The Alpha's Captive (16 page)

Her bottom turned bright red as did the tops of her thighs as he did his best to impress upon her the sternness of his resolve.

“Settle down, brat,” he growled, sliding his fingers into the tight embrace of her anal bud.

Hannah stiffened and stilled immediately, her incessant squirming coming to a stop.

“It’s not fair,” she whined in place.

“I know it’s not fair,” he commiserated. “But this is the way it has to be. Believe me, Hannah. I am doing this for your own good.”

“Sticking your fingers in my ass for my own good, huh, Lorcan?”

Her dry comment made him chuckle. When he heard her giggle a little in response, he slid his fingers out of her bottom. She had been punished enough for one day; continuing to overwhelm her would not end well.

“Let’s call a truce, whelp,” he suggested. “There will be time for me to fuck your little arse later.”

She blushed as she squirmed up to sit beside him. “You are mean,” she complained.

“Just mean enough to keep you safe, with any luck,” he replied, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I have some business to attend to. Can I trust you to be quiet and not run off onto the heath or go and get yourself killed in the next hour or so?”

“Yes, Lorcan,” Hannah promised. “I can be a good girl.”

Lorcan somewhat doubted that, but trust had to be built somewhere and he could not keep Hannah in his sights every second of the day. Now that she was part of the pack, she would have to learn to operate within it. Leaving her to her own devices was an essential part of that.

He pressed another kiss to her lips and stroked her hair. “We will have dinner tonight, you and I,” he said. “And perhaps then we will see if that plug still fits, or if you need a larger one.”

“
Looorcan!
” Her plaintive whine followed him out of the room.

Hannah was sitting quietly in her room doing her very best to be good, which amounted to doing nothing at all, when the door opened. She looked up, expecting Lorcan to arrive, anal plug in hand, but it was not him who entered and sat next to her on the bed. It was Sacha. How she was free, Hannah did not know. She was supposed to be locked away, but somehow she was still able to hold the key to her own cage, flouting Lorcan’s law with increasingly brazen acts.

“Hello, my sweet,” Sacha greeted her. It was strange to hear anything kind out of Sacha’s mouth, but they did share a bond now, and perhaps that made all the difference. It briefly occurred to Hannah that she should try to raise the alarm of Sacha being free, but she owed both Lorcan and Sacha something, and she would not betray Sacha.

“What news do you have for me, whelp?” Sacha’s fingers teased kindly through Hannah’s hair, her touch vaguely maternal and comforting.

“Lorcan is going to send you away for turning me,” Hannah blurted almost without thinking. “He says you broke pack law and you must go elsewhere. I told him he was an asshole for even thinking that, but he didn’t listen.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “He wants to kick you out.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sacha reassured her. “Lorcan is not that kind of man, no matter how much he might want to be. He is a soft leader for soft times. He is weak.”

Hannah was not pleased with Lorcan, but she did not like hearing Sacha speak of him that way. “He’s not weak!”

“Yes, he is,” Sacha said. “Our pack has dwindled to nothingness. You are the first new blood we have had in several generations. We are unable to mate, unable to grow, and we will die under his regime. You will bear his child and then we will be rid of him.”

“Be rid of?”

Sacha said nothing more, but the glittering cold expression in her eyes told Hannah everything she needed to know. Lorcan planned to banish Sacha, but Sacha planned to kill him.

Caught between warring siblings, Hannah’s allegiances were torn. Sacha was ruthless and cold, but she was also the only one who had been willing to bring her into the pack. And Lorcan, well, she loved Lorcan. But he wanted to tear the pack apart in his own way. If not for Sacha, she would never have become one of them.

“You’re both as bad as each other,” she said with tears welling in her eyes. “I thought that becoming like you would mean that we would all be family, that there would be some kind of…”

“You’re a naive little whelp,” Sacha said coldly. “I told you to think on what you were asking for, and you chose it. Do not cry now that you discover the world is not as kind or as cuddly as you imagined.”

Horrified all the more, Hannah could not contain her response. “You’re… you’re a bitch, Sacha.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she was knocked off her feet by a blow that came harder and faster than she could perceive. She lay winded on the floor, Sacha atop her, teeth flashing inches from her nose. “That’s right,” she hissed. “I am a bitch. I am
the
bitch. Learn that lesson well, my whelp, or there will be a place for you next to your aunt.”

It took Hannah a brief moment to realize that Sacha was threatening her very existence. There was nothing calm or moderate about the woman. She had a blazing desire, a vision for the Darkwood pack and she was not going to let anyone get in the way. Far from giving her the gift of becoming a shifter, Sacha had intended to trap her, use her womb to create new progeny and finally kill the man she loved. And the maddest thing of all was that Sacha expected Hannah to be an obedient pawn in her game of power.

“Lorcan has to die so the pack can live,” Sacha intoned coldly. “You must mate with him as many times as you can to ensure his seed is planted inside you. Your progeny will be the new alpha in due course, an alpha I will raise in the way a true wolf should be raised.”

“You’re insane,” Hannah whispered, her fear making her voice breathy and cracked, but not taking it away completely.

“I am right,” Sacha replied. “And you have no choice. This is my will, and you will follow it.”

Resistance flared in Hannah. She knew she was much weaker than Sacha, she knew she did not have the ruthlessness or the capacity for violence, but she also knew she would not allow any harm to come to Lorcan. And she knew there was but one way to stop a creature like Sacha…

* * *

Lorcan heard the fight start just as the rest of the pack did. There was a loud barking verging on yapping that could only have come from Hannah, and then a high-pitched yelp followed by the reverberations of bodies slamming against walls and the floor.

He arrived on the scene to find Sacha and Hannah both in wolf form, wrapped around one another with brutal fluidity, jaws flashing, hackles erect, fearsome snarling erupting from the pair of them. Hannah was not as large as Sacha, but she seemed to be acquitting herself well, snarling and biting with all the fury that was hers to muster.

They were both matted with saliva and blood, the floor was covered in smears of the same marked with chunks of fur. The temptation to shift and join the fray was strong, but Lorcan knew this was a matter better dealt with human ingenuity and a modicum of calm. He went to the wall, opened a cabinet, and took out a large fire extinguisher.

Neither Sacha nor Hannah knew what hit them. Suddenly enveloped in cold white dust, they leaped apart, furred bodies tensed for further attack. He knew he had but seconds to regain control before Sacha realized what had happened and attacked again. Fortunately, he was not alone. The pack was at his back, and they were just as eager to put an end to the battle as he was.

“Get Sacha!”

A dozen men threw themselves on Sacha, cutting Hannah out of the fray altogether. She continued to make a howling barking sound as Lorcan took his belt and wrapped it around Sacha’s snout, preventing her from biting.

“You’ve attacked Hannah, you’ve attacked me, and you’ve attacked her again,” he said. “As our American friends would say, three strikes, Sacha. You’re out.” He turned and looked at the two men who had been trusted with guarding her, his expression cold. “Mark. Lawrence. You will go with her. I will not tolerate disloyalty from my pack. This woman was to be held securely. You have failed me twice. You will not fail me again.”

Bruised, embarrassed, and sad, Hannah sat naked in her little room at the top of the stairs where she had been banished after the fight and felt sorry for herself. Sacha had not wounded her too badly. She had a few cuts and scrapes, but nothing of any real note. The others told her it was because Sacha was not trying to kill her, but trying to make her submit. That was probably true. Sacha’s plan would not work if Hannah was dead. But what Hannah did not tell them that in the heat of the moment, she had been doing her very best to kill Sacha, a fact that made her feel as brutish and nasty as she had thought Sacha to be. She would die to protect Lorcan, kill to ensure his safety, and neither fact pleased her in her frail human state. She was everything she did not want to be, and worse.

She felt Lorcan enter the room. She could do that now, discern his scent at a distance even though she could not see him. Sometimes she could feel him coming from several rooms away if it were quiet enough and his distinctive footfalls could be heard. Being a werewolf meant being sensitive, and being sensitive meant feeling everything, including the horrible sensation of having let Lorcan down.

Strong arms wrapped around her in a comforting, loving embrace. “Why so sad?”

“I’m a beast,” she said. “I’m worse than a beast, because beasts don’t know what they’re doing, but I knew and I did it anyway.” She let out a sob. “I hurt Sacha.”

“You’re feeling guilty about Sacha?” Lorcan sounded surprised. “You have nothing to feel guilty for, Hannah. She brought all her pains upon herself.”

“I wanted to…” Hannah squeezed her fists together so tight her nails pressed into the palm of her hand. “I wanted to do bad things to her, Lorcan.”

“The feeling was mutual,” he said calmly. “Your response was perfectly natural and nothing to be ashamed of. It’s part of what you are now.”

His words only served to make her feel worse, confirming her suspicions. She was no better than a beast now, her instincts animal and aggressive.

“What if I don’t like what I am now?”

“Learning to like ourselves is a challenge no matter what we are,” he said in refined, wise tones.

“You have to help me, Lorcan. You have to save me from myself,” she said, her fear not at all assuaged by his reassurances. She could still remember vividly what it felt like to sink her fangs into Sacha, the elemental satisfaction she’d felt making contact with a foe. “If I see her again…”

“That won’t happen,” he reassured her. “Sacha is gone.”

“Where?”

“There is a Russian pack in the very far north of that country. I sent her there.”

“Wow,” Hannah looked at him, impressed. “You banished her to Siberia?”

“Would you rather I allow someone to stay who attacks my mate and plots my death?”

“No,” Hannah said. “I was wrong to defend her. I was wrong to take her gift and let her turn me. I was wrong to come here. I was just… wrong.”

“What’s done is done,” Lorcan murmured, holding her close. “And there are no politics as brutal as politics, especially in a wolf pack. Sacha can’t help being what she is. Where she has gone they will deal with her appropriately. In time, she will be happy.”

It was Hannah’s turn to be surprised by a softer sentiment. “You care about her happiness? She wanted to kill you.”

“Wanting to kill the alpha is fairly standard among siblings,” Lorcan shrugged, giving her one of his handsome smiles. “I can’t take it personally. I will miss her, but this is the only way to keep us all alive. Besides, she will have a mate at long last. That will modify her temperament a great deal. The Russians are not as kind as I am.”

“You? Kind?” Hannah laughed. “If I know you, you are not done with me yet.”

“You know me very well,” he said, grazing his teeth along her neck. “I am definitely not done with you, my little captive.” One hand slid down to her bottom and cupped her cheek while the other produced the item he had promised—a long, thick butt plug meant for her naughty bottom.

Hannah felt a shiver run through her, not of fear, but of anticipation. Even as Lorcan eased her toward the bed, used his strong hands to spread her thighs and began to dab lubricant across the tight little bud of her bottom, she knew was no longer his captive. She was much, much more than that now.

“Hands and knees,” he murmured, easing her into the position he desired. “My little bitch in heat needs to be taken properly.”

The words would have stung if they had not been said in a loving tone. Lorcan did not hate her for the qualities she had discovered in her struggle with Sacha. He did not lecture her for anything, not for her animal instinct to settle scores with teeth instead of talk, not the fact she had made bad decision after bad decision in following her desire, and certainly not for the obvious and unfettered arousal that was taking hold of her as he touched her.

The slow circling of his thumb and the hypnotic tones of his voice conspired to cause her to relax her anus, her bottom quite willing to be filled as he pressed the plug against that tight little hole and slid it home in one easy push that made her moan.

“Good girl,” he said in approving tones, running his hand over her bottom and slapping her cheeks lightly. She had been expecting a punishment for fighting with Sacha, instead this felt more like a reward. Behind her, Lorcan’s tongue ran up the length of her slit, his hands keeping her bottom cheeks spread so he could taste her pussy and further arouse her. She shivered with pleasure as he lapped at her clit, then ran the tip of his tongue to the entrance of her body, swirling it at the clenching place where she wanted so much more.

The plug in her bottom heightened the sensation, the fullness in her ass promising fullness below as Lorcan shed his clothing and pressed up behind her, his cock taking the place of his mouth as he guided the thick flared head between her delicate lips and pushed inside her with a growl of dominion, his hand sliding up the back of her neck to curl in her hair as he took full possession of not just his captive, but his mate.