The Hunter's Pet

by Loki Renard

  The Hunter’s Pet

  By

  Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2014 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  Copyright © 2014 by Stormy Night Publications and Loki Renard

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Stormy Night Publications and Design, LLC.

  www.StormyNightPublications.com

  Renard, Loki

  The Hunter’s Pet

  Cover Design by Korey Mae Johnson

  Images by Bigstock/JackF, Bigstock/Iakov Kalinin, and Bigstock/S Silver

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults.

  Chapter One

  “Cut the attitude.”

  The gruff order was snapped at a woman with purple eyes, green hair, and an expression of smirking resistance that was fast becoming familiar to her handler. She had been his for less than an hour, but already her personality was shining through. Brash, rude, and brave. Standing in the sheer-walled decontamination chamber, she scorned her bonds and William himself with defiant looks and words. It didn’t change the reality of the situation. She was his, and he was already very proud of her.

  A rare gene mutation made her quite singular in appearance, not just her hair and eyes, but her figure too. Though athletic, the wildling was curvaceous with ample breasts and generous rump. Her breasts pushed the rough tunic dress she wore out and up so high it barely covered her shapely bottom. It was obvious from the tone of her skin and the amount of dirt built up across the same that she’d been running wild for quite some time. She was a woman without a city, closer to beast than person in some ways.

  “I’m not going to be yours,” she said, her voice incongruously lilting and soft. “Ever.”

  “You speak well for a wildling,” William observed. “You must have been raised in civilization, which means you know that you don’t have any choice. Once you go feral you lose the rights citizens enjoy. You can be caught. You can be bought. You can be owned.”

  Her gorgeous eyes narrowed to cat-like slits. “And you can go to hell.”

  Clever. There weren’t many wildlings capable of snappy wordplay. William could already tell that this one had a story, but he wasn’t as interested in her story as he was in getting her contained properly for transport into the city. Binding her arms and legs and carrying her had worked up to the wall, but now that they were past the outer gate, things would be different. They were about to enter Albion, a city that considered itself a bastion of law and order—a citadel of technology and clean living.

  While arguing with his new pet, William caught sight of himself in one of the polished surfaces of the decontamination chamber. He was an imposing man, taller than most with a square-cut jaw and dark brown eyes set beneath a prominent brow. The cleft chin was inherited from his father. The curve of his lips, sensual and much more well-shaped than most, were from his mother. He had been handsome once, before a brush with a wild boar had left a thick scar tracing from the middle of his left cheek all the way up to just below his eye. His thick dark hair was long enough to hide it and in his younger days he’d worn it down a lot. Now he preferred it tied back behind his head, scars be damned.

  She should have been scared of him. He was more than twice her size and many times her strength and yet she stood there barefoot and defiant. If she had been male, he would have likely beaten her for insubordination. But she was female. And she was pretty. He was not in the habit of unleashing beatings on women. Spankings were not out of the question though, and she was heading for one of those at breakneck speed.

  “You’re boring me,” she announced. “I’m leaving now.”

  Her statement was laughable. There was no leaving the decontamination chamber. Security was tight and multi-layered, from the gene-coded ID badges everyone wore, to biometric scanners and automated systems, which had probably already picked up stray skin sheddings from his new pet and analyzed them right down to the proteins. She’d only been within its outer walls for a few minutes, but the city already knew his pet better than he did.

  “You were captured,” he said. “And be glad you were. You would have likely been killed if you had been permitted to roam the wilds much longer.”

  “I could live in the wilds longer than you will live here in this tin can.” Her tone was derisive and arrogant. She tossed her long emerald locks, locking eyes with him defiantly. “I’m here because you need me. I’m here because your genetics are inferior. You cannot sense the radiation as I can, you cannot track the paths of prey, you do not see the world as it really is.”

  In a sense, she was right. Wildlings with her mutation were capable of seeing the radiation that bathed much of the countryside surrounding the city. The radiation was one of the reasons the cities had first been built; it was the background noise of a war long past, a poisoned history that could still kill if one were not careful.

  Cities were capable of growing their own food, but there was not enough room for the raising of livestock. Animal protein sold for a premium, and it was how William made his living. His new pet would help in that endeavor. Once trained, she would not only sense prey more quickly than he could, but she could lead him around areas of high radiation as well, limiting his exposure. She would be very useful one day. For the moment, she just had to be taught her place.

  William leaned down, his hands on his knees as he put his face so close to hers their noses were almost touching. “You’re here,” he growled in soft, deliberate tones, “because I own you.”

  “I don’t think so,” she growled right back, sharp white teeth flashing with every word. “You only own what you can control, and you will never control me.”

  “You’re my property,” he said in turn. “And I’m not going to argue with my property. Get in the crate, or I’ll put you in.”

  He pointed toward a large plastic-covered metal box big enough to contain a human if they were to crouch on their hands and knees. It was an undignified form of confinement, but regulations stated that untrained pets had to be restrained in the city confines. Wildlings had an uncanny knack for detecting energy ducts and breaking them too—along with everything else in their path. Pets could be trained, a few were even assimilated into society, but most, especially those captured later in life, remained under the care of their owners for their entire lives. This one glaring at him was at least twenty-five years old, far past the window where she would be compliant for training.

  “I’m not going in a box.”

  “In the box or on a leash. Your choice.”

  “My choice is to leave.” She took a step back and crouched for a split second before leaping up, using his thigh as a stepping stone and bounding for the wall. She’d probably mistaken the ducts at the top of it for an escape route. There was no getting out that way, but William didn’t have time to crawl around inside them in the hunt for a lost pet either. Damn, but she was fast. He admired her agility even as he jumped after her, catching her by the back of the tunic.

  “Let me go!”

  Wrangling her with one hand, he used the other to snap a collar around her neck. She squirmed and thrashed about like a fish out of water, fighting for her dignity as much as her freedom. He was secretly sorry he had to deprive her of both, but she was so defiant and resistant to good sense there was no other way of handling her. As she wriggled, he snapped a leash to the collar, getting her under effective control.

  “Let. Me. Go!” She grasped the collar wit
h both hands and tried to wrench it off her neck. It was a futile struggle, one that brought her to her knees. William did nothing but hold the leash as she thrashed around before inevitably tiring herself out in a fit of rebellion.

  Finally she sat on the ground, panting angrily and staring up at him with an expression of pure venom. He could not help but smile. She was adorable, all the more so for the fact she didn’t mean to be. He admired her spirit. She would be a fine hunter’s pet once her training was complete. He could have taken her to the market and sold her for a thousand credits then and there. In six months, she’d be worth ten times that amount.

  “We’re going to my home,” he told her. “It’s a secure compound on the west side of town. You’ll be well taken care of there. Unless you want to be dragged through the streets on this leash, I recommend you step inside the crate.”

  “No,” she snarled.

  He was really going to have to work on her obedience.

  “Won’t go into the crate and won’t walk on the leash? That means I’m left with one option.”

  “Beat me until I bleed, I will not do as you say.”

  He leaned down. “I’m not planning on beating you just yet,” he said, hauling her up to her feet.

  She bit him. Hard. A ring of teeth blossomed on his hand, followed by seeping blood from where her canines had made contact. Fortunately William had gotten all his shots before leaving on his hunting trip, including one that would protect him from the virulent flora in her mouth.

  “We do not bite,” he said mildly, sitting on the crate. It was made of solid material and was strong enough to take both his weight and the weight of the spitting wild thing he pulled over his thighs. She was not wearing much in the way of clothing, which made his job easier. Her simple tunic looked like a very old t-shirt. Perhaps it had been colored once, now it was gray and mottled with dirt and grime. There was not much in the way of soap in the wilds. The tunic did not cover much of her body, and it covered even less when she was bent over in a prone position. The bare cheeks of her buttocks were vulnerable to his gaze and his palm as he began spanking her with a steady, measured pace designed to make a statement.

  She yowled under his palm, but he was not sure whether that was from pain, anger, or frustration. He strongly suspected it was the latter two. He was not striking her with a hard enough force to genuinely produce the cacophony of noise that escaped her lips. Some of the sounds were not quite human, some were trills and growls, emulations of the natural world.

  “If you act out, you’ll be punished. If you are violent, you can expect to have a very sore bottom.” He emphasized the point with a harder slap that made both her cheeks jiggle as his hand caught them in its sweeping path. She had a very nice body, toned and shaped from running wild, but with ample curves. Two of those curves were the unwilling recipients of some much needed discipline, turning pink with the continued application of his palm.

  “Bite again and I’ll gag you,” he informed her. “And you won’t like that, will you?”

  The response was a vicious snarling sound that had no communication value other than to make it clear that she was angry.

  A tone sounded in the room indicating that the decontamination procedure was about to start. Time to get her into the crate before she panicked and hurt herself. Wrapping his right arm around her midsection, he stood up. She struggled, beating her toes against his shins and her fists against his kidneys. It was with no small amount of effort that he upended her crate and dumped her in it bottom first, slamming the door latch shut before she could burst free.

  Yowling and cursing emitted through the vents. He ignored it as he tipped the crate back onto its wheeled base and waited for the decontamination to begin. Everyone coming from the wilds was subjected to ten minutes of ionized spray calibrated to kill bacteria, denature viruses, and eliminate fungus, as well as an additional treatment to counter radiation. Nothing from the outside got into the city. Even small amounts of contamination could prove fatal to the young and the old, and certainly nobody wished the ills of the outside world to be visited upon those who took refuge behind the city’s great curved walls.

  *

  Miserable and trapped, Sarah raged at her own stupidity. The hunter had been tracking her for just three sunrises. She had tracked vegetables longer than that. If she hadn’t been feeling poorly, she would surely have escaped his trap. It was not particularly clever or well hidden, a simple rope snare much like ones she’d made herself in the past. She’d stumbled into it like a fool and now her liberty was gone, stolen by a great beast of a man whose gleaming eyes told her that he enjoyed the hunt more than most animals.

  “Call me William,” he’d said as he bound her on the ground. He spoke and carried himself with a casual arrogance, safe behind the camouflaged and padded armor that protected him from the radiation currents. The people of the cities were always hiding behind this and that. They were weak creatures, only able to survive inside their constructions. Remove the walls, tear off the armor, and they would crumble.

  She had tried to fight, but it was useless. He was far stronger than she in terms of sheer brute strength and she was at a disadvantage as she was caught in one set of ropes already. Carried from her home with no regard, Sarah’s fury had only grown with every passing step.

  Born a mutant, her family had taken her from the city when she was still very young. Mutants had never been treated well by citizens. They were experimented upon, used for dangerous and unpleasant labor, locked away for much of their lives because they were regarded as being brutal. It was not the life her parents had wanted for their only daughter, so they had escaped into the forests that had reclaimed the old lands where humans used to live before the age of cities.

  Her mother and father were long since passed, succumbed to fevers both. With their passing Sarah was left on her own. She didn’t mind that. She could have joined one of the wild tribes who lived further north, but she’d decided to stay where her family had settled, where every tree was a friend and every rock as permanent a marker as the city that glowed in the distance. Very few hunters came out as far as she lived. Those who did were easily avoided and even more easily scared off. City folk were wary of the wilds—as they should be. The forest was no place for people who lived separated from earth and sea and sky.

  A grinding sound followed by a loud banging interrupted her train of thought. The cloth separating her cage from the world was drawn back and dark, scarred eyes became visible through the grating.

  “Sorry,” William said. “Won’t be too much of that, I promise.”

  “Die!”

  He smirked and dropped the cloth back over the exterior, leaving her in darkness.

  She should have killed him as soon as she knew he was stalking her. She should have run a spear through his body and left him for the wild cats. But killing was not in her nature. She rarely killed forest animals, only when she truly craved protein. On those rare occasions, she was sure to give thanks to the animal and to use every part of it. Waste not, want not, her mother used to say. It was a precity term, from the days when people lived wherever they pleased without the protection of the domes. Back in those days, there were little towns and small cities and none of them were walled off from nature. Everybody breathed unfiltered air. Everybody drank water from reservoirs open to the elements. Sarah very much enjoyed it when her mother had told her stories of the olden days. They sounded so quaint, so free.

  Sarah was free, but her primitive life was not like the one those people had led. If she were to fall ill, or hurt herself, that would be the end of her. That was her weakness, her downfall. It was that which the hunter had exploited. A touch of the fever had distracted her and she’d wandered into his trap just as neatly as any wood pigeon.

  The crate began to sway and roll. In the darkness she felt herself being drawn out of the world she’d come to love and into a realm of the unknown.

  *

  “What’ve you got there, Willi
am?” A neatly uniformed clerk was waiting at the final gate. He knew William by name, for William was one of the very few citizens who regularly went from Albion to the wilds and back. The post at the gate was a lonely one at times, and the clerk often liked to make conversation. Usually William was happy to oblige him, but this day he did not have time for it.

  “My newest project.” William patted the crate proudly. The soft sound caused a fresh burst of angry shouting from inside. “She’s a little temperamental.”

  “Sounds like you have your work cut out for you.” The clerk stamped his card, updated the database, and waved him through.

  Albion rose in glorious white marble trammeled with diamond blue veins, conduits that carried power to the city in an organic grid. William hailed a transporter, a simple platform that would ride electromagnetic fields. He pushed the crate onto it, set the destination, then sat atop the metal box as they were whisked into the air and thence across the city. The skies were full of dancing platforms, narrow ovals sliding with smooth precision up, down around one another.

  The journey took exactly 9.9 minutes from the central terminal to the crested villa that William called home. It was on the upper steppes of the city, a three-story abode commanding a view of the wild lands from its upper balconies.

  He pushed the crate under the ornate arch that marked the gate of his private compound, and thence into the vestibule of his home. It took a moment or two to activate the force field that would keep his unwilling guest in and any curious neighbors out. A purple haze delineated the areas of control, making it easy to stay away from if one wanted to avoid an unpleasant shock.

  “I’m going to let you out,” he said, addressing the crate. “Stay away from the purple parts, they’ll give you a nasty shock if you try to breach them. If you’re thinking of being destructive, think again. Break anything and you’ll be back in the crate before you know it. I’m going to open the door now. Come out nice and slow.”

  He waited for a response. There was none. Worried that she might be somehow harmed, he opened the crate. She flew out, fingers clawed, face contorted with primal rage. He caught her before she could scratch his eyes out, but he was off balance and her momentum took them both over backwards. She tumbled over his head and hit the force field. There was a sound like a cross between a gun shot and the sound of an electric bug catcher and she emitted a loud yelp, scampering away from the purple wall at full speed.