Her Howling Harem 1: A reverse harem fantasy (Arianna's Story)

by Savannah Skye

  I had tried speaking to Rissa a few times, but she hadn’t replied. Was she dead? Maybe that would have been a mercy – I knew I was sick for thinking it, but I couldn’t get the look of anguish she’d had on her face out of my head. It made me want to cry. That thing, that creature – stuck somewhere between wolf and human – didn’t deserve the life that had been forced upon her. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay but I didn’t know how I could ever say that again with any conviction. I wanted to cry. That was the only overwhelming emotion I had left but I was too exhausted even to do that.

  Cora was here. I wasn’t sure where she was, or exactly how long it had been since they had trapped her in here, but she was here, too, and the knowledge of that both warmed my soul and made me want to scream in horror. I couldn’t believe that the one person I’d cared about from back home, the one person who had treated me with any kind of dignity after it had all gone down, was trapped in here with me and facing the worst thing I could possibly imagine. I wondered if she had seen someone like Rissa, if she knew what was in store for her. Her screams, still ringing in my ears, told me that at least she had some idea of what she was faced with. What were they going to do to her? How bad was it going to be? I wanted to claw my way out of this cell and find her and tell her that everything was going to be alright. If she still recognized me. If she even recognized herself.

  But these cells were built strong and hearty, so that no shifter could use their powers to escape. I had gone over every inch of this place using the paltry light I could see by through the tiny window at the top of the wall to inspect as much as I could, and I hadn’t found one little thing that told me there was any way out of here. My best bet would be to attack a guard when they came in here to bring me food or water, but even then, what would I do from there on out? There were dozens of people out there who I assumed would be all too happy to gain some favor from their monster of a leader by handing me back over, and God knows what they would do to me then. Maybe I would end up in the same place as Rissa and Cora and that hapless male they’d referenced when they’d taken Cora away.

  How many people did they have in here, suffering in agony, waiting for some kind of sweet release after the weeks, months, or years of torture at the hands of these monsters? The thought made my blood boil. If I ever did get out of here, then I would make a point of coming back and exposing the awfulness that was going on in this place. Surely, not everyone here could know what was going down.

  Maybe I was being too optimistic, but I couldn’t imagine that so many people were that comfortable with all of this. They couldn’t know everything that was going on in here or else they would have protested or left or…or maybe the ones who didn’t like it ended up as experiments themselves. My stomach dropped at the thought. Rickland MacLaren was evil. I wasn’t going to let that pass if I ever got a chance to take him on for it.

  Not that I ever would. My heart sank when I thought of the chances of me getting out of this place. Where would I go? Back to the Kellum compound, in the hopes that they would take me back? No, there would be no chance of that. They’d probably think I was coming at them as a spy for the other side, even as beaten and bloodied as I was. No, I’d go back to the cabin in the woods, to the ones who’d taken care of me despite everything, the ones who I loved more than I had loved anyone in my entire life-

  Loved.

  Now there was a word I hadn’t used before. But it was the only one that described how I felt about the Robicheaux brothers. Those gorgeous, loving, badass males who had taken me in and made me feel like a real person once more. It was strange, thinking about how lost I had been before they found me. I hadn’t even known how much I’d needed people like them in my life, how much I’d craved their attention and adoration. How good they made me feel, without knowing who I was or where I came from. It wasn’t until I met them that I truly understood how dirty and cynical and foul this whole business with the war between the clans was, and now that I had a taste of a life without all that, I needed to get back to it. They had cared for me and I had cared for them – things had just fit together, as though they were obvious, when the five of us had been together. In more ways than one. I still craved their touches, their mouths, their hands, more than they would ever know. I wondered if they missed me, if they had looked for me at all.

  Suddenly, I heard a noise at the end of the hall – I looked up, noting the blackness outside, and wondered who the hell was coming in here at this time of night. Whoever it was, I was all too happy to take them on. I prepared myself, coaxing the small brick I had managed to loosen out from the wall and gripping it in my hand. I could do this. I could take out this guard. I would kill him if I had to. The thought curdled in my brain, making me feel a little ill, but I knew that my choices were to take this guy out or to end up like those poor creatures experimented on in this place. Barely even human anymore. I took a deep breath as the footsteps drew closer, but before I could swing, I realized that they were too quick to belong to a guard. Far too quick. Like they were running from something or to something or-

  “James?” I gasped, as I finally saw who the footsteps belonged to. He looked terrified, even in the pale half-light afforded by the window high on the wall. His face was drawn and he held his hand up to silence me, then beckoned me closer.

  “What are you doing here?” I murmured, keeping my voice low, though I doubted Rissa was in much of a state to overhear or rat us out.

  “I’m sorry I had to lie.” He looked genuinely pained, the cruelty and harshness from his attitude before vanishing just like that. “I…I had no choice. I knew if I didn’t tell them who you were, they would have sent you for experimenting like the rest of the prisoners…”

  “It’s okay,” I replied. “Thank you for…for keeping me alive.”

  He looked around again and I could see the panic written all over his face. He knew he shouldn’t be here. I wondered what his punishment would be for talking to me, for telling me the truth, for showing me a little human comfort in my time of need, the same as I had shown him. Well, not quite the same, as I was still stuck in here and-

  Before I could finish the thought, the boy had looked around once more and had produced a heavy key from his pocket. He pushed it through the bars on my door and let it clatter to the ground with a clunk. He widened his eyes at me, as though imploring me to keep my damn mouth shut, and I blinked at him for a moment as I tried to make sense out of what had just happened. He darted off and, before he could change his mind, I lunged to grab for the key and undid the door as fast as I could. I stepped out of the cell and inhaled a big lungful of air. I was free. I was out.

  “Rissa?” I hissed into the blackness, but there was no reply. I peered into her cell but couldn’t see anything looking back at me. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light, I thought I could make her out – her back to me, her sides rising and expanding smoothly as she breathed in and out.

  “Rissa!” I called again, as loudly as I dared, but there was no response.

  “I’ll come back for you,” I promised, and I meant it. For now, I needed to get out of here.

  I crept to the door, which James had left unlatched, and stepped out into the main square of the compound – a snow had fallen overnight and the place was covered with soft white, oddly peaceful despite my circumstances. I took a deep breath, looked around, and noted a small door open on the side of one of the enormous walls that enclosed this place. Yes, that would do.

  I hurried towards it, shifting as I went and gathering my clothes in my jaw, and prayed that the fresh snow would obscure my scent enough that no one would bother coming out to find me. I hurtled through the snow, not looking back, my heart hammering so fast that I feared it might burst out the front of my chest. It pained me to know I was leaving people behind, that Rissa and Cora remained in this place, and made a promise to the full moon above me that I would come back to let them out as soon as I could.

  I made my way out of the
compound and into the forest beyond, and realized I had no idea where I was going. I just had to run. As far and as fast as I could. And pray that eventually I would stumble over one of the men I missed so much it felt as though a hole had been left in my heart at their absence.

  I began to move, glancing over my shoulder and making sure nobody was following me. And then, it hit me – I was out. I had sincerely believed that I would never get to feel this again, never get the snow under my feet or the breeze through my fur. I felt a rush of joy, despite myself. I was out. I had done it. My kindness had come back and released me.

  And then, my stomach dropped as I saw three figures on the horizon, cresting the top of a hill that I was barreling towards.

  Wolves. Three of them, all male.

  No doubt on patrol from the keep to trap in prisoners like me. My stomach clenched and I skidded to a halt, baring my teeth, preparing for a fight. Now that I had a taste of freedom, I wasn’t going back there. Not for anything.

  They approached slowly, as though making sure they had the right wolf, but as they got nearer, I realized something. I recognized their scents. Was I going crazy, or—

  Their scents washed over me like a warm summer rain. Before my mind could fully grasp it, they shifted back into human form when they were in front of me, and I did the same.

  Luke, Anton, and Ethan stood before me, looking down at me, beautifully bare and as perfect as the day I’d left them.

  “Oh, my God,” I gasped, and tears sprang into my eyes. I collapsed forward and Ethan caught me, pulling me into his arms. I inhaled his scent, the scents of all three of them, and wrapped my arms around him tight. I never wanted to let go.

  “Jesus, are you all right?” Anton asked, a little gruff, and I wondered if he was feeling as emotional as I was. I pulled away, shivering in the cold. “God, I feared we were too late. That we’d never see you again. What happened?”

  “I just…” I pointed back down towards the keep, which was still in view. “I left because I didn’t want you guys to have to put yourselves in danger to protect me, but I didn’t get far. The MacLarens took me prisoner. I escaped and…”

  I trailed off again, squinting. There was something wrong. The swell of joy that had overtaken me as soon as I had realized it was them was slowly draining away, and I couldn’t figure out why. I scanned their faces, one by one, and through my fog of shock and fear, it finally hit me.

  “Wait, where’s Rafe?”

  “He’s not with you?” Anton demanded.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I left alone that night.”

  “Fuck,” Luke muttered to himself.

  “We followed his scent and it disappeared right about the same time as yours did before we picked it up again leading here. He must have followed you and ended up getting caught.” Anton tipped his head back and ran his hand over his chin. “Did you see him down at the keep?”

  “No, but…” I shook my head, and then remembered what they had said the day before. The male. They were putting Cora in with a male.

  For experimenting.

  “Oh, my god,” I whispered, anger and fear and desperation swelling inside me all at once. “I think I know where he is.”

  “Do they have him?” Anton frowned, and I nodded.

  “I think so,” I confirmed and my chest went cold. “And I think he’s in a hell of a lot of danger.”

  “We need to get him out of there, then.” Luke peered past me to the keep, like he was going to run down there and get him out right then and there.

  “Yeah, we do,” I agreed. I looked between the three of them, grief and terror melding as I realized I’d been the reason Rafe was captured. “But there are hundreds of them, and we can’t do it alone. We need to get some help. I got you guys into this mess, and I swear I will find a way to get you out of it.”

  Or I would die trying.

  Stay tuned for the conclusion of Arianna’s story in Her Howling Harem Book Two, coming in Jan. 2018!

  Want more steamy reverse harem now? Check out Kidnapped by the Dragon Harem, out now!

  Four very bad boys, one ill-advised Christmas wish...what's a girl to do?

  Eleanor Maxwell loves her job at the daycare center and can’t wait to become a full-fledged teacher. But when a sexy stranger propositions her, she can’t help but wonder if she’s played it too safe all these years. Just when she’s considering throwing caution to the wind for a night of passion, the matter is taken out of her hands as she’s swept away by a clan of dragon shifters claiming they need a mate…and she’s it!

  Chapter One

  "It's lovely," I said, holding up Bobby White's drawing and squinting. "What is it?”

  "You!" squealed Bobby, with perhaps just a hint of reproach in his young voice.

  I looked again at the confusion of blue and red paint, sprinkled with glitter and, for some reason, with a dead leaf pasted into the middle of it. "Of course it's me! How silly of me not to recognize myself."

  "You ridin' a dom-key," Bobby explained.

  "What fun," I said with an enthusiastic nod.

  "In a spaceship. With a crocodile." He pointed to a bright orange smear and I beamed back at him.

  I never got tired of listening to the flights of imagination of my two and three-year-old charges. They might not have always had the language skills to express what they meant—to Bobby, every animal between the sizes of a dog and horse was a crocodile—but their enthusiasm for everything, their curiosity about the world, and their desire to see everything, do everything, and learn everything at ninety miles a minute made them the best people in the world to work with, bar none.

  The kids were why I got into teaching in the first place—or at least they were why I was trying to get into teaching. Working at the Sunshine Daycare Center was a day job, a way to pay the bills while I got my Master’s in teaching via night school. It made for a punishing schedule, but I stuck with it because being a teacher was all I had ever wanted, and because working with the kids was its own reward. Of course, the money was important, too. A Master’s is an expensive commitment—just meeting living expenses was tough enough, even if you're not living in the big city. The money I earned didn't have time to get comfortable in my bank account—it went straight in and straight out again.

  "It's beautiful," I said to Bobby. "I'm going to put it up on the wall."

  "Fank you, Elmelemanor!" My name—which was more usually pronounced Eleanor, or just plain Ella—was always a bridge too far for Bobby's diction.

  He scooted off happily, back to the drawing table to work on his next masterpiece, while I surveyed the room. The brilliant thing about kids at this age was that they had no concept of “cool”. Even before the word was used in human history there was a sort of unconscious concept of “cool”—some cavemen would look down on others because they wore the wrong type of animal skin, while others self-consciously hid their interest in quartz because everyone else was into flint. For some reason, this is how we're wired.

  But not kids.

  Kids do what they want without ever worrying about how it might look. They dance if they want to dance for sheer joy of doing it and don't care that they look like a puppet with its strings cut, on speed. They tell each other, their parents, their teachers and even random strangers that they love them. They wear what they like, they say what they think and they never worry that anyone might judge them for it. Best of all, none of their peers do judge them for it. When they dance badly, no one makes fun—they're more likely to join in. Sometimes you'll see kids behaving like kids in the park and parents will desperately try to rein them in—my heart breaks a little every time I see something like that. This stage of their lives, this joyous, non-judgmental attitude, is all too short. In a scant ten years it will be gone and they'll be picking on the weaker ones in the herd because they're wearing the wrong sneakers or listening to the wrong music.

  I often wondered how much we accidentally inflicted those prejudices on children from our own
experience. Or perhaps it was just an inevitable part of growing up; finding your people, your tribe, your clan. Either way, the more time I spent with children of this extraordinary age, the more I thought we could all learn a thing or two from them. I didn't have to look back very far through my own life to think of opportunities missed because I was too scared to go after what I had really wanted. I knew it's a horribly trite thing to say—

  “I'm supposed to be teaching them but I feel like they're the ones who are teaching me”—but that's genuinely how I felt. To live without the societal inhibitions of adulthood, that would be something.

  "Ella!"

  Just as I was thinking these very deep thoughts, Janet, one of the other caregivers, yelled to me and pointed at where Tyler Montgomery was painting a mural on the wall of the nap-time room with the contents of his diaper.

  "I got him," I called back to Janet. "Tyler! What are you doing? You wouldn't do that at home, would you?"

  As I chased after the half-naked Tyler, who had made a break for it as fast as his pudgy little legs would carry him, I reflected that Tyler's mother was, in fact, a conceptual artist. She had apparently won a major award last year for a pile of distressed tires which she set on fire outside of Rockefeller Center. I had asked what it meant but she said, “Whatever you want it to mean”, which didn't really help. For all I knew, she was training Tyler up for her next exhibition. I made a mental note to ask her to tell Tyler that feces were not an appropriate medium.

  After a surprisingly vigorous chase around the soft play area—the kid had an impressive turn of speed—I managed to grab Tyler, who acquiesced immediately with a big grin on his face.