I am nervous, but that does not matter. My feelings are of no concern whatsoever. This is my destiny, and I must rise to meet it. Tonight I will be bred, and the man who breeds me will be killed by the beasts that inhabit this land, roaming with a hunger that can never be satisfied.
I am pushed up onto the dais, and there is a moment in which I still haven’t seen him. I keep my eyes down on the stone, looking at all the cracks, hoping that somehow this isn’t actually happening.
I wonder what he’ll look like. I wonder how old he will be. I wonder if he will seed me and leave me with pups, or if he will prove to be unseeded, and then I will have to undergo this process again and again.
When I lift my eyes, it is first to my father.
He is a massive man sitting in an even larger chair. His gray hair is plaited in several thick cords and he is wearing a crown of golden thorns. His chest is covered in a cuirass for a battlethat will never come to the den because men like these come to give their lives. He has one shoulder clad in a pauldron with the insignia of the wolf. This is ancient armor, handed down from father to son for generations. I will never wear anything like it, because I do not have the prized male gene. I was made to be given away.
I have not been this close to my father for years. I have seen him from time to time, in the distance, being tended to by his wives. But the daughters of the ancient alpha are not of much interest to him. We are like cattle to be traded, nothing more.
“This is my daughter,” my father says, rising from his chair to cast an expansive arm in my direction. “My very flesh and my blood given to you.”
I turn slowly and hope the warrior who has come to claim me is handsome and kind. It seems unlikely that he would be both. The state some of my sisters have been left in after their night of breeding has made me glad that the men who did it were consumed by the hungry things.
But… wait… why so many strangers?
I feel a moment of intense confusion as I realize that there’s not one male standing in front of my father’s dais. There are three.
Three massive Karis warriors, each with long raven-black hair to their shoulders, bare chests showing rippling human physiques, and traditional black tartan kilts that can easily be shed for a transformation without being destroyed. They are wearing long black boots that come up past the knee.
My mother’s books taught me that they’re from wetter isles than these mountains, which tend to be dry and hot during the day, and dry and cold at night. Their skin is pale and their eyes arebright blue, a striking contrast with their dark hair. Their jaws are broad and well formed. They are handsome, and very similar in appearance. Related, perhaps? Small packs tend to breed similar traits.
One is probably a few years older than I am. Perhaps mid-twenties. Another seems older than him. The third one is graying at the temples and must be at least twice my age.
They have all come to die. But first they have come to take me as their own.
Not one.
Three.
Nobody told me three.
What would three warriors do to me? How would I ever hope to take them?
I try to dash off the stage as fright takes me, but my father intercedes by grabbing me by the arm. There is no escape.
He drags me down the front stairs of the dais, toward the three warriors who only look larger the lower I get in front of them. The middle one has to be approaching seven feet tall, a prodigious height by any estimation. He looks down at me with eyes that seem black, though I know them to be blue. His pupils have dilated so much upon meeting me that there’s almost no color in his gaze at all.
“This is the token I have for you. This is the appropriate sacrifice in return for your sacrifice,” my father says. The men aren’t listening to him. If they were, they’d ask more about this whole sacrifice deal.
I am inspected by three piercing sets of eyes, each of which seem to bore right through me, finding the secret parts of me I would most like to hide. I am on display for our dwindled pack, and for these strangers whose blood will be shed in the effort to turn back the dark tide. There is desperation in the air, a heavy, mournful energy that intertwines with this sexual transaction.
“You bring us a single female?” the eldest, most grizzled one says. His scarred features turn in disgust. I do not know if he finds me very displeasing, or if the fact I am alone is what is at issue.
“A small one at that,” the tall one says.
“A morsel,” the youngest grins, flickering a little wink at me.
“Barely a bite,” the tall one continues.
“We were promised great reward,” the eldest says.
“This is my greatest possession,” my father says. “My seventh daughter from my seventh mate, freshly turned eighteen years of age. Tibby.”
“Tabby,” I mutter. I’m also his thirteenth daughter, but I know he lost count a long time ago.
“Tabby,” he says.
