CHAPTER 15
Maya closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The air coming in through the small window of the cabin near the door smelled of evening. Her time was almost up.
She lifted her head when Grey touched her shoulder, his large hand warm and comforting, telling her that he could sense her feelings and he was there with her. For her.
Gods, she hoped this worked.
She looked down at herself, at the layers of gold fabric that criss-crossed over her breasts and swathed her body, cinched at her waist with a thick black satin sash. Her brother had helped her dress in the traditional outfit of a bride, his face like thunder the entire time, his blue eyes stormy and dark with a desire to fight, to draw blood for her sake.
It wouldn’t come to the things he was imagining, she would make sure of that.
She wouldn’t let Pyotr lay a finger on her.
Grey’s blue eyes softened and he sighed, his bare chest shifting with it as he watched her, wrestling with his own feelings as fiercely as she fought hers. She had tried to get him to dress in a more traditional manner too, but he had forsaken his tunic in favour of the freedom to shift, and had stopped at donning a pair of loose black trousers tied around his waist with a black sash that matched hers.
Outside, someone jeered.
Her heart leaped about in her chest and she sucked down another breath, hoping to steady it. Pyotr wouldn’t think anything was off if her heartbeat was fast, would think it was nerves, but she didn’t want to give him any reason to focus on her too hard. Just the thought of him looking at her at all made her skin crawl and her head fill with the vile things he had said to her, and those he hadn’t.
Those sick unspoken things he wanted to do with her.
She shuddered.
Grey gripped both of her shoulders. “You don’t need to do this Maya. Stay in here and let me fight.”
She shook her head, causing her black hair to brush across her exposed shoulders, and took his right hand, drew it away from her and kissed it.
Grey was strong, his hands callused and worn from all the battles he had fought, both in his tiger form and with a sword, but he wasn’t strong enough to take on an entire tiger pride alone.
She would fight with him, at his side, once the deed was done and Pyotr was no more.
Without their alpha to lead them, half of the males would be drawn into fighting each other for the position at the head of the pride, and the rights it would grant them. It would be easy for her and her brother to pick off the weakest, and let the strongest kill each other while they fled.
A soft knock at the door had her heartbeat accelerating again.
Her time was up.
The nerves she had fought so hard to contain rose back to the fore, swift and fierce, a deluge that threatened to shake her courage. She steeled herself. She could do this. She was stronger than Pyotr and one part of the ceremony would give her the perfect opportunity to use that strength to end him.
Grey answered the door, revealing the same female who had come to them yesterday, only this time she wore a plain dark gold dress and she had bathed.
Pyotr wanted everyone looking just right for his special ceremony.
Maya curled her lip at that.
She turned on her heel, her bare feet making no sound on the wooden floor, and swept towards the door, meeting her brother there.
The female backed down the steps, her head bent the entire time, and kept backing away as her bare feet hit the dirt.
Maya followed her down the steps, aware of Grey as he prowled like a shadow behind her, a dark wraith waiting for his moment to strike. His need to fight flowed through her too, bolstered her courage and had her heart steadying as she reached the dirt and turned calmly towards her left, where the main cabin stood beyond the large fire burning in the centre of the village.
Eyes landed on her, intense and focused, more pairs than she had expected.
Her nerves jangled again but she held herself together and tamped them down. A few more to fight shouldn’t prove a problem.
She lifted her chin and stared ahead of her. Blazing torches formed an aisle straight down the centre of the clearing, lined up between her and the fire. They circled the fire there, creating a path between them and the fire, and continued beyond it, lighting the way to the main cabin. Above her, the evening light had faded, and a million diamonds glittered against rich blue velvet.
It would have been beautiful, only the male standing at the end of the aisle in front of the fire wasn’t the male she wanted.
She hesitated, the thought of walking towards that cruel bastard freezing her feet to the ground, doubts sparking to life inside her head and her heart, rousing a fierce need to run.
Grey placed his right arm under her left one and raised it, so her hand draped over the back of his.
That simple touch gave her the strength she needed.
If she stuck with the plan, it would all work out.
They had gone over it a thousand times, had thought of every possible thing. It would work.
She looked at the few females gathered near the first set of torches, only five in total. The other thirty or so attendees were all male, most of them wearing trousers tied with black sashes similar to Grey’s. The males she could see near the front were another matter though. They were naked, ready to shift at a moment’s notice.
That had her heart pounding again, that fear returning, worry that Grey was going to end up overwhelmed before he could even shift when she made her move.
Grey’s fingers twitched beneath hers.
A silent message.
He would be fine.
He would. She would make sure of it. If everything went according to plan, it would be fine. She just had to hold her nerve until it was time.
She had thought that would be the easy part, but as Grey began walking her down the aisle, the instinct to run grew stronger, images flashing in her mind to taunt her with all the things Pyotr wanted to do with her, with how he wanted to break her.
It was a struggle to keep her eyes on Pyotr’s as she approached him.
He watched her closely, the fire blazing at his back making him look like some unholy lord of Hell, casting highlights in his tousled sandy hair and glowing in his golden eyes. It shimmered over his bare shoulders, outlining his powerful body as he stood before her in only a small leather cloth marked with the sigil of his pride over his crotch.
Gods, she was thankful that tradition allowed her to be fully clothed.
She wasn’t sure she would have had the courage to do this if she had been naked too.
The way Pyotr’s golden eyes raked over her said she would be naked soon enough.
Alone with him.
She was counting on it.
Grey stepped aside when they reached Pyotr, passing her hand to him, and she didn’t listen as Pyotr spoke the words. She said what was expected of her, somehow kept her eyes on his and her heartbeat level, as calm as she could manage.
When Pyotr turned away with her, she could feel Grey’s desire to follow her and remain close to her. She glanced back at her brother, needing him to know that she was fine and to stick with the plan. She could do this.
She was stronger than Pyotr.
The bastard didn’t know it though.
He was about to get one hell of a surprise.
They reached his cabin and he opened the door and extended the hand that held hers, encouraging her to step past him and into the wooden building. It was dark inside, made all the darker when Pyotr closed the door behind them.
Her eyes adjusted.
Widened.
She had been wrong. She had been the one to get one hell of a surprise.
She stared at the two females locked in cages at the opposite side of the room, near a double bed, both of them naked and dirty, huddled close to each other but separated by thick steel bars.
She whirled to face Pyotr.
“They were brides from other prides,” he said casually as he lit a lamp, as if it was perfectly normal of him to keep females locked in cages. Her stomach churned, acid tossing like waves stirred by a violent storm, making her queasy, and an icy trickle spread through her veins. He lifted his head and looked at them, no feeling in his golden eyes, not a trace of guilt over what he had done, and then at her. “They were not promised to me. I found they had been with others. They were not only mine.”
She tensed when he turned towards her, closed the gap between them with one stride, and raised his hand, sifting his fingers through her black hair.
“Unlike you,” he murmured, voice distant as his golden eyes followed his fingers. “You have not been touched by another… have you?”
Maya quickly shook her head, but she couldn’t stop herself from thinking about August, about that stolen moment in Underworld when he had changed her forever. Her heartbeat picked up, heat stirring in her veins to melt the ice.
Her eyes flicked towards the cages.
The fire inside her died, fear of ending up inside a cage rattling her courage and stealing her strength, making her legs tremble beneath her weight.
Gods, Pyotr was worse than the rumours, worse than she could have ever imagined.
She stared at the females as they watched her through dull, lifeless eyes.
Forced herself to look at what Pyotr had done to them, how he had broken them, abused them, just because they had dared to love another.
Her nerves settled.
Anger rose.
She would stop him.
She was going to end him.
She didn’t fight him when he untied the black sash around her waist and began to undress her, continuing the tradition of their ceremony. She stood still and let him do it, her skin crawling as his eyes shone with excitement as he unravelled her robe, removing layer after layer.
Unwrapping her like a fucking present.
The gift that she was, from her pride to him.
Gods, she hated it.
It was degrading, painful, terrifying, but she had to weather it, had to allow it and wait for the right moment.
Her moment.
She was going to make Pyotr pay.
He stripped away the last layer, letting the material drift down her body to pool around her feet, the evidence of his arousal tenting his leather loincloth. It was hard to resist covering her nudity when he raked his eyes over her, looking at her as if he owned her, his gaze telling her all the sick things he wanted to do to her against her will.
“We skip the next part and skip straight to fucking you.”
Maya shook her head and backed away a step, her heart lodging in her throat. “No. It’s tradition and if you don’t stick with it, this means nothing. I won’t be yours.”
He stopped undoing his loincloth and looked at her.
But then he continued, his eyes revealing nothing as he stripped it away and let it fall to the floor, revealing his hardness to her.
She refused to look at it, kept her eyes locked on his and her jaw set.
Silence stretched between them.
“Get on with it then.” He jerked his chin towards her and stroked a hand down his shaft. “I will claim you the traditional way to satisfy the contract between our prides and then I will claim you my own damn way… with you on your knees as I take you from behind… and then you will be mine.”
She would never be his.
Never.
Maya shifted, bones on fire as they shrank and grew, and snapped into new positions. She fell to all fours as amber fur striped with black swept over her skin and growled through clenched fangs as her head transformed and her tail sprouted from the base of her spine.
The second she was done, she adopted a submissive posture, lowering her body so her belly touched the wooden floor, and turned slightly to show the nape of her neck. Pyotr had to bite her there while in his tiger form, and then this part of the ceremony would be complete and they would shift back to continue with the mating.
She twisted a little further, luring him, her heart pounding erratically in her chest as she waited for him to take the bait.
Gold and black fur rippled over his shoulders and he snarled as he shifted.
The moment he hit the middle of his transformation, the point when he was at his most vulnerable, filled with pain and torn between two forms, she turned, pressed down hard with her back legs and reared up, raking her claws across his stomach and then kicking off.
She pounced on him, taking him down hard onto the wooden floor. He growled and completed the shift, far quicker than she had anticipated, and his back legs caught her in her stomach as he kicked, driving her off him.
Maya attacked again, leaped on his back and bit his shoulder, refusing to give up. She had started, and there was no backing down now. She had to finish this.
Pyotr twisted and bit her left leg, and she hissed and shoved with both of her paws, pushing him onto his side and away from her. She distanced herself and circled him, aware of the two females watching her as she kept her eyes locked on Pyotr’s, unwilling to let him get the jump on her.
He bared his fangs and leaped.
Maya met him in the air, wrapped her front legs around his ribs and twisted with him, but he was heavier than her and she didn’t stand a chance when he sank his claws into her shoulders and used that weight against her. She whimpered and hissed again as he slammed her onto the floor, his weight pressing down on her.
His head lunged towards her.
She quickly moved her head to block him, stopping him from reaching her nape.
Her teeth clashed hard with his and he growled as she snapped at him, hissing and driving him away. He backed off, his bright golden eyes studying her, looking for another opening.
She needed to keep his weight off her. She was stronger than him, but her strength meant nothing if he tilted her off balance. It would be too easy for him to best her.
His hind leg muscles twitched.
Maya leaped to her left as he sprung at her, and twisted, her back paws skidding on the ground and claws scraping over the wood as she propelled herself back towards him as he landed where she had been. She growled as she landed on his back, her claws cutting through his thick skin, leaving crimson trails in their wake, and grabbed the back of his neck in her teeth.
Pyotr roared.
Outside, all hell broke loose, the feral growls of his males filling the night air.
Grey.
Her momentary distraction was all Pyotr needed.
He easily shook her off him and before she could bring her focus back to the fight, he had her pinned beneath him on her back, his fangs gripping the front of her throat, cutting off her air.
No.
The edges of her vision grew hazy.
She struggled against him, kicking and scratching, hissing at him as he held her down and choked her.
Pyotr’s grip on her throat tightened.
Pain swept through her like an inferno.
She tried to hold on to her tiger form, but the fire blazing through her burned it away.
Her neck shrank with her transformation back into her human form and she dropped free of his fangs, the back of her head striking the floorboards hard, sending more fiery agony sweeping through her.
She breathed hard, staring up at the tiger looming over her, her heart thundering as the sound of the battle raging outside stripped her strength away, fear for her brother and for herself overwhelming her.
If she gave up now, would Pyotr believe she had been merely trying to make their mating interesting for him, had simply wanted him to fight to claim her as his bride?
A familiar scent hit her.
Earthy.
Tinged with snow.
The urge to fight blazed back to life inside her, roused by her deepest instincts as they seized her.
Told her to fight for her territory.
To fight for her mate.