by Starr, Maia
“I refuse to betray my men. I will not,” I said, intentionally keeping my gaze from meeting his. He slid his cheek closer into mine, the prickling of his beard hairs rubbing roughly against my face as he brought his lips just inches from my own.
“Oh, yes you will, and that fire in you will breed the strongest of wolves for our pack. I wonder if you can throw large litters from multiple fathers like a good pussycat?” he snarled, flicking his tongue outward against the corner of my mouth as he arose to stand again. I was disgusted. I wasn’t just a breeding whore for the usage of the tramps of the island; I was a lady, and not only that, I was the claimed mate of four of the most powerful beasts inhabiting the island. I was damned sure not popping out puppies like some bitch at a puppy mill for these rabid and vile mutts. I’d have rather died.
I turned to look back at him, my eyes casting fiery darts into his; if only looks could kill, I thought, but my words were just as icy once issued,
“I will haunt your pack to the ends of the earth and back again before I will ever obey any of you mangy mutts!” I spat in his face as I finished barking, not caring about whether or not I was abused more as a result of it. He had noticed the fire, but I had just started to ignite the burn and had a lot more fuel to back it up before I would ever give in.
He closed his eyes and brought his hand up to wipe at his face, growling as he looked at the spittle dripping off his hands, and in a flash, he backhanded me across the cheek, sending me along with the chair straight to the ground. I met the floor on the side, smashing my leg and arm into the ground as the chair came to topple over with me still latched to it. He kicked at the back of the chair, and I turned my face just as he spat upon me.
“You will do what we tell you to do, how we tell you to do it, whenever we tell you to do it, and your behavior will determine whether or not you are treated with any semblance of humanity at all. Do not try me, bitch. I promise you’ve never met anyone like me; there are none darker. There are none more brutal, and there are none stronger than I, nor are there any who will test my authority,” he warned me.
“Are you the alpha?” I asked, weakly, keeping my eyes averted to the ground as a sign of submission. This seemed to work as the man paused and snorted.
“I am the one in command here, yes,” he replied.
“What is your name?” I asked him, feeling that if he were the alpha, I should at least know who I was talking to. He snorted again and looked down at me.
“You look rather pathetic. You spat in my face and now try to be friends? You should have started out that way to begin with. It would have saved you some pain,” he chuckled, “but then again, your pain arouses my curiosities. You still show fire while being thrown to the ground. Why?” he asked me.
“I have always been a fighter.” I recalled the willpower and strength it had taken me to endure all I had in the last few weeks, and all throughout my life. This seemed to amuse him, and he chuckled slightly, kneeling down and lifting the chair to push me back upright. My hair fell across my face in a curtaining veil, and I sighed softly in relief; as crazy as it was, the shroud provided some semblance of security, even if it were only to my imagination.
“A fighter is what I have been looking for. It makes it more fun,” he said. “My name is Davish,” he added, and I pondered on the nationality of the tanned man with the intense and scary eyes, then it dawned on me, and everything made sense. Arabic: what a perfect match for alpha.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hailey
I was left to my lonesome for the first several hours of my captivity, but I knew that Davish was not going to give up on his opportunity to have me. He had made it clear in every action and every word and all of it rested on the fact that I had chosen to fight against him and the rest of the wolves. The two others who had taken me came in a few times to check on me, providing water and small amounts of food, but none of them dared to touch me, and I was beginning to wonder why. The only thing that made any sense was that Davish must have made a command that nobody messed with me. Perhaps he wanted me to be at ease for when he finally came but the thought of him coming at any given time terrified me, and I didn’t know what to expect from him after hearing that he was the darkest and most brutal of his vicious clan. I feared what would happen next, and I knew the time was no longer in my corner.
I learned later that Davish wasn’t the leader, but instead, the leader’s son. Davish came to me later that night, and the events that unfolded were more than horrifying: they were the ultimate trauma that I could no longer fight off. I was exhausted from my attempts, and just as Davish had predicted, I obeyed his every whim. He found me, still tied to the chair, my eyes barely slits as I peered up at him. The only thing I could see was the glinting glare of the candlelight as it hit his pearly white teeth. He was grinning, like a malicious beast about to savor and salivate over his prey, and it was me.
I suddenly felt my stomach churning, but I closed my eyes as his fingers ripped the ropes from my wrists, and he pulled me free of the chair. I had no way to stand, my legs were pure gelatin, quivering so much that I instantly came crashing to my knees, staring up at him but barely able to make out any of the shapes around me except that grin, that shimmering opal smile that was more terrifying than the darkness that was gently welcoming me. I didn’t want to give into him, and he could tell, but that didn’t seem to make a bit of difference.
As I heard the sound of his belt jingling, my thoughts drifted away from me, leading me to recall the faces of each of the men I loved, but it was Cree whose face crossed my mind first. Cree with his brilliant red hair and sweet demeanor, paired with incredible culinary skill. Cree, who had been trying to make things as normal as possible for me. And then Weston. His strong demeanor and quick sense of action made it easy to see why he was the alpha out of the four of them, though Malick was a strong second for the role.
Off in my thoughts, I could only feel bits and pieces of what was happening to me, and I forced myself to imagine I was anywhere but where I was. In my head, I exited the room and never endured that darkness, but in reality, the bruising already showing up on my body was the evidence that it wasn’t just a nightmare I could roll over and go to sleep from, but when in the midst of a traumatizing experience, your mind sort of fragments to protect itself. Mine was no different. I felt the stinging sensation of tears as they welled in the corners of my eyes, and just as Davish was about to rape me, I began to sob uncontrollably.
“Please, please, don’t do this to me,” I wailed, hoping that my cries wouldn’t fall on deaf ears, “I’ll do anything.” Davish snorted at me, stepping back and growling for some unknown reason.
“You,” he shook his head, continuing to step back and snarling, “You’re tainted goods! You’re ruined,” he groaned, and I wasn’t sure I understood what he was referring to. I looked up at him puzzled just as he pulled my wrist, lifting me off the ground and dragging me toward the door. My feet dug into the ground, and I did my best to stumble onto them, skipping to keep up with Davish’s increasing speed as he dragged me out of the shack.
“What do you mean? Where are we going?” I wailed, my fear rising to the back of my throat like a lodged piece of food stuck in my windpipe.
“You’re useless, a common whore; the child you carry is an abomination!” he bellowed. I was truly puzzled by this; the child I carried? What was he talking about?
“What, what do you mean?” I asked as he began to drag me toward a large crowd. He looked down at me with a vehement expression.
“I will let my father decide what is best for you,” Davish barked at me, tossing me into the center of the group. In front of me sat a larger graying man; he was by no means fat, but incredibly muscular, so much that the veins in his neck and arms seemed to proceed him as they protruded from his skin. I fumbled to my knees and looked up at the man just as I heard Davish address him with a bow. “Sire, she’s been impregnated by dragons. She’s useless to our cause,” he explained.
I understood immediately that the graying man was their leader. I glanced between him and Davish, and he snorted, his eyes steadying on me like I were an unwanted insect he was ready to smash beneath his massive boot. The man snorted and turned his head back toward Davish.
“I thought you said she was worth the time to take, Davish. Why do you now bring a worthless bitch to my feet? Is this my problem?” the man asked. Davish looked downward and shook his head.
“No, but it is only your place to determine what happens next to any prisoner, Sire,” Davish said respectfully. Aside from the man, another one of the wolves who had captured me snickered.
“I told you I smelt the dragon stench all over the bitch from the start,” he said vehemently. Davish growled and shot him a look of pure malice.
“You weren’t asked! Mind your tongue lest you want me to snatch it from your wagging mouth!” Davish snapped. I could feel my heart beating in my chest at nearly a hundred miles an hour. What were they going to do to me now that I was no longer a part of their reproductive plan?
“Shut up!” the graying man snapped, “There is a reason that I, Omar Rashif, am the alpha of the pack! The two of you both brought back a contaminated woman, and now you want to bark about who the better man is? Surely, neither of you, because now I, once again, have to clean up the aftermath of your idiocy!” Omar bellowed.
“What do you want us to do?” Davish asked, focusing his attention immediately back on his father. Omar arose from his seat and walked toward me, casting an annoyed glance at me and shaking his head.
“Pity, such a pretty one you were, but now I have no choice,” he slid his finger up beneath my chin to look over me one more time, and then, when I thought I could handle no more, he ordered my fate. “Kill her. There’s no room for tainted bitches in this pack,” he finished, slapping me hard across the face and sending me to the ground, leaving the last sounds to enter my ears the signing of my death warrant, and salvation was nowhere in sight.
Chapter Twenty-Three
James
"Damn it!" I hollered out at no one as I realized what those wolves had done. They had been able to confuse her trail so that we couldn’t easily follow where she had been taken.
I was supposed to be back at our safe spot trying to heal Cree, but he had only let me do the bare minimum before he stopped cooperating. He insisted I go with the others to make sure everyone made it out safe and alive. All I could hope at this point was that one of us found the right trail.
I could pick up the faint traces of Malick and Weston where they had split up in an effort to make sure one of them found her, so I chose yet another trail and just knew that if we didn’t find her in time, that all of us would be going beast before we even had a chance to say goodbye.
It was odd, the bond that had formed between the four of us. Sure, I didn’t always like the way Hailey looked at the other men, but it didn’t bother me the same way it used to. Besides, sometimes it was fun to have her at the same time as another man. But that didn’t naturally lend itself to all of these different clans coming together to be able to work on a similar cause without a fight, and yet we could. It was all Hailey, and what a powerful woman she was. The entire Earth would mourn her passing if something happened to her, and the wolves would burn for it, every last one of them. I would make sure of it, and I was pretty sure the others would feel the same way. If Cree made it, anyway.
"No, you can’t think like that," I told myself as I continued to follow trail after trail, many being false and leading me around in circles. But finally, the last one I followed took me through the trees and out into the open onto a part of the island I didn’t recognize. Then, I saw it: a broken-down shack by some old docks that was overgrown with various plant life. I just knew when I saw it that she was in there; they all were.
I didn’t know how they were fairing in there, but I knew that no matter what, Hailey was making it out alive, regardless of whatever we did or not. One of us would take her out of there and get her long gone before the werewolves and remaining dragons could rip each other to shreds.
I burst inside, using all my strength without a care as to what I had torn up, and from the looks of things, it was just in time. I could tell that Malick and Weston had both arrived only moments before myself, almost witnessing the death of the woman we loved.
Malick, unable to control himself was already changing, his purple ribbon of light swaying and expanding as the wolves began to change from their civilized bodies into their wolf forms, getting in pack formation. Even though they surrounded a very battered Hailey, I could tell they would be distracted enough that one of them might be able to get her if they stayed in human form.
"Someone has to get her, Weston," I hissed, approaching him as he seemed to be getting lost in his anger. We couldn’t lose our alpha. He needed to pull it together and be the one to carry her out. "She needs to be taken out."
"Then, do it, healer. You see how she is hurt," Weston seethed, not taking his eyes off the wolves who were ready for a fight as Malick's tail came down and shook the shack, starting to make pieces of it crumble and come down on them.
"As much as I hate it, you’re right. Please, try not to die," I ordered Weston as I took a spot behind the enormous deep purple foot that belonged to Malick. The wolves needed to lose my sight, lose my movements, so I would use the large forms of the other two dragons to hide until they moved to make an opening, then I would grab her before I shifted, carrying her up and out of this old piece of shit they dared to hold my mate in. Our mate in.
Chaos soon took over the scene in front of me, and I was worried that the building would kill her before I could get to her, and I had to make my move.
I took off at a run, and I could see the relief in her flickering eyes as she saw me lift her up. "You’re safe. I am going to fix you up," I told her, and she whispered something inaudible as I shifted, breaking the whole place apart with a thundering sound. At this point I didn’t care if one of the clans did find us; maybe they would come together once and for all to end this mutt epidemic. That was the only way, and I knew it, but they were all so damn stubborn. Even my own loving clan wouldn’t work any way but solo. It was impractical, but what could one dragon do?
I soared high and listened intently to Hailey's shallow breathing, knowing she would need as much care as Cree, if not more. For a moment, I felt a doubt take seed in mind, a doubt that I had the ability to save either of them, but I couldn’t do that and sabotage myself. Hailey was everything to us, and I would save her for myself, and Cree for her. There was no other option.
I got her back home and laid her down, trying not to let the panic or the tears show as I began my work on her. I was sure to put her next to Cree so she could see that though he was unconscious, he was alive, surprisingly. And he sure wouldn’t fight now at least.
As I began to cut her clothes off, she reached over to stroke Cree's arms before turning to me with sad eyes but a strange smile. "Baby," she said, and I cocked my head to the side before I watched her slowly and painfully move an injured arm to her belly. "Baby," she said again, and my eyes went wide. No, this couldn’t be, but then again, I should have known. The wolves would never kill her if they had use for her for breeding. It only meant one thing: she was already pregnant with a dragon, or at least she had been before they beat her like this.
That was when the tears came, both of happiness and pure terror that we might lose the best thing that could ever happen to any of us, and that maybe Weston and Malick would never know we were having a baby.
“I will make sure he or she is alright, okay?” I assured her, leaning down to place a kiss on her bloody and filthy forehead, and she nodded into me. “Shhh, rest, okay? Just rest, and I will take care of you.” I reached for a needle, placing it into her arm, knowing she would need to be out by the time shock wore off because the pain alone would cause her to go into a state that would harm the baby. I knew she would never live with herself.
Alone, I worked, trying to save the two lives hanging in the balance, and wondered what had become of the other two men that protected this woman with their lives.
Chapter Twenty-Four
James
Four Months Later...
I couldn’t believe I had been sent outside like a common house animal as I paced back and forth, trying my very best not to do something stupid like turn into a dragon or bust through the doors and cause any more tension to rise. That was the only factor keeping me from those things: the fact that Hailey needed a stress-free environment right now, even if it meant that I couldn’t be with her, holding her hand and coaching her through this.
Malick was also not allowed in the room. He had been errand boy until he lost it and went flying, unable to handle the stress in human form. I couldn’t exactly blame him this time. So, it was Cree and James that got front row seats to the birth of my child. Our child.
It wasn’t like we would ever know which of us was the reason she got pregnant. It could have been any one of us, surely, though Cree joked about it coming out with red hair and making it obvious just because he liked it. Even though we all got along now, sometimes I still wanted to wipe that grin off that cocky little boy’s face.
My blood pressure spiked as I could hear Hailey’s screams and cries coming from inside, and I growled and slammed my fist against a nearby tree, injuring the skin over my knuckles. I didn’t care; I just hated that I couldn’t be in there, couldn’t see that James was doing his damn job properly and making sure baby and mother would come out of this healthy and unscathed.
I didn’t know how much longer I could wait, especially as Malick showed his ugly mug and landed next to me with a large dragon huff, pushing smoke out of his nostrils. I rolled my eyes at him as he was finally able to turn into human form, not even bothering to find some clothes to put on. I supposed clothes were not exactly important when the woman you loved was in pain giving birth to your child.