by Abby Weeks
They knew what was happening. They knew what she was going to do.
She faced them and took a deep breath.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said.
They nodded.
“I think you all know why you’re here. I’ve spoken to Ma Hetty. She explained to me the importance of forming the handmaiden’s bond.”
She opened the leather ties that held her garment closed around her neck.
“This is something that’s new to all of us. We’re the last of our kind, the last five shifters in this valley. This has been our ancient territory for longer than any of us know, and it looks like we’re at the end of the era when our people protected the valley from the growing danger of the wolves. After we’re gone, this area will be overrun. But for now, we’re still here, and we’re still keeping the old ways alive.”
She was opening the garment, revealing more and more of her chest as she untied the front of her dress. The four brothers’ eyes were fixed on her cleavage.
“There are four of you, and there is only one of me. None of us asked for it to be this way. None of us would have wanted it to end up this way. I’ve known one of you longer than I’ve known the other three.”
She looked directly at Packer and let her ample breasts fall out from the front of her dress.
“Packer, you watched over me as I journeyed north into this territory.”
She looked into his eyes and could see the depth of the pain in them.
“I will always feel close to you because of that. I will feel like you’re the one who found me, the one who watched over me and made sure I got to this place safely.”
Packer nodded at her. She could see tears fill his deep, large eyes, the wetness of them catching and reflecting the light of the moon.
“But I can’t allow that closeness I feel toward you to cause difficulties with your brothers. All four of you are passionate. You are craving me. You are lusting for me. I don’t blame you. It’s in your nature. You’re wild, strong animals, and the desire to mate is a powerful one.”
The brothers nodded. She rolled the dress down to her waist and let them feast their gaze on her delicious, succulent breasts. She was their female, the only one on earth they could ever mate with. She was theirs in a way that nature itself dictated. She was the only living creature that could satisfy their needs, and that gave them some sort of claim over her body. It went deeper than love, or lust, or pleasure. It was the call of nature. It was the dire necessity they had within each of them to survive.
“None of us can survive alone. We need each other. All four of you need me. You need my body. You can’t feel at peace without me. But just as importantly, I need you. I need you all to forgive each other. To work together. To learn how to look at me as part of a family that shares everything. There can be no jealousy, no rivalry between us. We’re a family now, or at least we will be, after I’ve formed the handmaiden’s bond with each of you.”
“You’re choosing all four of us?” Logan said.
“I’m forming the bond with all four of you. Tonight, on this mountaintop, under the light of this moon, I’m going to form the oldest and most sacred bond that exists within our species. Ma Hetty has explained it to me. I know this is as new to each of you as it is to me, and all I ask is that none of you fight with each other.”
The brothers looked at each other. She knew they loved each other. She knew they didn’t want to fight with each other. That was what had been causing such grief in their hearts the night before. They wanted her, but they didn’t want her to come between them. She knew that. And she prayed she was doing the right thing.
“Once I’ve bonded with you, I’ll belong to each of you. Don’t think of the fact that I belong to your brothers. Think of the fact that I belong to you, wholly and completely. I’m the only female you’ll ever know. You are the only males I’ll ever know. We’re a family. We all love each other. There’s no room for jealousy or rivalry in our lives.”
The brothers were nodding. They looked at each other.
“I know why you were fighting over me,” she said, looking pointedly at Packer.
Packer growled.
“Don’t be angry. I forgive you for it, Packer. Your brothers do too.”
The other three nodded.
“But we have to move forward. If I bond with all four of you, there will be nothing left to fight over. I’ll belong to the pack. I’ll belong to all of you. You’ll possess me and own me completely, and there will be nothing left to fight about.”
“Except for the right to mate,” Tucker said.
“Exactly,” Aisha said. “Except for the right to mate. And that’s a battle you’ll each have to fight with me, not with each other. I’ll mate with whichever of you I wish. If you can make me love you, if you can forge a connection with me, a real connection, a bond that’s emotional and loving as well as passionate and physical, then you’ll get what you want. And the fact that your brothers are forming the same bond with me will never get in the way. That’s what I promise to each of you. You will each have the same chance to fall in love with me. You will have the same chance to experience me falling in love with you. And you’ll each have ample opportunity to mate with me, but only when there’s love.”
The brothers were looking at each other. They seemed to be accepting what she was saying. Aisha prayed they would accept it, because it was the only way she could think of to stop them from ripping each other apart.
Even from where she was sitting she could see the deep gashes in Packer’s torso. His brothers had been merciless. They’d let their teeth and claws tear deep into his flesh when he’d attacked Logan. She looked at Logan’s neck and saw the bite marks Packer had left there. There was no doubt about it, Packer had been mad enough to kill.
“Is that clear?” Aisha said.
The brothers said nothing. Instead they shifted back into their wolf forms and threw their powerful necks back and faced the moon. And then they howled. All four of them howled in unison, and the sound of it was deafening. Aisha knew that every wolf for miles around heard them and would be filled with fear at the sound of it. It was the first time in a very long while that anyone had heard the mating howls of the shifters in those mountains.
It was the beginning of a new era for the valley. The age of the shifters had returned.
*
Chapter 42
AISHA STOOD UP ON THE BOULDER. She knew that something momentous was about to happen. She knew that everything in her life, and in the life of the four wolf brothers, was about to change forever. She had no idea what the ritual for forming the handmaiden’s bond was supposed to look like, but Ma Hetty had told her that it would come naturally to her. She had to trust that. She had to trust her instincts.
She looked down at the four brothers.
“Once the bonds are formed,” she said, “everything will be different. The power will shift. All the decisions won’t be up to me any longer. It will be up to each of you to pursue me. Whoever wants to mate with me will be free to woo me however he pleases.”
With that, the wolves threw back their heads again and howled at the dark immensity of the sky. Aisha felt as if she was telling them something they’d badly needed to hear. It was no wonder they’d been so frustrated. It was no wonder they’d fought among each other. The way the shifter society had set things up, it had been designed to work in a world where there were many males and many females. It had been designed to control the rampant and vigorous mating instinct that each male possessed. Those rules didn’t work so well when there was only one female left in the entire world. It gave them no options. It put before them the prospect that they might never have been able to mate with her at all. That had been unbearable to them.
Now, she was giving them what they needed. She was giving them hope. By allowing them to form the bond with her, she was telling each of them that he had a very real chance of mating with her. It was putting the power back in their hands. It also
fit better with Aisha’s own understanding of the mating game. She hadn’t grown up here. She hadn’t grown up, steeped in the ways of the shifters. She’d grown up in Washington, among the humans, and in her world, every guy had the right to pursue and woo the woman of his heart’s desire. If there was a girl that drove him crazy with desire, if there was a girl who he fell in love with, he was allowed to pursue her. At least, assuming he was a guy with the courage to follow his heart.
Aisha let her fur garments fall to the ground around her ankles. She wanted to be completely naked in the moonlight. There had been a time in her life when she would have been mortified to stand in front of four men naked. She’d always been too concerned about her body. She didn’t look like the supermodels in the magazines, so she’d thought she wasn’t beautiful. She’d been so wrong! The four wolves were howling louder than ever now, louder even than when they’d been fighting. The howls were deafening, and she knew that the enemy wolves miles away would hear it and understand that something was changing in the valley of the shifters. She knew that the people down in the village would hear it too, and they too would know that things were never going to be the same again.
She was just one female, just one handmaiden, but that was enough to bring about a whole new generation for the shifters. If she had young and they lived to maturity, it would ensure that the shifters would be able to control and protect the valley for one more generation. She wondered if the humans would be glad of that. Would they appreciate the fact that the shifters would be able to protect them for longer? Or were they still so scared stiff of anything that was different from them that they didn’t want to even think about the possibility of new shifter pups being born into the world?
Standing there on that granite bolder, her naked body glistening in the eerie silver light of the moon, Aisha realized all that she represented to the brothers. She was life. She was love. And perhaps most importantly of all, her body represented all of the lusts and passions and pleasures that sex promised. It was no wonder the brothers were howling so wildly.
She raised her hands into the air and slowly turned in the moonlight, giving the wolves the opportunity to see her from all angles. They stopped howling and a deep, rich silence filled the mountaintop. As she turned, they stared ,watching her every move as if their very lives depended on it. She looked down at them and saw the sparkling gold of their shifter eyes. She’d never seen them looking at her so intensely. They seemed transfixed by her body. They were as still as statues. The only thing that showed her that they were alive at all was the white clouds of breath that puffed from their mouths and nostrils. They wanted her so badly that she could smell it. They were in their wolf forms, their massive bodies primed liked cocked guns, and every muscle in them was full to bursting with the raw energy of sexual tension.
Their penises were erect, their claws were drawn, their teeth showed slightly in the corners of their mouths. They looked every bit the alpha predators that they were. If she hadn’t been the object of their absolute sexual affection, she’d have been afraid of them. They looked like they were ready to kill. It sent a shiver up her spine.
*
Chapter 43
AISHA KEPT HER HANDS HIGH above her head and let them see the full length of her body from top to toe. They looked at her long, delicate arms, the seductive curve of her neck, her ample, life-giving breasts. She turned and they saw the curve of her pale, smooth belly, the curve of her voluptuous ass, her delicious hips.
Someone howled. She looked at the wolves. It was Logan. That surprised her. He always seemed so calm and collected. It looked like she was driving him insane with desire. She thought about the fact that he’d lived longer than any of the others, thirty-two years, without ever knowing he’d have a chance to mate with a female. It was not a surprise that he was literally dying with anticipation now.
She kept turning. From behind they could see the full, tender, erotic curve of her ass. From the sounds of their paws scuffing the ground, she could tell they had a hard time containing themselves. One of them yelped, but she didn’t look back to see who it was. Instead, she bent over, reaching with her hands down to the ground, giving them an even better view of her voluptuous, delicious ass. There were more howls, and she looked through her legs back at the four of them. Packer was the one howling this time. His yellow eyes glowed like balls of fire in the darkness. Aisha could see his tongue in his mouth and wondered what it would be like to feel it against her skin. Her cunt trembled with a gentle throb of desire. She bent over and grabbed her ankles, letting them see her ass and pussy at the same time. Tucker took a step forward and Hardy nipped at him, grabbing one of his hind legs in his jaw and yanking him back. Tucker yelped but remained in his position. None of them would break whatever structure Aisha decided to place on the ritual.
The ritual was the handmaiden’s prerogative. It was her way of showing the males that they would be allowed one day to mate with her. It was a sacred act in the shifter culture, and all of them understood that perfectly, even if they’d never been able to see or attend one before. Aisha realized that everything Ma Hetty had told her was correct. She instinctively knew what to do, what would be appropriate, what would make it clear to the males that they would be bonded with her for the rest of their lives.
She sought out Ma Hetty’s presence down in the valley and instantly connected to the older woman. Aisha was still shocked at how easy it was for her to connect mentally with other shifters when she needed them. It made cell phones seem like the most primitive devices imaginable. She gave an impression of the scene to Ma Hetty and could feel the pride and happiness in Ma Hetty’s mind as the seer realized that the first handmaiden’s bonding ceremony in many years was happening again in the valley. It was a momentous and moving thing. A ritual that Ma Hetty had long thought was completely dead was back. It was like finding evidence of some rare animal that had been thought extinct.
“Don’t be afraid,” Ma Hetty told Aisha.
The words filled Aisha’s mind and enveloped her. Ma Hetty was able to explain so much with just a few simple images, a few primal thoughts.
“Don’t hold back,” Ma Hetty was saying. “You have to form a bond with them that will survive anything. They have to know that they belong to you from now on. They have to know that you belong to them. You’re offering yourself to them. You don’t have to do it, there’s no obligation, but you’re choosing to offer yourself to them. It’s the most beautiful, precious gift that can possibly exist for a shifter. You have to make them understand that. You have to get that message under their skin, into their hearts, into their very souls. They’ll belong to you forever because of this ritual, and you’ll belong to them. The ritual is everything.”
Aisha felt dizzy. So much was riding on the ritual. Ma Hetty sent Aisha images to illustrate the importance of what she was doing. She showed Aisha an image of a mother shifter nursing its babies at her breasts. The infants were suckling, taking the milk into their mouths and deriving their nourishment from it. It was everything. It was the symbol of the bond between the mother and her young. It showed the love that existed between them, it showed the weakness and dependence of the baby, and it showed that everything in that baby’s life, even its sustenance and nourishment, came from the mother. It symbolized the importance of the link that would go on to define the lives of both the baby and the mother forever. It was a ritual, just as the bonding ceremony was a ritual, and she had to do something just as poignant and powerful as the suckling of a young baby to illustrate the binding nature of the bond she was about to create with the brothers.
She reached back to her thighs with one of her hands while the other hand rested on the rock and supported her in her bent-over position. She did something that she thought of as being incredibly daring, incredibly obscene, even. She pulled her butt cheek back, opening the crack of her ass and letting the males see her pink anus as well as the tender, succulent pink lips of her vagina. They howled again. They were goin
g delirious with desire. But they had to see her. They had to see her for what she was. They had to see everything.
She was going to be theirs after this. She was going to belong to them. She had to expose herself to them, make herself vulnerable, even if she was embarrassed.
She turned around to face them and sat on the rock, her legs spread out before her, giving them the clearest possible view of her vagina.
The four brothers inched closer to her. They wanted to see everything, every detail of the body she was offering them. They looked as if they literally wanted to devour her. There was something awe-inspiring and breathtaking about being looked at in that way by four massive alpha wolves. These were the predators that could take down any animal in the forest. They were the very pinnacle of the food chain. They could kill anything. And they were crowded in front of her, looking up at her from between her legs, and bearing their teeth as if they wanted to slaughter her.
Aisha shivered in ecstatic excitement. There was so much anticipation flowing through her body it was almost unbearable.
*
Chapter 44
AISHA’S LEGS WERE RAISED AT the knees, her vagina was right in front of the brothers’ eyes, and it was red and hot with desire. It was practically quivering with anticipation. She wanted to be taken by them, by all four of them, and she wanted to know just how deeply and thoroughly she was to belong to them from now on. She wanted them to claim her as their very own and make it clear, in no uncertain terms, just what kind of treatment her tingling vagina could expect.
She reached around to the lips of her vagina and touched them. Her pussy quivered. She could feel it growing warmer and wetter by the second. She ran her finger inside the slit of her cunt and felt the moistness of it on her finger. She could smell it too, her shifter senses giving her a keener sense of smell than she’d ever had before. She knew that the brothers could smell her too. They could smell the scent of sex flowing from inside her, inviting them to enjoy her, to devour her. She sighed and in the same moment, slid her finger deep into her cunt, letting it go all the way inside her. Then she brought it out and waved it in the air in front of the brothers. She saw them sniff and could almost see the very hairs on their bodies bristle with desire.