the center
of its chest. Its head hangs over mine, its tongue lolling out of its
mouth. It is dead. Completely, utterly dead. I would be crushed by
it, if not for the hardwood of the spear holding it up at an unnatural
angle.
It took my blood before it died. There is a hot trickle down
my face where my left cheek has been cut by the tips of its claws,
little traces of blood running down to my chin, pooling into a
dripping line of blood that plops into the dirt at my feet.
The men are mere seconds behind the bear, they rush to me
and take hold of me and pull me away from it even though it is no
longer any kind of a threat to anything. Maverick holds me
between his big hands and looks intently into my eyes. The others
stare at me.
I realize that they’re as shocked as I am. They gave me the
spear, but they never expected me to have to use it. They talk about
me as if I’m not even there, discussing what just happened with
hushed, incredulous tones.
“The bear wanted her,” Stryker says. “That thing went right
past us like it knew she was here.”
“She took the bear’s spirit,” Ice says. His gravelly tones
hold a respect I have not heard from him before. “It gave itself to
her. A sacrifice.”
It was a total accident. How can they not see that? The bear
came for me and I took the only thing I had to defend myself. It
was weak and sick. I didn’t do anything special. I got lucky. And
the bear got unlucky. And now its blood is running into the ground.
It’s dead. And some part of me has died with it.
I fall to my knees and am sick, the stench of the blood and
the rough fur of the wild bear making my stomach churn. I am
covered in the bear’s blood. It smears my legs and arms. There is
some on my face and neck. The arterial spurting has spread blood
from one end of the camp to the other.
“She needs to be cleaned up.”
The last person I expected to hear say anything remotely
kind to me speaks. Ice. He stands over me, smiling broadly. His
eyes are the color of the moon as he crouches down and picks me
up. He doesn’t seem to care how filthy I am. He does not recoil
from my dirty state. In the past he has barely wanted to touch me.
Now he cradles me against his chest and carries me into the forest.
It is dark, but he seems to have no fear of the wild tonight.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you will feel better. The others will butcher
your kill. You can relax now. Your work is done.”
I close my eyes and hope that wherever we are going is
more peaceful than the scene we are leaving behind. The sight of
the bear barreling toward me is emblazoned in my mind. Every
time I close my eyes it replays. I am glad for Ice’s arms. He has not
been a friend to me. He has not even been remotely kind. But I
need someone to hold me now, and being carried evokes a feeling
of safety I curl into.
“Rest,” he says as I tuck my head against his chest. “You’ve
earned it.”
After several more minutes, we reach the destination he has
in mind for us. To my relief it is a warm spring, surrounded by
rocks and steaming gently in the moonlight.
“This is nice,” I say in surprise. “Why haven’t I seen it
before? We’ve been washing in that cold river…”
“Some things are only for the eyes of the tribe,” Ice says.
“This is one of them.”
“So I am part of the tribe now?”
“A kill is a rite of passage,” he says. “You have proved
yourself as a man.”
“A man?”
“Well, not a man, but as a warrior,” he says, stepping into
the water. He carries me deeper into the spring and slides into the
water. I was naked to begin with. He doesn’t seem to care that his
pants are wet as he settles me on his lap and begins to cup handfuls
of water over my bare body, taking care to first clean the scratches
on my face.
“They will leave a mark,” he says. “But you will bear that
mark with pride. You were honored tonight, little rabbit.”
“I didn’t even mean to kill it,” I admit in a small mumble.
“It was an accident.”
“It’s not possible to accidentally kill a bear. You stood
proud and tall. You faced the danger and you presented your own
sharp fang to meet the beast,” Ice says, running his hands from my
hair to my shoulders and down to my hips.
He is so impressed with me, but I don’t feel proud. I feel
sad and sick.
The water laps around us gently as Ice holds me in his lap.
Once he is done washing me, he begins to braid my hair.
“You are much braver than you have any right to be,” he
says softly. “You are small and you are female and your life in the
city has made you weak. And yet you did that which few of our
tribe ever will. You slayed a bear on your own. Your spear found
its heart. Your kill was clean and true.”
He admires me now. He could barely stand me a few hours
ago. Didn’t want to be between my thighs. Now that I’ve
mistakenly ended an animal’s life, he speaks with reverent and
approving tones.
“It was just an accident,” I repeat.
“There are no accidents,” Ice repeats himself as well.
“Nothing under the sun or moon is an accident. The bear brought
you to us and on the full moon it sacrificed itself on your spear.
You took its blood. You have been marked as one of us. I can’t
deny it anymore. You are ours. Mine.”
His voice vibrates through his chest. I feel the words inside
me, moving through my flesh. He is the wildest among them. The
hardest to impress. He is the last piece of the puzzle and now he is
claiming me as the others have. I can feel my body responding low
in my belly, the slight ache between my thighs where I took
Maverick and then Stryker now calling to him too.
But Ice seems to be in no hurry to push himself inside me.
He is still half clothed as he caresses me, washing away the blood
that stained my skin and hair. There is a peace now, after the great
death. A calmness that sinks through me as I listen to the soft
sounds of the water, and lie in his arms beneath the great moon.
“Our hunt has come to an end,” he murmurs. “We now have
enough meat to take back to the tribe. They will feast for many
days and smoke much of it so it can be stored for when the winter
comes and the game is scarce.”
“We’re going to the tribe?”
“Yes,” he says. “And when we arrive, we will have the
chief’s blessing on you.”
“Blessing for what?”
“To take you for our own. To acknowledge among all the
soul bond that binds us five. Our hearts beat as one, but the tribe
must know this too. When they see you, they must know who you
belong to. Only the chief can make such a declaration. Then you
will be marked, and…”
“Marked?”
I turn to look at him, my rear sliding over his leather
leggings, which are now soaked.
“As we are.” He gestures to his chest, where the thick blue
lines and harsh slashes are marked across his skin. My eyes widen
as I understand what he is saying. He is talking about me bearing
marks just like his. Marks that must be pounded into the skin, so
they never wash off or smudge. I saw a show about it once, lurid
detail as to how sharp needles are pressed into the skin and ink is
injected with them. The pain was evident on the faces of those
receiving their marks, and they were being given with electronic
equipment. I do not think these savages will have that kind of
machinery at their disposal.
“All who have a kill are given the honor of a mark,” Ice
says, smiling as if I should be excited by the prospect.
“I don’t want to be tattooed.”
“It is a great honor,” he says, working his fingers through
my locks. “And you have earned it.”
“I don’t want a tattoo,” I repeat.
“Well, you are going to get one,” he insists, his smile fading
to be replaced with a frown.
I fall silent. He wants to mark me. Turn me into one of
them. I wonder how long I will still be recognizable as a city girl. I
don’t think my mother would recognize me anymore. Ice is now
braiding my hair on each side, leaving the top loose. My red locks
were becoming matted with the grease of wild living. Now he is
working them into a style that pulls most of the hair off my face
and uses knots and braids to keep it back. I can see my reflection in
the water when it is still. My face is already changing. It is less full
than it was when I first came into the forest. My eyes seem bigger,
my freckles are more pronounced. I am being changed by this
environment into a woman I do not recognize.
Most of the bear’s blood has dissolved into the water now. I
am being cleansed of the kill, but I will never be able to remove the
stain from my soul. Something has changed. Ice knows it. I can feel
it, but I’m not sure I want it.
“I should go back to the city,” I mumble under my breath.
“You could not go back to the city if you wanted to,” he
says. “You have drawn the blood of the forest. You are part of it
now. Your breath. Your bones. They must stay here. You would
die if you were to return to that land of ghosts.”
“What?”
“The city is a land of the dead. No life comes from there.”
“I came from there,” I point out.
“True, but you were a shadow. A shade. The bear sought
you out and gave you her blood. Made you real. Gave you life.
Before this you were a ghost to this place. Now you are of it.”
Ice is shamanic in his speech, and what he says would be
utter nonsense if I heard it in the city. Out here, it not only makes
sense, I find myself believing him. It explains his behavior toward
me as well. He never wanted to have much to do with me at all, and
I saw the constant suspicion in his eyes. Now I understand why. He
was a warrior confronted with a ghost. What was he supposed to
do?
Chapter Eight
When Ice and I return, it is not sleep that the others have in
mind. There is something brewing over the fire, and the bear is laid
out, her eyes covered with leaves. There is respect in the way she
has been positioned, and for reasons I can’t explain, I feel tears
springing to my eyes as I see her powerful body lying dead before
the flames. She wanted me dead, but there was something more
than her desire for my death.
I can’t explain any of this in words, but we were connected,
this bear and I, and somehow, I feel as though we still are.
“The ritual?” Ice stops me next to the fire, his hand on my
shoulder.
“She took her first blood. Now she must drink from the
mother,” Maverick replies.
My relationship with these men is continuously evolving. It
feels as though every day brings something new. The dawn is
beginning to rise as Ice sits me down before the fire.
I have been awake too long. I have seen too much blood. I
have tasted death. I want nothing more than to just lie down and
sleep.
“What do I need to do?”
“Drink,” Maverick says. Hans is ladling some of the brew
into a bowl. He brings it over to me and hands it to me with both
hands. I take it with both hands too. It doesn’t smell very good, and
I’m not in any way hungry or thirsty. I can imagine how I must
look right now, my face marked by the bear’s claws, my tattered
skirt ruined and dirty and wet, my hair braided as if I am one of
them… and now there is this brew.
“You’ve earned this,” Ice says, squeezing my shoulder.
“This is not something we share lightly. Drink deep, Riley.”
I look around at all four men and lift the bowl to my lips.
The brew smells of fungus and dirt. I hesitate, but their
encouraging smiles make me raise the bowl to my lips. I take a sip
and gag, but one of them puts their hand behind my head, and
someone else’s fingers take my nose, and before I know it, they
have poured a good dose of the brew down my throat.
I splutter and spit, looking at them with fury in my gaze.
“What are you doing?”
“Ensuring you get the proper dose,” Hans says. “Settle
down and gaze at the fire.”
I shake my head. I am so tired. I just want to sleep. I don’t
want to have this stomach-churning brew swilling around in my
innards. I want to go and lie down, but they won’t let me.
Maverick and Ice take a place on either side of me keeping
me up and awake. Hans crouches nearby and begins to hum.
Stryker takes up the tune, then Maverick follows and finally Ice
lifts his voice in a song, speaking words I don’t understand. They
are not in the common tongue, but they are powerful. I can feel
them flowing into me, just like the brew did.
As the minutes pass and the song swells, I start to feel the
effects of the brew. It is not an intoxicant the way the alcohol was.
It doesn’t make me hazy and warm. It changes what the world is. I
am me, but nothing else is the same. Everything from the dirt to the
breeze is suddenly alive. I am embraced by all creation, wisps of
wind caressing my face, gentling my scars.
The bear lies before me, but she is no longer dead. She
gleams with fractal patterns, black lines and rich red sparks
marking along her back and sides.
She raises her head to me and I realize that I did not kill her,
not in the true sense of the word. I took her into myself. Her flesh is
part of me. She has made me broader and bigger. She has given me
keener senses and deeper understanding.
I begin to make sounds of my own. I know the words of the
song. They come to me through my heart and dance over my
tongue without touching my mind. My voice is higher and softer
than theirs, but it fits with them.
And then, in the midst of the song, we come together. As
one. Not four men and one woman. Five souls joined in the flesh.
A thick cock slides in and out of me, pleasuring the wet channel of
my sex. I am not just a woman. I am the primal feminine and I am
being mated by males who wish to tame a part of me for their own.
I arch my back and let out a moan as another cock slides
between my lips and deep into my mouth. I am in ecstasy, feeling
everything so much more keenly than would normally be possible.
They stretch me, thrust inside me, take me and service me.
I am not entirely sure who is where at any given time, but
they all take my mouth and then my sex, one after the other, they
make deposits into my deepest places, filling my belly and my
womb with their potent juices. I am consumed with desire that
takes hold of my entire being, makes me so hungry for them I can
barely stand to be bereft of their shafts. I am the bear, but this time
the spears of the hunters do not end life, they try to create it with
stabbing strokes that stretch and demand my flesh give way to
theirs.
Orgasm after orgasm rushes through me, given by the
surging bodies of these men of muscle and desire. They are more
than savages, they are pure masculine forces of nature and their
seed soaks my flesh time and time again until once more we fall
into an exhausted pile and sleep.
Chapter Nine
“Time to take her to the tribe.”
“Time to go home.”
The sun rises and so do we. I wake to their voices
murmuring in the light. They are quiet, but there is undeniable
excitement in their tone. They are working as I rest, and I get the
sense they want me to get as much sleep as I can. I want to get as
much sleep as I can. This is going to be a very long day for all of
us.
The world is back as it was, but it seems brighter. The trees
are no longer merely obstacles of wood and leaves; they dance with
life in the breeze that invigorates me.
The bear’s meat and skin has been packed onto a sled that is
dragged behind two of them at any one time. There are other meats
as well, preserved in salts that they brought with them in thick
blocks.
“This will be a long walk,” Maverick says. “Tell us if you
are getting tired and we will rest or put you on the sled with the
meat.”
I don’t want to be put on the meat sled. I have gained Ice’s
respect and I want to keep it. I know he won’t respect me if I sit on
the sled and am pulled along. I have to stand on my own two feet. I
have to walk among them, as one of them.
Before we leave the little encampment, the men make sure
to pack everything down. The shelter is covered in large fronds and
leaves, the fire is damped down and doused with water. A small
stash of food is left in some clay pots that are hung from trees in
case someone comes by and needs it.
There is care in every action they take, thought put into
every aspect of their behavior. It is in stark contrast to how things
are in the city, where we don’t really need to think about what we
do in such small ways. The view of those inside the city walls that
the people out here are thoughtless savages could not be more
wrong. These men are more skilled and more intelligent than
almost anyone I met inside the city walls—because they have to be.
Out here a little mistake, a moment of clumsiness or inattention can
lead to serious injury or death. The stakes are higher, and these
men rise to the challenge every minute of every day.
“Come, little rabbit,” Hans says, taking my hand in his great
paw.
We begin the walk.
For a time it is just another stroll. Nothing much changes
around us. The trees are still thick, the undergrowth ample. The
path they must have cut when they first came this way is already
overgrowing with shoots and tendrils. It all feels familiar—until it
doesn’t.
I notice that the trees are starting to thin out, and that the
bushes grow lower to the ground. The birdsong is not as prevalent
and the light is starting to grow. I had gotten used to the perpetual
twilight of the forest, so these piercing shafts of light feel
simultaneously like an intrusion and a glorious display.
Since drinking the brew, I feel as though my entire mind
has been reset. I would never have paid attention to the way the
light hit leaves before. It would have been background to the
whirring of my mind, a thousand petty and neurotic thoughts
whipping through my brain in a ceaseless torrent. I am empty now,
and the world comes in to fill me.
The changes around us herald new terrain. There is a certain
longing and sorrow inside me because I know we are leaving the
place where the bear walks. Through the trees, I see bright flashes
of green; rolling grasses are waiting for us. I can tell already that
this new vista will be beautiful, but I feel an undeniable sense of
sorrow as we leave the place where I was born anew. There is a
roar in the distance, a rumble that reaches out to all of us.
I look up at Maverick, who smiles and drapes an arm
around my shoulders. “She’s saying farewell for now,” he tells me.
The bear is gone, but her spirit still walks the wilds. I feel a
strange sense of sorrow as we leave her territory. I will miss the
forest until we return. It is where I became a woman—more than
that, it is where I became fully human for the first time. The short
hours I spent in the embrace of the woods have changed me
forever.
We leave the trees and move into the savannah plains.
There are grasses for miles, and in the distance, a great mountain
range rises. The sheer sense of space is astounding. I have never
been anywhere this large before. The forest felt big, but my eye
line was always cut by tall trees. Here, I get the sense the world is
infinite. I could pick a direction and run in it forever.
“The tribe lives at the foot of those mountains,” Hans says,
pointing out green rises in the distance.
***
It is seven days’ walk to the village. By day we walk. At
night we make camp and love in equal measure. They fill me over
and over with their seed, and I give myself to them with eagerness;
well, most of them. Ice keeps himself separate from the sexual
interludes. I feel as though he was present when I drank the brew,
but he has not been with me since, and I am not entirely sure he
truly took me after the bear either.
He is the quietest of them all. Hans and Stryker love to
laugh and tell stories of their hunts. Their chatter fills the days and
makes me feel wanted and perhaps even loved. Maverick’s
watchful eye and stern discipline keep me in line, but every time I
so much as glance at Ice, I feel chills running through me.
After seven days, we arrive at the foot of the mountains,
where I am told the ground is most fertile for growing crops. There
are many small fields outside the village, tended by women and
boys who wave and greet us with a mixture of excitement and
curiosity.
In the city, nobody knew who I was and nobody cared.
There were simply too many people milling about for anyone to
really notice a specific individual. Here, it is different. I stand out
immediately. There is pointing and excited chatter as the word
spreads about the new woman.
I don’t begrudge them their interest. I find them just as
fascinating. The village itself is a curious place. There are small hut
houses everywhere, primitive in nature, but I also see hints here
and there that all the old technology has not been lost. There is
evidence of windows of glass, rounded panes that sit inside wooden
frames. And there are bits of metal and concrete, not made for
purpose, but perhaps salvaged from other places. These people are
scavengers, living in the rubble of the world before.
Maverick and the others lead me to a great roundhouse in
the very center of it all.
“We are going to see the chief,” he murmurs in my ear.
“Say nothing in his presence. Understand?”
I nod quickly, sensing that there is some tension. They are
worried about something, and that tension only seems to rise as we
are welcomed into the roundhouse and conducted into the presence
of the chief himself.
He is a massive redheaded man with eyes like emerald, a
thick mane of hair, and great muscular legs and arms. He wears
tanned furs and leathers stitched together skillfully in a pattern that
mimics the lines of his torso. Whoever made his clothing is
talented beyond belief. I find myself staring at him, my mouth open
until Stryker reaches over and taps me under the chin to remind me
to close it.
He is a fearsome-looking man, but there is a kindness to his
eyes and demeanor that sets me a little at ease, though I still find
myself hiding behind Maverick and Ice for the most part. They are
my protection from all that is strange and frightening.
“Chief Conan,” Maverick says, speaking not with
deference, but with respect. “We would present our mate to you.”
“Your mate?”
Maverick takes me by the arm and pushes me forward. I
find myself under the inspection of the chief, his eyes running over
me not with the carnal heat I have come to expect from all savages,
but with keen interest. He is weighing me not as a potential mate,
but as a member of his tribe.
“What have you brought from the forest?” he rumbles.
“They didn’t grow young women there last I checked.”
I feel the men draw closer around me. They are protective
of me. I have a flash of imagery in my mind of being a piece of
meat surrounded by wolves. They are worried the chief will want
me, I think. And what if he does? What then?
“This is Lulu Ursa,” Maverick introduces me by a name that
sounds strange to my ears.
“Bunny bear?” Conan snorts.
“She has the spirit of the bear,” Maverick tells the chief. “I
wear her claws. We had to face the bear to take her, and then, when
she had taken us as mates she slew the bear.”
“This girl is a bear slayer?” Chief Conan laughs. “You have
returned with a pretty girl and a very tall tale. Which tribe is
missing its maiden?”
“I’m from the…”
Maverick claps a hand over my mouth before I can tell the
chief I am from the city.
“She was a stray from the West Winds.”
“A stray?” Chief Conan seems to be unconvinced.
“A runaway,” Ice says, his natural growl sounding to great
effect. “She is headstrong, willful, and often disobedient.”
“A true redhead,” Conan laughs. “Very well. If you wish to
build a family home, you have my blessing. The cooks are already
preparing the feast. Go and make your preparations, and welcome,
Lulu Ursa.”
I do not think I will ever get used to that name, but Riley
doesn’t seem to fit who I am now either. Riley was an innocent,
virginal girl from the city who knew nothing about men or life or
the world beyond the walls. Lulu Ursa is an entirely different
woman, one I might grow into being, given enough time.
Maverick and the others give their thanks to the chief and
draw me away. I can sense tension among them until we clear the
gaggles of interested savages, men and women and children
dressed in brightly woven clothes and furs.
I get the sense that though these people all rely on the
hunters to bring them game, the hunters aren’t quite part of the
tribe. There is an awe and a suspicion in the gazes, though the
young men seem particularly eager to catch Maverick, Ice, and
Hans’ attentions.
***
There is a house for hunters at the verge of the village. It is
quite large and well made of wood. These savages have retained
skills from the long ago, which mean their homes seem to be very
comfortable and dry. I am glad. We have been camping in shacks
under the stars for two weeks now and it is nice to know the
concept of ‘indoors’ still exists.
I have so many questions, and they all burst out the moment
the door is closed.
“Why did you say that I am from the West Winds?”
“Our chief refuses those of city blood. Especially women,”
Maverick explains. “It is easier for him to believe that you are a
stray from another tribe.”
“Why? And why does Stryker get to be part of the tribe if I
don’t get to be?”
“Stryker passed many trials,” Ice interjects. “You would not
survive them.”
“I bet I would,” I say, instantly galled. “I killed a bear!”
“By mistake,” Stryker chimes in. “Fate and fortune can be
kind in a rare while, but the trials of the tribe are not for the fainthearted or those who have to rely on luck.”
I don’t like lying about who I am or where I’m from. I
know nothing about this West Winds tribe, and attempting to pass
myself off as one of them seems like a bad idea from the start—as
does lying to the chief.
It is not my decision though. Nothing has been from the
beginning of this. My men lead me from the chief’s home all the
way out to the verge of the village, where a well-made house stands
distant from the rest of the tribe.
“Why is this house so far away?”
“We shed blood,” Ice explains. “These people do not like to
spill blood or take souls. To do so is to invite the fury of the spirits.
We are not just hunters. We are warriors. We are the ones with the
spears and the knives.”
While we speak, food is brought to the house, presented
beautifully on porcelain plates from the before times. It is placed
next to the doorstep and then it is left.
We can hear the music and see the dancing, but Maverick
and the men do not make any move toward it, and I have the sense
we would not be welcomed.
“You’re outcasts in your own tribe?”
“The sheep may love the sheepdog, but that doesn’t mean
they want to lie with him,” Stryker says.
I can’t imagine women not wanting to lie with Maverick,
Ice, Hans, and Stryker. They are all handsome men with raw power
that commands erotic response. The women of the city would
swoon for them, I know that much. Surely the women of the tribe
cannot be so different they don’t notice.
I was expecting to be met with love rivals once we returned
to the tribe, but all the women we’ve encountered have lowered
their eyes and turned away. There are blushes and giggles, but none
of the brazen interest my men surely warrant.
“Who do they lie with, then?”
“Chief Conan has many wives,” Maverick explains. “When
women come of age, they marry him, or are traded to other tribes.”
“And men?”
“They may act as guardians, but it is forbidden to sleep with
Conan’s brides. Most leave. That is why we are important. We
guard the tribe and we hunt the meat.”
Four men to protect all these women, children, and one
chief?
Chief Conan has a very sweet deal. He doesn’t have to hunt
or protect the tribe; all he has to do is sleep with his wives all day
long and wait for the hunters to bring him meat.
There are some crops, and small birds that provide eggs and
meat, but for real game, they depend on Hans, Maverick, Ice, and
Stryker. My men.
I am completely confused, and not entirely pleased. I didn’t
know what to expect when we came here, but it wasn’t this.
“Why do you do this?”
“Why do we do what?”
“Why do you let him hoard all the women while you do all
the work?”
Maverick laughs, his handsome face contorting with
genuine amusement. “Conan does not have an easy task. A dozen
wives make for endless torment. Conan does not spend a minute of
his life without a woman or three in his ear. When the wives are
displeased…”
“Which they always are,” Ice says, rolling his eyes.
“He must settle endless quarrels and complaints…”
“Women are trouble,” Hans says. “Better one wild woman
between four than twelve women to one man.”
“Better a dozen rabid dogs than twelve women snarling
over a chief’s bone,” Maverick smirks.
They don’t seem upset by the arrangement at all. They don’t
seem to have much interest in the village women either, which is
strange because many of them are very beautiful. They have perfect
almond-shaped eyes, and a range of hair colors from brilliant
platinum blonde to the darkest raven shades. In the aftermath of the
Mostly End, people from all over the world came together in small
communities. There are bloodlines from across the globe reflected
in the people of the tribe.
“You don’t want any of them? Conan could have eight
brides and you could have one each…”
“We are related to most of them,” Maverick says. “They are
our sisters and cousins. We were always going to take a mate from
outside the tribe. Conan can mate with impunity because he was
not originally one of us. His red hair marks him as other.”
“Just like mine does?”
“Just like yours,” Hans smiles, drawing me into his lap.
“Stryker could have been with anyone in the tribe
though…”
There’s a pause, a moment of uncomfortable silence.
Stryker smiles.
“What?” I can feel there’s another story going untold.
“Our previous encampment was near a forest’s edge. It was
easier to come up upon it in the dead of night and this fucker did
just that,” Maverick says. “He’s just lucky he didn’t impregnate
any of the women he took.”
“They’re called condoms,” Stryker drawls.
“Plastic between you and a woman? What’s the point?”
“Not knocking up your sister?”
Ice makes a near feral snarl and I can’t help but giggle.
Stryker is teasing Ice, and he really doesn’t like it. Ice is strong and
smart and dangerously sexy, but he doesn’t have anything like a
sense of humor.
“I’ll knock you around, boy,” Ice growls.
“Easy,” Maverick says. “This is why we don’t talk about
the subject.”
They might be done talking about the subject, but I’m not.
I’m fascinated.
“So you were hiding in the woods and having sex with the
ladies of the tribe?”
“They thought he was a sexy ghost,” Hans murmurs,
rumbling as he laughs. “They sometimes went out in pairs to visit
him.”
“Oh, my…”
Stryker grins wider.
“Stryker was with several women before we caught him,”
Ice says. “By all rights he should have been put to death, but he
acquitted himself well in battle.”
“He wounded Ice and Maverick quite badly,” Hans
murmurs in my ear. I love how he translates the information for
me, telling me the things I need to know when the others will not.
“We realized he was of more use alive than dead. Good
hunters and warriors cannot be wasted.”
Stryker’s smile is broadening. He’s obviously not sorry for
what he did. I can imagine him lurking in the woods with all his
city wiles, seducing the innocent tribal women. And I can imagine
how angry Maverick and Ice and Hans must have been when they
discovered him—not to mention Chief Conan.
“They beat the shit out of me,” Stryker laughs.
“True. Once he was recovered he passed the trials,” Hans
says. “And here we are. One happy tribe.”
“Except I have to lie about who I am and pretend I’m not
from the city.”
“Nobody will speak to you,” Maverick says. “So it should
not be a hardship. We will be leaving on another hunting trip once
your moon blood time is over.”
I guess he’s talking about my period. I haven’t had one of
those in years.
“I don’t get a moon blood time.”
“Why?”
“I have a thing, an implant, that stops it.”
The men look at each other with consternation and
confusion, as if I’ve just told them I like to lop my limbs off for the
fun of it.
“Why would you have that?”
“Because it means I don’t have to bleed.”
“Women are supposed to bleed. As are men, just in
different ways. Men are the warriors of the world. Women are the
warriors of the home.”
“Sexists are the sexists of the universe,” I scowl. “I don’t
want to have a moon time. They hurt and they’re pointless.”
“You have to have one in order to conceive,” Stryker says.
“I don’t want to conceive.”
Their reactions range from amused to shocked. Hans’ arms
tighten around me almost imperceptibly, Maverick’s brows rise,
Ice gives me a sharp look as if I’ve done something wrong, and
Stryker just shakes his head.
“What?”
“It’s okay,” Stryker says. “I can take that implant out of her.
They’re short-acting.”
“Good. Do it.” Maverick gives the order. Just like that. As if
he has supreme right to my body. The amusement I felt at the
whole Stryker seducing their sisters situation fades immediately.
Hans’ arms are tighter around me for a reason. He knew. He
knew what Maverick was going to say, and what I was going to do.
“It just takes a quick scalpel incision,” Stryker says. He’s
moving toward his medical kit.
I tense up and shake my head. “No.”
Nobody is listening to me. I try to stand up to assert myself
more, but Hans has me trapped on his lap.
“Let me go,” I growl.
“Settle, little bear,” he murmurs in my ear. “We won’t hurt
you.”
Stryker has retrieved a scalpel. I watch as he rubs pure
alcohol over the blade. The sight gives me chills and makes me
squirm on Hans’ lap, not that it makes a difference. He is gripping
me securely by the hips and there’s no way to get loose.
“Hold still,” Stryker says, his voice soothing, but not
soothing enough.
“Leave me alone! I don’t want it to come out.”
“It’s coming out,” Maverick says, stepping over to me.
“Where is it?”
“I’m not telling you.” I stare at him defiantly. I know where
the little shaft is hiding. They’ll never find it.
“It’s usually in the upper arm,” Stryker says. “I installed
thousands of these things.”
He starts running his fingers over my upper arm,
precariously close to the spot where the implant is located.
Dammit. He really does know. In a second he’s going to find it and
then I’ll be fucked in a whole new way.
There’s only one thing for it. I bite him. Hard.
Two of his fingers are caught between my teeth as he lets
out an angry shout. I see I’ve left good indentations in his skin as
he yanks his hand away and shakes it, looking at me with angry
eyes.
I don’t get a chance to gloat. Hans turns me over his lap, his
large hands keeping me easily under control as my hips find his
thigh and my hands hit the floor. One large arm wraps around my
waist and then his other hand finds my ass with a loud smack that
echoes around the room and is followed by a painful ache.
“Don’t bite,” he lectures sternly.
“He was going to cut me!”
“It doesn’t matter what Stryker was going to do. You don’t
bite. Ever.” Hans keeps lecturing me as he spanks me long and
hard, his palm catching my ass over and over again, top, bottom,
sides of my cheeks all receiving painful swats from his massive
hand.
This isn’t fair. They were going to cut me and I’m the one
in trouble. They were going to make me bleed, and I’m not allowed
to defend myself. Assholes. As bursts of pain hit my nervous
system over and over, I get angrier and angrier. I’m not sorry for
biting Stryker. I’d do it again, and I will do it again if they try to
take the implant. I can remember what periods were like when I
had them, and I don’t want them back. Ever.
Hans spanks me until my ass feels like it’s made of molten
lava. Ordinarily I’d cry, but I’m too angry to cry. How fucking dare
they do this to me? They’re not even pretending to care what I
want.
He finally stops spanking. My ass is throbbing and burning
and I know I won’t feel comfortable for a long time. I don’t like
this side of Hans. He’s usually my ally, not the one punishing me,
but right now he’s as much my enemy as any of them are.
“You’re going to settle down and you’re going to let
Stryker take that thing out,” he says, as if he can just order my
submission.
“No, I’m not!” I shout the words defiantly. “If you try again
I’m going to…”
“Hold her down,” Maverick says. He sounds almost bored.
Hans picks me up and carries me over to the bed, kicking
and swearing and screaming. It means nothing to him, or to any of
the rest of them. He pushes me down on the bedding and pins me in
place. Ice turns my head away from the arm where the implant is,
his hand on the back of my neck, fingers digging into either side of
my spine to keep me in place.
On the other side, Maverick holds my arm down. All four of
them are conspiring to keep me locked in place to the extent that I
can’t move an inch. My whimpering whines make no difference.
So much of the time I feel as though I am the equal of these
men. I walk with them, by their sides, and I am loved and protected
by them. But right now I am being reminded how they really think
of me. I am not their equal. I am their possession. I am a female to
be owned and dominated. One who must obey.
“Please, no…” I start to beg. “Don’t take it out… don’t…”
I feel Stryker’s fingers on my arm. He’s being gentle, but I
don’t care. There’s nothing truly gentle about this. They don’t even
understand what they’re taking from me. They want me to be
fertile. That’s it.
“I fucking hate you all,” I snarl as the steel touches my skin.
“Keep her still,” Stryker says. His voice is calm now,
methodical. My emotional turmoil doesn’t touch him.
I growl and squeal as he makes a swift, shallow incision in
my arm and plucks the little shaft out of my flesh. I can’t see it, but
I can feel the burn of the cut and I know he has the implant.
“There we go,” he says, his tone soothing. “Now I’ll clean
that wound. It might sting a little.”
As if it matters. My ass is throbbing anyway. A little sting
in my arm as the sterile alcohol bathes the little wound he’s made
hardly registers. I feel the sticking plaster of a bandage being
applied. It’s over.
“Okay, you can let her up.”
The large male hands recede from my body. As soon as I
feel them retract, I leap up from the bed and run for the door.
Ice catches me before I can escape the room and tosses me
back onto the bed, pinning me face down again.
“You’ve angered the bear,” he says as he holds me in place,
his strong hand keeping me easily in place. “Her rage is not going
to be easily calmed.”
“I hate every single one of you,” I growl. There’s no way to
get up. Ice can pin me easily, he weighs more than twice as much
and his body is sinew and muscle and bone, where mine is soft
curves and still weak flesh. As much as I struggle, I am stuck
beneath him.
Ice chuckles. “You see?”
“She will calm down in time,” Maverick says. “That last
piece of the city needed to be removed. She will not truly be ours
until after her first moon blood.”
They are speaking about me as if I’m not even there. And
maybe I’m not. They don’t care about what I want, or what I think.
They order me about and take me as they please. They are keeping
me from returning to the city, even though I asked so many times
to be taken back. I had begun to accept my place here, but this
changes everything.
Now I have to get back to the city. If they do take the
implant out, I’ve probably got a few days before my body starts a
new period. But if I can get back to the city, I can get a new
implant and save myself the pain and the blood that I know is
coming.
Ice is smarter than Maverick. He crouches over me, one of
his knees on each side of my body, his hand firmly placed on the
back of my neck. He’s not trying to be calming or gentle or kind.
He’s just keeping me from running out the door and nothing more.
The rest of the men settle back into their positions. Hans sits
across from the bed. Stryker goes and messes with his medical
equipment. The whole mood in the house has shifted. I’m not
happy at all. That doesn’t bother Ice. He’s never cared what mood
I’m in, but Hans and Stryker are a little more sensitive to my
feelings. Maverick leaves the house entirely, stepping out onto the
deck. From my awkwardly placed position, I can see his back
through the window.
I watch as Stryker drops the implant into his medical kit.
That gives me an idea. Maybe I can get that one back inside myself
somehow? A little slit in my other arm or somewhere else and I
could maybe push it back in. It will probably hurt, but not as much
as a period does, I bet.
“Can I let you up? Or are you going to keep rampaging,
little bear?”
“You can let me up,” I say, not bothering to hide the
bitterness in my voice. I’m not going to run or fight right now.
There’s no point in doing either of those things. I can’t beat these
men by force. I have to use stealth and deception.
Ice clambers off my back and releases my neck. The loss of
his grip leaves me feeling a little bereft. I don’t know why, but
whenever he does that to me, there’s some part of me that likes it.
It feels safe, like nothing in the world can get to me.
Unfortunately, the only people in the world I need to worry
about getting to me already have.
I sit up and rearrange my clothes. I’m a mess, and it’s all
their fault.
“There is a way to stop periods that doesn’t involve an
implant.”
“What?”
“Periods stop for nine months when you’re pregnant.”
“Fuck off.”
Stryker scowls at me. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” I scowl right back at him.
“Young lady, you are about to get your butt whipped
again,” Stryker snaps at me. “I am about tired of your attitude.”
I am tired of his attitude too. I am tired of being owned, of
being treated like barely sentient meat. I am tired of it all, but what
can I do but accept my fate? They have taken the implant from me,
and I am no longer protected against their seed.
Chapter Ten
Three days later…
Stryker locked his medical kit away in the rusty old safe and
I haven’t been able to get to the implant. I also haven’t been able to
run away back to the city. My savages have been keeping watch on
me around the clock, as if they suspect I’m up to something.
They’re right. I hate the way they seem to be able to read my mind
and anticipate what I’m going to do before I do it.
I am beginning to feel pain, the once familiar ache low in
my belly that I know will turn into a torment I will be forced to
endure. It makes me angry. Anger is an easy emotion to feel now
that they have unleashed my body’s natural responses.
“Her temper is even worse now,” Ice notes as I prowl
around, growling like the bear whose spirit I must have absorbed.
What I wouldn’t give right now for a mouth full of sharp canines,
and fingers with long claws. They would be in real trouble then,
these savage hunters who have stripped the last vestige of
civilization from me.
“Her natural hormones will be asserting themselves,”
Stryker says. “Those implants suppress a lot of things. She will be
moody for a while.”
“Also, you ripped me open and pulled things out of me!”
I shout the words, not caring who hears me, not caring what
they do to me.
“Stop yelling. Now,” Ice snarls. I didn’t even see him move,
but suddenly he’s in my face, his nose inches from mine, those
silver eyes boring into my gaze with an intensity I can barely stand.
“I will gag you if you raise your voice again.”
“Go to hell!”
I scream the words at the top of my lungs. I know it’s a bad
idea. I know I should be more careful. I know he’s going to hurt me
for doing it, but I don’t care. I need to scream. I need him to know
that I don’t fear him.
His retribution is immediate. He was prepared. I didn’t
notice, but he had a braided cord in his hand the whole time, and as
I scream he shoves it in. Leather fills my mouth, bitter tasting and
rough against my lips and tongue.
“I will not tolerate disrespect from a woman,” he says.
“And especially not from you. We own you, girl. You are
property.”
He is something totally unspeakable, but he doesn’t care
what I think of him. He ties the leather behind my head and stands
over me, his hands on his hips, his bare muscular torso rippling
with every breath he takes.
“You behave worse than an infant,” he lectures. “You
scream and you cry and you expect some result from it. We will
never respond to your displays of temper, girl.”
I growl through the gag, tasting leather and rage. I’m going
to do more than display temper. I’m going to run away from them.
They have no idea how mad they’ve made me. Up until now I have
been too afraid of the world at large to be without them, but my
anger makes me more brave than I was before.
He grabs me by the back of the neck and pushes me forward
over the bed.
“Hold her arms,” he tells Stryker and Hans. They do as they
are told, dutiful assholes.
My ass is bared. My cheeks are spread. I feel him pushing
slippery liquid against the most embarrassing bud of my body.
“She needs to be disciplined,” he says. “She’s spoiled.”
He’s talking to the others, not me, but my face blushes red
with frustration and embarrassment. Ice handles me as if I’m an
animal. I’ve seen him deal with carcasses and display more respect
than this.
The pad of his middle finger rubs around my hole, then
pulls away.
“Bring me that root and a knife and hold her still.”
I don’t know what the hell he’s planning to do to me, but I
know I won’t like it. Hans and Stryker have their work cut out to
keep me still as I pitch another fit, but I don’t care. It’s worth it to
fight. Ice and the rest of them have to learn that they can’t just do
whatever they want to me—even if they can. I have to resist,
because resistance is all I have.
He’s doing something behind me. I hear soft scraping
sounds, but I don’t know what he has in store until something hard
and rounded, and not at all finger-like starts taking advantage of
my lubricated hole and pushes inside me.
“Ginger root,” he says. “Disciplining naughty girls since the
before times.”
At first, it doesn’t feel like much. It just feels like a
relatively small, but hard intrusion. It could be a lot worse. Is this
what he thinks will subdue me? Sticking bits of the landscape up
my ass? Well, good luck to him… wait… what is that?
I’m starting to feel a tingling deep in my rear. It’s just a bit
weird at first, but then it starts to heat up and I realize with a start
that the root is causing the tingling, which is quickly turning into a
burning feeling deep in my ass.
Ice snorts in a satisfied way as my hips start to dance with
discomfort. They’re not satisfied with beating my ass. They’re
going to torment it from the inside out now. Every second that goes
by, I feel the heat and tingling spreading. It’s not fair. The
lubrication and my own squirming motions seem to be making it
worse. I can feel the very tight ring of muscle burning the most,
and then my internal parts starting to heat up as well.
I want to tell him to get it out of me, but I can’t speak
thanks to the gag. All I can do is mumble into the leather and
writhe about to the extent that Stryker and Hans allow. A few
minutes into my session of torment, Maverick enters the house. I
hear the door creak open and then a low whistle emits from him.
“What’s going on?”
“I’m teaching her a lesson,” Ice says.
“And what lesson is that?”
“If she yells at me, she gets punished.”
“She yelled at you?”
“Loudly,” Ice says, unimpressed. “And without end. Now
she has a reason to yell, but she can’t.”
It is humiliating to be spoken about like this, to be held in
place by my savage men and treated more like an animal to be
broken to their will than a woman with thoughts and feelings.
The ginger slides from my bottom, but the punishment is
not over. Something thicker and harder is already pushing in. It’s
Ice’s cock. He is making good on his threats to take me in my most
sensitive place, and now it is more sensitive than ever.
I blush furiously, my entire body reacting to the hot
humiliation of being held down and taken by this stern man who
has disapproved of me from the very beginning. This is not sex for
pleasure. This is sex for punishment. I can feel his disciplinary
intent as he puts one large hand on the back of my neck and eases
the broad head of his cock slowly, but inexorably into my bottom.
There’s no point begging him for mercy. I know that there
will be none. I knew what I was doing when I taunted him in the
first place, practically begging for him to prove to me that I could
be controlled.
Now he is showing me, the throbbing hot flesh of his cock
spreading my stinging asshole wide, inch after inch sinking into the
tight cavity. The physical sensation is uncomfortable, but I feel his
dominance coursing through me. With Ice, I will never get away
with anything, and that knowledge makes my body sing with
arousal I would deny if only I could.
I let out a little whimpering moan as the big, mean savage
urges his cock forward, sliding the thick shaft in and out of that
tender, embarrassing place. Only Ice could come up with such a
twisted punishment. It is him all over to calculate a way to first
shock, then overwhelm me. The rage that drove me to yell at him
has abated, turning me into a whimpering, squirming little mess
beneath him.
The hands of the other savages slide from my body. Now it
is only Ice who holds me in place, and his hand is no longer as tight
as it was around the back of my neck. I am staying in place of my
own free will. I am allowing my bottom to be fucked by this
savage. Worse, my hips are rising up and back, taking him deeper
still because this is what I want. I want to be held in place,
punished and fucked.
I want to be dominated by him. I want to feel this unique
sensation running through my very blood, where I know it doesn’t
matter what I want, because all that matters is his will and his
desire.
Ice has made me soften beneath him. He has taken my
defiance and rage and turned it into submissive arousal. And he
knows it. I hear him growl, but it’s not an angry sound anymore.
It’s a sound of masculine triumph as my bottom relaxes all the
more, allowing him to surge in and out of the tight ring of muscle
gripping his cock.
He fucks my ass without mercy, his cock sliding in and out
of my stinging hole. Gasping and squealing into the gag, I lift my
hips. The heat in my ass has spread throughout my sex. My clit is
tingling, my pussy is dripping and I need to be filled there
desperately.
I should be furious, or cowering beneath him. Having my
ass fucked should not result in this much raw desire, but there is
something about his unchained cruelty that turns me on and frees
me to be whatever I please. With him, I don’t control myself,
because he will control me when necessary. Right now, he has the
back of the leather gag in his hand and is using it like a pair of
reins, pulling my head back as he pushes his thick rod into my sore
ass over and over again.
“Scream at me again, girl, and I’ll whip your ass before I
fuck it,” he growls. “You have been spoiled. But I will un-spoil
you.”
His cock is pushing past the tight ring of muscle over and
over, making it submit to him. I feel his hot cock going deeper and
deeper with every thrust. There’s not a hole in my body he would
not take. There’s not a thing he wouldn’t do to me and I know it.
Maverick is watching everything. I know he’s seeing the
way my ass is being stretched lewdly around Ice’s rod. They are all
watching. Stryker. Hans. Maverick. They are all witness to my
punishment.
Should I be crying? Begging for mercy? Should I be
learning a lesson? All I’m learning is that my ass is another source
of rough pleasure, and that being disciplined doesn’t mean being
hurt. My hips roll, grinding my ass around his dick and soon I am
sliding back on him, matching him stroke for stroke.
I hear Ice growl as my ass clenches his cock and I know he
is looking for a new way to make an impression on me.
“Pick her up, Ice,” Maverick says, his voice thick with lust.
“I will have her too.”
Ice pulls me up from the bed and holds me against him, his
cock deep in my ass. He holds me up on his cock as Maverick
slides to where I was lying. Then he lets me slide back down atop
Maverick’s muscular body. Maverick’s cock is hard and waiting
for me and I am impaled between them in one devastatingly slow
motion.
My ass is already full, and as my pussy stretches around
Maverick’s cock, I feel myself spreading wider than ever before,
filled and taken by these ruthless men whose desire and dominance
makes me respond with instinctual ecstasy.
Everything they do to me is so wrong. But everything I feel
with them is so right.
They have made me a savage. They have made me as they
are, and as my holes are pillaged by their thick, pounding cocks, I
am no more than an animal, and I am no less than theirs.
I am sandwiched between my men, sated by the savages.
My orgasm comes in a crashing rush of sensation that I cannot
control or contain. They hold my writhing form between their
muscular bodies and spend their seed inside my holes.
It leaks out as they soften and slide from me and I lie
between them, weak with orgasm. Now there are no more lectures,
no more arguments. Now my pussy is tender, my ass is throbbing.
Now I have no more desire to fight. All I can do is fall asleep
feeling a deep contentment that I have felt only a few times in my
life before—and every time with these men.
Afterward, I crawl into Ice’s lap and he holds my naked,
cum-dripping body against his, pulling a blanket over me to shelter
me from the cold. Ice rarely deigns to share words with me, but his
actions say all I need to hear.
I have been punished, taken to the very brink of my body’s
capacity for discipline and pleasure alike, but he does not hold my
bad behavior against me. He takes it in his stride and he addresses
it as necessary. Now that I am subdued, I have earned his affection.
I let my eyes close as the savages rumble around me,
Maverick and Hans and Stryker discussing matters of the tribe, of
hunting, and of war. I nuzzle my head into Ice’s chest and close my
senses against everything but him. In return, I feel his arms wrap
tight about me, cradling me close so I am completely protected, and
completely cared for. Something tells me that this truce is
temporary. Ice is too unyielding, and I am yet too untamed for us to
exist in complete peace. But for the moment, this is enough.
Chapter Eleven
That is the last pleasure I receive. Overnight, I begin to feel
the dull ache low in my belly that used to herald one of the twelve
agonies of the year. I go back to sleep, hoping to avoid the worst of
it, but as the dawn breaks, I hear Maverick shout.
“Someone is wounded!”
I have bled profusely absolutely everywhere. I don’t know
what they’re going to do with the bedding, but it covers me and
Maverick and Ice.
“It’s her,” Ice says, his lip curling with what might be
disgust. “Her moon blood has come.”
I am so embarrassed I could die. “I’m sorry,” I stammer. “I
didn’t… I…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Hans intervenes. “We’ve been covered
in blood many times before, and we will be many times again. We
should have anticipated this when we took your implant out.”
He’s the only one who seems to understand my shame and
wants to do anything about it.
I start to cry. I hate periods.
The day does not improve from there. The pain grows and
the flow gets heavier. They bring me things to staunch it, boiled
moss and woven cloth, but I bleed so swiftly that it is easier to sit
in the river and let the water wash it away between waves of
cramps that leave me lying weak against the rocks.
“What’s wrong with her?” The men cluster on the bank and
watch me bleed.
“Some women have unpleasant periods,” Stryker says.
It’s a total understatement. This isn’t unpleasant. This is
hellish. I’d rather be attacked by a bear than go through this.
“She’s losing a lot of blood,” Maverick says. “Get her out
of the river already. She will attract predators.”
They pull me from the river and take me back to the hut,
where once again we try with the moss and the woven material, but
the bleeding does not slow and the pain does not abate and I feel
myself growing weak.
“I told you not to take it out of me. I told you,” I moan
against the bed.
“Stryker, go get the medicine woman,” Maverick orders.
Hans sits next to me and rubs my lower back, massaging as
much of the cramping pain away as he can. It helps some, but it
does nothing for the worst of it. When I open my eyes, I see
concern on their faces. This is not good. This is not normal.
Soon Stryker brings an older woman with kind eyes and
wrinkled skin. She looks at me and speaks in soft words, asking me
questions about the pain and the blood and the rest of it. It does not
take long for her to come to a conclusion.
“Meat,” she says. “She needs meat and my brew. She is
weak. Her energies are unbalanced. She must rest and restore
herself. You must not take congress with her until her energies are
pure.”
I have no idea what is in her brew, but I don’t care. I will
take whatever she says will work. The woman prepares the drink
for me and I drink it down eagerly, so desperate for relief I don’t
care that it tastes like the shavings from a rusty razor.
At first nothing happens, but over the next few minutes
warm relief washes through me. In an hour, I am floating on a
cloud, giggling to myself at a joke I haven’t been told.
“She’s intoxicated,” Ice says, his pale silver eyes floating in
front of mine.
“Good. Leave her be.”
I’m floating. I’m awake and I can still hear and see them as
shadows moving around the room. They’re taking care of me
quietly and gently.
***
The blood begins to flow less intensely and over the next
few days, I start to recover. The relief I feel when it finally stops
cannot be described. When I am feeling strong enough to do so, I
confront Stryker.
“So that was a stupid idea. Are you going to give me the
implant back?”
“No.” His near amber eyes are warm, but firm. “You don’t
need it.”
“You think I can bleed that way every time?”
“You won’t bleed that way every time,” he says. “Next
cycle, you will have conceived and you will not bleed at all.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Well, I know we’re going to do our best to make sure that
happens,” he says with a disarmingly sexy grin.
Now that the bleeding is over, my desire is returning full
force. Stryker is too damn sexy to be mad at for long, but I’m not
happy with what he did, and with what they intend to do.
“Does it matter if I want that or not?”
“It will be better than the intense bleeding, and better for
your body than the implant.”
“But…” I bite my lower lip. The notion of bearing a child is
foreign to me. I never thought I would be a mother. I was not raised
with that expectation and I have never truly thought about what it
would involve. “Isn’t that dangerous? Couldn’t I die?”
“A woman who dies in labor is as a warrior who dies in
battle,” Ice says. “It is an honorable passing.”
Nobody asked him, and his harsh comment that seems to
imply my death would be acceptable if it came in the service of
procreation makes me angry. Deeply, quickly, entirely angry.
“Fuck you, and fuck honor.”
Ice looks as shocked as if I just slapped him across the face.
The intimacy we shared at his last punishment of me has been
erased in blood and pain. I would not have spoken to him this way
a week ago, but a week changes a lot, especially when being bred
like an animal becomes a topic for discussion.
“You won’t die. We have medicine. We are not primitives.
The secrets of the old world are still known by our elders. We have
not lost a woman in many, many years, and we will not lose you,”
Stryker says, calming me.
“He doesn’t care if I die. I’d rather fight a hundred bears
than have his baby!”
“You do not know how to be a woman,” Ice accuses me.
His words are barbed and they slice deep. How dare he
judge me? How dare he expect me to sacrifice my flesh for his
purposes, and then call me unwomanly? He is a savage in all the
worst ways. My temper flares brighter than ever and I speak before
thinking.
“And you do know how to be a woman? Why don’t you
show me. Put on a skirt and show me how to be a lady.”
The muscle in Ice’s jaw tics and I see him prepare to grab
me. God knows what he would do to me if he got me. He is a
throwback to a time before the broken world, and I have no more
patience for him in that moment than he does for me.
Maverick and Hans drag me away from Ice. We are at war,
he and I. He can go to hell if he thinks his dick is ever getting
anywhere near me again.
“Don’t taunt him,” Maverick growls at me as he pulls me
out of the house and onto the deck.
“Why not? He’s such an expert on womanhood.”
“She should be beaten for her insolence,” I hear Ice
growling indoors. “We spoil her. She should be whipped into
submission and taught her place at the fireside, cooking meals and
tending our babies.”
“She is from another world,” Stryker tries to explain. “She
has never learned these things. You can’t beat them into her. She
will never be a woman of the tribe.”
Stryker’s words sting me more than Ice’s do. Ice is upset
with me because I am not behaving as he believes a woman should.
He at least wants me. But Stryker doesn’t think I’ll ever really be
one of them. He thinks I’m too deeply infected by the city.
I’m going to prove him wrong. I’m going to prove my
mother wrong. I’m going to prove the little thoughts in my head
that say I’m too weak and too pathetic wrong too.
I turn my head to Maverick. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“Ready to take the tattoo.”
Maverick raises a brow at me. “Why?”
Why? Because I have something to prove. To myself, and
to Ice, and to everyone else. They want to strip me of everything I
am and make me in their image of a perfect tribal woman. But I
have already proved myself. The bear chose me. I want the tattoo
to prove it, so Ice will have to shut up.
“It is a long process. It will hurt.”
“Life is long. Everything hurts. I want the marks.” I look at
Maverick, expecting him to be the one to make the decision.
“Ice!” he calls out.
Ice emerges onto the deck, still bristling from our fight.
“You are the keeper of the marks,” Maverick says. “Riley
wants her tattoo. What say you?”
“I say no,” Ice says, his gaze stony. “I say she is a petulant
little girl playing at womanhood. She will not wear a mark until she
proves otherwise.”
“I killed the bear! I earned the marks!”
“You are earning a mark across your ass if you keep your
whining up,” Ice says, turning away from me. He walks away, his
decision made and apparently, final for the moment.
“Sorry, little rabbit,” Maverick says. “The marks must be
given by one skilled in their application. Ice is the only one trained.
You must earn his favor.”
“I’ve never had his favor,” I say, knowing I am sulking, but
what else is there? No matter how much these savages take from
me, it is never enough for that cold, cruel man.
Chapter Twelve
None of us are happy.
After Ice and I fight, it becomes apparent that I am not the
only problem in their world. We were supposed to take leave of the
tribe once my moon blood was done, return to the wilds and hunt
again. I am not bleeding anymore, but we are still here. Have been
for ten days. That seems to be ten days too long for my men and
me.
I don’t understand everything that is happening, but
apparently the chief has forbidden them to leave, so Maverick and
Stryker and Hans are all just as unhappy as Ice and I. The five of us
prowl around the house that now feels far too small, and growl and
snarl at one another.
If not for Maverick maintaining order, I think there would
be fights among the men. Stryker and Hans spend a lot of time
wrestling. They say it’s training, but the matches break out almost
at random.
Stryker is sitting on the deck and Hans tackles him off it.
They fall three feet to the ground, struggling for dominance as their
limbs tangle.
It’s kind of hot to watch, but there’s a reason for it. They’re
bored. They’re not made to sit in a hut at the edge of a village.
They’re made to test their mettle against beast and foe. With
nobody else to turn on, they turn on one another.
Maverick is perhaps the worst affected by the indolence. He
is a man who needs to be in control of something, and with Ice and
I refusing to so much as acknowledge one another, and Hans and
Stryker rolling around like puppies most of the time, his dominance
has just one outlet: me.
“Come here,” he growls.
I go to him. He takes me by the chin and turns my face up
to his.
“On your knees, little rabbit.”
I slide down to my knees obediently. Doing as Maverick
says is a pleasure. His bright blue eyes blaze down at me and make
me smile. I am rarely in trouble with Maverick. I never displease
him. It’s not possible to disobey him because he makes doing the
right thing easy.
“You’ve come a long way,” he says, caressing my hair.
“You will go a lot further. You’re yet to reach your full potential,
Riley.”
His fingers leave my hair and trace lightly over the scars on
my cheek. “These are the key.”
I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I don’t know that it
matters. I like listening to him. I like hearing his voice, feeling his
approval. I like knowing I am his. Maverick gives me a feeling of
belonging, and of protection. It is right to be on my knees in front
of him.
It’s not sexual. It’s essential.
He takes a seat in front of me and draws me between his
legs, caressing my hair and my scarred cheek. It will never fully
heal, and I don’t want it to. It’s a reminder of that which I have
survived, and reminds me that I can survive more than I think I can,
even now.
Hans comes barging through the door, disturbing my sweet
moment of peace.
“The West Winds come,” he declares. “We’re needed.”
Maverick stands up right away, leaving me on the floor
alone.
“What? What’s going on?”
“A tribe of people,” Stryker explains. “They come to trade
and cause trouble. The annual swapping of the brides is upon us.
Conan’s daughters may be swapped for those of the West Winds, if
he decides he likes the look of any of their young women.”
I shouldn’t be shocked. Maverick and Stryker and Ice and
Hans all took me as their own without my input, but hearing that
women are traded as brides in such a common way strikes me as
wrong.
“We must act as guards, to ensure the proper transfer of
property.”
“You mean, to ensure the girls don’t run away.”
“This is how things are done here,” Stryker tells me. “It is
how you were taken, and you are happy, are you not?”
“No!” I exclaim. “I mean, I’d prefer a choice.”
Hans smirks. “Would you?” He comes toward me, puts his
hands on my hips and sweeps me up off my feet, holding me aloft
like a trophy. “You want choice, little rabbit? Or you want us?”
He makes me laugh, even though he is essentially saying I
have no free will where they are concerned. It’s difficult to stay
mad at Hans. He has an easy way about him, and though his
dominance is no less complete than any of the other men, he does
not carry it so heavily.
“You are happy for your sisters to be traded by Conan?”
“None of our sisters live in this clan anymore,” Hans says,
putting me down. “We moved them years ago, after Stryker defiled
so many.”
“This isn’t truly a clan,” Stryker says. “It’s a harem we’re
contracted to for protection and food.”
I still don’t truly understand what keeps them serving
Conan. They are protecting families they are not allowed any real
contact with. Conan controls all, and yet my men offer their bodies
and lives in defense of the innocents who live here. They seem to
receive very little in the way of compensation.
There’s no time to think about it or ask any more questions.
A sonorous horn sounds as the warriors of the West Winds arrive. I
follow my men out as they go to escort them into the village. They
order me to stand back, and I do, but I watch with the same wide
eyes as the other maidens of the village.
The men of the West Winds are painted with red markings
across their faces, and they wear the skins of large cats, tiger stripes
across their great bodies. They are fearsome to the extreme, and I
am glad that I have my savages to protect me.
Chief Conan comes out of the roundhouse, dressed in a fur
cloak and impressive leathers that have been stitched finely. He is
the best dressed of all the men, including mine. His red hair is long
and flowing, his eyes fixed not on the men of the West Winds, but
the women who follow behind them. There are six young ladies,
around my age, and the chief has eyes for them all.
“Welcome!” He extends his arms to the head of the West
Winds contingent. “We already have one of yours in our village.”
“One of ours?”
“A stray. I’ve let my men have her, but you’re welcome to
take her back if necessary.”
I take several steps back. I can’t see the expressions on my
men’s faces, but I see their bodies stiffen at his words. It would
seem that the chief does not consider me his, but he does not
consider me theirs either, not really.
The painted West Winds warrior growls and shakes his
head. “What stray?”
“The one known as Lulu Ursa.”
“Luwhat whonow?”
“That girl.”
Chief Conan points to me. All eyes turn to me. The warrior
narrows his gaze and shakes his head.
“Never seen her. Never heard her name.”
Conan looks at me, calls me forward. I hesitate, but what
can I do? If I run now, I will be caught, and in moving forward I
get closer to the protection of my men. Maverick catches my eye as
I walk past and gives me a little nod.
“Where are you from then, Lulu?” The chief asks me the
question, and I do not hold the truth back.
“The city.”
Chief Conan bristles visibly. He draws in a deep breath and
speaks in a dangerously soft growl as his eyes narrow to two
emerald chips.
“The city. So you have all lied to me. Five of you all came
spinning a story of deceit.”
Chief Conan has a flair for the dramatic.
“What is your city name?”
“Riley Jones.”
His eyes widen. He holds his breath and there is a moment
where the entire world seems to do the same.
“Riley Jones,” he says wonderingly. “No. It can hardly be a
coincidence.”
“Coincidence?”
“My name was once Mark Jones.”
“That was my fath…” A tingle runs down my spine. I look
into his eyes and I suddenly know why I felt a kinship with him
from the beginning. He and I share the same blood, if not the same
family.
I have imagined this moment a thousand times over.
Finding my father in the wild, being greeted by him warmly. But
this moment is nothing like that one. He is not pleased to see me.
He is horrified.
“What are you doing here? You should have stayed in the
city!”
“You left me!” I am filled with rage. I take a flask of wine
that is supposed to be an offering for the men of the West Winds
from the arms of one of the obedient village girls, and I dash it as
his feet. “How dare you!”
Nobody knows what to do. The chief is so respected that
most here would never meet his gaze, let alone scream in his face,
but to me he is no chief. He is the father who abandoned me to the
city and who came to these wilds. Here he has a new family.
Endless wives and children. These people who stare at me, many of
them must be my half siblings. I am among family, and yet I am a
total stranger to them all.
My fury is only matched by my destruction as I fly into a
rage and tear at everything I can. There are gasps of horror as my
anger takes free rein until Maverick’s arms wrap around me. He
hauls me off my feet, flailing and screaming with a rage that does
not just belong to the woman I am now, but to the child my father
once abandoned.
I am inconsolable and uncontrollable. I scream every curse
word I know, and some I don’t as Maverick takes me from the
chief’s home and carries me out of the village. I wrap my arms
around his neck and cry on his shoulder as we take to the fields, his
pacing soothing me until finally I am calm enough to stand on my
own.
It takes a long time. The late afternoon sun gives way to
twilight, and then to night proper. I am so angry I can barely speak,
so furious at all I have given up, all I have believed in.
Maverick lets me fume and rage all that time. He lets me
cry. He gives me space as I am suddenly thrown into a deep
mourning, not just for my father, but for everything I thought he
was.
“What am I going to do?” I ask the question, my eyes full of
tears. “What are we going to do?”
“First, you are going to hurt,” he says simply. “It is no
wonder you drew the spirit of the bear. Your rage is the same.”
“My rage is justified,” I say. “I came here… into the wilds
to look for him because I had a memory of him. I thought, if I
found him, he would love me. But he… he wanted to give me
away!”
“I know,” Maverick says. “I am sorry, he is not a good
man.”
He is not. And all my life I blamed my mother, secretly and
sometimes out loud for the fact he left. I thought she drove him
away by being too clingy, too concerned, too annoying. But now I
see that she was a woman with a broken heart and an unfaithful
husband who did not love her and who did not love me.
My tears flow again as I wish to my core that I could speak
to her, see her, tell her how sorry I am for hurting her. I’m not sorry
I left for the wilds. I’m not sorry for having found my men—even
Ice. But I am sorry for how it happened and for how little I
understood her all my life.
Maverick watches over me as I pace in circles, trying to
digest what I now know. I didn’t like Conan from the beginning,
but now that I know who he is, and how we are linked, I loathe
him.
“I won’t live here,” I say. “Not with that man. He rejected
me once when I was a child, and again when the West Winds came.
I wish he was dead.”
“We will leave,” he says. “We will have to. I cannot see a
way this ends well for any of us.”
“Will he take revenge for what I said and did?”
“Revenge is not what I am worried about him taking,”
Maverick says. “Come, we need to get the others and we need to
leave tonight while the moon is still covered by the clouds.”
Maverick’s suspicions are correct. By the time we return to
the village the hut is surrounded by no fewer than fifteen men. The
men of the West Winds have come for me. My father has promised
them a bride, and they want what they were promised.
Ice is at point. Hans and Stryker have his flanks. There is no
doubt that the threat of violence is in the air. I have no idea why.
Was my anger so great that we are all going to be outcasts now? I
hope so. I want to leave this place and never return. Just looking at
my father standing there makes me want to scream with rage.
“What is happening?” Maverick asks the question coldly.
“We are going to trade.”
“Trade what?”
“Riley for one of the West Winds maidens.”
Silence meets his statement. Maverick does not so much as
dignify the idea with an answer. He stares my father dead in the
eyes with an expression that conveys so much pure derision and
disgust that words would only dilute the message.
“She is my daughter,” Conan says, blithely unaware of how
terrible he is being, or uncaring if he is aware. He is so used to
having things his own way that he does not seem to understand that
he might be done. “Therefore she is not yours to have, but mine to
trade.”
“She’s our mate. We will go to war to defend her.”
Conan smirks. “You are four men against the finest warriors
of the West Winds.”
“You’re right,” Stryker says. “There’s not nearly enough of
them to take Riley from us.”
“I hate you!” I snarl the words at the man who fathered me,
the one who abandoned me, but trades his daughters for women
from other tribes. I was fortunate to be left behind. He has no love
for anybody. It is my men who sacrifice for this tribe. My men who
feed the hungry. My men who provide protection.
“Take him and leave,” Maverick says to the warriors who
stand around Conan. “Take him as prisoner, take him as slave. Do
with him as you please, but you will never take another woman
from our tribe.”
“What?” Conan laughs. “You cannot trade me, insolent
boy.”
“You have nobody to protect you but these slavers of
women. I am sure they will make good use of you too. We revoke
our protection. We revoke our fealty. You are a man alone.”
“Kill them,” Conan orders. “Take the girl and slaughter
these fools!”
He orders their deaths without hesitation. The years of
service to the tribe are as nothing to him. He does not care what
anyone has done for him. He only cares how useful they are in the
moment.
The warriors of the West Winds make ready their attack. As
agile as my men are in battle, they are far outnumbered and I do not
see how they can possibly win. They will be slain. I will be taken.
It will be a horror unlike any I have ever known, but I can see it
playing out before me as time slows with fear.
As the first blade flashes, I scream.
That scream turns into a roar that does not come from my
throat, but from the hills above the village. It is an unsettling,
horror-filled sound that makes every inch of my skin tingle.
Suddenly, we are not alone. She is here. I don’t know how,
but I feel her presence.
The roar makes the warriors hold their blades. There are
large dark shadows moving above the village. They are angry.
They are loud. They are…
“Bears!”
The West Winds warriors give the shout and make them
real.
A horde of bears come rushing down from the mountains.
Not just one bear, but five. They come past the boundary of the
village, sweep around the hut and race past Maverick and me,
sending the attackers scrambling for their lives.
I do not move an inch as fur and fury flows past me,
through me. My rage is their rage, my blood is their blood. I may
not have a father, but I have the family in the wild and I wear their
mark.
What happens in the dark will never fully be revealed to any
of us. Some say that the bears came from the mountains and ran
toward the river. Others say they ran into the shadows and became
one with them. Still others will say that there were never any bears
at all, that some dark magic was at play, an illusion that struck
terror into the hearts of those who tried to take me.
Whatever the physical truth of the matter is does not matter.
Maverick, Ice, Stryker, and Hans do not miss their opportunity.
They are as fierce as the bears, moving among those who would
have slaughtered them with blade and spear flashing dangerous
arcs.
In the end, there are the fled, the dead, and the wounded. An
equal number of each, but not a soul to oppose my men. Chief
Conan cowers on the ground, his hands over his head, groveling for
mercy he does not deserve.
He is bloodied and wounded, but not so badly he will die.
Flesh wounds for my flesh and blood. I don’t feel sorry for him. He
abandoned me and wanted to trade me for some poor soul he could
fuck.
Maverick stands over him. He has never looked so hot or so
commanding before. He is a man who knows how to wear his
wounds and will fight to the end. He would never do what this socalled chief is doing, cowering for his life.
“Go,” Maverick growls. “Go and never come back. You are
outcast now and forever.”
“I need…”
“You will have nothing. Take nothing. The wilds will
decide your fate. Now go, before I reconsider my mercy and take
your head as trophy.”
They are harsh, savage words, but no less than the man
deserves. He rises to his feet and begins to stumble into the
darkness. We watch him go with merciless eyes. He planned to
take me from my men, and instead it is they who have taken his
tribe.
My father is gone. But there is one man I still have a quarrel
with. Ice.
I turn to him and I look him dead in his silver eyes.
“Now do I get the tattoo?”
Ice shakes his head. “No.”
“No?” I cannot believe he is denying me again.
“You summoned the bear who marked your face. She came
to you in your hour of need. It is a rare talent and a great feat, but it
does not earn you the mark of our tribe.”
I stare at him, my jaw dropping. I have done the undoable. I
helped run off the corrupt chief. I called forth an army of ghost
bears. And still it is not enough.
“I guess bears are easier to impress than you,” I say bitterly,
turning away from him.
If he says something, I don’t hear it.
Chapter Thirteen
The village is celebrating their new chief. Maverick will
rule them all, with Ice as his shaman, Stryker as medicine man,
Hans as resident brute. It’s all so perfect for them, and now that
Conan is gone, the women are not so reluctant to show their ardor
for my handsome mates.
This does not please me. At all. The only saving grace is
that no woman dares cross a lady with a reputation for being able to
summon a bear if she is angry. There are whispers everywhere I go,
and the story has already been told and retold so many times that it
has been blown out of all proportion.
Fortunately, my men are not the only ones in the village
anymore. The warriors who survived the bear encounter have been
permitted to stay. Our tribe needs fresh blood and strong warriors,
and several of the West Winds warriors fit that bill. They seem to
have voracious sexual appetites, and they have been moving from
bed to bed to sate and pleasure the women who used to have to
wait their turn for Conan’s attentions.
There is order coming out of chaos, celebrations running
deep into the night, day after day. There is so much going on, so
much change, so much for my men to pay attention to that
suddenly I feel I am the least of their concerns.
I am not as happy as everyone else seems to be. My father
is gone. Not just the man himself, but the illusion I manufactured
for all those years. And I am still being denied the mark of the
tribe, the final endorsement only Ice can give.
I want the marks. I want them because I have earned them. I
want them because they would show me as separate from the other
women, it would show me as their mate. But Ice will not give
them, not even after I called down an army of bears upon those
who would harm us. I don’t know how I will ever please him, and
now that my men have access to many young women who are
fertile and eager to mate, I don’t know that they will have use for
me for much longer.
As night falls, I withdraw from them all. They don’t seem to
care, or notice. They have known one another a very long time and
once they begin chattering, they can drink the night away without
paying any attention to me.
We no longer eat and drink alone. Meals are taken at the
central fire, where several dozen men, women, and children all eat
together. As the meal goes on, I slip into the bushes that run from
one side of the village down to the river.
As soon as I clear the village boundary, I run. I don’t even
care where I am going. Tears fill my eyes as my heart is filled with
what feels like rejection. Branches whip past me in the dark,
slapping my legs, my arms, my face. I don’t know where I’m
running. I just have to get away from them. From everything.
I skid to a halt, my muscles stopping me before I even
realize why I’ve stopped. The survival part of my brain has kicked
in and a split second later I see why. A large cat is standing in my
path. Another beast of these wilds and this time I am sure I am
alone. The beast is about the same size as me, but it has golden
flashing eyes and when it lifts its lip in a snarl, I see long canines lit
by the moonlight.
It is awe-inspiring, frightening, and dangerous. But I am not
in the mood for this. My fists clench by my side, and all my anger
and sadness erupts in a shout.
“Go to hell!”
The cat startles and disappears into the bushes.
Behind me, I hear a burst of laughter.
I whirl around to see Ice emerging from the brush.
“What are you doing?” My question is more of a demand.
“Making sure you don’t kill yourself,” he says. “I don’t
think that cat has ever seen anything like you in its life.”
I have never seen Ice laugh before. He looks incredibly
handsome doing it, his eyes lit with humor, his lips curled up in a
smile that isn’t cruel or condescending.
“You are a scourge on the wilds,” he says. “Now come
here. You have run long and far enough.”
“You followed me?”
“Of course I followed you,” he said. “If you think you take
so much as a breath without me noticing, you are very much
mistaken.”
His words fill me with warmth. I don’t really know why,
but I feel better almost instantly. Maybe it’s because it shows he
cares. He won’t let me get hurt, even when he is angry with me and
refusing me the things I ask for.
“I thought you would let me go if you saw me leave.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t like me?”
“Why would you think I don’t like you?”
“Because you growl and you lecture and you tell me I’m not
doing the right things and…”
“You never had a father,” he says. “It shows. You don’t
know how to hear a refusal as anything other than rejection. You
don’t know how to take a correction without taking it personally,
because in your world it was always given to hurt your feelings. I
don’t tell you that you are behaving badly to hurt you. I tell you to
correct you. I will not allow a drop of ink to enter your skin before
you are ready, and you will just have to accept that.”
“How will you know I’m ready?”
“I’ll know because you’ll be able to heard the word ‘no’ and
not act as though a dagger has just gone through your spoiled little
heart.”
“It’s not the word ‘no.’ It’s what you say no to, which is
everything.”
He cocks his head and looks at me with that wicked gaze.
“Do you expect me to take pity on you because you pout and
sulk?”
“I expect you to hate me, just like you have from the
beginning. I’m never going to please you, Mr. Ice, and there is no
point trying.”
“You can please me by doing your duty.”
“Letting you knock me up? What a duty.”
“Bringing new life into the world, an act only a woman can
perform,” he says. He doesn’t seem angry. He strikes me as
serious. “We can do many things, but we cannot send our seed into
the world without a mate. You are that mate. Our progeny would
form a new line. A new tribe. But you think these little petulant
thoughts. You worry for your body. Bodies break and eventually
are burned. We will all turn to ash in the end.”
I don’t know what to say to that. His words are twisting my
mind, showing me the world through his eyes. I consider things I
haven’t considered before. I am the only one of the five of us who
is capable of bearing life. Maybe that isn’t a burden. Maybe that is
a gift.
“You are adored.”
“I am?”
“You are the womb at the core of our world,” he says. “You
don’t understand that.”
“I’ve been told my whole life that…” I stop talking. There’s
no way to explain what I’ve been taught because so much of it was
never said at all. It was in the water and the air, it was in the
housing too small to hold a family, in the difficulty meeting others.
What he is talking about so naturally doesn’t happen at all without
a permit.
Ice’s view of me is not as enlightened or as advanced as it
could be. He reduces me to my parts—because out here, those parts
matter. In the city, a man is the same as a woman because we have
no need to protect ourselves from wild beasts, no need to ensure
that the tribe grows. Out here, masculine and feminine come into
their own in a way no city dweller could ever understand. One is
not lesser than another, they are both absolutely essential.
“I would worship you, if you would let me,” Ice says, his
words uncharacteristically gentle. “We all would.”
“It’s hard for me.”
“I see that,” he says, his voice softer than ever.
I understand him in a way I did not before. He doesn’t want
to use me for selfish reasons. He wants me to fulfill the potential
inside me. He wants me to bear his children so there will be a new
tribe, one made of him and me and the others.
He reaches out and pulls me into a hug, a close embrace that
makes tears rise to my eyes. He is so tall my head just barely comes
up to his chest, and pressing my face against his hard pectoral plane
comforts me.
“I am not going to make things easy for you, little rabbit,”
he says. “I can’t do that. But I can look after you whether you
understand or not. Let’s get back to the tribe. It is late and you need
sleep.”
Chapter Fourteen
Things are different after our conversation. True to his
word, Ice isn’t any less demanding of me. He’s still the strictest,
perhaps barring Maverick, who makes all the decisions for the
group and expects them to be followed. Now that he has an entire
tribe to boss around, he is less strict with me, but after being
followed by Ice into the night, I know one of my mates is always
watching over me. They take turns, and some are more obvious
about it than others, but I am never truly alone.
A few days after my attempt to run away, the men call me
to them. I am surprised that they have the time to speak with me,
given how many things must now be attended to. Changing the
structure of the tribe has not been easy. There are those who were
favored who have lost position, and those who were less well
regarded who are now experiencing some power. There is
bickering and arguing, and Maverick has spent most of the day
handing down judgements on matters great and small.
He makes time for me at the end of the day, along with the
others who have been drawn from their duties, apparently to deal
with me. I feel guilty and small, called before these four brawny
savages, each of whom now has so much more responsibility than
just me.
“Ice told us what happened the other night. Seems you think
we’re going to lose interest in you now we have the tribe to worry
about,” Maverick says, taking my chin and looking down into my
eyes in that way he has of ensuring he has my total focus. He is so
handsome it hurts, the lines of his face hard and yet the gaze in his
eye caring.
“There’s four of you and one of me,” I say, trying to stay
practical. “And there’s lots of women who would love to have you
and bear your young.”
“There’s one of you,” Maverick agrees initially, before
telling me exactly how I am wrong. “One we want. One we own.
We are guardians of the tribe, but we are the masters of you, and
you will not forget that, little rabbit.”
Hans wraps his big, burly arms around me. “Why would I
want another woman when I can have a temperamental little
redhead who can call down an army of bears?”
I allow myself to smile.
“My city girl, who knows where I come from in a way no
other woman ever could,” Stryker says, his amber eyes on mine.
He and I have not spoken of the city at all, but we do share an
understanding of the world, and he has been my ally many times
over—even when he sliced the implant from my arm and made me
fertile again. I hated him for it at the time, but now I am starting to
see that he restored my birthright.
I don’t expect Ice to have kind words for me. He’s not a
kind words sort of man.
“You are an exceptional creature and a rare soul,” Ice
speaks against my expectations. “I will have you, Riley, and when
you are ready, I will mark you and fill you with my seed so you
never again wonder whose you are, or where you belong.”
“I’m ready,” I say softly. “Please. I am ready. I truly am.”
I’m not the only one imploring him. Hans, Stryker, even
Maverick are looking toward Ice, he who makes the final decision.
It is not typical for women of the tribe to wear the marks. I would
be the only one. But I am also their only mate. And I have earned
them.
“Give her what she deserves,” Maverick says. “She has lost
enough. It’s time she receives what she is due. We could have none
of this without her. Would have done none of this without her.”
Ice looks at me with that unholy silver gaze and I fear his
refusal and rejection again.
“We will do the ceremony tonight, here in the roundhouse,”
he says. “We will drink the brew, mate her properly, and she will
receive the marks she deserves.”
I let out a squeal of joy and throw my arms around him. He
embraces me back, leaning down to murmur in my ear, “They hurt,
little rabbit, and you will not be the same afterward.”
“I know.”
***
Dark falls, and the ritual begins as the rest of the tribe
sleeps. I present myself naked to my men who are sitting in the
middle of the roundhouse, where a small bed has been prepared for
me. There are four posts staked out at each corner of it.
I look at Ice and Maverick for reassurance first, knowing
Stryker and Hans are already on my side. Maverick smiles with
pride, and Ice, well, he’s always hard to read, but I don’t feel chills
running through me when I meet his silver eyes—at least not the
same chills I usually feel.
He has a set of tools before him, a bowl of bright cobalt
blue ink, and a row of little chisels and hammers. They are meant
for me.
I feel a moment’s hesitation, but I don’t let it show in case it
means I am refused the marks.
“Come and sit.”
I do so in the middle of the bed, cross-legged.
“These marks are not superficial images,” Ice begins to
speak, his gravelly voice low as firelight flickers from several
torches lighting the roundhouse. “These are a binding between us
all. They are reserved for warriors, for those whose kinship runs
deeper than mere blood. Blood is nothing compared to the bonds
that are formed between those who share marks.”
I listen, enthralled as he speaks. This ritual has meaning to
all of us. It is a marriage of sorts, though there will be no white
dresses or flowers. I will not traipse down an aisle and smile at my
friends and hope they think I look thin in my dress. This is a
ceremony that goes back before the rituals of the old world, all the
way to the time before history.
“I have given these marks three times,” Ice says. “First to
Maverick, then to Hans, and finally to Stryker. We are as one. Now
you will join us, little rabbit. You will wear our marks across your
back and all who see them will know who you are.”
I feel a welling of pride, and little tears of joy begin to sting
my eyes as I sit on the brink of full acceptance into their lives.
After this, there will be no distinction between them and me. We
will be the same thing. Five bodies. One soul.
“You have earned these marks many times over,” Maverick
picks up the words. “First, when you had the courage to leave the
city. Then, when you were found by the bear, and again when she
sacrificed herself on your spear. Just days ago, you proved that you
have her soul, and that your protection extends to us as ours does to
you. You are unique in all the world, Riley. And you will forever
be ours.”
I can barely contain the tears now.
“You were so soft when we met,” Hans says, continuing on.
“So innocent you didn’t even know what your body was for. But
you learned swiftly and you proved your bravery to us, and to
yourself. You have grown many years in several weeks. The
cowering girl has flowered into a woman. And you are our mate.”
I smile at him, so grateful. In the beginning, he was the one
who understood me best, who showed me mercy and gentleness
when I needed it and who unlocked the pleasure between my
thighs. He was my first kiss, my first cock, and I will never let him
go.
“I know more than most what it takes to leave the city,”
Stryker begins the end of their vows. “I know the desperation it
takes to go. To leave the walls of that world is to accept death. I
think you understood that when you left, even if you didn’t think
you did. Since then, you have faced your end, you have told your
truth, you have fought us every inch of the way when you did not
agree—and you took the punishments that are the wages of that
kind of disobedience. You didn’t like them one bit, but you took
them. And you grew from them. You have earned your place with
us.”
Stryker’s words hold special weight. A tear traces down my
cheek as I nod just a little. I did risk everything in leaving the city.
It was an impulsive act to throw myself into the wilds, and I didn’t
fully consciously understand what I was doing on that day I left,
but some part of me did. The wild part of me, the truly human part
of me knew what I was risking, and that risk has paid off four times
over in the form of each of these men, any single one of whom
would be more than enough for me and who together represent my
personal heaven—and occasionally, a well-deserved hell.
Ice picks up a bowl of brew and presents it to me.
“Drink deeply,” he says. “All of it.”
It smells like the brew they gave me after the bear died, but
stronger. Drinking it all down is not easy. The taste of fungus
threatens to make me gag, but I drain it to the last drop, knowing
that these brews serve great purposes.
“Now lie down on your stomach,” Ice says. “Stretch out
your arms and your legs.”
I do as I am told, lying face down on the furs. As soon as I
am in place, each of the four men takes one of my limbs and wraps
a leather cuff snugly around it. Each cuff is then tied to one of the
four posts hammered into the ground.
“We can’t have you moving as I give you the marks,” Ice
murmurs by way of explanation. “And you are a wriggly little
rabbit at the best of times.”
I give a little giggle. There is new warmth in his voice, and I
love it.
“You will not just be marked,” Maverick says, as Ice
prepares his tools and my skin. I feel cool strong-smelling alcohol
daubed over my back. The brew is not yet taking effect, but I am
starting to feel a little dreamy. “You will also be mated.”
He moves around behind me and I feel something warm and
soft against my pussy lips. It is Maverick, chief of the tribe, and he
is licking my sex. It feels incredible, gentle and arousing and as the
brew begins to sink into my bones, and my mind begins to fly, all
sensations are muted and simultaneously heightened. I feel desire
spiraling up my spine like a serpent, reaching into all the different
parts of my body.
“Open your mouth,” Ice orders.
I half expect him to slide his cock inside me, but instead it
is a thick piece of leather that is slid between my teeth.
“Bite down on it,” Ice says. “It will help.”
Just how much will these marks hurt? I quiver with the
anticipation, my clit tingling as Maverick’s tongue laps around it
and then traces up the seam of my lower lips. I am totally
vulnerable, utterly exposed. My once clear skin is about to be
covered with the marks of the tribe. Ice will impose himself on me
indelibly for all time. That thought makes my inner walls clench
with desire. I want this so badly. I want this final, undeniable proof
that I am theirs and they are mine.
The sharp tip of a chisel is placed against my right shoulder
blade. Tap.
I feel a little sting, like that of a bee, and then another, and
another.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. This is the sound that will follow me
through many hours to come.
Between the brew and Maverick, I can’t focus on it as pain.
My teeth sink into the leather as Maverick’s cock spreads my
pussy. The brew has made me braver and taken away the sharpness
of the sensation. I feel pleasure and pinching as Maverick fucks me
long and slow, careful not to jolt me in a way that will disturb the
marks.
“Beautiful,” Stryker murmurs as Maverick’s cock slides in
and out of my soft, willing pussy. I can feel each of them around
me, each one of their unique spirits with me on this journey.
Maverick takes me first, because he leads us in all things.
He sets the pace and the tone, he owns me to my very core. He was
not the first to ever be with me, but he is the first among my
savages. I feel his hands on my hips, locking me in place so he can
stroke harder and faster.
At first Ice works while I am taken, but the tapping stops as
the chief begins to grunt and growl above me. My breasts are
pushed into the furs as Maverick ravages my hole. My upper back
burns with firewater as Ice passes a solution over my skin and I cry
out in pleasure pain. Ice brings torment, but there is always a point
to the suffering I endure with him.
Maverick is pounding between my spread thighs, urging
himself to a climax that will once more seed my pussy. My arms
contract, tugging at the ropes as my body attempts to respond, but I
am held firm. I must take the marks, and I must take this fucking
too.
“Good girl,” Ice murmurs, brushing my hair away from my
face. He cradles my cheek in his hand and gives me his thumb to
suckle on as Maverick roars in orgasm and fills my cunt to the brim
with hot savage cum.
I keep my eyes on Ice as the next savage takes his place
behind me. It is Hans, the loving, sweet man who broke my
virginal walls down and made me ready for my men to take and to
fuck. His thick cock plows through the creamy cum and plunges
deep inside me, all the way to my womb.
“Such a good little bunny,” Ice murmurs, keeping me
focused on him, my lips and tongue desperately suckling at his
finger as Hans seats his cock deep inside me and keeps it there.
A soft whimper escapes me as Ice returns to giving me the
marks, depriving my mouth of his comforting digit as the sting
reignites against my skin. Unlike Maverick, Hans doesn’t fuck me,
he just holds me on his cock, my soaked pussy stretched nice and
wide around his hot throbbing dick.
Occasionally, he gives me a gentle thrust or two, but for the
most part, I am simply kept filled. The brew makes me lose track of
time as my hips roll in small motions back against the thick rod.
“You’ve come a long way, little rabbit,” Maverick praises.
“From taking the marks on your ass, to receiving them on your
back.”
I let out a little giggle, my pussy clenching, making Hans
groan.
“I have to fuck her,” he rumbles.
Ice moves the tools away and a moment later, Hans
unleashes an hour of potent desire on my poor pussy. He grabs my
ass and fucks me as hard as I’ve ever been fucked, rough strokes
forcing Maverick’s cum to foam inside me as he gives me a second
potent dose with a roar of masculine release.
My pussy is aching as Hans slides out, and I feel the twinge
of protest of my inner walls as Stryker follows immediately after
him.
“I know,” he murmurs softly. “It hurts to take the marks and
our cocks, but you must take both, little bunny.” He strokes my hair
gently, and starts to fuck me again, not as I want to be fucked, but
as I need to be fucked.
Ice’s markings are still being tapped one sting at a time into
my skin, and between the two sensations, I start to whimper and
whine a little. These savages will fuck me raw.
“Does it hurt?” Ice stops and asks me.
“Yes,” I squeak softly.
“Good. Bear the pain, little one, breathe through it. Stryker,
fuck her harder.”
At Ice’s bidding, Stryker gives my sore little pussy a hard
thrust. I yowl and moan at the same time.
“There is pain in this life. Pain that must be borne,” Ices
lectures as Stryker ravages me, my pussy gripping his cock with
every punishing thrust that stretches my already well fucked cunt a
little wider than before.
Stryker knows more than anyone what it is to leave the city
and become savage. His rod punishes me because this is what I
need. I need a sore little pussy. I need a cum-soaked cunt. I need to
know that discomfort is not death.
He pulls his cock free from my hole and slaps it against my
swollen pussy lips. I gasp and yowl when he roughly shoves it back
inside me, and then out again, thrust, slap, thrust, slap. And all the
while the sharp tools bite against my skin until I want to cry with
the pleasure, and come from the pain.
In the end, Ice must pull back, because the tremors of my
orgasm are too persistent. Stryker fucks me roughly through one,
two, three climaxes, his cock demanding that my cum-soaked hole
service him no matter what.
Finally, I collapse against the furs, spent and sobbing. My
pussy is nearly as sore as my back, but it feels so good. It feels
right. And it has broken my sensation of pain, left me floating on
an orgasmic cloud.
The tattoos take hours. The sun rises and falls and rises
again. I lie in a contented state of semi-consciousness, pleasured
throughout it all, only stopping for brief breaks to relieve myself,
wipe the semen from my body and then return to the bindings.
I am not the girl I was in the city. I am a woman of the
wilds, mate to the savages.
Somewhere in the midst of the mating, I sense the moment
life sparks deep in my belly. There is a ripple that plays through
every part of me, a glow deep in my belly. I know I should not be
able to sense this, but the brew has changed the way I see the
world. Surface flesh is irrelevant. All is energy. There is something
inside me, a reaction that has been initiated and will roll on through
the night and the day and then the day after that and then burst
forth into the world and a long time from now, my son will stand
here and look upon these wilds and know that they are his. He will
be linked through me and through the spirit that brought me here.
Ice’s tales are more real than any concrete building. I
understand that the city truly is a town of ghosts, because not one
person there can see as I do. They are locked to their screens, living
in worlds of limited imagination. They do not know what they are,
even for themselves. They do not know that even inside the city,
they are part of all that is. There are no walls to reality. When one
bird takes flight, we all do.
I orgasm through these revelations, rough thrusts plundering
my sensitive holes when Ice takes a break from the delicate work
of the marks. I do not know who is inside me. It could be
Maverick, Ice, Hans, or Stryker. They are all one thing to me. One
perfect masculine entity with four phalluses and eight arms who
holds me and uses me and fills me, who has thrust life inside me
and made me the vessel for so many generations to come.
I can feel myself, not as an individual, but as part of a line
of life that flows all the way back into the very genesis of time, and
all the way forward into a future unknown. I am not a single
person. I am a part of a lineage that is greater than myself alone.
Do they know what is happening? Can they feel it too? Or
am I the only one who knows that deep inside my body, there is a
little life unfolding, fluttering with division after division, building
itself according to a template old as time. Perhaps I am delusional,
but it feels real to me. It is my secret. A woman’s knowledge. They
will know soon enough if it is real, as will I.
I came to the woods to find my father. I didn’t find him. I
found more than him. I found the family I have been yearning for
all my life. And I found the animals of my spirit, the timid rabbit
and the powerful bear. Both will live in harmony on my skin for as
long as I do, carved into my skin by the careful artistry of the one
man I know will never, ever let me get away with a single thing.
Finally, Ice passes a warm cloth over my back and sets his
tools aside. The others are in various stages of exhaustion around
us, but he is wide awake, as am I.
“Is it done?”
“It is done.”
He drops a kiss on my forehead and draws me up from the
bed. For the first time, he shows me the marks in a piece of
polished glass. They cover my shoulders and run all the way to my
waist. The skin is red where the ink is sinking in, but I see the bear
rising rampant above the small figure of the rabbit. I see my
weakness, and I see my strength. Around them are four wolves
facing the four directions of the wind.
I have my pack, my protectors, and inside me, new life
grows. Our future cannot be certain, but I know that I will be loved
by them as long as I live. These marks are testament to the bonds
that were forged in battle and lust, in pain and in sacrifice. These
are men I would die for, and these are the men I will bring new life
forth for.
They gather about me, caressing me, praising me, kissing
me, their hands roaming my soft curves. Separately, we are a
madman with no fear of pain, a cruel dominant sadist, a city
runaway, a mere hunter, and a lost little girl. Together, we
command the spirits of bears, overthrow corrupt chiefs, and we will
create a lineage and legacy unlike any the wilds have ever seen.
The End
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Loki Renard Links
You can keep up with Loki Renard via her blog, her
newsletter, her Facebook page, her Twitter account, and her
Goodreads profile, using the following links:
http://lokirenard.com/
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https://www.facebook.com/loki.renard.9
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