by Pearl Foxx
The men, the pack, roared their approval.
Linnea backed away, free now that no one was crushing her arm in their grip. Her calves bumped into a raised platform, and she spun around to find a throne of skulls and twigs, sun-bleached bones and thicker, dripping things. A small, private fire burned on the dais, with a small animal cooking above the flames. Beside it were two massive men, made all the more hulking by their height above her.
One was blond and angelic, save for the sneer twisting his lips. However, it was the alien on his knees who drew Linnea’s eyes.
Her ears rang as she stared at him, her blood pumping extra loud, extra hard.
He was gorgeous.
Twisting black hair fell over his shoulders in braids with gnarled knots twining through the strands. His skin was a rich, burnished brown and glistening with sweat and ash from the building fire. His bones were prominent, his stomach hollow between the tapered points of his hips, giving the impression that like Linnea, he was a prisoner here. Because surely, if he’d been at his strongest, he could have taken the blond man holding him down with one easy swipe of his massive arm.
But his face. When Linnea’s gaze came to his face, she froze.
His brows were heavy and dark; one scarred straight through. His nose had been broken, possibly a few times, and beneath that was a thick beard unable to hide a strong, square jawline. None of that compared to his eyes—light gray, like the smoke around them, and flashing from the licking flames of the fire beside him. His eyes locked on her, and in his gaze, she saw all his pain. All his sadness.
The breath rushed out of her at the sight of him.
“Looks like someone has an admirer!” the blond mutt, as Linnea would now think of him, called over to Savas.
“Shut up, Caj,” the burnished sun-god of a man before Linnea snapped. His voice glided across her skin like trailing fingertips.
“What are you going to do about it?” Caj provoked. His gaze locked over Linnea’s shoulder. She spun and retreated a few steps, placing herself closer to the beautiful man on his knees and farther from the others. She moved on instinct before she even realized where she was going.
She didn’t move again.
“What’s this?” Savas asked, walking up with Merick. “An admirer, you say?”
“Father, don’t—” the young, skinny man beside her started.
Father? Savas was his father?
Holy cannolis.
“Don’t speak,” Savas snarled. His son instantly closed his mouth. Above him, Caj’s sneer stretched farther across his horrible face. “If the bitch is interested in even my scrap of a son, then she will be thrilled with you, Merick.”
Linnea’s eyes slid to the small fire. A longer stick to test the meat rested just within reach, its tip burning, and red. She looked up to find those smoky eyes locked on her, and ever so slightly, he shook his head. Starved and on his knees. His own father was holding him captive. Yet he stayed still and obedient while around him women were sold and threatened. Beautiful eyes or not, he was someone too abused to make an escape.
That would never be her.
She winked at him before making a lunge for the burning stick in the fire. Reaching her hand in quickly, she grabbed the end. The other end of the stick was ablaze, some kind of tar stuck to the wood, and burned so hot it was almost blue.
Caj had just enough time to shout a warning before Linnea reared back and swung the stick as hard as she could against the side of Savas’s head, setting his hair and clothes on fire.
Other men ran toward her while her target beat the flames out, but not before losing some hair and getting a nasty red mark on his cheek. She hoped it would blister and puss and get infected. Leaping down from the dais, Caj grabbed her.
Savas growled, clutching his burned face. “You’ll pay for that, woman,” he hissed.
Caj ripped the stick from her hand and threw it aside.
“Oh, really?” Linnea spit, glaring at Savas. “You’re going to make me pay? You steal women and sell them. You’re disgusting. You probably have to do that just to force a woman to be around your disgusting ass.”
At her words, Savas laughed, head back in a howling sound that sent a shiver up her back.
The sound of his amusement set her teeth on edge. “I’m not joking around with you here, buddy.”
“Believe me, human. There is a joke here, you just aren’t getting it.” The leader’s flesh rolled, and he shimmered around the edges like her vision was blurring.
A low rumbling built in Savas’s chest. Behind him, his men watched with rabid, almost glowing eyes. Caj stepped away from her, putting plenty of space between her body and Savas. Only then did she feel truly terrified.
She was about to be eaten alive.
“Father, no!” The man with long braids leaped down from the dais, throwing an arm across her chest to force her behind him. “If you have ever cared about me at all, don’t do this. Don’t kill these women for nothing. Just send them home or let them go to Gerrit.”
“Gerrit?” Savas roared, the side of his face now a painful shade of red. “You and your puppy love for that traitor! He is nothing, no leader. What kind of Alpha allows his slaves to run around like free Vilkas and denies his people the right to trade? He and Kaveh were a disgrace to Clan Vilka!”
Some of the other men cheered, others howled. Linnea peeked around the man’s shoulder and found far more wolves staring back at her than she remembered. She returned to her spot directly behind him.
I’ll just stay right back here, thank you very much.
“There’s nothing to be found with Gerrit that you can’t get here,” Savas continued. “Nothing he can offer the Vilkas that I can’t. And your adoration for him over your own flesh and blood is getting tiresome. I brought you into what will be known as the greatest pack of all the clans, and this is how you thank me?”
“You brought me in?” The man’s voice shook, but he stood straighter. Up close Linnea could see that he was almost as tall as his father, and despite his slender, hollowed appearance, he was stacked with wiry muscle. “You treat me as badly as some chained up Katu! No matter what I do, you’re never happy, and if pleasing you means allowing these women to die, I have no interest anymore. You’re no father to me. You should have killed me the night you assassinated our true Alpha. You should have let me die with my people. My real people.”
A hush fell over the camp. Whatever he’d just said, it had meaning beyond what Linnea could imagine. She saw it etched all over Savas’s face. If she’d thought the man a monster beyond feeling, his son’s words had dealt a solid blow.
“He’s a waste of energy, Savas.” Caj approached now that he was no longer between a wolf and his meal. Caj’s cruel, twisted mouth was a match for the man in charge. They were both bloodthirsty beasts. “Just today, we tracked a pregnant Katu, and he let her go so we couldn’t bring her back as a prize for you.”
The man beside her tensed. Without thinking, she laid a hand on his back in solidarity. His skin twitched, but he didn’t sidestep her touch.
“You’ve gone too far now, Son,” Savas said, his voice low.
“As have you, Father.”
Linnea felt him speak the words through her hand. His body trembled with each one.
Savas turned to Merick. “It does seem my son has taken to protecting women today. Perhaps we throw them both in a cage tonight while we feast. I’ll make sure you are entertained with plenty of compliant companions before you take the woman home tomorrow.”
Merick gave a sharp nod, his forked tongue sweeping across his lips as his eyes swept one last time down Linnea’s body. She scrunched up her nose at the sight. She didn’t even look at freshly baked brownies with that much open lust. Disgusting.
“Caj?”
At Savas’s summons, Caj straightened up like a tin soldier, all but clicking his heels together. “Yes, sir?”
“Make sure this one and my son watch.” To his men, he turned and sho
uted, “Burn the women!”
His pack erupted in a cacophony of noise. Wolves howled, and the women gathered near the growing pyre didn’t even have the strength to scream as the aliens descended on them like vultures and dragged them toward the fire.
“No. Stop!” The man surged forward, but Caj twisted, slamming the heel of his hand straight into the chest of Savas’s son.
The wind knocked out of him as he bent over gasping.
At the pyre, a man dragged a woman by the hair toward the inferno. Before Linnea could even scream, the woman’s body was tossed into the flames.
As Linnea crumpled to her knees, the young man turned and caught her.
She pressed her face against his chest, her world tilting sideways, and the only thing keeping her upright was an alien’s arms wrapping firmly around her.
Chapter Four
Nestan
Nestan stalked back and forth along the bars of the cage the Vilkas had deposited him and the human woman into. They were trapped behind thick iron bars drilled deep into the rock of a cave near Father’s camp. The space was filled with the stench of desperation, sweat, and death.
The stone walls reeked of lilint minerals, sharp and pungent; they blocked out everything else, leaving him without his best defense system. This was where the prisoners were kept until they were gone. Nestan hadn’t known where they went until this evening.
The Hylas were buying them. The Hylas, who last time Nestan checked, allied to Clan Vilka. Flesh trading with any clan, even with his father’s lowly pack, was not in the peace agreement.
But most importantly, his father had an agreement with the humans. A contact. The betrayal ran far deeper than simply selling to the Hylas.
More than ever, Nestan felt an urgency to return home. He had to warn Gerrit that his father had sold them out to the humans. The information turned him itchy with desperation, but there was nothing he could do aside from wondering what new torture Father would think up for him. All because his father’s ego couldn’t handle a little blonde human woman who fought back.
She’d had no idea what she was up against in that fight. But she’d been brave in the face of it, and her reward was to be locked in here with him. Barely a man himself anymore.
Nestan clenched his fists together, releasing them only to clench again so he could feel the blood flow through his arms. His anger mounted as he replayed the events of the day in his mind, and he felt the savage part of himself clawing to the surface, seeking release through murder and revenge. Everything he’d been through today was just a small sample of the torture he’d endured for the last six months.
His own father allowed him to be treated this way.
His head pounded and his mind churned with a fury he never thought he would feel. He wasn’t the kind of person to be filled with thoughts of bludgeoning someone to death, but that was exactly what he thought of when he imagined Caj’s smirking face or remembered his father’s last laugh.
The gleeful expression on Father’s face as he watched his men burn the women alive made Nestan’s stomach roil. He practically felt the flames against his own flesh as he thought about it. And the woman in the cell with him had narrowly escaped the same fate. She was too beautiful, too strong, too much of what he’d always searched for in a woman. He couldn’t bring himself to even look at her. He was ruined now, but the last thing he was going to allow was for her to end up returning to the Vydal with Merick in the morning.
He had just one night to save her.
Felks wandered into the cave with a drunken stumble and a dopey smile on his face, the blur of alcohol dulling his eyes. The men had been celebrating. Who knew what they had done with the women’s bodies after they were burned. Nestan couldn’t stand the thought of the men he considered his brothers—his Vilkan pack—celebrating the death of women.
Stepping forward, Felks leaned against the bars, eyeing Nestan with cruelty. “So ya finally found yerself stuck back ’ere like the lil bitch ya are?”
Nestan stopped pacing, and his fists hardened like steel, his nails digging into his palms, drawing blood. What he wouldn’t give to kill his father’s Beta. If he was in shape, if he’d had a decent meal at any point during the last few months, he would rip the bastard’s arms from his shoulders and smash his face right into the rock floor until he choked on his own blood. He was filled with so much rage that his body shook and his mind wouldn’t work.
The human woman stood up with her hands on her ample hips and tilted her head, staring back at Felks, demanding his attention. The idea of Felks’s lecherous gaze on her made Nestan’s vision turn black for a moment.
“Just what do you think you’re doing here?” she asked.
Nestan and Felks turned to her at the same time, both shocked that she’d spoken. She acted like this was her kingdom and the cage her royal throne, and Felks was the one intruding impolitely. She let loose a hollow laugh that gave Nestan a chill, but he could see the wheels turning behind her eyes.
She’d been through so much, shouldn’t she be traumatized or horrified … or at least serious? Instead, she had a small smile on her face, and her eyes twinkled with light. She stepped forward toward Felks with swaying hips.
Looking her up and down, he licked his lips.
She smiled back, but as Nestan watched, he saw the intelligence in her eyes. Felks was too drunk to realize that not only was this woman not what he thought she was, but she was also a lot more than he was ready to handle, especially drunk.
Nestan had the distinct impression she could rip Felks to shreds.
“So, you came to check on us?” she asked.
Felks smiled and placed his hands on the bars, leaning against them, so his face stuck slightly between. “I just thought it might be a g’d opportunity t’get t’know our visitor a lil better. How are you making out back here? The prodigal son ain’t givin’ you any trouble, is he?”
“Oh, no. I’m just fine. I mean the accommodations are so luxurious. How could anyone possibly complain about being thrown into some hellhole slaughterhouse?”
Felks blinked his eyes, not quite understanding the change in her tone. She had guts whoever she was.
“Here I was hoping maybe you could help me out.” She sauntered closer and placed her hand on top of Felks’s.
Nestan recoiled at the idea of her touching someone as repugnant as Felks. He was the epitome of everything Father stood for and everything Nestan hated. Felks had no compulsion against killing innocents or even Vilkas.
Reaching between the bars, she placed her other hand on Felks’s cheek. She leaned in as if she might press her lips against his.
Rage shut out the last control Nestan had as he began to shake. Something about the idea of anyone putting their hands on her body made him want to rip the rock from the very walls and beat the offender, smashing their bones to dust.
Instead, he watched, frozen, as she grabbed the back of Felks’s head. Slipping her arm outside the bars, she grabbed his wrist. She leaned forward, forcing him back, and then yanked back with all her weight, slamming his face into the bars, breaking his nose. As she pulled she twisted to the left, leveraging her weight and the bars against Felks’s strength to break his elbow.
Blood gushed down Felks’s his face as he howled, “You bitch!”
“You’re the one who came in here looking for a good time.” She shrugged, stepping back from the bars. “I guess you can dish it but aren’t actually man enough to take it.”
She turned her back on him and walked away, returning to her place on the floor.
Nestan couldn’t help but laugh. It was the first time he’d laughed in months, and it felt almost like a betrayal. It was a hysterical sound, the kind a trapped animal makes when it hasn’t realized its own fate. He laughed as Felks got to his feet and spit blood on the ground, glowering at both of them.
“I’m glad Savas decided t’give you t’the Hyla for the inconvenience of all yer dead friends. Merick’ll make sure ya get wha
tcha deserve.”
Felks slunk from the cave, his arm cradled against his chest.
Nestan looked at the blonde woman on the floor. He had mistaken her for weak because she was short for a Vilkan female—she barely came up to his shoulder—yet her frame was curved and inviting, exactly the kind of woman he would’ve wanted to lay with back when such things crossed his mind. But that was before he’d turned into the animal his father had worked so hard to create.
“Sorry you didn’t get a chance to kick his ass,” she said. “I’m Linnea, new around here. Know any good places to grab a bite to eat?” She slumped forward, dropping her forehead against her knees, her shoulders quaking.
“Are you injured?” he asked quickly, fear spiking through him.
Then, he realized she was laughing. Laughing.
She peered up at him with a broad smile. “Yes, I’m fine. A little exhausted from all the assholery and from watching those women be burned alive, but somehow I’m okay. Isn’t that insane? I’m okay. Really. Never been better.”
He didn’t believe her at all, but he thought distraction might be the best plan of action. “Next time the guards come in here, let me deal with them. They won’t always be drunk. You won’t always have the upper hand, so just let me handle them.”
Linnea nodded and took a deep breath. Her eyes went wide, and she reached out toward his face. “You’re injured. You have bruises on top of bruises and cuts where there used to be bruises. You need a doctor.”
Nestan scrambled back, pulling away from her unexpected touch, sending him to the ground in his need to escape.
Shaking his head, he averted his gaze. He didn’t want to talk about his injuries, or his father or Caj’s beatings, or the starving or anything else. He definitely didn’t want her touching him; just one bit of him against her would defile all the good he saw in her. He was dirty, more than skin deep, all the way to his soul. He enjoyed just watching her, knowing that there was something as beautiful as her in this world he’d been forced into. He wanted to protect her and keep her safe, to make sure she stayed alive and far away from men like Merick and Felks. But he didn’t want her to know him. She wouldn’t want to if she discovered this was only a shadow of the man he was supposed to be. And now even that shadow was fading away.