Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71045 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 355(@200wpm)___ 284(@250wpm)___ 237(@300wpm)
My father is only a little older than he is. I try not to think about that. Feels wrong to be attracted to someone who could literally be my father. Oh, no. I’m blushing again. I’m glad for the night hiding my reactions. The way his eyes flashed when I reminded him that he could be subject to my magic as well is still making my knees feel a bit like jelly.
They pick up their clothes on the way back, but not before I have seen them all naked. They are all very muscular and very attractive. I am starting to feel a certain warmth low in my belly when I look at the way their cocks swing weightily between their thighs. Wolves are always casual with nudity. It is unavoidable when you shift so regularly. But this is different. So very, very different.
I don’t know where to look, but everywhere there is something to see. A thick, muscular ass. A set of broad, powerful shoulders. The long, strong legs of a warrior. All of these men are my mates. Just thinking that makes me feel lightheaded.
I am marched off back to their camp, which they must have set up before they came to my father’s den. As camps go, it is not bad. It is not good either. They have fortified it with fire and a few sharp pointed stakes hammered into the ground, but it is still simply a tent with a bit of heat. It’s not going to do anything to keep us safe if someone competent isn’t holding watch—and there’s nobody competent to keep watch besides me.
I could tell them the charms and sigils they need to use to keep the camp safe, or I could let the dark crawlers in the night sneak in and simply take them. That’s what’s supposed to happen. That’s what they deserve to happen. They don’t understand that they are the sacrifice for the pack. The dark things will feed on them, and they’ll be sated for a few more months.
“That was amazing,” Thorn says to me, his tone low so the other two don’t hear him, or can at least pretend not to hear him. “How did you learn how to do that?”
“My mother taught me to read before she died, and it was all in her books,” I say. “She would perform little charms from time to time and I followed what she did.”
“Where we come from, those arts are viciously suppressed,” he says. “Witches are…”
“Burned?” I finish the sentence for him. “I’m not a witch. I’m a wolf.”
“Never seen one burned,” he says with a little smile. “Never seen one at all. You’re my first one.”
He’s sweet. It’s a pity he’s not going to survive much longer. Tomorrow the scavengers will be picking at his bones.
But I still need to worry about tonight.
They will all want to mate me. Every single one of them. All three will push themselves inside me and leave their seed behind when they are gone. I will return to my father’s den and give birth.
I read in one of my mother’s books that a female shifter’s ovulation can be triggered by mating. If we were like humans and had to wait for a few days every month, it would be almost impossible for us to reproduce. That means once these brutal warriors start taking me, my body will begin to release eggs for them to fertilize.
“Come and stand by the fire,” Krall says. “I want to look at you.”
It’s starting.
I go to where he wants me to be, and look at him with defiance.
“You’re old,” I say.
He looks at me with hard eyes, his scarred features made more stark in the firelight. I can see his kills in the depths of his pupils. Shadows of horrors dance inside him. He is harsh with me because he is harsh with everyone, because there can be little softness when a creature dedicates itself to death as thoroughly as he has.
“And you’re an impudent brat. Strip her, Skor.”
The tall, dark man with the burning eyes reaches for my dress. I draw back, crossing my arms over my chest to protect myself.
“If you rip this, I will kill you,” I say, meaning every word. “This was my mother’s.”
“Then take it off,” he says, stopping.
“I don’t want to.”
He smirks slightly.
I am starting to realize they all actually have slightly different features. At first they all seemed to look like one another, but I think that was because my frightened eyes made them seem to blend together. Krall has pronounced, craggy, rough features. Like he was carved out of a rock and then hit in the face several times with an axe. Skor has a longer, angular nose, thick but cruel lips, and a way about him that makes something inside me crackle with recognition. He has the gift inside him. Does he know that? I can’t be sure, but I know I can feel it. Thorn has softer, younger features, a more square jaw, and he has no facial hair. He is handsome in an obvious, vital way.