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 mother came from a pack of cream-skinned, red-haired wolves. I inherited her coloring, but not her gentle temperament. I can thank my father for my strength, but I have her to thank for my curiosity. She made her way to the mountain on her own, seeking adventure. She met my father, the alpha of our pack, and the rest is history.
Quite literally.
There are legends about our pack that go back hundreds of years. We’re one of the original bloodlines. My father can trace his lineage all the way back to Wepwawet himself. We are the wolves of the gods. To claim a bride born of my father’s seed is an honor all shifters aspire to, so we are told.
I know that the world outside these mountains is very different from the one we inhabit. I have heard stories of cities of machines, where a wolf shifter declares himself king while living among simple humans for the most part. I shudder at the idea of being among so much humanity. I’ve never seen a human, but my mother’s books and diaries describe them. They are sort of half-creatures. They look like us in many respects, but they are unable to take any animal form. They live their entire lives in a sort of hairless, juvenile, helpless state. I shudder at the thought of them.
“Is she ready?” Ansya bustles in, interrupting my thoughts and the last of the preparations. She is the head of my father’s household in terms of cleaning, cooking, ordering everything, and she is perpetually irritated. She has two deep lines between her brows but an otherwise very pretty face. I think he loves her the best, now that my mother is gone.
“She’s ready. We tried to make her look a little older, a little sexier, but she never grew a very big bosom,” Talisa says. She has three boys and each of her breasts is bigger than my head. She is my father’s seventeenth bride, and she is only five or so years older than me.
“The warriors are waiting,” Ansya says, sounding aggravated. “The alpha is impatient for the feast to begin.”
We will all eat well tonight. A wild boar is turning on the spit, and the smell of roast meat is filling the air. It will attract scavengers, but they will be dealt with by our guests.
“Come, Tabby,” Ansya says, chivvying me up and out of the chair. “Everyone is waiting for you.”
I have to lift the hem of the dress to stop from tripping over it.
Because this is a big occasion, I will be presented on the stone dais where my father usually sits. He is in his big chair as usual. I can see him from the side, a massive older man with all manner of tattoos and scars. What my father has not done cannot be imagined. He rules the pack with an iron fist and an even more brutal set of fangs.
My stomach begins to churn as I realize that these are some of the last virginal steps I will ever take in this life. My feet slow, a fact that immediately annoys my chaperone.
“Go on. Go up,” Ansya pushes me, poking me harshly in the midsection. “There is no time to waste. The boar will burn and the food will be as ash in our mouths if you tarry any longer.”
I am nervous, but that does not matter. My feelings are of no concern whatsoever. This is my destiny, and I must rise to meet it. Tonight I will be bred, and the man who breeds me will be killed by the beasts that inhabit this land, roaming with a hunger that can never be satisfied.
I am pushed up onto the dais, and there is a moment in which I still haven’t seen him. I keep my eyes down on the stone, looking at all the cracks, hoping that somehow this isn’t actually happening.
I wonder what he’ll look like. I wonder how old he will be. I wonder if he will seed me and leave me with pups, or if he will prove to be unseeded, and then I will have to undergo this process again and again.
When I lift my eyes, it is first to my father.
He is a massive man sitting in an even larger chair. His gray hair is plaited in several thick cords and he is wearing a crown of golden thorns. His chest is covered in a cuirass for a battle that will never come to the den because men like these come to give their lives. He has one shoulder clad in a pauldron with the insignia of the wolf. This is ancient armor, handed down from father to son for generations. I will never wear anything like it, because I do not have the prized male gene. I was made to be given away.