The Offering

by Rosary Deville

  Rolling my eyes, I spread the quilt. It still contained the stains of my first claiming—my blood, cum, and beta juices never to be washed out. An offering to the God Cerowain, the quilt would be a constant reminder of my submission to my alpha. I bristled at the thought.

  The slaver and his slaves camped on a nearby hill, smaller and wider than ours. All three betas shared a quilt and went about spreading it while their alpha surveyed the area. I watched them work. The girl was the most puzzling, though. She must have felt me staring since she looked right at me. There wasn’t dullness in her eyes, but life. Fight. How the heck was this girl a slave beta? Maybe she might prove herself if she survived this night…

  My mind returned to one of my family’s holiday parties. A friend of mine had lost a cousin who fell into the role of slave beta and never got out. His alpha hadn’t even defended him against the molebats. I shivered at the thought—being eaten alive inside their burrows.

  “Sit closer to me if you’re afraid.” Don’s voice caught me off-guard.

  I scoffed under my breath. Yeah, right. Like I’ll ever do that. I didn’t want to be closer to that asshole. My wrists were still sore. He had ended up tying my hands together. Pinning them above my head, he fucked the life out of me. He kept trying to get me to submit. And the worst part was, this time he’d come close. More than physically, he’d gotten into my heart, stripping me down to the core—demanding my soul, not just my obedience. I hated him so much.

  “I’m good, thanks.” I scrunched up my nose. “I’d rather not even talk to you if that’s all right, master.”

  He growled low in his throat. In two seconds, he had me on my back—the white peaks of his fangs showing. Trapping me beneath his firm muscular frame, he stared down at me with those mesmerizing eyes. His mocha-colored skin made the startling blue stand out. The more his werewolf rose, the more neon his eyes became until they glowed in the dark. His long silver-brown hair spilled over his shoulder, feeling heavy against my chest. “Are you trying to get me to take you again?”

  “Get off.” I bared my teeth, wishing my pointy canines were more intimidating. Our eyes locked in a staring match. His gaze never leaving mine, he leaned close and nipped my nose. Then he licked along the freckles that culminated at the tip in slight discoloration—another leftover from worg form. I’d hoped the dark patch would fade the more I stayed as a wereduin. So far, no such luck.

  “Your will is crumbling, my little Fern. You’re mine.” He nibbled my chin. “It’s only a matter of time.” My body shuddered. He must’ve felt it; his mouth twisted in a triumphant smile. Then he rolled off me. Tying his hair back into a long ponytail, he went back to marking our territory.

  I wanted to fight him, but that was when I heard it. Scurrying.

  Our hummock was tall enough to provide a terrifying view. Molebats advanced from every direction until the entire valley was teeming with them.

  High-pitch cries came from their open mouths—sounding like a million little voices speaking all at once at a crazy speed.

  Fear stoked in the pit of my stomach. My mouth went dry. As a pup, all the horror stories told to scare us into good behavior involved molebats attacking, carrying us off into the burrows to be eaten alive. I was so scared I could barely breathe, and my stomach ached.

  “Stay down.” Don stood in front of me, his legs like sturdy poles. Maybe it was instinct from all the times he’d schooled my body for his ownership, but I scooted closer to him. Inside, beneath many layers of fear, I still wanted to fight him. Wanted to shove him away and run off down the hill. Runaway and never let him catch me. He was just a rapist who had captured me against my will.

  Waves of molebats clashed into the werewolf pairs that were still on flat ground. People screamed all around me. The molebats had started to attack their victims.

  Would we survive the night? These were molebats. Could Don fight them all by himself? But then again, he trained under my mom, and he hoped to play spawn professionally. I heard that sometimes they released beasts into the playing field to add more of a challenge. So maybe he was used to this, right? At the least, more prepared? I could only hope.

  Don lit the four torches he received from his trainers yesterday and placed them at each quilt corner. These special torches burned if the alpha lived. They served as an offering to the Twins. They also symbolized life, not only the alpha’s but their unborn pups.

  If the alpha failed to protect himself and his beta, then this was where it ended for them. The torchlight would die out, and they would be shamed for their weakness—only the torches served as their funeral. They weren’t permitted to enter the Moon Vale, nor did they even go before Arawn—the Twins’ beta and the God of Death. Instead, Arawn’s servants would escort their souls into the Shadows, where they would be forgotten.

  I wasn’t certain what happened to betas who died at this stage. It wasn’t considered important enough to be mentioned. I assumed that, like everything else involving alphas and betas, they went together.

  While Hummock Prairie had a lot of hummocks, the Second Offering needed to take place at the center so as to have the most exposure to the molebats. Because of the hundreds of alpha-beta pairs participating in the Offering, not everyone was lucky enough to find a hill. Those that hadn’t, weren’t doing so well.

  One alpha looked at her limit, five molebats attacking around her. She moved so fast that she blurred together. Not far away, her beta fought with all he had. A molebat came from behind and drove its knife-like talons through his back. The alpha threw a dagger at the molebat attacking her beta, but it missed.

  The molebats took the boy to the ground. They didn’t even wait before they sliced off his arm, followed by his leg. Then tail. He screamed in pain, crying out for his alpha, but it was all she could do to not die herself. She yelled his name, fear in her voice. That was when I recognized them as the small boy who I’d seen during the Hunt being injected by his alpha female’s essence after she had tied up his wrists.

  I swallowed the lump in my throat, sadness ripped at my heart—also, appreciation. That made me feel terrible since others were dying all around me. But right then, I appreciated the overly punctual bastard who always showed up early. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have gotten our hummock, and I may have been that unfortunate beta getting ripped apart by molebats. The alpha still stood, surprisingly, but she hadn’t the strength to save them both. I wondered if Don would have left me to die, but compared to her, he was the better fighter.

  A blood curling, high-pitched shriek rang out from down the hill.

  It was the slave girl beta. How had she gotten so far down her hummock and away from her owner? Two molebats had her, one attacking her leg, the other her shoulder. She screamed, trying to shake them off. Her cries echoed around me as they tore her skin off—glee in their squinty eyes.

  Color drained from my face.

  She kicked the snout of the molebat attacking her leg. Claws out, she shredded the face of the one eating her shoulder. I couldn’t express how badly I was rooting for her. She had to getaway. She just had to. Otherwise, I was about to watch another person get murdered.

  Don could help her. He could. Why didn’t he?

  Freed, she started climbing up the hill on her hands and knees. Her alpha sat at the plateau. That was when I noticed the other two slave betas. The one who had shuffled his feet and looked at the ground earlier had already been overcome with molebats. They sliced up pieces of his body, passing it to their comrades. It reminded me of ants cleaning their kill.

  The other beta tried to fight them off with a stick. Unlike the girl, he hadn’t been bitten yet. He looked so scared. I wanted to help them, and at the same time, wanted to hide my eyes. The girl spotted me.

  “Help!” She skirted off the ground. Instead of going to her master, she raced towards our hummock.

  No, don’t come here! Don’t! Don wouldn’t save her. He wouldn’t protect her. If she wanted to live, she had to make it back to her alph
a.

  The closest molebat snared her hair with its claws, and she tripped. She let out an ear-jarring scream as they collected on her back. I had to stop this, but my body froze up.

  A memory surfaced of a previous holiday party I went to with my family. I saw the face of the same girl, laughing with three other betas.

  “Stop!” I leaped to my feet. “Myrtle!” I didn’t know why I lost all fear. Maybe it was because I didn’t want to see a person I knew killed. Maybe I assumed that Don would protect me. No rule said he had to, though, not if I left my quilt.

  I raced down the hill toward Myrtle, her hands reaching for me. The molebat’s razor-sharp talons severed her foot from her ankle. Blood seeped into the reddening grass. Her screams were broken by tearful sobs.

  “Myrtle!” I ran to my doom, running to save a person beyond my help. They were already carving her up. The last look of pain and fear shown from her eyes before they closed for good. Two molebats scavenging her remains.

  They looked up, and their black beady eyes homed in on me. I was a considerable way down the hill. Don hadn’t followed me.

  I couldn’t move. My body paralyzed with fear.

  Molebats scurried toward me—their skinny arms reaching out for me.

  My body jolted to life. Shifting forms, I sprinted up the hill. It was quicker to run as a wolf since I hadn’t mastered this as a werewolf. I didn’t change completely. There wasn’t time, but I had more speed running on all fours. In my mind, was her foot being severed clean off.

  With the wind roaring in my ears, I raced up the hill—their high-pitched voices right behind me. I could almost feel their ragged breaths on my neck.

  Almost at the top!

  My quilt was empty.

  Don?

  Where had he gone? Had he abandoned me?

  A black shadow leaped over me. The heavy mass landed somewhere behind me and shook the ground, knocking me over. Instinctively, I blocked my face, returning to wereduin form to protect myself with hands and not paws, from the fangs and talons I expected to come. But they never did. Opening my eyes, I noticed someone fighting off the molebats some feet from me.

  A full-fledged werewolf, Don tore into molebat flesh, slicing up multiple targets at once—tearing off their ears and their naked, bat-like arms.

  One sank its teeth into his shoulder. For a moment, my mind doubted. Could Don really get eaten by molebats? And if so…

  It would be my fault for leaving my quilt. Any beta who left their quilt, either thrown out like Myrtle’s asshole alpha or else left in fear—or in my case, stupidity—was fair game to the molebats. Nothing was forcing an alpha to go after them. Yet Don went for me.

  Had I doomed us both? Please, Mother Goddess Arduinna, protect us!

  Don severed the head of the molebat who bit him—blood splattering all over the ground and trickling out of its pig-like snout. Growling, he leaped forward and pinned three molebats beneath his body. On their backs with their stubby rat legs and tails up in the air, they would look funny if they hadn’t been covered in Myrtle’s blood. Don bit open their throats with no regard for their lives.

  The molebats that were still slicing up poor, dead Myrtle paused to watch the unlucky three bleeding out. Don turned his fangs on them, bloodlust in his neon-blue eyes. For a moment, he scared me more than the molebats. They didn’t approach him but continued to dissect Myrtle’s body. He wanted them to come at him. I saw it in his eyes, felt it in his stance. His fangs dripped of blood. When they didn’t attack, he didn’t pursue. Not turning his back on them, he walked up the hill, still crouched low in a killing position.

  I was still on my knees when he stopped in front of me. He yanked me off the ground and backhanded me hard, throwing me onto the quilt. Salty tears stung my bloody lip.

  “You little fool! Do you want to die?” Don grabbed me up by my hair and slapped me in the face again and again. I blocked as best I could before he threw me back onto the quilt. I couldn’t stop the tears. I saw Myrtle’s face—the terror-stricken look of one who didn’t want to die. Clinging to the quilt, I sobbed into the fabric. Don didn’t hit me anymore. He was quiet, standing over me. “Stop it. You’re embarrassing.”

  “Fuck you.” Sobbing hard, I barely got the words out before I screamed up at Don. “Why didn’t you help her?” I yelled like we were equals, like he hadn’t been smacking me around.

  “Help her?” Fangs out, he pinned me to the ground. Droplets of his drool dripped from his open jaw and collected onto my cheeks. “You are my beta! You, not her. You stupid little fucker. Do you know I have the power to let you die?” Menace shown from his startlingly neon-blue eyes. “Stupid little idiot. You almost died. And next time you do something so foolish, I won’t be risking both of our lives. You got that?”

  Rolling over onto my stomach, I clutched the quilt and wept. Don didn’t comfort me, but he didn’t yell or hit me. Our scuffle drew more molebats’ attention, but his menace stilled them. Their bat ears twitched, looking as if unsure whether to attack. I could almost hear the question in their scuffle of jumbled voices.

  Don’s lip bled, but he licked it off. There was something feral about him. It sent shivers down my spine and gave me the first air in my lungs that I had since Myrtle got ripped to pieces. His terror meant my protection. He was angry. Livid. More furious than I had ever seen him. But his ruthlessness was keeping them at bay. He looked like he wanted to sink his claws into every single one of them.

  “You,” low snarls came from his throat, his voice deep and guttural. “Sit in the center, and don’t you dare move.” I nodded. “If you do,” his werewolf features showed none of his handsomeness. “I’ll kill you myself.”

  I crawled to the center of my quilt and closed my eyes, trying to block out the loud cries all around me. My curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced up. It was the remaining slave beta, he finally tired and lost his footing. The molebats swarmed him. My stomach churned.

  “No, you don’t.” Don’s voice had me swallowing the bile that crawled up my throat. “Not on this quilt, you fucking don’t. And if you get up from this spot, I’ll crush your skull in.”

  Burying my face into the quilt, I cried out my nausea and fear. I kept expecting the molebats to come for me, too.

  Don growled, real and threatening, and it made me look up. They surrounded us, swarming the hummock like ants up a hill. Their terrible, high-pitched voices were the only sounds I heard. I clutched the quilt with white-knuckled fists and screwed my eyes shut. Sickness filled the pit of my stomach—fear, sadness, and terror spilled down my cheeks in large, salty tears.

  Don fought them. I couldn’t look, too afraid, but I heard the commotion. The wailing death screeches. The scurrying of hundreds of trotting feet. The swipe of his claws sent wind across my back. The ground trembled as he leaped from corner to corner.

  None of them touched me.

  Not even one.

  I still couldn’t look up, but I heard them dying. Don was killing every single one of them. Tears dried on my cheeks, and new and different emotions filled me. Admiration. Gratitude. Relief.

  I braved a glance up from my arms, clinging to my quilt like that alone protected me. Two molebats raced toward me from the front corner, puffs of air coming from their flaring nostrils. Their jaws opened, revealing tiny, dagger-like teeth—two protruding fangs flashing in the moonlight. Throwing my head down, I hid against the quilt. But they never attacked me. I felt Don’s presence in front of me. Felt the wind in-between his claws, the ground rumbling underneath his feet. Heard the loud tearing of flesh and bone his fangs made.

  I cracked an eye open. Don was amazing. He fought a never-ending mob. It must’ve been an entire hive attacking us, climbing up the hill from all sides. But thanks to his choice of location, only so many could come up at the same time. Don moved super-fast, looking like he fought them all at once. His training from his teachers had come into play and something else.

  Whatever side he was not on,
a mirage of himself materialized so that four Don’s fought simultaneously. The mirages changed places with him if he moved in their direction, perfectly mirroring his last location, so Don never actually stopped moving.

  I looked at a trident made entirely of onyx, driven through the quilt into the ground. From it, golden lights flowed like veins. Where they ended, the mirages formed. The light connected all four directions—north, south, east, and west. When Don replaced a mirage, the light connected to him like he was the image.

  I recognized this weapon. Don had received it from his trainer when he’d left me alone in the bazaar. He had placed the trident at the center of the quilt, close to where I sat. I could have touched it if I didn’t fear for my life.

  I glanced at the other alpha on the nearby hill, the asshole who let Myrtle die. He, like Don, fought like Hell’s demons. He didn’t have the trident that Don had, but he held his own. He’d set up a barrier around him, also made of the same golden light. It held back the molebats perfectly, blocking his back and sides, so he only had to worry about one direction.

  The quilt his betas had setup earlier lay forgotten in the dirt—molebat corpses and blood all over it. My anger grew. If he could kill the molebats, why hadn’t he saved his betas? He had claimed them. Why not protect them? All three would’ve easily fit inside the barrier behind him. But I knew the reason. Slaves were disposable.

  The asshole had probably used his betas to buy time to set up his barrier, too. Don and he indirectly helped each other. Every molebat killed by Don was one the slaver didn’t have to and vice versa.

  Finally, they stopped coming.

  Don crouched defensively in front of me. His claws dripped blood. His growls loud and menacing. I was still terrified but no longer of him. When no molebats came up our hill, Don started breathing hard. It was for a couple of seconds, but even Don needed to catch his breath. He rounded on me.