He pushed his finger into one of the open wounds on my arm. The flesh squished. “Are you sure we’re nothing alike, buttercup? You don’t strike me as the dainty innocent type, so it’s not the attraction of opposites.”
“Get away from me!” My voice cracked, and fat tears escaped down my cheeks.
He laughed and slid back to his side of the car.
I spent the remainder of the six-hour trip crushed up against my door, fighting for every shred of daylight between us. He found that entertaining, and a tiny part of me enjoyed pleasing him.
Please your partner, please yourself. Sounded great, probably was great, unless your partner was a monster who savored pain.
After a few hours, the Mark throbbed as the ice-venom wore off, then the pain spread until it was all I was aware of, except when a jolt in the road sent a stab of agony through my whole body. A feverish chill settled under my skin, with my blood burning hot, and my skin so cold my teeth would have chattered if I had had the strength.
We arrived at IronMoon’s heart after dark, but the vast house was well-lit, with floodlights sending light up the walls, illuminating the manicured grounds and extravagant building.
A mansion in the middle of the forest sounded appropriate for an aspiring King-Alpha. A castle was too obvious. Probably would announce a little too loudly that all the rumors of his actual, ultimate ambitions were completely true. Serious intentions might result in a serious response from the most powerful packs.
This way he could gnaw on them one rib at a time, and by the time they realized the rumor was truth, it’d be too late. Gabel would snap his claws shut around any remaining throats.
Gabel came around to my side of the car. “Wake up call, buttercup.”
“I’m not sleeping,” I muttered.
He bent down to get a look at my arm. I shoved at him with my good arm, but the pain made me dizzy and nauseous, and the world blurred. He grabbed at my shirt and snatched the collar. His wrist twitched, and the fabric ripped.
“Hey!” I protested.
“I’m not going to ravish you.” He tugged again, splitting the shirt further along the sleeve to expose the wound on my arm. His own arm had dried brown and sticky hours ago.
Being ravished was the least of my worries. If he wanted to resist the Bond’s song, he wouldn’t touch me. I managed a weak laugh at the absurdity of it all. “Modesty.”
He ripped my shirt the rest of the way and my plain, nude-colored bra flashed the world. “Modesty is an irritating human concept.”
The rake marks on my bicep had swollen into purple, crusted lumps. The bruising traveled up to my shoulder. Good. Hopefully it had started to fester, and I’d wake up from this nightmare. I’d still be the IronMoon Oracle, but I’d have my soul back.
Gabel slipped his arms under me and lifted me out of the car. I squirmed weakly. He ignored my struggles and told one of his goons, “Get the doctor.”
He didn’t bark or snap, just matter-of-factly demanded his will be done. Feet crunched on the pea gravel as someone rushed to comply. Most Alphas needed to bark or shout orders before anyone scurried away that quickly.
As if I were nothing and his own arm was not carved up like a fancy roast he carried me over the drive, up the stairs and down long brick walk to the house, and across the threshold into the brightly lit foyer.
There was nothing romantic at all about it.
“Put me down,” I said.
“I will not drop you.”
“You could. Right down these stairs. On my head. Please.”
“Then what would people say?”
He bore me up the two flights of stairs that wound around the wall of the foyer, giving me a panoramic view of its castle-like state. He stepped off at the second floor and carried me down a very long, very quiet hallway illuminated only by a few delicate wall sconces. The house itself seemed afraid to make a single noise.
He nudged the door at the end of the hall with his foot. “This is your room.”
Best news all day. Gabel hopefully slept somewhere far, far away. Like the other side of the world.
He set me down on the bed, then flipped on the lights. I opened my eyes to see the walls were a pale cream-grey color like the harvest moon, and on the far wall was a beautiful painting of the ocean.
Gabel backed away, out of my sight, but did not leave.
The pack doctor was a man old enough to be my grandfather, with the bushiest sideburns I had ever seen, and he was disgusted at having been summoned at such a late hour. He twisted my arm to get a good look. “This is a mess.”
His powers of observation were top-notch. IronMoon could clearly command the best sort of talent.
“No permanent damage,” the doctor said, not caring about why my Mark was hideous and disgusting, and clearly not referring to the permanent damage that had been done to my soul.
Gabel pulled off his shirt, ripping the crusted blood off his wound, and for the first time, examined the three rakes that had appeared on his own large bicep.
“Oh, I see,” the doctor said, “didn’t recognize it was a Mark at first.”
Hard to fault his mistake. Marks were usually beautiful.
“Well, this sort of thing happens when the Mark is hasty.” The doctor twisted my arm around to get a look at the bruising. “Rips up the female, but there’s no permanent damage.”
Yes, there was.
“I do not rip up females,” Gabel said. The doctor ignored him.
Gabel seethed and turned to examine his scabs. “Interesting. I thought the Mark appearing on the male was not true.”
I groaned at his ignorance. “You are an idiot.”
The doctor shoved an unnaturally yellow liquid at me. It stank of acid and laundry detergent.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There’s nothing I’m going to bother to do for a Mark. It’ll be half-healed by morning. That will kill the pain and help you sleep.”
It smelled like it’d kill just about anything. Sleeping off the awful day was worth the risk. I gulped it down. It tasted better than it smelled, but that wasn’t saying much.
In five minutes I passed out cold.
A Is For Apple, B Is For…
The next morning greeted me with a swollen arm and a mess of bruises. I reached across my breasts and touched my bicep. Scabs met my fingers. It was still tender, and the fevered feeling lingered, but physically the worst seemed to be over.
Dammit.
No hope of festering.
I dragged myself up into a sitting position and stared at my bedsheets. Not a dream. I groaned, rubbed my head, and forced myself to actually look at the hideous Mark.
Three four-inch long scabs crusted into my bicep.
“You fucking monster,” I whispered. “You absolute fucking monster.”
I pushed the blankets off my legs.
I was naked.
Not even panties! I patted myself. Nudity confirmed. “What the hell?! Please have been the doctor... please have been the doctor...”
And not Gabel.
But it had probably been Gabel.
I burned red with total mortification. I looked around for something to wear. Someone had laid out a blue silk robe, a pair of panties, a bra, and a pretty dress of pale blue on the foot of my bed.
I held the panties to my nose.
Gabel hadn’t touched them. A female wolf had brought these clothes in.
I pulled on the robe, and took stock of my room. It was actually two rooms, the other room having its own couch, coffee table, and television on the wall. There was also an immense bathroom, with a tub so deep I could have drowned in it. The closet was completely empty.
My bowls, stones, orbs, and oils were nowhere to be found.
If Gabel wanted me to be his pet Oracle he needed to give them back.
“They’re not gone,” I assured myself as I showered, talking myself down off the ledge. I wouldn’t panic, and I wouldn’t grab for them if Gabel dangled them
in front of me. “Don’t fall for his games.”
Time to find a meal instead. Think all this through. Come up with a plan.
The dress’ straps showed my bruised upper body to the world.
How would I introduce myself when I bumped into an IronMoon wandering the hallway?
Oh, me? I’m nobody. Just the woman your crazy Alpha Marked yesterday because he was bored.
That sounded accurate and like a good conversation-stopper. I’d go with that.
Two large men stood on either side of the door to my room.
I looked between them. “Ah... am I a prisoner?”
The one on my left jumped forward with a quick reply. “No! No, you’re not.”
I inched between them and headed down the hallway.
They followed.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
They exchanged looks, and one said, “Keeping an eye on you?”
Gabel had given me some minders. Maybe then they could tell me where my tools were. “I came with two bags. Where are they?”
Another exchange of blank looks, then the one on my left confessed, “We don’t know.”
“Where’s Alpha Gabel?” I demanded.
“In his office,” the one on the right said.
“Take me to him.”
“Maybe you’d like to get something to eat?” The other offered instead.
Storming around making a lot of bitchy demands might entertain or enrage Gabel, and doing either without a damn good reason sounded foolish. My bowls would have to wait another hour.
Goon A led me back down the long hallway and down the spiral staircase. It wrapped around the wall, affording a magnificent view of the vaulted ceiling that extended perhaps four stories, and massive windows that let the late spring sunlight pour through. In the center of the main foyer was a large, square, shallow fish pond inset into the marble, filled with waterlilies and fat koi.
What, no gold statue of Gabel? Must have been in the garden.
The kitchen, like everything else, was immense. A man in a chef’s jacket with the name Brian monogrammed across his chest worked over several large pots on the stove. At the table under the window that overlooked the grounds sat two young women of about my age.
Both were pretty in the sort of way I would have fully expected of IronMoon females: clothes a little too tight, and just a little too much makeup. They were both blonds, but the dominant one was clearly the platinum one, and there was a sharp menace in her gaze. She reeked of floral perfume. Wolves almost never wore perfume; it masked our scent and our ability to smell clearly.
The platinum blonde zeroed in on my raked-up arm, and her lips curled into a snarl. Platinum there should have counted herself lucky she had avoided Gabel’s affections. She didn’t seem like the cruel sort of crazy that would want Gabel for what he really was, or recognize how dangerous he was until it was too late.
Brian offered me a sandwich. I took up a seat at the table with my two new... packmates.
They didn’t introduce themselves, but Platinum sort of sneered, “So you’re the one Alpha Gabel brought back.”
“My name is Gianna.”
She eyed my injury again, then stood up, almost knocking her drink over. “I’m going to go talk with Alpha Gabel about this.”
I almost burst out laughing at her stupidity. My soul spasmed with a crush of pointless, unwelcome jealousy. Whatever entertainments Gabel had with Platinum were over now. Although if he wanted to fight his own soul, I wouldn’t stop him. The more he paid attention to her, the less he’d bother me.
There had to be a way to free myself. Bonds did fade and die from time to time. That New Moon ritual occasionally worked. Mates could be repudiated if there was some gross offense. Murdering a Bond had to be possible, just like people who gnawed off their own arms.
“Don’t do this,” Brian said softly from the kitchen island. “Just eat your lunch.”
Platinum turned on him. “Stay out of this, Brian!”
“She’s his BondMate. Don’t do this,” Brian pled.
“No. I’m going to talk with Gabel about this.”
Gesturing with my sandwich I said, “Tell him I’m fine going back to Shadowless if he’s come to his senses this morning. You can have him.”
If only it were that simple...
“You don’t want him?” she scoffed.
“I don’t even know him, and I didn’t get a say in it. Fine with me if he’s having second thoughts. I never had first thoughts.” Each word caused the new membrane within me to twist, like skin threatening to rip. The thought of Gabel with this blond horror show twisted my throat into a growl, and I didn’t even want the man.
“That’s dangerous talk,” Platinum informed me with sweet menace. “You chase him away, and what do you think is going to happen to an Alpha’s left-overs?”
Fat chance of that happening, but if it did, I’d rejoice the rest of my days. Maybe other females would have been afraid of being in a new pack without protection or status, but I just curled my lip at her. “Absolutely nothing. I’m the IronMoon Oracle. I don’t need this Mark. The Moon has touched my skin, and no one can take it away.”
Her snide expression transformed into malevolence, melting and reshaping in a mask of hatred. Her sidekick almost trembled. “If that’s what you think,” she hissed, “you keep thinking that.”
She stalked out with her companion and left me to my sandwich.
Brian braced his hands on the island and sighed. “Sorry about that.”
“I don’t care,” I repeated, as much for him as for me.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about. Alpha Gabel is just polite to the she-wolves, and sometimes, they get the wrong idea. He doesn’t fraternize with them. The males he’ll set down, but he’s tolerant of the females.”
“Right. Tolerant. The wrong idea. Sure.”
Brian didn’t argue with me further. I finished my sandwich and decided to prowl around the house so Platinum could have plenty of time to stomp and whine in front of Gabel. I rubbed my bruised Mark. If he tried to touch her, would I feel it? Probably. Even the thought of her with him sent an angry throb along our shared souls.
Not fair.
The house was bigger than I had originally estimated. It sprawled across the top of a forested bluff. In every direction there was nothing but thick woods and various outbuildings nestled amongst the trees. A single wide road led to the base of the hill. The air smelled of late spring, but there was also a fetid scent. Dead deer in the woods, perhaps.
IronMoon was supposedly a large pack, but the house echoed with emptiness. Customarily most of the pack’s leadership lived in the same house, or at least in the same general community, with the rest of the pack not far away. There seemed to be no one in the house at all. “Who lives here?”
“Many live in the outlying barracks, or some live in town,” the ever-present Goon B supplied. “Only a few of the ranked pack members live here, and a few others, like Cook.”
Or like Platinum.
So Gabel kept only a chosen few close to his den, just like the King-Alphas of old.
After the interior of the house, they showed me the grounds. A lavish pool and patio, spectacular gardens, and beyond that, well trimmed grass, and a vast dirt arena for training that had been carved out of the forest. Perhaps about thirty males, in a mix of human and wolf form, exercised and sparred in groups of two or three while everyone else observed.
I drifted toward them. My goons didn’t stop me.
I had seen training before, but this wasn’t training... it was combat. Blood and fur flew everywhere. An older man in a plaid kilt, stood on a little wooden crate. Nothing missed his gaze, and he barked corrections and instructions constantly. He was about forty, huge, and even from a distance, intimidating.
“Master of Arms Flint,” Goon A murmured to me.
Master of Arms. So Gabel had even gone for the traditional titles, too.
“Stop!” Flint bellowe
d.
Everything stopped moving. Even the bugs in the air. Even my heart, I think.
Flint raised one huge arm and pointed straight at me. As one the warriors spun around to face me, Goon A and Goon B snapped to attention.
The Master of Arms jumped down from his box with the nimble grace of a deer. Flint marched toward me, the hem of his kilt swirling around his massive knees. He had a couple of bruises on his body and a few healing scratches. He also looked fresh as a daisy and ready to go beat every single one of these warriors with one hand tied behind his back.
Flint’s entire right arm, shoulder, chest, and trailing in a point along his torso an intricate tangle of old-order tattoos in blue-black ink. I recognized some of the symbols, but others I didn’t, and the arrangement was one I hadn’t seen before. As the sunlight slid over the curves and lines of his body, the black ink shone radiant, metallic blue.
Blue-gloss tattoos. Someone somewhere still knew how to make the blessed ink and apply it, and the blue-gloss had taken hold, just like my own skin’s silvery paleness.
He snapped one hand behind his back, like he was going to rip off his kilt and strangle me with it. Instead, he bowed. “The warriors of IronMoon bid you welcome, Lady Gianna.”
What.
The.
F-
He straightened, then spun on his bare heels to face the assembled warriors. “As you can see, we train hard.”
“Ah... yes.” I found my tongue lodged somewhere in my throat. The runes extended to his back. One was the sacred rune for a man who dedicated his blood to the Moon’s service. A few others for death, victory, memory, and family. “Yes, this is... impressive.”
He nodded solemnly. “They may make something.”
They looked like something already.
“Wolves!” he shouted to them, “This is Lady Gianna, Alpha Gabel’s Bonded, and a Seer blessed by the Moon Goddess. Show her the proper respect!”
As one, the wolves threw their heads back and howled the pack’s greeting to a returning female of high rank. It was slightly different than the howl greeting an absent Luna, but only just. It had never been sung for me. My Goons and Flint howled as well.
The song echoed over the forests and birds cawed and flooded into the sky. Flint laughed and spun around to me, his eyes a little too bright for comfort. I stretched an uncertain smile over my face. “Thank you, Master of Arms,” I managed. “That was most um... fervent.”
The Alpha's Oracle Page 3