Kristoph ran a hand lovingly over my belly. “That’s where my son is gonna’ grow, isn’t it?”
I grinned at him.
“That’s right.”
~
Another bar room. Another Saturday night.
I stand in the corner, my hand on my obviously pregnant belly. A man sidles up next to me, grinning, his breath reeking of gin and worse.
“Well, lookie here,” he grunted, bending over and admiring my heavy belly. “What’s this?”
“None of your business,” I growled. “And you wouldn’t like the father if you met him…”
He glanced up at me. He was unshaven and overweight, with long stringy black hair that hung down over his eyes, like nasty spider webs caught in his face. He made me sick just to look at him.
His pock marked face grimaced for a second, and I thought he would rage at me, but instead, he just grinned. I knew from my years working in a bar that men, the drunks you find at every bar, once spurned, will turn into one of two things: they’ll either resign themselves to rejection or they’ll rage at you, they’ll spit at you and call you the worst names they can think of.
Fortunately for me, this guy turned out to be the former.
“Fine, fine, fine…” he scowled, throwing up his hands in mockery of me. “And I’m sure his daddy’s coming back—where is he, by the way? Just ran out to get some cigarettes?”
That stung. That reminded me of home and not in a good way.
My hand shot out and knocked the bastard’s face half off his shoulders. He staggered, rubbing his jaw and scowling.
“You bitch…” he growled. “I’ll wipe that smirk off your face… I’ll knock that baby out of your slutty, fat belly…”
“Like hell you will,” a voice said behind the drunk. The man paused, a look of pure terror on his face. He turned, ever so slowly, to find Kristoph standing behind him.
Kristoph’s shirt was off. He was going to fight. That’s what all the drunks in this bar had come to see—they’d come to see the stranger who couldn’t be beaten, the man they’d all heard stories and legends about.
“Why don’t you run the hell on out of here before I take you apart?” Kristoph hissed. The drunk didn’t seem to know what to say, or who the hell Kristoph was…
But I could tell that he felt it, felt Kristoph’s power—felt the threat that Kristoph represented, felt the strength and hunger in his veins.
“Man, I don’t know who you are…” the drunk grunted, his words almost more like animal noises than actual human speech.
“And you’d better hope that you never do…” Kristoph whispered. “Because I am a nightmare to know.”
“I was just talking to this here bitch about that kid in her—“
Kristoph’s fist shot out and connected with the drunk’s face. He flew clean off his feet, landing like a pile of bricks—out cold.
“That’s my kid you’re talking about, you son of a cunt,” Kristoph growled before snaking his arm around my waist and pulling me close, pressing a kiss to my lips. I melted into his kiss—and what girl wouldn’t, honestly?
“What are we looking at?” he whispered once I was close.
“I didn’t get a good look at them,” I replied. “But they look like rough assholes—definitely. You’ve got two to fight tonight. One of them, I know—he used to be a minor league UFC fighter until he got busted for drug charges and the UFC kicked him out.”
“Sounds about right. The other?”
“No idea… Doesn’t look like much. Supposedly, he trained in Thailand or something like that and he’s back to make some money and test out his stuff.”
Kristoph nodded.
“Those are the ones to watch out for.”
“The ones who train abroad?”
“No,” Kristoph said with a grin. “The ones who don’t look like much.”
My heart leapt into my throat at the thought of Kristoph getting hurt. I grabbed onto his hands and pressed them both to my stomach.
“Be safe, love,” I whispered. “Remember… You’re not just fighting for yourself now… And you’re not just fighting for me…”
“I know,” he replied, his eyes gazing hard and long into mine. “I’m fighting for him too.”
“That’s right,” I whispered, pulling him in for one last, hot kiss. I loved tasting his tongue, tasting his lips, feeling his passion… It gave me chills.
A makeshift ring had been assembled in the bar. It wasn’t much but it would function. The bookies had taken bets and just about everyone was betting against Kristoph—of course, he was a no-name stranger and here were two seasoned fighters going against him. Who wouldn’t take that bet?
But that was just the way we liked it.
The first fighter came out strong, wailing away, all fists. The match was operating under standard MMA rules—so punches, kicks, and all kinds of grappling were allowed. This guy knew what he was doing and he knew how to use the rules to his advantage.
But he was no match for Kristoph. I could tell that Kristoph was playing with him, giving people time to place more bets, letting them bet that he would lose. The poor fools didn’t know how burned they were going to end up…
It was about two minutes into the first round when Kristoph decided, apparently, to finish the game. I could tell he was getting bored. He liked fighting—but not like this. Not when there wasn’t anything interesting to it.
The other fighter came at him hard and Kristoph shot out, catching the poor bastard by the legs and picking him up. He flung him up in the air and then, my werewolf landed on top of him with a sickening crunch. The fighter tried to grapple Kristoph, tried to wrestle his way out of the situation, but it was clear already that there was no way for him to get free…
A few quick, well-placed strikes from Kristoph’s big right hand ended the fight, with the fighter, a former contender, now nothing more than a has-been, a pile of bloodied, broken teeth and nothing else.
They dragged the poor bastard away and Kristoph shot me a grin. We were halfway to a big payday. I rested my hand on my belly. And well on our way to a new life…
We had been going back and forth for weeks about what to name our son. Kristoph still didn’t place much stock in names, after all, so it was hard to convince him that it was something we needed to talk about. Finally, though, I got him to understand that I would not have us making up our son’s name on the spot.
We were considering Dante, based on Kristoph’s favorite poet, or Jessie… But even I, I who wanted to plan everything out till the last moment, to the tiniest detail, even I knew that we would only know our baby’s name when he arrived.
The next fighter came out. He was unimpressive but I knew, based on Kristoph’s warning, not to underestimate him just because of that.
As soon as the fight began, he started circling Kristoph in a way that made me uncomfortable. What the hell could he be planning? This was scary…
I wanted to say something, but I knew that would only distract Kristoph. Besides, there was no one he couldn’t beat…
Still, I found myself running my hand over my belly, praying to God that Kristoph would come out of this alive and unscathed…
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” the fighter growled, his nose twitching. Kristoph’s face twisted into a determined grin.
“I knew it was you when you entered the room… I smelled you.”
The fighter’s eyes flashed.
“Is that your woman over there?” he asked, hungrily. Kristoph nodded shortly. A dull, shocked silence had come over the room.
Now, the fighter began to transform, growing, getting taller and taller. I screamed as I realized what was happening, pressing my hands to my belly in fear, as if that would somehow protect the baby.
The other fighter was a werewolf.
In seconds, he had transformed. And he was coming straight at me! I tried to escape but the bar was too crowded. I was pinned to the ground in seconds.
“Your wolf killed my father a long, long time ago…” the beast growled, its voice more like an animal’s than a man’s—truly the most terrifying and disconcerting thing I had ever heard. “And now it’s time for you to pay for his sin…”
He raised one huge, clawed hand over my head and I squeezed my eyes shut, saying a silent goodbye to Kristoph, and to Kristoph’s son—whom I would never know.
But the fist never came down.
Instead, I opened my eyes to see the werewolf in the clutches of another—Kristoph—struggling and screaming as two hairy, clawed hands slowly squeezed the life of out him.
A moment later, Kristoph dropped the spent corpse of the wolf and began to transform back into a man. He took me by the hand.
“Are you alright?”
“Me? Yes, Kristoph, I—“
“And the baby?”
“Fine, I think.”
“Good… Then let’s go…”
As we rushed out of the shocked bar, Kristoph squeezed my hand, letting me know that he would never let me go—that he would always be there for me, to protect me, to protect our family.
I squeezed his hand back.
Saved by the Werebear
Table of Contents
Attack!
Sold into Slavery
Learning to Please
Battle
Refuge
Epilogue
Attack!
I grew up in a village, far, far away from this horrible market place and for years, we lived in peace. We lived in harmony—the kind of harmony you hear about in fairy tales. We were all people with dark skin there, far from the prying eyes of those who might persecute us for being different…
It had been a quiet day, and average day, near the end of the week and right before the festival of the Goddess, when our entire village took a rest from the nearly endless work of farming and plowing, mowing, reaping, and the like, to celebrate the accomplishments of the past year and, mostly, to thank the Goddess for sparing us from famine, flood, and any number of other horrible things that could easily have beset the village during the year.
My village normally has few accomplishments which we hope to celebrate—but many, many things which we’re happy to thank the Goddess for not bringing to bear on our heads.
My village is—or, rather, I should say… Was… Was situated at the end of a dirty, dusty road, not far from the edge of the Imperial Forest. Our people were almost solely farmers and loggers, with a few small-time artisans who practiced their crafts while tending tiny backyard patches of crops on the side. You could sprint from one end of the village to the other in less than a minute, to give you an idea of the size, how utterly insignificant we were.
The houses were all sticks and twigs, cobbled together with the aid of mud. My mother, who had grown up in a far nicer town many miles away, always cursed the filth of the village. But she had been the fourth daughter of a landholder who had fallen on hard times and when my father, a far-off farmer come to town for market, offered three goats in exchange for my mother’s hand in marriage, my grandfather accepted without a second thought.
The sound of hooves opened the day, distant and echoing in the early morning dew. Farmers stopped in the tracks, perking up their ears, wondering who could possibly be coming to visit us.
Yes, that is how naïve we were—we imagined that the sound of hooves charging towards us was the sound of visitors—not rapists and conquerors.
An hour later, the horsemen were upon us. Great, big, burly men, their hair all matted, covering in tattoos and scars and filth, whipping their horses and us, the villagers, alternately. They crashed into our lives, smashed down our fences, beginning already to set fire to our huts.
We ran out into the street bisecting the village, which turned out to be what they wanted. They gutted the men, grabbing them by the throats from their horses to steady their flailing bodies as they plunged spears and cruel looking sharp swords into their pulsating throats, forcing the blades down into their chests, blood gushing from noses and ears as they expired there in the dusty streets.
The young women were seized, of course. I was no exception. I had been gathering mushrooms with my little sisters and as we made our way back to the village down the long, winding forest road, we heard the screams and the groans of death and destruction.
And then, a trio of horseman appeared at the head of the trail, hungry looks on their faces as they saw us—young, nubile girls, all dark, dusky skin and dark hair, natural and clean, hanging down our backs.
In contrast, their faces were filthy, smudged with dirt and soot from their fires. Their armor seemed to have been cobbled together at random, with different pieces from different sets. They wore their trophies, I realized, the things they had taken from the men they had killed, pulled off their corpses… I was looking at riding, charging, horrific screaming monsters, mountains of armor riding their dusky, malnourished horses, ribs visible and nearly foaming at the mouth…
They charged and we turned tail, running into the forest as fast as our legs would take us. We screamed and I gripped my little sisters’ hands, dragging them faster and faster into the woods.
But it was no use. First they were behind us and then, they grabbed one of my sisters, before snatching up the other. By now, it was just me running, running myself ragged, panting and groaning as my lungs ached for air, as my legs screamed for rest. But I knew there was no way I could rest. No way I could stop and survive.
But the horseman was just playing with me. In the back of my mind, I knew this. I knew he could have overtaken me whenever he wanted. He wanted to see me run, to see me exhaust myself before he swooped in and grabbed me, compliant out of fatigue, whisking me off to my fate.
Finally, I collapsed, gasping for air, a muddled pile of sweat. I turned to see the horseman descending from his steed as I struggled to my feet. His big boot descended on my chest and forced me to the ground.
With the tip of his sword, he pulled up the edge of my simple peasant’s smock, sliding it up my long, smooth legs, made golden by exposure to our simple countryside sun, and up, further, to reveal my naked womanhood, crested with kinky dark hairs. No man had ever looked at me like this and I found myself burning with shame, embarrassed and terrified beyond belief.
I hated this.
I began to sob.
“Please, sir, please…” I whined, trying to cover myself without meeting that sharp blade, without catching it between my fingers. “Please, I’m… I’m a virgin…”
“A virgin, eh…” the horseman muttered. I saw the gears working in his head. What was he thinking about? Probably he was making mental calculations, but of what?
Of course—the price of selling my maidenhead at the market place. I’m sure I was worth far more a virgin than if he touched me. Finally, he sheathed his sword and reached down to grasp my arm, heaving me to my feet. He bound my hands with rough twine, and then through me over his horse, like nothing more than war booty.
As we walked through the town, seeing the burnt remains of the village, the corpses littering the side of our small road, the smell of blood and burning hit me. It nauseated me, and after a moment, my body simply couldn’t handle it anymore. I passed out.
Sold into Slavery
We had been traveling through the dark eastern forests for days when finally, we came to a market place. The other slave girls and I were trotted out onto the market platform and we watched in horror as hundreds of men came to ogle us, looking at our bodies, admiring us as if we were pieces of meat.
“Gentlemen, the finest virgin slaves from all around Europe, here for your delectation… This may be your only chance to sample the beautiful, virgin skin of one such as…”
The seller glanced at me and gestured towards me—or, really, he gestured towards my body, for that’s all he cared about.
“One such as Dashandra here…” the seller announced, grabbing me hard by the wrist and forcing me forward.
He grab
bed my shift and lifted it up, revealing my nude body to the men. I turned my head away, ashamed and burning with embarrassment and even… a little excitement? This was the first time many men had looked at my body and I couldn’t help but admit that I was a little curious to know what they thought of me. The boys in my town had always told me I was beautiful, with my sweet little angel face, my nose, slightly upturned and my girlish body, looking a little bit younger than my eighteen years. My dark hair cascaded over my shoulder in gentle curls and my girlhood was covered in a soft down of dark brown hair. I had gotten used to men looking at me now.
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