by Logan Jacobs
And I couldn’t let her die. I wouldn’t.
“If you hurt her, I will make your death slow and painful,” I growled. My voice was so threatening I nearly scared myself, but the warg wasn’t the least bit fazed.
Instead, the beast let out a low chuckle. It was a disgusting sound, a mixture between a dog’s bark and a pig’s squeal that made me want to clamp both hands over my ears. I forced myself to stay still, though, and just gripped my sword a little tighter. My short fingernails dug into my palms, but I didn’t care as I tried to communicate with Ainsley with my eyes, to tell her everything would be okay and there was no way in hell I’d let her die.
“Who are you?” the warg taunted. “I thought we’d killed off all the men.”
“You assholes did,” I spat. “I am the Dragon King.”
Suddenly, the creature’s beady eyes went wide.
I’m talking wide as mother fucking dinner plates kind of wide. So wide that I was thrown off for a moment. I hadn’t expected him to know what the hell I meant by Dragon King. I’d just thrown it out there to sound powerful.
But the way his eyes widened told me there was something more behind that look. He knew something, and my very title had scared the shit out of him.
“Not possible,” he finally breathed as he looked me up and down.
I noticed the shock had loosened his grip, and Ainsley could breathe now. So, I looked from her face down to the warg’s exposed foot as I hoped she got my message.
And sure enough, she did.
Half a second later, Ainsley brought her foot down right on top of the warg’s, and I heard the bones shatter with multiple loud cracks.
A shit load of things happened at once. The warg screamed, Ainsley wrenched herself free from his gnarled claws, and I leapt forward with my sword in my grasp, ready to skewer this fucking warg.
But before I could bury my sword in his back, the warg managed to straighten himself and blocked my blow with one well-muscled arm.
“Not today, Dragon King,” he snarled.
The other arm came up in a wild haymaker as it tried to knock me out, but I spun under his punch and swept my right leg out to kick his feet out from under him.
The warg crashed down on the platform with a thunderous shake, but the vines were too weak to hold the weight of his fall. They snapped apart, and for a split second, I thought he would just fall to his death on the forest floor.
But, with a yell, he wrapped a hand around my ankle and took me with him through the massive hole in the platform.
I tried to grab a hold of something with my empty left hand, but there were no good holds in the vines.
“Ben!” Ainsley screeched.
But it was too late. There was nothing she could do as the warg and I both fell toward the forest floor.
Branch after branch smacked me in the ass, then the back, then the side, then the arm as I tumbled through the trees and down toward the ground. It was all I could do to get myself into a ball and turn my fall into a somersault when I hit the ground, so I didn’t break every bone in my body.
As quickly as I hit the ground, I forced myself to uncurl from the ball and face the warg, who had managed to hit the ground in a similar position. The monster, however, seemed to be a hell of a lot more affected by the pain of impact than I was, and he was on his hands and knees as he tried to regain his composure.
This was my opportunity.
I snatched my sword up from beside me, raised it above my head, and ran at the monster. I was ready to slice him in half right down the middle of his back, but unfortunately for me, the thing had the advantage of animal hearing. So, he spun around to dodge my attack just before my blade could make contact.
One of the warg’s meaty hands sent a blow straight to my kidney and nearly knocked me flat on my stomach. I flipped over just as the monster straddled me, and a wave of heated stink breath hit me square in the face.
“Gods, haven’t you ever heard of a toothbrush?” I choked on the smell but managed to pop him right in the mouth as he leaned over me with a sickening grin.
The warg grunted as his head snapped back, and I snatched the opportunity to stab my sword right into the place where its neck met its shoulder. I heard the blade go through with a satisfying squelch, and the beast yowled in agony.
I quickly yanked my blade free and readied myself to go for its now exposed stomach, but I never got the chance. The warg kicked me, hard, with a foot before he used the other hand to sink one of his massive claws into my side.
This sucker was a hell of a lot harder to fight off than the orcs.
“Shit!” I yelled when the sharp claw pierced my skin.
The idiotic warg, though, had left his side unguarded when he’d tried to go for the kill shot. While his disgusting yellow eyes were laser focused on my bleeding wound, I stabbed him right where the kidney should have been, and my blade sank through the layers of skin and blubber to do exactly what I wanted.
The warg’s eyes went wide, and much like his friend from yesterday, he let out one last growl as he tried to cling onto life.
But it was no use. I’d hit the organs, and the monster fell backward to bleed out on the forest floor.
“That’s what you get for trying to kidnap women,” I spat. I landed a last kick to his ribs, good and hard, before I spun around to scramble back up the tree.
As soon as I broke through the branches, I saw Mira on the platform in the middle, and the last warg crouched in front of her with its teeth bared and a nasty cut on its right cheek.
I felt a little swell of pride at how she’d managed to maim the beast already. The second warg was nowhere to be found, and I assumed she’d already managed to do away with him.
I had the advantage, for the moment. The beast hadn’t seen me yet, so I bent down and slunk over the platform to get behind it.
The women of the village were all huddled in one corner of the platform, and they were terrified as they watched the warg rush Mira again. She fought it, though, and the sound of metal against claw rang out through the village.
I climbed so I popped up right behind the women on the platform. Jemma saw me, and a brilliant smile lit up her face, but I quickly put a finger to my mouth to make sure she’d stay quiet. The last thing I needed was for her to say something and ruin the whole plan.
Jemma nodded her head vigorously at my shushing motion and turned away from me so none of the other women saw.
I rolled onto the platform, only a little in pain from the wound in my side, and slowly, silently, rose to my feet.
All of the women saw me now, but thankfully, they were all so frozen in fear, none of them said a thing.
The grunts and growls that emanated from Mira and the beast blanketed any sound I made as I crept over the vines, but I made sure to keep my footsteps soft and only stepped on the very balls of my feet.
The moment I was close enough to run the beast through, I made myself known to Mira.
“Mira, move!” I shouted.
The brilliant warrior instantly hit the ground as my blade came up, and I hacked clean through the warg’s neck.
His disgusting, snouted head dislodged from the rest of his body and bounced across the platform before it eventually rolled off. Then the beast’s body collapsed and spilled dark, ugly blood across the green vines.
For a second, the only sound heard throughout the village was the gross, slimy smack as the warg’s head hit branch after branch on its path down to the forest floor, where his buddy’s body was.
Then all was silent.
“Thanks for that,” Mira finally panted as she wiped some warg blood from her cheek. “That thing was much too strong.”
“These things are definitely better fighters than those damn orcs.” I nodded.
We carefully turned to the rest of the village, unsure what response we would be met with. The last time I’d killed something, Jemma had all but had a panic attack when she saw the dead body in front of her.
Many of the women’s faces were coated with tears, and fear was written across all of them as they collectively stared at the grotesque corpse.
Finally, after a moment, Ainsley spoke.
“Well, I hope this has convinced you why we must learn from Ben, my sisters.”
I knew the woman had said they didn’t have a leader on this island, but everything about her held the makings of a queen. She was the only one without tears of fear on her face, her posture was straight, and she leveled each of the other women with a gaze that could have burned through iron.
For a long moment, none of them said anything. A few broke down into sobs, others stared at the corpse, and some just gazed blankly off into the distance, probably in shock.
Finally, the abrasive brunette who had seemed so against my every move before stepped forward and leveled her green-eyed gaze on me.
“I am Theora,” she said before she spun around to face the rest of the group. “Sisters, I have given much thought to this. The serpent man and his woman are right. The attack this morning does nothing but proves that. Had they not been here, we would all be dead or enslaved by now. There would be no one left to inhabit this island, and our peaceful ways would have been completely in vain. We must learn to fight. If we do not, I fear we will all die before our time, just as our mates did.”
She finished her little speech with a nod before she turned to me, as if to ask for approval.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
I let her words hang in the air as I waited to see what the rest of the women would say, but there was no more resistance to be had. The attack had scared them all beyond belief, and I could see it in their eyes.
“We will learn to fight from you,” a blonde said.
“We will,” a black-haired deer woman echoed.
Soon, they were all in agreement.
“Good,” I told them. “We will start this afternoon, but first, I think I’ve got a bit of a problem here.”
I shifted and indicated my side, which had started to hurt suddenly. Hot, red blood trickled down my torso and soaked into the side of my pants.
“Oh, my!” Jemma exclaimed as she rushed forward and ducked to examine the wound. “Come to the healing tent.”
For the first time, her voice actually sounded serious and low, so I followed her to the tent, where she immediately stoked the fire and sat me down on one of the logs.
I watched her slender form flit around as she added water to the pot and made a poultice of some kind from a mixture of leaves and berries.
A few times, she caught me as I watched her, and I received a shy smile in return. It struck me how different these women were about their sexuality. Whereas the serpent women had been open, and almost demanding at times, these women hid their attraction behind small smiles and fervent looks.
I loved both reactions. These women had such different effects on me, it was insane. For example, the way my body heated up every time Jemma’s beautiful eyes grazed over me made me nearly go crazy.
Finally, Jemma came back over and stared at me.
“Ben, I must ask you to take your shirt off,” she said with a small giggle.
“Oh, right, of course,” I laughed. I started to lift my arms to take off the tattered cloth, but a searing pain shot through my torso the moment I stretched the wound. “Fuck. Ow.”
“Here, let me help,” Jemma offered.
She set the poultice down on the log next to me, then knelt before me. Her eyes were wide and focused on my muscular torso as she very carefully slid her soft, warm hands under the hem of my shirt.
The moment the pads of her fingers made contact with my skin, I forced myself to bite back a groan. Most of me wanted to let my head drop back, close my eyes, and revel in the feeling of her hands on me for hours.
I heard her breathing grow heavy as she started to lift my shirt, and I couldn’t help but watch her expression when the material peeled away to reveal my toned abs. Even though they were smeared with blood, the deer woman sucked her plump bottom lip into her mouth and gazed at me.
Her fingers slipped further and further up as she pulled the shirt away from my abs, then my chest. Finally, she stood and helped me get one arm out of the sleeve, and then the other.
Then the shirt was off, and Jemma folded it carefully before she grabbed a wet cloth and started to clean the wound.
The whole process was titillating, and the way the warm water mixed with Jemma’s hungry gaze spurred me on and made me brave.
“Did you have a husband before the invaders came?” I asked her. I was still a little unsure how their growth and ages worked. For all I knew, she could have been born a hundred years ago.
“Oh, no.” She shook her head quickly. “I’d only been alive fifteen summers when they came. I had no mate or prospects. I was much too young. And by the time I was fertile… well… ”
She tilted her head as her words trailed off, and sadness brimmed in her eyes.
“So, you are ready?” I asked. “For a mate, I mean.”
Jemma brought her clear gaze up to mine.
“Yes.” Jemma brought her clear gaze up to mine and smiled. “I am ready for a mate. But I don’t wish for young ones. I do not think it right to bring children into the world while our island is still threatened.”
“Of course.” I nodded.
Jemma finished cleaning off the blood from my torso and brought the poultice up to my wound.
It smelled, and not the good kind of smell, either. It was almost as bad as the warg’s breath had been.
“Wow,” I gagged.
“My apologies.” Jemma grimaced. “I know this is not pleasant, but it will help the wound to heal and stave off infection.”
Infection. Gross. I’d bet those wargs carried all sorts of diseases.
“Okay, go ahead,” I said, and I covered my mouth and nose with my free hand.
Jemma giggled a little at my disgust as she dipped a hand into the poultice, and then all but slapped a huge handful of it onto my wound.
The sensation that spread around the entirety of my torso when the poultice hit it was the strangest fucking thing I’d ever felt. At first, it tingled and cooled, almost like Tiger’s Balm would, but then, all of a sudden, the tingling sensation was replaced by a burning that seemed to permeate the entirety of my being. It only lasted for a split second, though, and when it dissipated, the entire wound was completely numb.
Jemma continued to pile on the poultice until it had filled the hole in my side and covered a pretty large area around it. Then she wrapped my stomach in a white cloth and tied it off to hold the poultice in.
“I will need to change that in the morning,” she informed me. “But you will heal within the next two moons.”
“Thank you, Jemma.” I smiled at her, and she blushed a bright red and ducked her head.
“You are welcome,” she replied.
I left the medicine tent and decided now would be the perfect time to see what the wargs had destroyed within the village and help the women to fix it. I walked around as I made a mental list, and then gathered the women to start repairing everything. They showed me how they wove their bridges with thick, strong vines, and we fixed two of the connecting ones that had been destroyed. Three tents had also been ripped apart when the wargs tried to capture the women inside, so we pounded out some long sheets of bark we peeled from the trees and turned it into cloth.
Once that was done, Mira, Jemma, Ainsley, me, and the rest of the village women were on the center platform, and everyone was ready for Mira and me to teach them how to shoot. We brought our bows out of our tent. My plan was to teach the women with our trusty weapons, and once it seemed like they were getting the hang of it, gather the village together and make enough bows for everyone.
“Alright,” I said to the group. “The most important thing to know about the bow and arrow: range. This weapon allows you to be many feet away from your opponent and still hit them. But that also means you need t
o be accurate. If you are even the slightest bit off, you could miss or hit someone else, and then you’ve lost all of the advantage of the long-range weapon. I’ll show you with our weapons for now, but we’ll have to make more for the rest of you soon.”
Mira tacked a piece of white cloth to the tree as I spoke. We’d drawn a crude bullseye on it with the use of some fruit juice, so I could teach all of the women how to aim.
“Who wants to go first?” I asked.
Every single woman looked at each other, like they wanted someone else to volunteer. It felt a little like the first day of school, when none of the kids wanted to do anything without the permission of their peers.
Finally, Ainsley stepped forward.
“I will try, Ben,” she told me.
“Thanks.” I smiled.
I indicated the place where I wanted her to stand, and she came right before me. I showed her how to grip the bow first, and then where to nock the arrow. As soon as I let go, though, the bow drooped instantly, and Ainsley grimaced with the effort.
“It is rather heavy,” she puffed out. The strawberry blonde-haired woman forced herself to raise the bow up, and I could see how the muscles in her arms shook, but she managed to remain steady, no matter how hard it seemed to be for her.
Okay. Step number two in this whole build a militia plan? Exercise. These women needed to put some meat on their bones and build muscle mass. Their legs were toned and strong, the way a runner’s are, but their upper body completely lacked any sort of strength. I needed to change that.
And one of the best ways to do that would be for them to eat actual meat.
“That’s okay, just do your best,” I told her with an encouraging smile.
Ainsley returned my smile as she forced the bow to stay up. Then she nocked the arrow, but she definitely wasn’t ready to shoot.
“Your footing is wrong,” I told her. “May I show you?”
She nodded, and I stepped up behind her and put my hands on her waist so I could direct her.
“Thank you,” she breathed, but I couldn’t tell if it was in response to my help, or my close proximity.
“You’re welcome,” I replied. “Now, put your feet shoulder width apart so you don’t lose your balance, and then step forward with your dominant foot. Good. Bring your elbow down so it’s flat. Good. And don’t move your hips when you shoot. Keep a good base.”