Shifter (33 page)

“We connected. I felt it,” she spits out and grabs my other leg. With both feet pinned to the bed and invisible flames rushing across my body, I scream. The woman in the chair cackles. The male wolf looks satisfied and impatient. My body convulses. I can smell my flesh burning, but I don’t beg her to stop.

When she pulls away, I say, breathing quickly, “Any connection you think you had is all in your head. He felt nothing for you. No love. If he felt anything for you, it was lust.”

“Maybe, but if he didn’t or couldn’t love me, he sure as hell doesn’t love you,” she shoots back.

If Mave thought that jab was hurtful, she was sadly mistaken. I’m well aware of the truth behind it, but I’m not going to let her know this. “I may not be beautiful or skinny like you, but I’m much more appealing than you will ever be.”

“How so?”

“I’m not crazy. Men fuck crazy a few times until the crazy gets to be too much. They marry women like me. They fall in love with women like me. He may not love me, but he sure as hell does not and will not ever love you.”

Her eyes blaze. And I mean that literally. “Take her,” she spits to the wolf.

I freeze as she moves to step out of the room and the two wolves step toward me.

“What are they going to do to me?” I ask Mave, trying to stall.

“He’s the wolf alpha. You are my payment to him for helping me. They don’t have many women, especially since you killed one of them. They want new blood and your blood is pure,” Mave says, coming back into the room. “And once you are carrying his child, Dimitri won’t want you anymore. It’s a win-win situation.”

“I thought you had to be bitten to become a were,” I say.

“If you aren’t born one, you do. Male weres can impregnate human women, though. Not all the babies are weres but a large number are. With your pure blood, the chances are high that you will have predominately were babies.”

I start laughing. They stare at me questioningly. They don’t know what is so funny.

“What?” Mave demands.

“I can’t have children,” I say through my laughter.

The room instantly erupts in yells and curses. Mave looks pissed and a little scared. The two weres are arguing with and cursing Mave.

“Quiet,” Mave shouts. Begrudgingly, both weres shut up and back away from her. Turning her gaze back to me, she asks, “What do you mean, you can’t have children?”

“I mean just that. I can’t have kids.”

“How do you know this? Are you lacking the equipment? Do you have some sort of medical problem that prevents it?”

“No.” I contemplate lying, but decide better about it. I’m not a great liar, and I’m hoping if they try to remove it on their own, they botch the job and make me sterile. “I have an IUD.”

“A what?”

“It’s a little T shaped device in my uterus that prevents me from getting pregnant.”

“But only while it is in. Once it is removed…”

“It took me six months to fully heal and stop bleeding when the thing was put in. It will probably take that long or longer to heal from its removal.” I am fibbing slightly. The doctor has told me no such thing. For all I know, nothing will happen when the thing is removed, but she doesn’t have to know that.

“Mave, we had an agreement,” the male growls.

“Give me a minute,” she says to him. “Don’t touch her until I get back.”

Fear sweeps through me at her determined look. I can’t imagine what she is thinking.

The male glares at me as if I had gotten the implant to purposely piss him off. The female, on the other hand, looks a little relieved. I get the feeling that she wants to be his mate, to be the one to bare his children.

I take the time to test my restraints again. The effort is fruitless, but I have to try. I think over all of the powers I know Dimitri has. The only things he has that will be helpful at this moment are his abilities to shift and his superhuman strength. He tried to walk me through the mental and physical processes of shifting once, but I couldn’t understand it. Now, though, I try to imagine it. Try picturing my body shifting, altering, turning into something other than what it is. Nothing happens. Obvious I don’t have the superhuman strength, either.

Next, I try teleporting my body back to the cabin. I know I have that power. I did it with Katie, but I can’t. I don’t know if it is fear holding me back or the lack of confidence that what I think is happening to me is actually happening.

Mave returns rather quickly with a smug look on her face. She saunters over to the bed and tries to sit down beside me, but there isn’t that much room between me and the edge of the bed for her to sit comfortably. “I looked up your little problem on the internet, and guess what? I can fix it with no problem.”

“What?” I shout, terrified all over again.

“I can fix you. She’ll be ready for you in about an hour,” she says, looking over her shoulder at the wolf.

“What are you going to do to me?” I ask. I wish I could keep the fear out of my voice.

“I thought it was clear. I’m going to remove the obstacle in my way, or, well, his way. It’s quite simple really. It will be painful, no doubt, but you will heal quickly. Now relax.” She turns slightly, lifts my shirt, unbuttons my jeans, pushes them down low on my hips, and places her hands on my lower abdomen. Her hands are hot. I feel my skin burn at her touch. This makes me wonder if her skin is always that hot or if she is doing it to purposely hurt me. Probably the latter.

At first, nothing happens, then the heat seeps into me, and a wave of nausea flows over me, then the pain comes. The lower half of my body jerks off the mattress, and I scream. And scream.

Whatever she is doing doesn’t take her long to do, but the pain she causes makes it feel as if it takes hours. I pass out just as she is finishing. As I am fading from consciousness, I hear her tell the weres, “Give her time for my healing spell to work, then you can do what you need to do.”

“What if she doesn’t conceive?” the female asks.

“Oh, she will. My other spell will ensure that,” Mave says, grinning down at me malevolently.

I don’t know how long I was out, but judging by the look on their faces, I haven’t been out for long. They look bored and annoyed. Thankfully, they aren’t looking my way, so I quickly shut my eyes and try to go back to sleep. This doesn’t work. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that I am no longer sleeping. My breathing must have changed or something, and they have noticed.

“I know you’re awake,” the male says.

I refuse to acknowledge him, wishing I could melt into the surprisingly conformable mattress. If my arms and legs weren’t pulled so far and so tight and in so much pain, and I wasn’t in this situation, I might let myself fall asleep to escape the world.

“I told you that you should have taken her while she was sleeping,” the female says.

“Mave said that she had to heal. That as long as she was asleep her body was healing. My seed wouldn’t take hold until she heals. Now help me undress her.”

I feel my shoes pulled roughly free of my feet. My toes grow cold as soon as the air touches them, making this already mortifying situation even more uncomfortable.

“Does she have to be completely naked? Can’t we bare her from the waist down?” the female asks. For a brief second, she sounds as she is purposely trying to drag out the event, not to stop him from further hurting me, but to keep him away from me as long as she can.

“No, I want to feel her completely nude under me,” he says lustfully, bringing me fully into the scene.

I fight the urge to vomit, then I wonder if there might be a way for me to escape when they untie my legs to remove my pants. I quickly forget my plans because they only untie one leg at a time, and they both hold me down as they work. This doesn’t stop me from trying to jerk from their touch.

Tears began to squeeze from eyes when I feel the rough touch of his fingers against my hips as he grabs the hem of my panties and rips them from my body.

“I’m going to the restroom,” the female says. I doubt she has to use the restroom. She just doesn’t want to watch what is going to happen. Too bad her reluctance has nothing to do with the fact that he is about to rape me. As a fellow female, she should have some sympathy toward me and the violation I’m about to suffer.

I don’t know for sure, because I’ve closed my eyes tightly, not wanting to see what he is doing, but I think I hear the soft thuds of his clothes hitting the floor after the female leaves the room.

I don’t beg him to stop. I can’t stop my sobs, but I swear to myself that I will not give him any other reaction. The foot of the bed sinks as he crawls onto it. I jerk slightly when he places his hands on the inside of my ankles and begins to slide them up my body. At my knees, he spreads my legs wide and bends slightly to inhale me. This position causes the ropes around my ankles to chafe more, and I think I feel a bit of blood wet my skin. I hear him growl in pleasure, and I swallow down more vomit. Of its own accord, my pelvis shifts and tries to wiggle away from him.

His hands slide up my thighs, but stop before he gets to the center of my body. His body freezes there for a long time. I can’t stop myself from looking at him. The curiosity as to what has stopped him overpowering me. I’m glad things haven’t gone any further, but I have to know why. He looks confused, as if he is struggling to figure something out. After a second, he shakes his head and moves over me, his body hovering inches above mine. I can feel his penis lightly brushing across the top of my mound. He isn’t erect, and I thank God for small favors.

Again he stops. Looking down at me in frustration. He leans his body on one arm, reaches down, and takes hold of himself. I can feel the movement of his hand as he furiously jerks on himself. When nothing happens, he lets himself go.

“Margaret,” he calls out, and instantly the female wolf’s head appears in the doorway. Her eyes cast down, purposely not looking toward the bed.

“Yes?” she asks in a low, sad voice.

Growling again in anger and embarrassment he sits up, points to his penis, and says, “Help me out with this.”

Slowly she raises her eyes to see what he needs help with. The first look she gives him is a scandalized one. The look changes quickly to one of amusement as she comes to understand that he is having problems getting up. She walks over to the bed, a bright smile on her face, and reaches her hand out to half-heartily stroke him.

“Use your mouth,” he spits after a few minutes. This time I think she is going to refuse him. I think about goading her into refusing, but settle for mentally praying for God and Dimitri to save me. Instead of watching her suck him, I close my eyes and try to summon Dimitri’s super strength or even Dimitri himself, but I get nothing.

My eyes shoot open a few minutes later when Margaret’s head lands painfully on my arm. She has succeeded in making him hard, and he has pushed her away and is preparing to enter me. Fear rushes back over me, and I begin to cry. Margaret turns to lock gazes with me, and I plead with my eyes for her to help me. She looks at me dispassionately and sits up. As she does, she snickers, and I realize that he hasn’t moved.

I make myself look at him. He lifted my hips up and poised himself at my open, but he is limp again. Cursing, he moves to run his fingers between my legs, but he stops mere millimeters from me. His hands shake as if he is pushing against an invisible barrier.

“You touch her,” he snaps at Margaret who was trying to crawl off the bed.

“What?”

“You heard me.” He grabs one of her hands, puts it around his penis, and shoves the other toward me. Her face goes red in anger but quickly shifts to confusion as she looks down at her hand. The one he has forced in my direction has stopped an inch or so from me.

“I...I can’t,” she says in bewilderment.

I begin to cry even harder now, though these tears are in relief instead of fear. Granted, I will suffer the humiliation of this entire event for the rest of my life, but it seems I am being spared much worse. As I cry and thank God, it dawns on me what might be happening.

“What do you feel?” he asks her, letting go of her hands.

“Nothing now, but when you were trying to force me onto her, my body felt repelled by her. As if it knew it shouldn’t be touching her and didn’t want to.”

“Damn it,” he shouts, leaping off the bed. “Mave,” he calls into the other room.

“What could you possible want with me?” she asks in annoyance, entering the room.

“She’s mated to him,” he screams in her face.

“How’s that possible? I didn’t think you could mate with humans.” She visibly fumes at the idea. I smile mockingly at her.

“We can’t. Weres and humans aren’t the same species. Shifters, on the other hand, are human with special abilities, like witches, so apparently they can. Fuck.”

I lay in shock and relief. Dimitri was right. I hadn’t believed him. I couldn’t believe him. Couldn’t believe that someone like him could love someone like me. But he has to, right, for us to have mated? I close my eyes, mentally call out to him with every bit of love and need I have in my heart, and to my surprise, he answers.

Chapter 32