Take All of It September 2019

by Scarlett Skyes

  *****

  The sun had set when Leander woke me and said that I was required to observe the delivery of Arkadios’ sentence.

  “Sentence? What about a trial!”

  “The trial is done, the decision has been made.”

  He wouldn’t say anything further than that, instead bidding me to follow him out the door where we were joined by two men indistinguishable from the pair who had been at the forest entrance. With these huge men flanking my sides in case I had any notion to try and make a run for it, we travelled through the many corridors of the house in reverse order from earlier until we were outside and I was brought back to the clearing where the bonfire blazed anew.

  Shackled to rings set in the ground and stripped naked in the light of the fire and nearly-full moon was Arkadios, who looked like he had taken a severe beating, dried blood clung to his skin and matted his hair. His head hung low, staring at the ground in front of him as the crowd first murmured at my appearance and then quietened as a man wearing long flowing robes approached Arkadios and read from a piece of paper.

  “Arkadios Philokrates, you have been found guilty of some of the most heinous crimes against your own kind that I have ever had the misfortune of sentencing. For the use of silver against your fellow shifters alone, the penalty is death.”

  “No!” I screamed and surged forward, held back easily by the two guards until I collapsed into a heap on the grass before the man continued.

  “For also endangering the future of our kind by risking the impregnation of a prophecy fulfilment candidate… the sentence is death by silver ingestion.”

  A shocked whispering rippled through the crowd as a table and chair was brought to Arkadios while a man passed me coming from the direction of the house, carrying a steaming bowl of something.

  “Let us remind ourselves of the prophecy that Arkadios apparently forgot, and remember exactly what it means to all of us.”

  Led by the man next to Arkadios, the entire crowd murmured along.

  Under a full moon

  When Oriana’s tears fall

  Will be born a human female

  Daughter of a shifter and human pairing

  Her childhood will be pain and danger

  She must be protected

  For she will choose a mate

  She will choose the best from the best of us

  They will produce an heir

  And thus begin a golden age

  For all shifter kind

  Leading us away from the path of extinction

  “This gruel,” the man indicated the bowl set before Arkadios, “is rich with silver shavings taken from the very weapon he used. Arkadios Philokrates, you will imbibe it until you are dead. Do you have any last words.”

  “I take full responsibility for my actions,” said Arkadios. “I did the best I could. I ask only that you treat Kylie with kindness regardless of whether it is her that fulfils the prophecy.”

  I cried out again from where I knelt on the ground and clutched my stomach, so distraught that I felt physical pain in my belly. My eyes squeezed shut against the tears that began spilling out until I saw a burst of light through my eyelids and knew that my ever-present protector had burst into flames just like the werewolf had the previous night.

  I felt myself lifted up and assumed the two men who had held me back were going to force me to watch but when I opened my eyes and looked to the sides, they were nowhere near me and backing off fast. Up and up I went until my feet left the ground.

  Near the bonfire I saw Arkadios holding the bowl in his hands and staring in my direction in wonder. From somewhere behind me a golden light shone but I couldn’t see where it was coming from no matter how much I craned my neck.

  Then I realised something, or perhaps ‘I realised everything’ was closer to the truth. The light wasn’t coming from behind me, it was coming from me. Somewhere inside me Arkadios’ seed had taken hold and I was going to bear his child.

  I also saw that the shifters had misinterpreted the prophecy as clearly as if I could question the prophet himself. It didn’t say I was to breed with an alpha… it said I would choose from the best of the best of them. And I had chosen Arkadios, my protector.

  The golden light emanating from my body intensified and I felt filled with knowledge. I knew exactly what I needed to do to save the shifters. They had become stuck in their old ways, trying to remain unchanged as the world left them behind. Everything would be different now, Arkadios and I would lead them into the promised golden age.

  I felt the power of all animals inside of me, wisdom, power, speed, stealth, agility… I could become anything. With that thought, I changed into a shining rhinoceros, and came crashing to the ground on all fours, immediately charging towards Arkadios with the crowd leaping out of my way in surprise and just a little terror.

  When a path had cleared before me, I changed into a shimmery golden cheetah, closing the distance at breakneck pace, before turning back into my regular human shape, taking the bowl of death from my adopted father’s hands and casting it into the bonfire.

  I took his hand and snapped the chain that held him, seeing my golden shine spread to him and the injuries he had sustained begin to close. With a roar, he shifted into his bear shape and tore the other shackles off before pulling me in close protectively, not that I would ever need that kind of protection again. There was next to nothing that could ever hurt me now.

  *****

  I’d come back home to tie up some loose ends, say some goodbyes to my friends and collect some personal effects. After the scene at the Halloween party where everybody saw me chased away by what looked like some gang members, followed by the carnage evident at my house and the fact that Arkadios and I went missing, a huge investigation from the local police force had begun.

  Then the video footage surfaced. Somebody had a dashboard mounted camera in their car that night we fled and caught what looked like somebody in the world’s most impossibly realistic Halloween costume leaping on to the back of a Humvee from the passenger window of another car. The license plate matched Arkadios’ of course.

  So now it was an FBI matter for some reason and the hunt for us had gone nationwide. I couldn’t bear putting my closest friends through the pain of not knowing what happened to me, like I had been through with my mother, so I had to come back. Just once.

  There was something else I wanted to do too. A lesson I had to teach. The only problem was finding my student in the sprawling city. All day and well into the night I roamed the streets, trying to pick up his trail until at last I smelled something I recognised.

  His scent led me right into the roughest part of town. I pulled my hood around my face, trying to watch all the darkest corners at once, gauging who might attack me, who thought they could take anything they wanted from me without permission.

  Even so I had to concentrate on the trail too and I was close. I was so excited by the prospect of finding my pupil that I was actually caught off guard when a voice spoke out of the darkness behind a dumpster in an alley.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t fuckmeat. I see your werebear friend isn’t here to protect you. You stupid bitch. You owe me big-time, fuckmeat. I got kicked out of the pack after all that shit but now I can bring you to Jeff and they’ll have to let me back in. First though, I’m going to fuck you for myself, get me some of that royal pussy. Then some of that royal ass. Then some of that royal mouth so you can clean me off before I serve your up on a platter.”

  I slowly pulled my hood back and smiled, a faint golden glow already brightening my eyes as I decided what form would be best suited to tearing him apart.

  “Ah, Carlos. I’ve been looking for you.”

  ###

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  Success and Confidence 1

  Description

  Carmen "Confidence" Jones has built up a large and dedicated following on her video blog based around the mantra of "You don't need a man!" and she's well on her way to realising her dream of becoming a famous investigative journalist. However, when her Mom gets engaged to notorious billionaire Castor "Mr. Success" Viktorov, she's about to get a bareback lesson she'll never forget!

  Kinks/Sub-Genres

  Pseudo-Incest, Breeding, Stepfather, Stepdaughter, Rough Sex, Virgin

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  *****

  “So remember, you don’t need them. You’ll be fine without carrying their deadweight, but if you do decide you feel like having a man in your life, make them work for it. Make them work hard because you’re worth it, I’m confident of that. Until next time, I’m Carmen “Confidence” Jones, thanks for watching.”

  I clicked the button to stop recording and sat back in my chair, letting out a whoosh of breath. It had been a surprisingly tough evening of creating the content for my yalltoob video blog. I always had an outline to work from, but I usually adlibbed a lot as well, and the words just hadn’t come as freely as usual tonight.

  I’d been video blogging for a few years by this stage, drawing on my own life experiences growing up in a household where the man was nothing but a distant memory. My Mom and I were doing fine, and I wanted to show that to the world, well half of the world anyway.

  I was quite happy doing it, I felt like I had found my calling in life, but about a year ago, things had begun to get really interesting. I’d heard some rumours and then done a little undercover investigation about sexual harassment at the local branch of a major corporation.

  After applying for a job online and getting an interview, I was not at all shocked when the interviewer said I could have the job if I sucked his cock like a good little girl. Little did he know that I was wearing a concealed camera.

  After painstaking editing, I uploaded the finished product on my yalltoob channel and… wow, just ‘wow’, my audience size absolutely exploded. The police launched an official investigation and my video gave countless women the confidence to come forward and describe their ordeals, exposing a corporate attitude towards women dyed in the wool of the organisational culture.

  The corporation was brought to its knees, it had to pay out countless millions in settlements, lives were changed. A few men even spent time behind bars. It was crazy, a crazy success.

  Then, about six months ago, things got even better. Yalltoob rolled out an advertising programme whereby people with lots of subscribers could sell advertising on their videos. I enrolled and all of a sudden I had a small business on my hands while still in high school.

  It was a lot to deal with while still trying to keep my grades up but thankfully the mainstream media soon stopped harassing me, and I was left with just the continually growing viewership. I even used my own business as a case study for my economics class, so it was useful there too.

  Now I was finished with high school and had been accepted into college where I was going to be studying journalism. I had high hopes about my future career, I was going to expose the injustice women experienced, shatter glass ceilings and change the world. First though, I’d have dinner.

  I left my room and went to the kitchen, going to the fridge where my Mom had left a plate of food for me. She’d said something about going out that night, but I hadn’t been paying too much attention, I was too wrapped up in getting my video done.

  While my food heated up I went to the living room to try to find something decent to watch on TV as I ate. My Mom had certainly been ‘going out’ a lot more lately but I didn’t think anything of it, she was obviously well within her rights to catch up with friends or whatever as often as she wanted.

  I’d long since finished dinner and was using trashy reality TV to help me procrastinate about going back to my room to get stuck into editing my video when I heard footsteps at the front door. My Mom must have returned, but then I heard something I never thought I would.

  In addition to my Mom’s footsteps, it seemed she was talking to somebody… a man. Was it possible? No, surely not. She couldn’t have been on a date, could she? She’d always been so supportive of my video content, possibly fuelled by a lingering resentment about how my Dad had walked out. I sat on the sofa hardly daring to move as the front door opened.

  “Carmen? Can you come here please? There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.”

  My feet seemed to weigh about a ton each as I made my way to the front door. Standing next to my Mom, just inside our house, was a tall man of about six foot four who looked strangely familiar but I couldn’t quite place him. I put on my most polite face as I approached the pair.

  “Carmen, this is Castor. Castor, this is my daughter, Carmen.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Carmen, I’ve heard so much about you. Your mother is very proud.”

  Castor… Castor “Mr. Success” Viktorov! Now I recognised him. Known as a ruthless businessman, he’d grown an empire for himself and had a reputation that everything he touched turned to gold. The guy was a billionaire, through the open door down on the street I could see a driver just stepping back into a limo. It was safe to say I was caught off guard as I held out my hand with my mouth open in a slightly dumbstruck pose.

  Instead of shaking it, Castor raised my hand to his lips and planted a kiss that left my skin tingling, while never taking his eyes off mine. My Mom cleared her throat conspicuously and I remembered my voice.

  “I’m… uh… nice to meet you Mr… Castor. Sorry I can’t stay and talk, I’ve got some video editing to do.”

  “Carmen! Don’t be rude.”

  “It’s no problem, Laura, I understand completely. From what I’ve heard Carmen here is running a successful little business, I know how much attention that can require. Go ahead, Carmen.”

  I fought back a surge of indignity, I was the one who had said I couldn’t stay and talk but it seemed as if Castor felt like he was in a position to give or withhold permission for me to stay or go. Worse than that, my Mom was looking at him adoringly as if he’d just brought a troubled teenager into line. Having already said I was going I turned on my heel and faced away from them before my anger bubbled to the surface and went back to my room.

  That was the first hint I had about my Mom’s relationship and, wow, things moved fast from there. Down a dangerous slope too, as far as I was concerned. It wasn’t long before Castor spent the occasional night at our house, and damned if I could get any sleep with my Mom’s room just the other side of some pretty thin walls.

  As if the squeals, grunts, buzzing, smacking and thumps weren’t enough, a picture fell off my wall and I swore I heard Castor call out my name once, but I put that down to a crazy auditory hallucination. The entire ordeal was so much more than a simple pillow over the head or even ear plugs could shelter me from.

  Apparently my Mom had been seeing Castor for a while now but had kept it quiet until she knew it was serious. She knew my stance on men and didn’t want to parade a series of them in front of me, which is why none of her other potential boyfriends ever made it to our front door.

  But, like I said, things moved quickly. The summer holidays were far from over when Castor was over for an especially vigorous night of defiling my Mom, though he left before I got
up the next day. Over breakfast I was sleepily spooning my cereal into my mouth, doggedly avoiding any hint that I noticed how bow-legged my Mom seemed to be walking.

  I was staring straight down into the milky bowl and wondering if I could possibly fit a power-nap into my day between recording and editing when my Mom let out one of her clearing-the-throat hints and I looked up. She had her hands nonchalantly clasped in front of her, apparently absent-mindedly displaying a huge diamond on a gold band around her ring finger.

  “You’re kidding me,” I said.

  “Hmmm? Oh this old thing?”

  “Mom! For God’s sake, tell me this is a really early April fool’s day prank, you can’t be serious! You don’t need him!”

  “Honey, calm down. I am serious, it’s happening, and you’re wrong, I do need him. What you might be surprised about is that you need him too.”

  “Me? The last thing I need is a man ruining our life.”

  “Your whole life has been tainted by your asshole Dad walking out on us, I understand that, but it’s really killed me to see that seed sprout into what looks like a genuine hatred for half the population of the world. It kills me because I remember what it feels like to be in love… in lust too.”

  “That’s it! You’re thinking with your… uh.”

  “Sometimes in life you have to think with your pussy, Carmen.”

  “Mom!”

  “That’s another thing that’s really made me so sad about this whole mess. A beautiful girl like you went all the way through high school without parking up with a boy, didn’t have a date for the prom, don’t even know what it’s like to be touched by a man going crazy with lust for you. It’s one of life’s miracles, one of the reasons we’re even here, and it made me feel like I’ve failed you as a mother.”

  “Mom, you…”

  “So I’ve always been looking for the perfect man. Not just for me, but for you too.”