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My chest compresses, and darkness settles over the room. “Tell me you had nothing to do with Papa’s death,” I whisper.
He takes another drink. “I couldn’t afford for there to be competition.”
A terrible, broken cry is torn from my lips before I collapse to my knees. I can’t breathe. The air makes a wheezing sound as it tries to enter my lungs.
He steps toward me, and I throw my arm out to ward him off. “Do not dare to touch me,” I hiss. “Ever. You are not worthy of me, this life or the next!”
He stops a few paces away. “I don’t need to touch you, do I? Now, one of the barbarian bastards has already bred you. That’s good enough for me. I’ll keep your man alive for your compliance. But he can never leave. And neither can you. I’ll forgive your actions tonight. But tomorrow, you will play the part of my willing bride. I had your father killed. Don’t think I can’t do the same for your mother, or the barbarian bastard you claim to love.”
He drains his drink, slams it down on the table, and strides from the room.
As I fall to sobbing, two of his guards enter. They take me up winding stairs and into the attic of the house. Here, I am tossed into a boxy room with a single wooden bed and high barred window, and the door firmly shut.
I try the door. I try the window. Then, with my hand over my belly where a babe grows, I cry myself to sleep.
* * *
Lor
Pain is my unwelcome friend. It batters me in waves.
“Shift, you mangy mutt! I know you can hear me. I’m not above stabbing you again to rouse you if I must!”
That is the voice of my king, Alfred, and he sounds pissed.
Shift?
My eyes try to open but resist my command.
Fuck the pain!
“Shift!”
I shift. The pain is excruciating and then absent. I shake uncontrollably as every muscle on my spent body goes into shock. My stomach feels like it is trying to consume me from the inside out.
Hot, bloody meat is thrust between my lips. I suck it clean of juices before I slowly chew.
“Thank the Goddess,” my king mutters gruffly. “I thought I was going to lose you.”
“Please stop cursing,” a feminine voice chides softly.
I swallow the lump of meat and blink my eyes open to find his pretty sister, Lara, staring down at me. Her belly is swollen with the late stage of pregnancy. She is mated to the king’s closest friend, and this will be her third whelp. I am in a wooden cottage, a soft bed beneath me and a fire blazing to my right.
As the nourishment does its work, my shaking eases to a tremble. “He took them,” I croak, just as Lara thrusts another piece of bloody meat between my teeth.
“Who?” Alfred demands, rounding on me.
I suck the meat clean of blood and swallow it whole. “Marshal. We mated Freya. She carries our child. Then the bastard came with men. Aston was beaten bloody—they bound him and tossed him on a horse. And Freya…” I must take a moment to compose myself. “It was everything we hoped for. She declared for us, claimed us, put her mark on us, and demanded we tend her through her heat.”
“I will skin the bastard!” Alfred begins pacing before the fire.
“Freya has been a part of this clan in all ways that matter,” Lara says, thrusting another piece of meat between my lips. “Were I not so heavy with child, I would set this lordling straight myself.”
As a young lad, I knew nothing of Hydornia and very little of the Blighten, save they are green bastards and raided our village. I had never been to a city nor even stepped beyond the clans. But there is power in numbers and weaponry, and I understand that Marshal is a lord with troops at his disposal. None of this deters me. “You will need to get in the fucking queue. Just as soon as I can stand, I’m going for my mates!”
“Mates?” The king pauses his pacing, and a brief smile finds his lips. “I always wondered about the two of you. Who is the top dog?”
“That is a terrible fucking pun,” Lara mutters, but I hear the humor in her voice as she presses another juicy lump of meat into my mouth. That I accept it without fuss is a testimony to my weakened state.
