Her lips twitched recalling his howl of intense pain.
Didn’t expect that, did you?
A fist banged on the door, making her jump and release her bladder. She bit off the cry as more fire stung raw flesh but had no choice but to let the process finish.
“Thirty seconds, Raine, before I come in and get you!” Cabhan shouted, and she shivered at the tone of his voice. She’d quickly learned how to differentiate between their human voice and the dominant tone of the wolf.
When the wolf was in play, there was no going back.
Cleaning herself up, she was disturbed by the mix of white and red leaking from her. She’d known there’d be blood, how could there not be? But to see it with her own eyes, to know the blood on the paper was hers? It terrified her. How many internal injuries did she have? How many would she have if they achieved their goal and knotted her?
Was this what the three dead women before her had suffered through?
The panic attack came from nowhere, stealing her breath and shooting her heartrate through the roof. Shaking hands dropped the toilet paper as she fell forward onto hands and knees, crawling to the huge tub.
There was no safe place left for her.
Wheezing, she dragged herself over the cold edge and landed heavily on her back, wincing as the chill seeped into her battered muscles. Wheezes became whimpers, became whines, became tears.
Cabhan bulled into the room, hot amber eyes already tainted with the dreaded black searching the space furiously. They locked onto her, assessed the situation, and darkness consumed him completely. “Crying is unbecoming for a mate.”
A big hand clamped around her throat, hefted her effortlessly from the tub and carted her out to the bed. He threw her onto the sheets, snagging her ankle and rolling her onto her stomach. The position reminded her too much of Quinn and her first introduction to penetration.
She kicked out, knowing Cabhan could go deeper, harder, when she was like this. She cried out when he folded her legs at the knee and pulled her hips back to the edge of the bed. Effectively trapped in a submissive position, her thighs pressed against her belly and her pussy a prime target, Raine struggled to move.
His huge hands clapped down on her ass cheeks with a solid smack. “No struggle. Mate stays still while I mount her, then she can fight all she likes. I like it when they fight my cock.”
Oh fantastic. No one told her Cabhan was a goddamn sadist.
Fingers wrapped around her neck, sliding to the front to grip her throat, biting into soft flesh hard enough to bruise. She gave a good attempt at bucking him off, but he’d folded her well enough to immobilize her, and with the hand on her throat there was nothing she could to stop his cock nudging against her, finding the most vulnerable spot and plunging swiftly into her.
Panic attack warred with survival instincts. Cabhan’s fingers tightened around her throat with each brutal thrust, grunting above her as he pushed her down, his weight pressing on her distressingly.
“Stop! Cabhan, stop!” She screamed at him, surprised she’d broken her own vow not to beg, but helpless to keep the words inside. Her sheath spasmed with a vicious stab of pain but he was beyond listening, tucked away somewhere while his filthy beast battled for full dominance.
They were learning how to subdue her, to protect themselves as they raped her, and that pissed her off. As far as she was concerned, they were fair game whether they wanted to believe it or not. They were all going to pay for this, dearly. With their lives if she could find a way.
Her fingers clutched the sheets, gripping tight as Cabhan’s thrusts jerked her around. The base of his cock pressed into her and she gasped, feeling the knot build against her. From Cabhan’s renewed efforts, he was all too aware he was close to doing what none of his brothers had.
“Just a little more,” he grunted, straining into her, using his weight to force the growing knot through her tender orifice. “Let the knot in, petal, and all this will end.”
“No! No, get off me!”
Raine hunched her hips, pulling away from the terrifying pressure breaching her. She let her head rest on the quilt as Cabhan cursed a blue streak a mile wide, laughing weakly when she realized the softball-sized knot had formed fully outside her.
Take that, asshole.
The hand around her throat released her, pressing beside her head as Cabhan braced himself, long groans of climax rumbling through him. More semen flooded inside her, making her feel sick at the thought of so much of them staining the most private parts of her.
Marked. Claimed. Ruined.
“Damn it, Raine,” he murmured against her hair. “Why couldn’t you just give in for once? The wolf nearly had you, just another inch and you’d have been ours. Now if Dubh can’t claim you, we have to go through all this again.”
Her stomach flipped. “No, we don’t. I’m not compatible!”
“According to our wolves, you are, and they are rarely wrong.” Cabhan pulled free with a little hiss that was lost in the uncomfortable moan of hers and kissed the back of her shoulder. “Dubhlainn might not give you a lot of time, Raine. Make the most of it.”
She rolled onto her back, judged the distance between them. As his eyes widened at his mistake, she bared her teeth and lashed out with fingers curled into claws. Her nails were short, but they still scored his pectoral muscle deep enough to draw blood. “Goddamn it, you crazy little savage!”
Lunging at him was both oddly fulfilling and one hell of a mistake. The shock in his eyes as she moved fast, tearing strips from his hide, was sinfully rewarding. They underestimated her every damn time. But the sudden movement sent pain threading through her veins, her system incredibly unhappy with all the jostling and unnecessary moving when it was insistent she should be curled up resting.
“Who’s the savage here?” she demanded. “Not me, wolf!”
Cabhan backed away from her quickly. She took pride in the swiftness of his retreat; maybe they would finally learn she wasn’t their typical female, willing to present herself and her womb for their taking. She was a warrior, a fighter, and while they had her beat physically, they were no match for her in resourcefulness or strength of will.
“Get out, you coward.” Raine sat on the edge of the bed as Cabhan scowled and nearly smashed the door in two on his way. Probably got his testicles in a knot—pun freaking intended—at the fact he’d been so close to tying with her and been thwarted.
God, she didn’t want that thing inside her. The pressure had been too much, both against her resistant cervix and the entrance to her sex. Unfortunately she knew how close he’d come to succeeding, and once one part of him popped inside her, the other would follow.
Raine shuddered. Across the room, the dressing room mirror reflected the image of a pale-skinned, limp-haired redhead staring at her. Gray eyes were losing their manic edge, becoming sad and forlorn, framed by dark purple bruises that looked vicious against the pallor of her skin.
A necklace of bruises formed around her throat, a red band decorated with blackening marks in the shape of fingertips. An accessory to the raw patch on her cheek and her chapped lips.
Her shoulders were slumped, body language shouting defeat, but Raine squashed it. Defied it by straightening, pushing them back so she sat with rigid posture. Fatigue and pain were two of her greatest enemies, fucking with her mind even as they gnawed away at her physical shell.
Smash the mirror.
She rolled her eyes at the thought. Why bother? It wasn’t like she had the gumption to slit her wrists or her throat and be done with this hell. Been there, considered that, she reminded herself in disgust. Got the freaking T-shirt and matching sweater.
The monster under the bed is coming for you.
Trepidation rippled through her. Dubhlainn. The biggest and meanest of them all, the one who’d threatened her, belittled her. Yeah, she could use a weapon against that massive beast, even if it was the last she had available to her. Even if she’d likely do more damage to herse
lf than to him.
Cum trickled down her thighs, sticky and warm, as she tottered over to the dresser, sending her stomach into a fit of retching. It was akin to being pissed on and she found the thought abhorrent.
Curling her lip in defiance at everything to go wrong in her life in the last day, almost snarling at the pitiful creature in the shiny surface in front of her, Raine hauled back and rammed her fist into the glass. It cracked, barely, but then, so did her fingers. “Ow, shit! Shit!”
“Hurting yourself won’t solve anything, little rabbit.”
Horror froze her in place. Her neck tingled with awareness, tiny hairs saluting his presence like miniature soldiers acknowledging a superior officer. Something inside her died. Her witty tongue and fiery sass crawled beneath the closest rock, leaving her with nothing but the coppery taste of terror in her mouth.
The door snicked shut quietly.
A few more moments and the animalistic urge would overtake him, turn the monster into something more horrific than she could imagine. He was the biggest of the five, the strongest, the fiercest. He could snap her in half with one hand while he used her corpse to find his release.
He was her nightmare.
“Look at me, little rabbit. I’d like you to understand a few things before the inevitable happens.” For now, his voice was normal. If anything, it lowered an octave, but nothing close to the gravelly darkness of the wolf. “Raine, do as I say. This doesn’t have to be traumatic.”
“So you all keep saying,” she said listlessly, steeling herself for a hand around her neck. Her fingers throbbed in time with her heartbeat and the bite on her nape was a stark reminder of their main goal in this farce. “So far the only ones not traumatized are you and your fucking brothers.”
“You’ve certainly left your mark on them,” he commented, and sounded amused by the fact. “I don’t presume to know what’s happened in the last few hours, Raine, but I can hazard a guess. That you’re standing there trembling tells me you’re expecting me to, what? Drag you to the bed and pin you down? My brothers are good men, Raine. Good men, good wolves. But they can be rash when hormones are involved.”
Raine’s lips quivered. Why was he talking to her? If he was the last she had to endure, she wanted it over with so she could crawl into a hole and grieve for what the day had cost her. “Rash? You call the past few hours of torture rash? Go fuck yourself, Dubhlainn.”
“Dove-linn,” he corrected her gently. “Would you please look at me?”
Slowly, she turned, expecting him to be standing behind her, ready to pounce. Instead he was sat on the bed, studying the bloody sheets with undisguised fury. His brilliant blue eyes flashed with iridescent fire when they shot to hers, locked.
“My brothers are not Alphas, no matter the promises my father made to them, to us all, before he exiled us from our home. The scent of estrus does funny things to a wolf, wipes our control, snaps the chain on the beast.” Dubhlainn breathed deep and a smudge of black appeared in the blue. “Add in the scent of your heat and they were helpless against their base instincts.”
She folded her arms over her breasts, shielding them from his intense gaze. “And you? You sit there as though you do this every day. Your brothers had already taken me against my will by this point.”
“They are not Alphas,” he repeated solemnly. “I am. The bond between my wolf and I is strong, resilient enough that when I tell him we will have you, he does not steal control from my grasp but allows me to do what I feel is best for both of us and you. He knows you will take our knot tonight and so he is not concerned about waiting a few more minutes to let the rut take its course. Control is a powerful thing, little rabbit. I have more than enough to make this enjoyable for you.”
“Ha! Same old story. All you’re going to do is cause me more pain.” She huddled into herself, breaking their connection as she dropped her eyes to the carpet, to the drying bloodstain that was her virginity and her first sexual encounter. “And don’t call me little rabbit, I hate it.”
Dubhlainn got to his feet, came to her. The rough calluses on his hands stroked over her jaw as he cupped her face and tilted it back to look at him. “It was my right to take you first, but I was outvoted in favor of Quinn. That was a mistake that cannot be rectified, and for that I am sorry, precious.”
“Outvoted? How can the Alpha of a pack be outvoted?”
“When the Alpha is not recognized as such. They see me as their unofficial pack leader, but my father filled their heads with tales of how the first to breed the next in line would be considered to be the next Alpha of the Galway pack.”
She scoffed. “How do I know he didn’t fill your head with the same shit?”
Dubhlainn grinned down at her, white teeth gleaming. “Have I fucked you yet? By your own admission, my brothers were unable to control themselves.” And his eyes were still largely blue. “I should have insisted on claiming you first; much of this could have been avoided if I had.”
Raine jerked her face from his hands but he simply recaptured her. She didn’t like this touchy-touchy thing going on. Resigned to rough treatment, the gentleness he showed her set her nerves on edge until they were nearly screaming. “Doesn’t matter anymore. Whatever you’re planning, get on with it.”
He bent and pressed his lips to the pulse hammering in her throat, sniffing deeply before licking the vein. He hummed in delight and her system purred for him. “Somehow, you’re being a remarkably clever female and suppressing your heat, Raine. I can smell it, but you’re not allowing it to work.”
“I’m not doing anything!” she shouted at him. Sick to death of hearing about the goddamn heat that didn’t bloody exist, she knocked him back a step. Her chest heaved with a sob she didn’t let escape.
He growled at her and grabbed her hand, dragging her into the bathroom and turning on the shower. “You have two minutes to clean up, do what you need to, and calm down. If you need to cry, now’s the time to if you’re not wanting to show weakness in front of me—which is fucking ridiculous, by the way.”
She blinked as he stomped out of the room and closed the door, giving her privacy. What the hell was happening? Had she stepped into an alternate universe or was she bleeding out and hallucinating a kind and appealing Dubhlainn as she lay dying on blood- and cum-stained sheets?
She didn’t care as she stepped under the warming water, washing away sweat and bodily fluids. When the water finally ran hot, she washed her hair, her body, and deliberated over the place between her legs as tears cleansed her strangled soul.
“If you don’t, I will.” Dubh leaned against the wall, as though he had all the time in the world.
Raine squeaked. “What the hell!”
“I want you clean, precious.”
She shook her head vehemently. “It hurts!”
He sighed and shoved away from the wall, striding over to the shower and yanking the door open. She cowered back when he stepped inside, certain this was when he came to the end of his tether and claimed her. But he just grabbed a bottle from the shelf as water streamed down his torso, highlighting every ridge of muscle, and soaped his hand.
“No!” She slapped at him desperately as he reached between her legs, snapping her thighs shut tightly. She didn’t want him to touch her there, not when the pain that followed burrowed into her bones. “Dubhlainn, no!”
He spun her around so her back hit his chest, his erection a sword against her ass, and crossed his free arm over her chest just below her breasts, pinning her securely. “Shush, precious. Shush now. It’s a lot to ask, I know, but trust me. Just relax and let me show my mate how being tended to can feel.”
All her courage upped and went, leaving her flailing in his hold. Her body bucked, kicked, and didn’t budge him an inch. He simply waited until exhaustion drained the fight from her and slipped his hand into the apex of her thighs.
More tears fell as his fingers traced her swollen labia, irritating the flesh with soap and touch. A single digit eased
inside, parting the inflamed flesh and tossing her off the ledge into a new hell. Keening protests echoed in the shower, shameless pleas for him to stop.
“Jesus,” he muttered against her wet hair. His tank of a body went rigid at her back, anger pumping off him in waves. “I’ll fucking kill them. Shush, precious. I know it hurts, I know it does.” His lips caressed the curve of her shoulder as she flinched and sobbed. “I’ll make it better, I promise, Raine.”
“You can’t!”
“I can and I will.” He pushed another finger inside her, moved them gently. Carefully. When he pulled them free, blood and cum splattered on the tiles and washed away. He cursed and yanked the showerhead down, tucking it against her opening.
She yowled as heated water pulsed inside her, struggled to get out of his hold and this fresh wave of torture. Pink water streamed down the inside of her legs, swirled at her feet. He didn’t stop until the water finally ran clear.
“Good girl,” he crooned, and shut the shower off with a flick of his wrist. His arms, his warmth, never left her. Kept her cradled against him as she went limp. Toweled her dry, made her feel cherished even as her stomach fell into her feet and stayed there.
Dubhlainn lifted her easily and carried her into the bedroom. She blinked slowly, unsure what she was seeing or why. When she chanced a look at him, his beautiful eyes were warm but bleeding black.
The bed was neatly made, sheets changed yet again and smelling fresh. He’d added a pile of blankets, more freaking pillows, and half a dozen lit candles spilled the scent of lavender into the room, eradicating the sour odor of sex, blood and cum.
“My temper got the better of me earlier,” he murmured into her ear, licking at the lobe. He was the epitome of a gentleman when he laid her down on the mattress, her damp hair strewn over the pillows as he settled her in and made her comfy. Then he stretched out beside her. “I was impatient and angry, and just a little frustrated. I took it out on you, on the nest you cleverly built. That was wrong of me, Raine. I admit that, and I apologize.”
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