by Abby Weeks
“I’m not lying,” she said. “I swear I’m not.”
He slapped her across the face. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, just intimidate her, make sure he had her full attention. He’d treated her like this before. She knew where it came from. Whenever he felt insecure, or unworthy, whenever he came face to face with the truth and realized he didn’t deserve a woman like her, he got mean.
*
Chapter 3
HEATH HIT HER AGAIN, the palm of his hand slamming into her face aggressively.
She was crying now. She took a step back from him but he kept on top of her, backing her up against the wall.
“You want to leave me. Admit it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t,” she said, over and over.
He took her face in his hand, squeezing her mouth in his strong fingers.
“I love you, even though you’re a fat cow,” he said. “Remember that.”
Aisha felt as if someone had just emptied a bucket of ice water over her head. She was in complete shock.
“Get over there,” Heath said, pointing at the bed.
She was acting on autopilot. She was numb, emotionally and psychologically. This was the way she got through the times when Heath treated her like this.
She went over to the bed.
“Strip,” Heath said.
She took off all her clothes. She’d been beginning to feel as if she might get a new start to her life here in Dead Wolf. She’d made new friends, she’d been learning new things, but now she saw that she was still as much in the life she’d known in Washington as she’d ever been. Heath was going to treat her like he owned her and there was nothing she could do about it.
She stood by the bed, naked, and looked up at him nervously. She was afraid to look at his face, but she knew that if she didn’t, he’d take it as an insult.
He approached her like a prowling dog. She was terrified of him. When he got to her he put his hands on her waist and pinched the white flesh.
“You’ve been eating like a pig while I was ill?”
“Heath!” she said.
“Look at yourself,” he said.
She was holding back tears. He could be so cruel, she couldn’t understand it. Where did it come from?
He pulled her into the bathroom and stood her in front of the large mirror over the sink.
“Look at yourself, Aisha.”
Aisha didn’t know what to do. She felt bewildered and scared. This didn’t make any sense. She glanced quickly at Heath’s face in his reflection in the mirror. He looked like a monster. It was horrific. But she was there, trying to look past it, nursing him, caring for him, thinking only of making him as comfortable as possible with the misfortune he’d suffered.
But what was he doing? She was a nice girl, a lot of men would say she was beautiful, and he was trying to ridicule and humiliate her and crush her confidence. His scarred arms reached out and he put his hand on her belly.
“Look at this, Aisha. Look at all this fat. Look how disgusting you are.”
She was crying.
“Please, Heath,” she said.
He turned her around and made her look back at her ass in the mirror. “Look at this fat ass. You’ve got no self-control.”
Aisha looked at herself and then shut her eyes.
“I’ll tell you something,” Heath said. “Don’t you even think about leaving me. I may be scarred, but I’m still a man. You need me up here. And no one else will want you anyway, not when you stuff your face every chance you get. You’re an ugly pig.”
He pulled her over to the bed and threw her roughly down onto it. She landed on her stomach and Heath climbed onto the bed behind her.
“Get up, bitch,” he said.
She got up on her hands and knees, the tears falling from her face onto the sheets beneath her.
Heath leaned down so that his face was by her ass and he licked her asshole. Aisha felt cheap and dirty. She felt humiliated, disrespected, and abused. He ran his tongue around the rim of her anus and then slid it underneath her, reaching forward till his tongue was able to slobber all over her vagina.
“That’s it, bitch. You get nice and wet for your daddy. You’re nothing without me. You wouldn’t survive one week up here in the north without a man like me to look after you. You don’t know how lucky you are.”
He continued licking her, sucking on her anus, slipping his tongue into her cunt. Despite how disgusting and ashamed she felt, her pussy began to get wet. It was a reflex response to the stimulation of Heath’s tongue. She wasn’t enjoying anything that was happening to her, but her body betrayed her, getting wetter and wetter as he continued to lick and suck her sensitive skin.
“You’re a whore, Aisha. You’re my whore.”
He rose up and pulled down the loose, cotton pants he was wearing. She felt his cock graze against her ass cheek, and she could tell that he was massively erect. He was bulging and throbbing, ready to burst inside her. Something about being mean to her like this always made him horny.
He slapped her ass. She cried out. He slapped her again, harder than before. She cried out louder.
“I’m going to show you the way things are,” he said.
He pressed the tip of his cock against her anus.
“Heath,” she cried out, but her cry fell on deaf ears.
He pushed forward, and his enormous, throbbing cock began to slide very slowly past the tight muscle of her anus.
“Heath,” she cried out again. “You don’t have to be like this.”
He thrust forward, sliding all the way into her asshole. She cried out from the overpowering sensation of it. He grunted as he thrust forward, then sighed as he slipped back out of her.
Aisha felt an overpowering, all-encompassing flood of sensation. It was too much for her. She clenched her teeth, made fists with her hands, and tried not to cry out anymore. He could treat her like this if he wanted, but she could still control her reaction to it. She could show him that she was strong.
He thrust forward, sliding deep into her anus.
Aisha gasped, but she refused to cry out.
Heath pulled out and thrust back in, over and over, till Aisha could feel the pulsing throb of his cock nearing climax. He grunted with each thrust.
Aisha gritted her teeth and let him plunge again and again into her ass. There was nothing to do but bear it. She’d promised herself she wouldn’t make a sound, but when the first spurt of his orgasm flew up into her ass, she cried out. His cock squirted semen over and over and she cried out with each final thrust.
When he was finished, she reached up to her face and wiped her eyes. She was ashamed of the fact that she’d been crying.
Heath pulled out of her and walked into the bathroom. Aisha lay on the bed, his sticky white semen running down her thighs and butt cheeks. She looked at him. He was staring at himself in the mirror, looking at his face as if he couldn’t believe what had happened to him.
Aisha felt sympathy for him then. She knew it must have been heartbreaking for a good-looking man like him to see his face so hideously transformed. Despite the cruelty he’d shown her, she found that she was still able to empathize with his pain.
“It will get better with time,” she said.
He looked at her and sneered. His face made her think of one of the villains out of the Batman movies.
“Come here,” he said.
She got up and walked over to him. For some reason, he seemed more comfortable putting her in front of the mirror instead of himself.
“I was harsh earlier,” he said. “But I’m just looking out for you. Around these parts, if a woman isn’t able to offer the men something of value, she’s worthless. I don’t want you to be worthless.”
Was that really what he thought? She couldn’t read him anymore. She couldn’t understand him.
“You’ve got to stop eating,” he said.
She thought she knew what was going on. It was called transference. He was transferrin
g the pain of his own insecurity onto her. He couldn’t control what had happened to his face, so he would take on something that he could control, such as her weight. He’d force her to starve herself because it was easier than dealing with the real issue, which was his own deformity.
Aisha looked at herself in the mirror. She didn’t know anymore if she was fat or not. When she was younger, before she’d started going out with Heath, she’d never dreamed of worrying about her weight. She was a normal kid, same as all the other kids. It was the last four years spent with Heath that had her doubting herself. Did she need to lose weight, or was it just Heath putting his own insecurities onto her as a way of shielding himself?
Whatever it was, it was going to get a lot worse now.
She reached up to her shoulder and touched the paw mark.
“Do you see this?” she said to him.
She realized he’d never mentioned it before, they’d never discussed it. She still thought that perhaps the stories she’d heard about handmaidens were just old superstitions passed on through Ma Hetty from generation to generation, so she wanted to know if Heath could see it.
And she had to find out, if it really was all just superstition, why Ma Hetty and Packer had the same marks.
“See what?” Heath said.
“This?” she said, pointing right at the birthmark, which was darker now than it ever had been back home.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. All I can see is your fat gut and your fat ass.”
Aisha went back to the bedroom and got under the bed sheets. She didn’t know if she was hiding from Heath or from the crazy stories Ma Hetty had filled her head with.
*
Chapter 4
THAT NIGHT AISHA WOKE WITH a start. A wolf howl woke her. She could tell by the coldness of the room that it was the middle of the night. She got up and went into the bathroom. She was almost afraid to look at her shoulder now. It was a mark that meant she was different. What was she going to do? Everything here was so weird, like a nightmare. If she was a handmaiden, the last handmaiden, then the whole town might want to kill her if they ever found out.
She shook her head. That couldn’t all be true, could it?
The wolf howled again, and Aisha cocked her head as she listened more closely. Somehow she could tell that it wasn’t a wolf at all, but a shifter that was howling. It was Packer, and he seemed to be calling to her.
Aisha went back into the bedroom and checked on Heath. He was fast asleep. He was still taking pain medication and it knocked him out.
She put her coat on over her pajamas, slipped into her snow boots, and quietly crept out of the room and down the stairs. Everything was silent. She made her way to the front door and checked if it was open. It was.
The icy air rushed in from outside and washed around her, waking her senses to the night.
She stepped out into the snow and instinctively knew to go to the place she’d run into Packer by the guard tower. She could tell that she was different than before. Something about her had changed, but she wasn’t sure what it was. She felt that her senses were keener, sharper. She could see clearly through the darkness, even though the moon was partially obscured by cloud. She could smell the air, even though it was fresh and cold and empty. The air itself had a scent that she could pick up. She also felt more resilient to the cold than she ever had before. She could feel how cold it was, but it didn’t hurt the way it ordinarily would if she’d been out in weather like this in just her pajamas and a coat.
When she reached the guard tower, she stopped. She could see the faint, red glow of a cigarette butt moving around at the top of the tower. Someone was up there, keeping watch, always keeping watch.
She crept up to it slowly, and when she got close, she made a short dash to the base of the tower. She couldn’t be seen from there. She looked out into the darkness beyond the fence. The forest out there still terrified her, and at night she felt it was almost suicide to go out there alone.
She peered out and saw nothing. She’d been mistaken. She’d thought Packer’s howl had been calling to her, but now she realized just how crazy that was. No one had been calling, least of all a shifter!
She decided to go back to the inn. She hoped Heath hadn’t noticed she’d gone out. She didn’t think he’d be understanding about her running around the town in her pajamas. Just as she was about to turn to leave, she saw those piercing yellow eyes. They were a couple hundred yards distant. They were looking right at her, and when she looked straight at them, she felt like someone was looking clear through to her soul.
She had to get to him. She ran to the fence and then skirted along the outside of it, keeping an eye on the guard tower. It didn’t appear as if anyone had seen her. She made her way to the tree line, which was just a few yards from the fence. Once in the forest, she was amazed at how rapidly she was immersed in total darkness. A few feet from where she’d entered the trees she could no longer even tell that the town was right behind her. The tree canopy blocked off what little light had been coming from the moon. Aisha strained to see in the almost pitch darkness, and realized that she could see enough to make her way slowly through the trees.
She prayed Packer would find her soon, because she was terrified. She’d never been in a forest alone at night before, even in Washington. And this was nothing like the forests back home. In the rest of the world, forests were contained areas, surrounded by farmland and cities and roads. There was a limit to the amount of monsters anyone could be afraid of when the forests were so contained. Here, the forest was immeasurable. Anything could live in it. She knew the shifters patrolled this area, as did the men from the town, but it did little to make her feel better now that she was here alone in the darkness.
“Aisha,” she heard. It was Packer. He was keeping his voice low so as not to alert the guards in the tower.
“Is that you, Packer?” she said.
*
Chapter 5
THE YELLOW EYES APPEARED FROM the darkness first. Then she saw the rest of his rugged body. When she saw him, her jaw dropped. He was completely naked.
“You’ll have to excuse me,” he said, standing there like a Greek statue. “I came here as a wolf.”
Aisha laughed. She peered at him in the dim light. He was definitely a well-built specimen, with strong muscles, toned flesh, and rugged features. She tried to look him in the eye, but she couldn’t help glancing down at his body. His torso curved inward, and his cock hung from a bush of hair at his crotch. Aisha felt her ovaries tremble with desire as she looked at that penis. It seemed firm and strong, even though Packer wasn’t sexually aroused.
“Do you show up to all your dates like this?” she said.
He was so unselfconscious. He just shrugged as he approached her. “I was patrolling this area, and I found myself howling to you before I’d even realized it. I know I should have met you with clothes on.”
She laughed again. “I don’t mind, really,” she said, a mischievous sparkle in her eye. “You can meet me like this any time you want.”
Packer grinned at her.
“Why were you howling for me?” Aisha said. She couldn’t help but laugh as she said the words. Who ever thought she’d be speaking like this to a real shifter, standing in a dark winter forest in the middle of Alaska? Life sure was strange.
“I was worried about you,” Packer said.
“Really? I’d have thought creeping around this forest after dark was a lot more dangerous than being asleep in my bed.”
Packer shrugged. “I don’t know about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say I don’t trust the humans.”
Aisha looked at him. She thought back to the rough treatment Heath had given her. Packer was right not to trust them. He might also be right that she was safer out here than she was in her own bed.
“Why don’t you trust them?”
“I don’t trust them with our own,” he said.
> He walked up to her. She held her breath. She was so close to him she could have reached out and touched him. She glanced down at that dangerous penis again as it hung in Packer’s dark pubic hair.
“Your own?” she said. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Aisha. I’ve seen the paw mark on your shoulder. I know you’ve sensed a difference in yourself since coming up here. I can even feel it happening.”
“Feel what happening?” Aisha said.
“Your old senses, your handmaiden senses, the senses that make you like a wolf even though you can’t shift—those are coming back to you, aren’t they?”
Aisha didn’t know what to say. It was true she’d been feeling things that could be described like that. She could see in the dark better, she could identify Packer by his howl, she could sense what was going on around her just by the scent of the air.
“Maybe they are,” she said.
“Then you know that you’re a handmaiden?”
Aisha sat down on a log. Packer lowered himself onto his haunches and looked her in the eye.
“You know it’s true, Aisha.”
“How can that be true?” she said.
“I don’t know,” Packer said. “I don’t know, but it is. I recognized it the very first moment I saw you. I couldn’t miss it. Every gene in my body is designed to recognize you, and you’re the only handmaiden I’ve seen in years.”
“How did you recognize me?”
Packer leaned in close to her, his face almost touching hers, and he breathed in her smell.
“Your scent,” he said. “It’s intoxicating to me. I can smell you from miles away. You smell like nothing I’ve ever experienced in my life. The first time I caught your scent, back on the boat, I didn’t even know what it was. I had to find you. I was going crazy in my cabin. You should have seen the sheets I tore in my sleep.”
Aisha put her hand over her mouth. No one had ever told her that her scent was irresistible before.
“I had no idea I had such an effect on you,” she said.
“It’s no joke, Aisha. You’re like a drug, to me, and to my brothers. Just put yourself in our position.”