“Okee-dokee,” Kirk says, dropping the key to the floor where I couldn’t possibly reach it.
He finally releases the silver cuff. And, oh Fenrir Wolf, the skin on the front of his palm detaches, fused as it now is to the silver.
After being half-raised by a great-grandfather who was a motorcycle gang leader, I’ve garnered a reputation as a pretty bad bitch over the years. But I just about faint all over again when I see that.
“Oh gee, that smarts,” Kirk says, looking at his melted palm.
Grey fur sprouts on his face. The natural instinct of his wolf taking over to heal his human.
“No, Gatekeeper. You are not allowed to turn to your wolf for the pain,” Damianos says, stepping further into the room. “This is, after all, a lesson.”
The fur recedes as quick as it appeared, leaving his hand a disgusting mess.
“Kirk needs medical attention,” I say, trying to keep it together. “You’ve gotta at least let him have bandages.”
Damianos levels me with a cool look. “You are going to be even more vexing than I anticipated,” he says before telling Kirk, “Attend to your wound, then complete the lesson. Use your good hand to open the door when you leave.”
Kirk, no longer to my surprise, does exactly as commanded, running out of the room.
And then suddenly I’m alone.
With Damianos Drakkon.
For the very first time.
Chained to the bed…
And wearing a nightgown that makes me look like a tragic heroine in a Shakespearean play.
Not good. Really not good.
Chapter Twelve
There’s a scared rabbit where my heart used to be, thumping its feet wildly and trying to get out. And I can’t even be mad at myself for feeling scared. Yes, I was raised by motorcycle gangsters and Vikings, but Damianos…
He’s something else.
Laying down prone and chained to the bed, my mind has a hard time processing how insanely large he is. He dwarfs both my father’s and my sister’s seven-foot plus dragon husband. And even though he’s simply dressed, he’s still radiating all-powerful trillionaire.
People like me act. Before I enter any room or conversation, I always make a conscious decision to pretend like I’m the baddest bitch on earth.
But this dude isn’t acting. I know that as he looks down at me.
As bad as I pretend to be, he’s way, way badder.
He’s not just the elephant in the room.
He’s the mega monster stealing all the air, making it impossible for me to breathe, much less say something cool and unbothered.
All I can do is stare as he comes to stand in front of the bed, towering over me, as his eyes slowly scan my prone body.
“Thralls can be unbelievably stupid, especially the dogs. If not given precise and specific commands they often hurt themselves in their eagerness to obey. You’ll do well to remember that when dealing with servants during your time here.”
His voice is so casual, that it takes me several moments to realize he’s explaining why Kirk hurt himself trying to free me. And that he expects me to do better in the future.
I consider lots and lots of answers before choking out, “During my time here….so you plan to keep me here for a while. Is this some kind of power move then? You planning to use me as a bargaining chip with my family? My dads or…?”
I think about the Black Box project that Rafes couldn’t get traction on until he was elected for a second term. He’d been scared that Damianos Drakkon would somehow acquire enough of our time gates for some unknown supervillain plot. I used to think him paranoid. And I’d been relieved when he agreed to let us keep the gate his mate arrived at unboxed.
But now I have to ask Damianos, “Is this…is this about the North Dakota gate? Because I’ll never agree to sell it to you. I don’t care what you do to me.”
“No, this is not about the gate.” He crooks his head, but it doesn’t come off as quite human. The gesture is almost slow motion in comparison. As if he thinks his head is much larger than it is.
Like a dragon, I realize. Even though he looks human, he still moves like a dragon.
“And as for how you fit into my overall plan…” he continues. “Originally you and your sister were merely pawns I planned to murder as part of my vengeance against your fathers. But your visit to my home in Greece changed all of that.”
He stops here of all places. And I’m forced to ask, “Changed all of that how?”
His eyes scroll over me. And even though I’m wearing this billowing nightgown, I can feel his gaze pressing into my skin, like a slow, cold lick. From the bottom of my bare feet to the top of my hair, which I’m sure must look wild and untamed now. Machine straightening doesn’t stand up to shifts.
“If I am correct about our…” he sneers, disgust curling his lip. “…unfortunate compatibility, we shall soon find out.”
I narrow my eyes. “What the hell does that mean? We’re not compatible. Like at all.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so either,” he replies. Then he frowns hard, and I once again feel that weird pressing in my head.
“Okay, is that you?” I demand, raising my non-shackled hand to my temple.
His frown turns into a cold neutral look. “Is that me what?”
“I have no idea. It feels weird. Like someone’s rooting around the outside of my brain. Trying to get in. If that’s you, please stop.”
The sensation suddenly ceases.
I lower my arm. “What were you trying to do? Hypnotize me like Akwasi, Kirk, and that boy you’ve got driving for you?
Instead of answering, he bends down and retrieves the key Kirk dropped on the floor. “It is time to attend to your hygiene, Ola. Unfortunately, Colby is preparing for your lesson, so you will have to see to your own bathing. Please do so immediately. After these days of healing from your necessary punishment, your odor is penetrating even my capped drakkon tongue.”
Okay, I think he’s trying to say I stink, and he wants me to take a shower, so he’s going to let me out of the cuff.
No argument here. Wolves don’t process smells as good or bad like humans and apparently dragons do, but I can feel the days of sweat and grime on my skin. And maybe a shower will clear my head so that I can figure out a way out of this situation.
“I allowed you to heal after your attempted escape. Do you feel that dull ache in your arm bone, Ola?”
I don’t answer, but I do reflexively rub at my arm, which I guess is answer enough for him. “Remember that when you think about running again,” he says.
Then easily handling the silver arm-cuff, he picks it up and turns the key, freeing me with one twist of his wrist.
But before I can feel too much relief, he promises, “My shackle remains even though I’ve freed you from the silver cuff. You are no longer your own person. You belong to me now. And wherever you run, I will catch you. And when I catch you, you will be punished.”
I sit up and rub at the dull, throbbing ache in my arm.
“Good, I see it is beginning to sink in,” he says with a cold smile. “This business between us will go much easier for you if you keep that at the front of your mind over the next few months.”
A deeper fear settles over me…did he say months. Months of what exactly? Being held as his hostage? Or worst?
Questions race through my mind and come tumbling out, one on top of another. “What business? Why did you bring me here? And why are you keeping me alive if the original plan was to kill me?”
“The facilities are that way,” Damianos informs me, nodding toward the closed bathroom door as if I asked him nothing at all.
We stare off for a second or two. He’s not only not going to answer my questions, I sense in those cold, silent moments, he’s also getting a kick out of scaring me.
For that reason alone, I break off the staring contest and push myself off the bed to shove past him to the bathroom. I don’t want him to see how much his tactics are working.
Okay, no more time for freaking out, I decide after the door slides shut behind me.
Escape! Escape! ESCAPE! Figuring a way out of here has to be my number one priority. With that in mind, I look around the wood and stone bathroom. The ceiling slopes on a diagonal angle, so this space must be located directly under one of the gables. But damn! No windows.
I get in the shower, crazy disappointed, but determined to figure this shit out. However, the shower suddenly stops five minutes into my mental analytics. Crap. I’d forgotten that we’d outfitted the entire house with climate-friendly settings. Lights turn off when no one is in the room, the dishwasher only runs in the evening. And in this particular case, the shower stops and automatically begins its dry cycle after only a five-minute rinse. Then it refuses to turn on again for the same user for another couple of hours.
Kind of my fault. Even though I use up more than 5 minutes’ worth of water just thinking about washing my long, thick, and naturally curly hair, I might have pushed for some extra stringent climate controls. Did I mention I could be a petty bitch? Especially when it came to the Yellow Mountain Wolves. Well, I’m paying for it now. I won’t be able to get fully clean, because I was too busy thinking when I should have been lathering up my body.
This smart house is turning out to be a real pain in the ass—
Wait, smart. The gatehouse is smart! I cut off my lament when I suddenly realize I might be able to use a wall to get some kind of communication out. What did Mom use to call those formal text messages you had to type out on a non-biological device and send through a special server? Email! Maybe I could use the wall to send some kind of email to one of her old accounts. Which I hoped to God she still checks.
Suddenly I’m a lot more eager to return to my bedroom. But then I cringe when I note what’s missing from the bathroom.
Namely, towels. Or any kind of robe.
Okay, it seems the whole point of this abduction is for the universe to yell at me, “You, Ola Greenwolf, are a complete lie.”
“You better represent for us fly girls and wear that bikini!” How many times had I told my sister that? She’d been self-conscious about our tall, double-wide brickhouse bodies growing up. And I’d been more than sure it would be a privilege for any man to see our banging curves on display.
But all that body positivity flies right out the window now. But to be fair, nobody in their right mind would want to walk naked into a room maybe still currently occupied by the Greek statue of a dragon shifter who kidnapped her ass.
Please don’t be out there. Please don’t be out there, I beg the universe as I tentatively open the door.
And you know what? The universe ain’t shit.
Of course, Damianos is still in the bedroom, standing by the front-of-house window big as day.
He turns his head to me in that slow dragon way of his and openly stares at my naked body.
And my wolf…goddamn her. She stands up again, making me breathless for reasons I refuse to deliberate on.
“Don some attire, then join me at the window,” Damianos commands. Then he cuts his gaze away like he’s not at all impressed by anything he saw.
I am not upset. I am not upset about Damianos non-reaction to seeing me naked. This guy has kidnapped me. Kidnapped me! I don’t care one way or the other if he doesn’t find me as hot as I know I am because I’m not a stick like a lot of young rich women my height want to be.
I shouldn’t care…
So I won’t, I decide as I palm open the closet.
It doesn’t take me long to decide what to wear. There are only linen nightgowns. Ten replicas of the one I woke up in. I check the push-button drawers underneath just in case. I would kill for my normal around the house wear, a t-shirt and a pair of yoga pants. But the drawers are empty. No underwear even. So, I guess old-timey sleepwear it is.
I slip it over my head then covertly look around for a smart screen or a set of controls. Anything I could use to get a message out…
“Have you forgotten the second part of my order?” I look up from my search to find Damianos once again regarding me now that I’m covered up. “Come, stand with me at the window. I would like for you to see this.”
He raises one huge arm and beckons me forward.
It would almost seem like a friendly invite, if not for the stone-cold look on his beautiful face.
I go to him. Maybe playing along will get him out of here faster, so that I can spend some quality time with that smart wall.
I reluctantly go to stand next to him at the window, and the view hits me like a gut punch. Most of North Dakota is flat, and we’re on a mountain. So you can see farther than expected. The original state pack village sits, nestled among the trees further down the mount. And if I squinted, maybe I could see all the way to New Wolfsburg, the North Dakota pack’s current kingdom town, where my kingdom mansion sits, like the largest jewel in a crown dotted with houses. From this vantage point, New Wolfsburg feels so close.
But it’s so far away.
“Don’t look out,” Damianos commands. “Look down at the gatekeeper. I believe you referred to him as Kirk.”
I don’t want to look down. But something inside me won’t let me not look. And that’s when I see Kirk.
Standing there. Just standing there. One hand bandaged and the other closed around a huge shiny butcher knife.
“What…what…?” Only the one word falls from my mouth. I’m too disturbed to construct the rest of the question, too afraid I already know the answer.
Kirk waves at me with his bandaged hand, a big goofy grin on his face.
He was so angry and resentful at my coronation. I never would have guessed he’d have a smile like that hidden underneath. But his bright smile makes what happens next that much more horrifying.
After waving, he raises the knife in his arm parallel to the ground.
“No, don’t!” I scream. At Kirk. At Damianos.
But neither of them listens, and in the next moment, it becomes too late for pleas. Kirk slashes the knife across his throat, still smiling.
No…No….
Remember, Ola, they’re all our subjects, even the ones we don’t like. We have to figure out what each and every one of them needs. Figure out how to help them. That’s what real kings and queens do.
I bang on the window and scream as Kirk’s body slumps to the ground, Uncle Kyle’s words ringing in my ears.
“Do not defy me. Do not attempt to escape,” Damianos says beside me, his voice low and ominous. “If you cross me again, I assure you the next punishment will be much, much worse.”
Chapter Thirteen
DAMIANOS
At my words, the North Dakota Queen falls to her knees and screams for a rather long time.
As I watch her lament upon the ground, a delicious power crackles inside my flame. After so much torment, I finally have the daughter of my father’s murderers in my possession. And it would seem I have already succeeded in breaking her.
I’d been a bit worried that the gatekeeper’s death wouldn’t fully drive home my point. But apparently, my she-wolf overvalues the lives of her fellow wolf mutations. Even the enemy I saw spit at her feet through the eyes of Akwasi, one of my many thralls. ‘Tis a silly, if not surprising reaction.
They can be soft-hearted, these upright primates, not to mention overly emotional. Why I’ve seen them fall into dramatic fits of disbelief when they see one of their kind die, even if the one dying is merely a fictional character in a story.
The recriminations will come next if experience holds out. Many “how could yous” and “I can’t believes.”
“How could you fucking do that?” my she-wolf demands as if having been given a cue. “You had no right. No right!”
I roll my eyes—a useless but amusing habit I learned from the cattle. Then I settle in for the inevitable next phase: piteous wailing.
Often I snap the outraged party’s neck, just so I won’t have to hear them carry on. Or I g
od speak them to simply forget what they saw and go away.
It is unfortunate I haven’t been able to god speak my captive. It would make this unexpected business between us so much more palatable if she would simply do my bidding.
Despite my many previous failures, I once again attempt to compel her.
“You will cease your caterwauling and return to the bed. You will wait there until it is time to do your mately duty, and there will be no more attempts to escape.”
She stiffens, then stands up straight. Then looks me directly in the eye.
Did it work? For the first time since I discovered that I could not god speak this female, my chest fills with hope.
But then she growls, “Stop trying to get into my head! Is this how you get off? What you call fun?”
She shoves at me. I don’t move of course. But still…the shock of it. Why is she not crying? Or quivering before me and begging for her own life?
“You’re pissed at my dads—who by the way, were defending their village when they killed your dad, you big-ass hypocrite. But life means so little to you, you don’t think anything about taking it from innocents, people who have nothing to do with your beef!” she yells at me. “Well, fuck you, you big-ass arrogant bitch. From now on, I’m not doing anything you say! Kill me. I don’t care. I’m done being your victim!” she declares.
Then she hauls back her right arm and punches me. In the throat!
“Ow, ow, ow!” she says directly afterward, shaking out her hand.
Her punch does not hurt me as it does her. Her strength is nothing compared to mine. But it is a rather irritating sensation. And I find myself rather peeved when despite her pain from the first punch, she draws her arm back to strike me again.
This time I catch her fist mid-strike with one hand and capture her jaw in the other.
From there it is but an easy thing to bring her body close to mine so that I might speak directly into her ear. “You are not done doing everything I command until I say you are. In fact, by the time our business is finished, I will hear you beg.”
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