Chapter Five

“Thought you could hide in there forever, little she-wolf?” he raged, “there is nowhere you can go that I won’t find you!”.

I gasped for air, still in shock. The impact of his body hitting mine had completely winded me and I struggled to find my voice.

“Fuck…you” I whispered breathlessly, glaring at him defiantly with my glowing orange wolf eyes.

He snarled in response and extended his canines, his own eyes glowing bright in return. Rather than submitting, I extended my own fangs and snapped up in his direction. He closed his hand around my throat and leaned back, scowling down at me with those piercing blue eyes. I glanced down briefly at his impressive torso and caught my own bosom out of the corner of my eye heaving up and down as my lungs fought for oxygen.

He narrowed his eyes and set his face in a dangerous expression that chilled me to the core.

“You just don’t give up, do you she-wolf? No matter. I will fuck you, use you as I please and punish you for as long as I have to. You will bear my heirs and stand beside me as Luna and nothing on this earth can change that. You are mine”.

In one graceful movement he had lifted me off the floor flinging me over the bed, bending me over with my face pressed into the mattress, vulnerable and exposed. He leaned over and pinned me down with his hand on the centre of my back. I felt him lift up my dressing gown and slowly, deliberately, he pulled down my white lace panties. He left them nestled halfway down my thighs and then I heard metal clinking. I twisted my head to look behind me to see him deftly unbuckling his belt one-handed, pulling it slowly, sensually from around his hips.

I wriggled and struggled, and in response he pinned one of my legs to the bed with his own, letting even more of his body weight press down on my back. I felt the unmistakable firm bulge of his erection against my thigh fighting to be free of his jeans and I knew where this was going.

“Quite the one trick pony aren’t we? That’s right, rape me again and see where that gets you. I will never give up fighting to take back what is mine, you fucking asshole!” I hollered, swinging my elbows back in the hopes of getting him in the ribs.

“Whoever said anything about fucking you, Nova?” he said coldly. “Oh, no no. Not tonight. Tonight, you need to be taught a lesson. A lesson you will not learn from the pleasures of my cock. No… tonight you will learn who your Alpha is, my Luna”.

Ice travelled through my veins and my heart dropped to the floor as I connected the dots. Oh god.

That belt was coming for me.

I struggled even harder, thrashing my free limbs like a trapped animal.

“Let…me…go! Fuck you! I will never be yours! I would rather die than carry your children, it will never happen! Release me now and I will spare you from the armies I will unleash on-”

A loud snap broke the air and I gasped. The stinging, heavy impact seared across my buttocks so shockingly painful I could barely breathe.

“You will fall in line, my little Luna. I will break you one way or the other. If you cannot love me, then perhaps you can fear me instead. I do not care either way. But you will show me the respect I am owed…as your Alpha!” he bellowed. Another loud snap! cracked through the air and I howled as the belt came down on my tender flesh. Tears streamed from my eyes and wet the sheets beneath my head as I cursed my stubborn nature and Wyatt along with it. He did not yet understand that the more that he pushed, the more I would fight back. And hard.

“You’re no better than Mason! I will kill you in your sleep for this, Wyatt!” I screamed, hoping it came out more intimidating than the wail I heard in my heard in my ears.

In response he gave three more lashes in quick succession and I almost fainted from the agony. My knees gave out and he lifted me up back up onto the bed in an instant, holding me in place to give another two lashes. I cried out as each one landed and whimpered in pain as he paused, clutching the bedsheets in my hands.

“You dare compare me such a weak, incompetent fool? I am no wife-beater, Nova. Have I yet used my fists on you? I have shown you nothing but mercy, yet you insist on defying me at every turn! You have no idea how lucky you are I took your pack, and you never will know! You are a hard-headed woman and not a damn thing I can say will change your mind. So I am reduced to disciplining my own Luna like an unruly child!” he fumed.

Four more lashes followed and I screamed into the mattress as the crack of his belt echoed across the room time after time. Finally, he stepped away and I crumpled to the floor only to shriek upon landing on my tender flesh. I rolled onto my side hyperventilating, hugging my body with my arms. I stared into the distance and felt the tears dripping across my nose onto the floor.

He disappeared for a few minutes but I stayed rooted to the spot, too weak to move. When he returned he held something in his hands wrapped in a towel. He crouched down next to me and moved to put it against my injured buttocks. I gasped and flinched away, fearful of whatever new torture he had planned.

He looked wounded. Those piercing blue eyes looked down on me with concern and he grasped my hand, stroking the outside with his thumb.

“Nova… Nova, listen to me. I’m not going to hurt you. This is ice-It’s an ice pack, it will help”.

He waited for a signal so I nodded, allowing him to place it against the red raw flesh he had inflicted on me. I shrieked as it touched my skin and he allowed me to squeeze his hand, muttering comforting words and urging me to breathe through the pain.

I lay there numb and unseeing, frozen in time. My mind raced with everything and nothing as I counted the steps that led me here.

My father had been Alpha of a well-known pack in Dallas before a long war broke out with the grand Houston pack who were collecting territory much like Wyatt had been doing. My father fell in battle leaving my mother pregnant, unprotected and on the run to save our lives. She crossed state lines begging at the door of every pack Alpha this side of the Mississippi River until finally she reached Meridian and Bobby, Mason’s father, had said yes. He allowed us to live in his pack peacefully under his protection and my mother had served as his wife’s chief maid until the day she died after giving birth to her sixth child with Bobby, leaving Mason and his sisters without a mother. Only three years later my own mother followed after a brief fight with cancer, leaving me no choice but to accept my fate with Mason.

Which led me here. Lying on an expensive carpet wounded from yet another Alpha who would rather control me than let me fulfil my destiny to lead my people to greatness. If my father had not been killed in battle, I would have been Luna after him, free to choose my own Alpha and rule for my lifetime as my predecessors had.

I would not be robbed of my blood right by another rogue Alpha.

My breath was silent now, my body still as I returned from my trance into the past. Wyatt was lying down next to me with one long arm holding the ice pack to my rear and the other stroking my hair which encircled my head like a long silvery halo.

“Where were you?” he asked softly, looking at me knowingly. His eyes bore deep into my soul and I knew that he could read me better than anyone had before.

“Surrounded by death” I whispered, surprised by my own honesty.

“Our way of life has that effect. We love more intensely than the humans, fight between ourselves more viciously than the vampires, and our bodies work harder than any animal that exists. Weres are not often found in retirement homes” he sighed regretfully. “But that is something I hope to change for my pack. All my pack, including Meridian”.

I couldn’t take my eyes off his face as he talked. How was it possible to hate someone so much, yet in these brief moments feel like the world stopped for us? Just for a moment, I felt something beyond the blind rage and contempt I’d had for him since the day we met.

I was lost in those pools of intense blue once more, memorising the way his kissable mouth moved as he spoke exposing his beautifully straight white teeth. His hair was mussed up, likely him tugging on it in frustration while I had been locked in the bathroom. His face had been flushed and sweaty after his efforts with the belt, but right now he seemed calm and contemplative. I could never tell which Wyatt I would get; raging, good-humoured, lustful, tender. The list went on. This Alpha was harder to read than any man I’d ever met.

“Can we be done with this already, Nova?” he asked wearily, large hand clasping my head as he smoothed down my silvery locks once more. “Aren’t you tired? You have been chosen to be Luna under a great Alpha. Is that not enough for you?”.

It would be so easy to give up. Give in to the life he was offering. Take the mercy he had given me and become a subservient Luna clearing his dishes with a trail of our pups in my wake.

But something called to me that I couldn’t describe; a certainty that I was born to lead, to do greater. And looking into his handsome, chiselled face all I saw was the wolf who took all of that away from me on the battlefield.

“No…it’s not. I was meant for a greater story than being taken as a child by one Alpha and stolen by the next as a trophy of war. I am destined to choose my fate, to lead my people. Not stay at home and tend to a pack of your children” I whispered disdainfully.

He was exasperated, I could see that much. He took a deep breath and tried to reason with me again.

 “There are many ways to serve one’s people, Nova. Being a Luna is a great honour. When you have my trust, you will enjoy all the freedoms you desire. But you must earn it. Every time you run, I will come for you. I will bring you back every single time and we will do this-” he gestured towards my backside with his arm, “as many times as it takes. You are mine and I am yours. And I will keep reminding you of that until you accept it”.

He searched my face for emotion and I deliberately kept my expression blank, staring back at him through my tear-stained eyes. He sighed and rolled onto his back, leaving his hand stroking my hair absent-mindedly.

“Ah, well. You’ll feel differently once you’ve borne a child. Jared tells me all females soften to their mate after they’ve whelped a pup together”.

I snorted in derision and he continued, “but we have to get married before all that anyway. The Omegas have been planning it all, you will love it, I’m sure” he said reassuringly, more to himself than me.

The small amount of tenderness I had for him evaporated into thin air, and the mood shifted.

“What on earth makes you think I will marry you?” I hissed through my teeth, rolling over to turn my back on him.

Without skipping a beat he retorted, “what on earth makes you think you have a choice?”.