by Delta James
“I know you wanted it to be different, but it isn’t. Griffin is not your mate, nor will he ever be alpha to our pack. I almost wish I could let you off without a spanking, but I fear without a painful enough backside to remind you to behave, Griffin will have to put up with more of your foolishness. Come be a good girl and get yourself over my knee. If you submit, I’ll only use my hand. If not, I did bring my strap and I’ll welt your bottom.”
Colum gestured with his hand for her to come to him. She hated this. Hated that as a female she was expected to submit. Hated that because of her sex she couldn’t rule her own pack or even her own destiny. Hated that she knew Colum meant to spank her hard enough that sitting would be painful for the next few days.
“Ava, don’t make me come get you. You know you were wrong. You know you deserve to be and are going to be punished. The only question is do you just want to feel my hand delivering that punishment or my strap?”
“Colum...”
“Now, Ava,” he said with steel in his voice.
Knowing one way or another she was going to be spanked, Ava walked over to Colum. He helped her across his lap, ensuring she was securely placed before lifting the robe she had worn to Griffin’s room in order to bare her bottom for his discipline.
“You will find your mate, Ava. But I fear he will have a hard time bringing you to heel.”
Colum lifted his hand and brought it down sharply on her derriere, causing her to yelp. He began to systematically cover her backside with hard swats from his strong hand. Ava tried to wiggle and squirm to avoid the blows that rained down on her rump. The pain and heat Colum was able to inflict was awful. She hated being disciplined and yet she often felt as though she couldn’t help doing things that got her spanked.
Ava tried to keep from crying as the spanking continued and Colum made her sit spots and upper thighs his target. At last the pain was too much and she lost her fight with her tears. She began to cry, softly at first and then more loudly as Colum continued to lay into her. Once the tears started, true submission to the spanking and to the rule of the pack followed quickly. Ava gave over and accepted her place in the pack and at the moment over Colum’s knee.
Finally, Ava felt Colum stop and begin to rub her bottom soothingly. He helped her up off his knee and made her sit on his lap. He took his handkerchief and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“There now. All done. You were a naughty little wolf, weren’t you?”
Ava maintained a stony silence as her tears began to fall again. Colum wiped them away.
“Ava, do you want to show me I got through to you and behave, or do you need to go back over my knee for more paddling?”
“No,” she cried.
“No, what?”
Ava looked into Colum’s face. There was kindness there, but also a grim determination that she would comply.
“No, sir,” she said with a resigned sigh.
“You were told not to bother Griffin, weren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you disobeyed, didn’t you?”
“But we mated. We’re supposed to be together.”
“No, Ava. Griffin made a mistake but even drunk and in desperate need he didn’t take you as a woman, only as a wolf. I’m not excusing his behavior. He never should have done that, but I know he regrets it and I know he has apologized to you.”
“You don’t understand. He’s supposed to lead this pack with me beside him.”
“Ahh,” said Colum as realization dawned. “Is it Griffin you want or is it to be mistress of the pack?”
“Both.”
“Neither is yours to claim. I probably ought to put you back over my knee and take my strap to you, but I’m not going to. You go stand in the corner and think about what I said. You are to remain in your room until Griffin leaves. If I catch you disobeying again, I’ll welt you good. Do you hear me?”
Ava thought about defying him, but realized all her efforts would get her was a set of welts across her backside. She nodded and let Colum help her up and then went to stand in the corner. After about thirty minutes, Bethan entered the room with tea and cakes.
“Colum said I was to tell you that your punishment was over and you could come out of the corner, but was to remind you that you are not to leave your room. I thought you might enjoy a nice pot of tea and a little something to eat. Cook has made lemon cakes. I know they’re your favorite.”
Ava turned to glare at the woman who held the position that Ava thought should be hers, but found she could not maintain her hostility in the face of Bethan’s kindness. Ava realized that might be the one quality she lacked amongst those needed to be mistress of a great pack.
She walked over to the bed and sat down gingerly, taking the cup of steaming tea that Bethan had made for her. It didn’t surprise Ava that Bethan remembered she liked her tea with lots of cream but very little sugar.
“I do think there is little in this world that can’t be much improved with a good cup of tea.”
Ava smiled in spite of herself. “Even more so with lemon cakes.”
Bethan laughed. “They certainly do improve one’s outlook on things. I hate to leave you up here by yourself...”
“It’s all right, Bethan. I’m being punished and Colum could have made it a lot worse. I’ll be fine.”
Bethan reached out and patted her arm. “Of course you will be. We she-wolves are far stronger than some of the men give us credit for. You will find a mate, Ava. I hope he will be here with us at Calon Onest. I, for one, would miss you if you weren’t here.”
Ava watched as Bethan gracefully rose from the bed and then left her alone.
Chapter Three
A few weeks later
Ava’s heart had soared when she heard that Griffin would be returning home. She meant to talk with him about what had happened and try to convince him they had a future together. Her hopes were dashed when Bethan had told her that Griffin was returning with his new mate, Maddie, a human who he’d turned.
Bethan had gone out of her way once Griffin had left again to engage Ava in the daily life of the pack. Ava had searched for Bethan to ask her advice, when she stopped outside Ioan’s study only to hear a conversation regarding her future.
“You can’t send her away, Ioan,” Ava overheard Bethan saying. “Calon Onest has been her home her whole life.”
“Ava needs a mate,” said Ioan with some finality. “She needs to be mated and brought to heel before she gets herself in real trouble. There’s no one here for her at Calon Onest.”
“Maybe we could find someone...”
“Bethan, you have said yourself she needs an alpha male. There are none here save me and I have my hands full with you,” Ioan teased his wife. “I have begun making inquiries amongst packs with unmated alphas. Ava is beautiful and shifter-born. Given the dowry she would bring from us as well as allegiance with our pack, finding her a mate shouldn’t be too difficult.”
“Ioan, you can’t just marry her off. She needs to find her fated mate. She needs to fall in love.”
Ioan chuckled. “Not all she-wolves come to their mate’s bed of their own accord. As I recall there was a beautiful Welsh wolf who vowed she would choose her own mate regardless of the choice made for her by her older brother who was alpha of their pack.”
“How many years have I been blissfully mated to you and yet you refuse to let that go. Nigel was a fine, upstanding wolf...”
“Who would have indulged your every whim and never taken a strap to your backside regardless of how badly you needed it. As Micah found you your mate, so will I endeavor to find Ava’s. Hopefully, it will take fewer spankings to convince her to settle down once she is marked by him.”
“If you recall, my alpha, it wasn’t your marking that brought me to heel, but rather your knotting and tying me several times while we were in seclusion that made me decide that a beta without the ability to knot me in human form was far less desirable,” said Bethan in a husky tone.
Ioan
growled low and seductively to his mate. “Ah, yes, I do recall that weighing heavily in my favor although as I remember it, what finally made you surrender to me was being knotted on a welted bottom after you tried running away.”
Bethan had giggled like a young girl as her mate and the father of her children continued to call to her in the way of their kind. A call that was said to be both felt and heard by the recipient. It was said to spread like wildfire through one’s blood and seep into the very marrow of one’s bones.
“Please don’t fret, my beloved,” said Ioan. “Ava is part of our pack and my responsibility. But part of that responsibility is to see her happy. And much as you hate to admit it, you know she would be far happier mated to the right wolf. Come give me a kiss and then go finish your preparations for Griffin’s return with his new bride.”
Ava had run from the house before Bethan could leave and find her eavesdropping. She had begun to believe that even if Bethan supported Griffin taking another to mate, that she cared for her. How could Bethan just agree with Ioan and sell her off to any alpha willing to pay the price in exchange for a shifter-born alpha female and an alliance with Calon Onest?
The estate was vast and Ava shifted to her wolf form to run. She galloped along the rugged coast and then up through the pastures and meadows seeking peace for her restless soul, weary mind, and wounded spirit.
Ava fled to the far end of the estate, to a quiet glade by a stream she’d found as a child. She thought of it as her special place known only to her. She kicked the dirt much like a child having a temper tantrum as she did it. She’d always come here to think and find peace—something that was never easy for her.
The rumors circulating throughout the world of the shifters was that there were rogue wolves, some even said rogue packs, who were raiding for breed-able females—be they shifter-born, turned, or still human. Ioan had, only the week before, issued a command that the women of Calon Onest were not to leave the estate without either his or Colum’s permission and with a male escort. Even as angry as she could get at the ruling members of her pack, she knew that they took the responsibility for the safety of the pack seriously.
As long as she remembered she had always wanted. Wanted something elusive and always seemingly out of reach. For a while she’d believed her fate lay with Griffin and as mistress to the Calon Onest pack. She thought he was the answer; thought he’d eventually get tired of saving the world and come back to take over as the rightful alpha of their pack and claim her as his mate. She now realized that was not meant to be.
Traveling the world first as a Special Forces operative and then at Ioan’s behest had given Griffin his fated mate and shown him that his happiness was not to be found here at Calon Onest. It was said he found her in New Orleans. She was human and had come under the protection of the pack there after a failed kidnapping attempt. The talk was that he was going to start a new pack on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with his new mate, Maddie.
Ava smiled a little to herself. She was nothing if not a realist. She realized she was in full-on pity party mode. The smile faded rapidly as tears began to form. In the peace of her little glade she digested the fact that Ioan meant to send her away. Away from the only place she’d ever known. She tried to sort out her feelings.
How could he do this to her? Passing her around like a she was some trophy prize—shifter-born, an alliance with Calon Onest, and a dowry. What was this, the fifteenth century? It was as if Ioan didn’t think that Ava on her own would merit anyone’s serious interest. Words failed her as she tried to sort through all the feelings crowding into her mind.
At the top of the list was anger, followed close by humiliation, hurt, and a feeling that she wasn’t wanted. No one recognized or appreciated her for who or what she was... only what she could bring to another pack.
If she was honest with herself, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise. Her own parents hadn’t wanted her. Her father had turned her human mother without her consent and had been bitterly disappointed when Ava had not been the son he coveted. When her father had been banished from the pack for both turning his mate without her consent and then abusing her, Ioan had convinced her mother to stay. However, she’d never truly adjusted to life within a pack and by the time Ava was seven, her mother had gone into town and never returned. Even though Ava was a rare shifter-born female, it seemed that she had never been of value to anyone.
On some level she knew this was a bad place for to be—not the glade, but the place in her own head—a dangerous place even. She knew this was often the kind of thinking that led to her making bad decisions. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that one of those ill-fated decisions she’d made lately was the night she’d pursued Griffin. She’d known he was drunk and knew he’d come home from a particularly bad mission with Special Ops. But Ava really had believed that if only she could get him to mate with her, he’d see the light. He’d see they were meant to be together and to rule Calon Onest. She had tried to dismiss the fact that he hadn’t wanted her in human form, but had been all too willing to knot and tie her as a wolf. It turned out that the only light Griffin had seen was that his ever having mated with her was a bad thing. Unwanted yet again.
After that whole fiasco, after showing Griffin she’d forgiven him for taking her the first time as a wolf, offering herself to him again and then being punished for it, now here she was being bartered around as if she were nothing more than some alpha’s fuck toy and broodmare. Ava couldn’t decide if she felt more like prized breeding stock or some high-dollar whore.
Well, damn it, she was worth more than that. She deserved better. She would not, absolutely would not allow them to treat her like this. If they wanted her gone then gone she would be—but on her terms, not theirs. Unbeknownst to anyone, Ava had saved some money and done some investing on the side. She had developed computer skills in programming, researching and being able to manipulate information on both the worldwide web and the dark net. She was a hacker of the first order. Whether or not she was a black-hat hacker or white-hat depended entirely upon who was willing to pay her the most money. She had kept her developing skills a secret from everyone within her pack—something for which she was now glad.
It was then that Ava came to a decision. What the hell... if America was indeed the land of opportunity then she’d go there and take that opportunity. To hell with all of them. They didn’t want her; she was gone.
Ava knew Griffin was to arrive sometime today and there would be a small celebration. She also knew that several of the packs were gearing up for a confrontation with some Eastern European packs they believed to have gone rogue. She was quite certain that an opportunity to escape Calon Onest and seek her own destiny in America would present itself.
Ava returned to the house in time to see Griffin arrive with Maddie, She supposed she was pretty enough and Griffin seemed besotted. Maddie’s eyes found hers and Ava scowled. She barely managed to stifle a yelp as Colum’s strong hand connected with her backside.
“You behave yourself,” he whispered. “If I hear one word said that you were anything less than kind and gracious to Griffin’s mate, I will welt you good and you will be confined to your room until this is all over. Am I clear, little wolf?”
“Yes, sir,” she said in as neutral a tone as she could muster.
Colum didn’t know it but he’d have nothing to worry about ever again. That would be the last time he’d ever swat her or threaten to do worse. She planned to be gone before the stroke of midnight.
Ava made her way up to her own room and sat in the middle of her bed making plane reservations, setting up a new bank account in America, and transferring funds. She had picked a remote town in coastal Maine. As far as she knew the closest wolf pack was hundreds of miles away in Canada. That meant, for all intents and purposes, the area she had chosen was devoid of pack rule. She would be free.
Her plan was to make a clean getaway. She was routed to fly into the Midwestern United
States. At that point, she would buy a car and head east. Every few states she would buy a different car. She was going to try to make it as difficult to follow her as possible... if they tried at all.
Dinner had been a very celebratory affair. Ava had participated and been gracious to both Griffin and his new mate. For the life of her, Ava could not understand why Griffin had chosen to turn a human female rather than mate with a born shifter. It made no sense. Perhaps Griffin was not the wolf she believed him to be.
Ava did not believe in fated mates. She was convinced this was a fantasy perpetuated by the males of her species so that they could coerce a female into a mated pairing. Of course she’d been told that a male could call to his fated mate and she would not only hear him, but the call would reverberate throughout her body. Ava had never experienced such a call and was convinced it didn’t exist. By touting this myth as fact, the men could conspire and force females to be their mates.
There were elaborate rituals and rules associated with a male shifter declaring a woman to be his fated mate. Once he had done so and convinced the alpha under whose protection she lived, he could force her to shift to her wolf form and run her down. Once caught she could shift and accept his claim or he would mate with her as a wolf—knotting and marking her as his own. There were other ways men had come up with to force a woman to accept a mate she had not chosen for herself. In all of those scenarios, the one constant was that the woman’s desire not to be mated was subjugated to the will of the men around her.
At the end of the day, the males had all the power. Well, Ava was done with that. She would live on her own, subservient to no one.
Once she was finished with her preparations, she took a last look around the room that had been hers most of her life to see if there was anything else she needed or wanted to take with her. Seeing nothing, she cracked open her door and peeked out. She strained all of her senses, but she was sure no one was up and around. She moved down the hall to the hidden door she had discovered as a small child. She opened it quietly, went through, and closed it and her life at Calon Onest behind her.