by R. Lee Smith
She didn’t want to be here. She didn’t want to be out there either, but if these were her only options, she’d rather be out there than in here. This was her life now and this was not the way she wanted to begin it.
She didn’t know any other ways.
After a while, Nona found the empty gourd where she’d left it after washing up and picked it up. She followed the wall back outside and stood for a while in the mouth of the cave, wondering who to interrupt so she had someone to walk with, but everyone was either busy or napping, so in the end, she just set off for the pond by herself.
She wasn’t far out of the clearing before she heard footsteps, not quite in sync with her own. She glanced back, expecting to see Gef or maybe Madira, since she knew Burgash wasn’t going to leave his mate…mates, or his cub to follow her stubborn ass around the woods.
The path behind her was empty and still.
She kept walking. The ‘echo’ returned.
Nona heaved a loud sigh and said, “Come out where I can see you,” fully expecting Nakaroth to materialize at her side as he so often did.
Instead, after a short pause, the dried underbrush shivered and out from behind a tree stepped the white-furred female, Lura. Vru’s mate.
They stared at each other. Well, to be specific, Nona stared at Lura and Lura stared into the forest with her chin up and her tail tucked between her legs.
Nona opened her mouth several times to ask some version of ‘What are you doing here?’ only to remind herself each time that, all things considered, Lura had more right to be here than Nona did.
As her silence drew out, it was Lura who finally said, “There are words I want to say to you.”
Nona realized that without noticing, she had shifted the empty gourd to her left hand and put the right on the hilt of her knife. She released it, but kept her good hand empty. “Oh yeah?”
“I know I am low. You do not have to hear me. If the others knew I was speaking to you now…” Lura looked back along the path toward High Rock. Her low ears folded even lower. “‘Where is your mate?’ they ask me. What am I to say to that? If I asked Gef where her mate was, would she know? And if it was his will to hunt, could she stop him? Could she command him to hunt other prey? How then am I responsible for my mate’s hunt?” Her eyes, blue as only a wolf’s eyes could be, tapped once at Nona’s and stared again into the trees. “These are some of the words I would say to you. That I am not my mate.”
“I know,” said Nona uncomfortably and moved the gourd back into her right hand. “I’m, uh…just going to the pond for some water. You can…You can come with me, if you want to.”
Lura showed throat and eased herself onto the path, keeping plenty of space between them. “May I speak?”
“Sure.”
“I am low. You do not have to hear me,” Lura said again. “I have no one else who will hear my words. Even the tribute bitches and unblooded wolves rank themselves higher than me. I have no rank. I have only my mate’s share of honor in High Pack…and I share his dishonor as well, the stain of his shameful rutting, his moods and rages. Our chief sees the threat of challenge in him. Did I put it there? I have been loyal to him in my every breath! But that means nothing. If my mate challenges, I will share his punishment. I will be in exile, never to be welcomed in any pack. Yet if I dare to speak against my mate, if I dare to say words to him or about him, what am I but a disloyal bitch? No other will ever have me. I will be forced out, at the mercy of rogue wolves. And wyverns,” she said in a small voice, looking around.
“I’m sure Kruin would never make you leave.”
“Oh are you? Are you!” Lura grabbed at her own muzzle with a trembling hand until she had taken several breaths. “We should walk,” she said when she was calm again. “We are too close to High Rock and I should not be speaking to you.”
Nona nodded and, without thinking, moved aside. It was Lura who started walking, passing Nona on the path and then stepping off it and into the woods. Nona glanced back, orienting herself to High Rock and the stark winter outlines of these particular trees, and then she followed her.
It began to snow—fat fluffy flakes, filling up her footprints and covering the path to the pond in a perfect blanket of white.
28. A Friendly Walk In The Woods
They walked without speaking for a while and although the silence wasn’t entirely comfortable, it wasn’t too unpleasant. Lura was a stranger, that was all, and that was Nona’s fault for not making any effort in all the time she’d been here to get to know her better. She had to do something about that. She just wasn’t sure how to start.
“So…tell me about yourself,” was the best she could do and it sounded so stupid in her mouth that she wished Lura hadn’t even heard it.
No such luck. Lura roused herself from whatever dark corner her own thoughts had been churning in and frowned at her at once. “Why?”
Nona could only shake her head and shrug. She didn’t know why. She’d never been able to understand how naturally and easily other people just…connected.
And for a second or two, she thought Lura might just drop the whole thing and they could both pretend it had never happened and maybe try again when she thought of a better opening, but Lura was ‘low’ and Nona was ‘high’ and that took an already awkward situation and added whole new dimensions of torture.
“I am called Lura,” she said finally. “Born of Snow Peak Pack, daughter of its chief. Another daughter, one of thousands. He sired no sons that lived and he was old and slowing when I was born. He sent away his thousand daughters to other packs, but he saved me for High Pack. He brought me here himself, to give me as tribute to the lord of the land while he was still chief and I was his to give.”
Lura fell silent. She should say something.
“How old were you?” Nona asked, because she was an idiot. “I mean, when did this happen?” she amended, which wasn’t much better, to judge from Lura’s openly confused face.
“Two winters gone?” Lura guessed after some thought. “Three? I don’t know. How old? I had my woman’s blood. He said I was old enough. How old are you?” she asked, throwing the question out with some annoyance, as if to prove what a senseless question it was.
She was twenty-four, but she shrugged. It didn’t matter here. It only barely mattered back on Earth. “What happened to your father?”
“I don’t know,” Lura said after another baffled, irritated stare. “He was old and his line was broken. Even if his mates made sons for him, they could not possibly be blooded before his death. Perhaps he is chief still. Perhaps he was challenged. Perhaps he lay down and died. It is nothing to me here.”
“Oh,” said Nona, because what else could she say to that? She didn’t have any right to call it callous, even in the privacy of her mind. She didn’t know where her father was either, if he was alive or dead or if he ever even thought of her.
“I was given to Kruin,” said Lura. “He claimed me for his mate. I was his highest. I was…not kind to those lesser than me.” She seemed to struggle with that, but while Nona was still trying to think of some way to offer sympathy without sounding like an ass, Lura suddenly burst out, “I should not have had to be!”
“What?”
“I was highest! I did nothing wrong! And he put me aside. He said he did not love me.”
Oh Jesus, and what was she supposed to say to that? She didn’t want to know more. She didn’t even want to know this. It wasn’t that she was unfeeling, but she could barely live with her own baggage. It was a little too soon to start carrying other people’s around too.
“What does love matter?” Lura asked bitterly. “She put that human nonsense in his head and he put me aside. I was not good enough for him to love, yet he took Sangar! Lamed and playing with her dried plants, stinking of humans and horsemen, but he chose her! He took Graal with her grey muzzle and withered womb. He took Madira, a bitch of Low River! Low River! Their chief wore trophies of mindi teeth! Why not…squirrel tail
s? Why not rabbit ears?” Lura turned her head to sneeze, ears flat, fuming. “And now his daughter sleeps in my bed. She throws her little stones at birds and my mate calls her his huntress.”
Nona glanced at her slingshot, holstered on her thigh, and even though she was trying to make friends here, still her mouth opened and out popped, “I don’t see you hunting, with or without stones.”
Lura’s hackles stiffened briefly, then shivered flat. She sent Nona a sidelong, petulant glance. “I am unblooded, is that what you say to me?”
“No. I’m just saying, I’ve never seen you hunt.”
“Well, I am unblooded,” Lura declared, pushing her ears forward while keeping her chin down—the lycan equivalent of tossing her hair. “I was a chief’s daughter! A chief’s mate! All the meat of High Pack is his first and I was his highest! Why should I have to hunt?”
“Okay,” Nona said neutrally.
They walked, climbing higher and higher into the hills, and further from High Rock. Snow blew in flurries at their backs, pushing them helpfully along. Nona’s new leather clothes were heavy, but warm. Her feet in her new boots were dry.
“Vru hunts for me,” Lura muttered.
“Yeah.”
“He hunts enough to feed a thousand mates. Every mouth in High Pack has eaten of his kills. He is strong and fearless. In another time, he might have been chief. He still might. No one has any right to scorn him.”
“Not for that,” Nona agreed, “although I have a few things to say about the way he flirts.”
“I do not know that word,” Lura sniffed, but Nona thought she might have an idea of its meaning by the way her ears shifted to show unhappiness. After another long stretch of time with nothing but the crunching of their feet in fresh snow and the shush-thwap that came from pushing through the overgrown, dead branches, Lura heaved a sigh. “I do not know how to hunt. I will never learn now. Who would teach me? It is humiliating to stand with those younger than me and be schooled by Sakros, that grey-face. My mate has no patience. He does not teach what to do, he only punishes what you cannot do as well as him! Who else? Madira?! Shall I go to the bitch who replaced me and ask how to use her honorless little human weapon?”
“I’ll teach you,” said Nona.
“Ha. And will you also teach me to fly? You do both equally well. No, I cannot hunt,” she said, with finality, whining just under every word. “And he knew it. He put me at the Fringes, knowing I cannot hunt. And they knew it, too. They knew they did not have to claim me. Why should they? They just…used me! All of them! I had to go upon my belly and let them piss their dog-seed inside me for bones and bowel, hooves and snouts! And now they turn their eyes on me and whisper because I chose Vru. I chose him, yes, my choice! What choice was that? What should I have done? Stay in the Fringes until I have my Heat and breed a cub with a thousand fathers? Leave High Pack? Return in disgrace to the pack that bore me and whine at the Fringes there? No! I must be grateful to him, do you understand? I must be and so I am. I am grateful as he bites my neck and rubs my muzzle in the earth and pounds me until my womb is bruised and beats his fists against my sides because it is another day and another and another that he has ordered me to fetch you out and I did not do it—”
The words, coming at the end of this litany of misery and outrage, did not immediately have meaning. In the same belated instant that they did, Vru’s hand was already clamped over her face, mashing her lips against her teeth, filling her mouth with the taste of blood.
“—because he wants another bitch,” Lura said, watching with sulky eyes as Vru yanked the knife from the sheath on Nona’s belt even as she grabbed for it and threw it into the trees. “And this time it is not enough for me to stand aside. This time, I must help her replace me.”
“Enough of your whining,” Vru growled, ignoring Nona’s struggles, which was easy to do since in this position and in his powerful arms, they were about as effective as a toddler’s. “I am not keeping them. I will not honor these man-bitches with my claim, as I have honored you.” He paused, then added in an edged tone, “With the piss of my dog-seed.”
Lura flinched and showed the whole of her throat. Quick as a snake striking, Vru swung his free arm and sent his mate crashing to the forest floor with one backhanded punch.
“Go and get the other one,” he ordered, sending her on her way with a kick.
“I can’t! Burgash is watching! And Ararro! I can’t get near her and she’s too much a coward to so much as piss on her own!”
“So offer to piss with her. I don’t care how you do it, but I want her and you’ll fetch her. They have to find them both,” he growled through a smile Nona could hear. “And the little one…I mean to take my time with her. And if you whine at me again, they’ll find you laid out right alongside them, so swears Vru of Thousand Falls, so go and do not return without Heather.”
Lura went, throwing Nona a last resentful stare through her tears.
“And you, stop your fighting.” Vru gave Nona a little shake, his claws digging into her cheeks, and when that failed to quiet her, he let go of her belt and slapped her in the side of the head. A light slap, surely, but hard enough to set her skull ringing. “If I must tell you again, I will say it with teeth. Do you hear me?”
Nona nodded once, her eyes straining as she searched the ground for some hint of her knife…but it was gone. She had no weapon. She had no hope of fighting him off. She was caught.
Again.
Vru gave her another of those playful, head-spinning slaps. “I say, do you hear me?”
Nona nodded and hummed against his silencing hand, letting him know she wanted to talk.
“No howling,” he warned her and when she nodded again, he moved his hand from her mouth to her neck. He squeezed, just to let her know how easily he could crush, then loosened his grip. “Speak.”
“What do you want?” she asked, although she knew damn well. She didn’t need to hear his plans, but as long as he was talking, he wasn’t doing anything else.
“I’m going to mount you,” Vru said, rubbing his crotch against her ass in brisk, pleasureless motions, making himself hard the same way another man might sharpen a knife. Readying a weapon, nothing more. “Submit and I may leave you with nothing but the stink of me for your fine, high mate to endure. Refuse me and I will mount you anyway, and you will wear my scars on your flat, naked face all the rest of your life. But fight me, as I know you want to fight me, and I will break these rabbit bones one by one, pull your plant-eating teeth and open your screaming throat. I don’t need you breathing for what I want. You’ll still be warm enough for my pleasure.”
“Don’t,” said Nona, because she knew he wanted to hear it. She didn’t try to act scared. He’d smell an act. She was scared enough anyway; she could feel her fear scratching and writhing inside the frozen shell of her heart. She’d felt this way before. She knew it wouldn’t last. “I won’t tell anyone if you just let me go now.”
“Ha! Is this how you beg? You will have to do better than that, man-bitch.”
Nona thought about it, then held up both her hands for him to see. Moving slowly, deliberately, she lowered one and reached behind her, between them, finding first his stomach and following it down to his cock, already half-out of his sheath.
He yanked her head down and closed his mouth around the back of her neck, growling into her hair. She did not allow herself to feel his teeth sharp against her skin, his breath in coarse snorts, drops of drool and maybe blood trickling down her spine; she felt only his cock in her hand, hardening as she carefully stroked and squeezed, pushing out of his body to prod at her hip. She had no doubt that with one bite, he could end her life…but being good wasn’t going to save it. This was the man who had ruined meat when he couldn’t use it to buy a mate he didn’t really want as anything but a status symbol. He meant to leave her exactly the same way for Nakaroth to find—torn open, spread out, and stinking of his piss. But she couldn’t let him know that she knew it. He had to
believe that she believed he’d let her live if she played nice. So she played nice, just for now.
Vru growled into the back of her neck, drool sliding hot as lava down the channel of her spine. His weight shifted. His hips twitched, pushing into her fist as she stroked, his jaws clenching in the same rhythm. His next growl was more of a groan and the one that followed, a panting laugh.
She could not have been very good at this. She had only the most theoretical understanding of what made a ‘good’ handjob and no practice. Although Nakaroth had encouraged her to explore his body during the two long nights they had been together as mates, his being exposed made him tense and she was too aware of her inexperience for either of them to relax and get into it. They’d been taking it slow, which was a funny way to describe having sex as often as they did, but for now, they had both been more comfortable letting him be in control. She needed to learn about her body before she got too adventurous with his.
But Vru didn’t care about trust and confidence. She wasn’t even sure he cared about her technique. What made him hard was the humiliation he imagined he felt in her compliance. Anticipation quickened and coarsened his breath, but it wasn’t the act itself or the rape to follow—it was Nakaroth finding her, Burgash finding Heather, and taking them both right out from under the shadow of Kruin’s protection.
Knowing that, understanding it, Nona did not attempt to get him off as much as just let him feel her touching him. Long, slow and above all else, timid strokes. She did not particularly want that touch to say ‘Does this feel good?’ She wanted it to say ‘Please don’t kill me,’ and after she’d said it a few times with her hand, she said it out loud.
He came. She felt it shudder through his body, felt the force of it hit her thigh, even if the leather was thick enough to shield her from the heat. His cock slid back out of her fist, resheathing, but only halfway.