“Good,” Krall grunts, not stopping for a second in his relentless pursuit of the flatlands. I can see them over his shoulder, grassy plains that stretch on for miles at the edge of the desert we haveyet to cross. I wonder what grass will feel like on my paws. It looks soft from this great distance.
“Can I get down, please?”
Krall ignores me. I feel a pang of irritation. This man makes everything difficult. He adds resistance to absolutely every moment, entirely unnecessarily. He could just do what I am asking. It would not take a moment.
“Hey,” I say. “Lemme down. I need to pee.”
That last part is enough to get him to act right away.
He loosens the blanket ties and lets me slide down his tall body all the way to the ground below. My feet touch the scree and I know instantly I am already quite far from my home territory.
I follow instinct like a flash. I turn and I run as hard and as fast as I can back up the mountain. I do not want to be taken from the lands I know. There are ties they are trying to sever, and I will not allow it.
“Get her!”
Three powerful males are immediately on my tail. Krall is too large and too fatigued from carrying me to effectively give chase, and Skor seems to have the bulk of the equipment, which takes him a moment to shed. If it was just the two of them, I might actually be able to get away. But there is a third mate, a younger, faster, more predatory creature and it is he who overhauls me and brings me down in the dusty pebbles of the lower slopes.
“Let me go!” I scream at the top of my lungs. There is no point trying to maintain dignity. They’re not going to allow me any. They are abducting me from my home.
“I’m sorry,” Thorn says as he holds me down. “I’m sorry.”
“I saved your life and this is what you do to me?” I weep and my tears find the dust, turning it into the very smallest pools of mud.
“I know,” he says. “And I am sorry, but I really can’t let you go.”
The others have caught up by now, big lumbering beasts that they are.
Skor snatches me up and holds me in front of his burningly intense blue eyes rimmed by dark lashes.
“Do not run from us, please,” he says. I expected him to be harsher, but he modulates his tone a little. “It’s dangerous, and we are eager to leave these lands.”
“I’m not eager to leave. That wasn’t the deal. That was never the deal. You are supposed to get to mate me for one night. Not take me away.”
“We are not going to leave you up there, to a place where all are consumed sooner or later,” Skor says. “We’re going to take you to civilization. We’re going to show you what life can really be like. You’re going to be very happy.”
“Where are we going?”
“It will take some time, because we are far from transport. But once we find it, we will be taking you to Eclipse City. It is the biggest shifter-led city in the continent. It has a wolf king. You will see the world through entirely new eyes there, trust me.”
But I don’t trust him. I may not be worldly. I may not have seen cities of wonders and kings who are wolves, but I know that when a man with this look in his eyes tells me to trust him, trusting him is the absolute very last thing I should ever do.
I feel the tug of my ancestral home pulling at me. I am being commanded to return. I have to go back. I have to. I feel panic rising in me at the prospect of being taken even farther away. I quell it a little by telling myself I will escape these mates soon enough. They will sleep tonight, and I will give them no reason not to trust me. I will let them think I have submitted to them, and when I have a chance I will run all the way back home. They will not dare follow me into another long night of darkness.
“You’ve been mated,” Skor says. “You belong to us now. It is really that simple.”
“You didn’t mate me,” I snap back. “You put your rod in the wrong hole and…” I trail off, blushing at my own coarseness.
Skor throws back his head and roars in laughter.
“Do you need a dose of my seed in your pussy? Would that help make the journey more pleasant?”
“Shut up,” I sulk. I do not like the feeling of being mocked, especially sexually.
“Don’t tease her,” Thorn chimes in. “She’s homesick. We know what that feels like.”
I feel a little pang of gratitude toward him, but it disappears when I remember he could have let me go. He could have pretended that I ran too fast. He could have tripped or stumbled. I could have been free now, making my way back up to the place I belong. But he didn’t do any of those things. He caught me and he handed me back into captivity, and for that reason I cannot trust him or risk liking him for even a moment.
“It’s time to go,” Krall says, taking my hand in his. He sets off down the hill again, and I am forced to follow him like arecalcitrant child. I try to pull back, to get away, but his grip is firm and unyielding, and even picking my feet up entirely and just sliding across the rough ground is not enough to dissuade him. He just lets me drag.
