Amber

His hand grasped my wrist and pulled me to a stop. I lurched backwards and almost fell down.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked. "Trying to escape again? I thought you learned your lesson last time."

"I did, I'm not running away from here."

"Seems like you were," his voice was silky.

I shook my head.

"You never learn."

Somehow, he manoeuvred me around so I was facing him and he planted his lips on mine. I froze in my shock and even though I had sensed he had been angling in this direction for some time, the reality of his unwanted advances was difficult to comprehend in my shock.

I turned my mouth away. "Let me go, Jasper," I said, trying to be firm without drawing his ire.

"Why? So you can run?" His eyes were black in the darkness.

"No, so I can go to my room."

He grinned and the expression was horribly familiar. It was the same look he had worn while tormenting me as a child. Not much had changed since then. I tried to yank my sore wrist away.

In response, he started pulling me towards the trees.

"I'm going back to my room," I told him, trying to pull in the opposite direction to no avail.

"Doesn't seem like that."

"Jasper."

"What? Give me one good reason to take you back to your room."

It sounded so horribly suggestive when he said it in that tone.

"I'm tired and I have a lot to do early in the morning."

"We won't be that long," he said. It was a threat, not a promise.

I hoped beyond hope that he was just messing with me, that he was only trying to scare me. Maybe, if I satisfied him with my fear, he would tire of his games and leave me be. A whimper that felt all too real escaped my throat.

"Quiet, Amber."

"I'm scared."

"I'm not going to hurt you if you don't fight me."

I didn't want not to fight, and even though they had forced me to bend to their wills for years and punished me whenever I did not perfectly comply, I was not going to let him do whatever he wanted to me so easily.

My usual survival strategy, my pretense of compliance, began.

He must have noticed that I had relaxed my muscles and stopped yanking against his wrist, because even though he did not let me go, his grip loosened just enough to be perceivable, as he continued to drag me along.

I did not fight as we stopped in a clearing and he turned to me, pulling me up against him. I stayed limp while he groped me and when he finally pushed me on the ground.

So focused was he on his own crime against me, he paid no attention to what I was doing. My arms were loose and I felt around the ground with my hands, hoping to find something I could use as a weapon against him while he was distracted.

I found nothing but dirt, so I grasped as much as I could, handfuls of damp soil and sand. Slowly, ever so slowly, I brought my hands closer to his face while he hovered above me and fumbled with our clothing.

And slowly, then suddenly, I shoved the dirt into his eyes, grinding it into his eyeballs as hard as I could. I hoped I would blind him so he could never look at me again.

He shrieked, sounding little like the brave hunter he thought that he was. I tried to knock him off and squirm away, but even blind, he grabbed me by the hair and stopped my movement away from him.

"You little bitch," he snapped, and then I was pushed back on the ground and his hands somehow found my throat.

Colours danced in my vision as he continued to crush my neck with his hands with all his strength, strong by nature and strong from training. I stood no chance against him and had reached my end, but I found I did not even care. In death, I would escape all of them. Why hadn't I thought of that before? I wanted to live, but years more of this didn't seem worth it.

I met his eyes by the dim light of the moon. As much as the hunters hated the supernatural creatures they fought against, he looked more beastlike than any creature I had ever heard of.

My eyelids fluttered down, blocking me from even my last dim vision as darkness swept me under.

—————

My first thought when I awoke was the grim relief that I had survived. So much for my grand escape.

My second thought was to wonder what they were going to do to me next. Surely I would not escape what I had done to Jasper unharmed. Mrs. Lyndon would see to that whether or not I deserved it.

My third thought was the realization that I was gagged and tied up with my arms behind my back. My heart began to pound frantically in my chest at the loss of free movement. This was a whole new level of captivity.

I opened my eyes and cautiously looked around. I was still in the forest, although it was almost dawn judging by the light of the sky. I must have been out for hours. I was not alone, but I could not see Jasper and I was not sure whether that realization relieved or upset me.

I focused on the five people nearby me. I had never seen any of them before in my life.

They were clearly large and strong and they moved like fighters. Then there was me, small, untrained, and restrained on the ground.

I was absolutely screwed. I started working my wrists back and forth, trying to loosen what bound me.

"She's awake, Alpha."

Oh, no, Alpha? That meant werewolves. I was even more than absolutely screwed. What were they going to do to me? I had heard nightmare stories of what these brutal beasts did to humans. Torture, rape, murder, cannibalism, I had jumped out of the frying pan and somehow landed in the fire. I moved my wrists more quickly, my sweat dampening the bindings. I had to escape, somehow.

"Don't waste your time, Huntress. Even if you do escape, you know that we can track you by scent," one of them said. He was frowning at me fiercely and I shrunk under his gaze, eyes lowered. I had so many years of practice trying to diminish myself that it came to me instinctively.

If I challenged, I only increased my punishment. Meekness was my trusted shield.

I could practically feel his gaze burning into me for a long moment. I stayed very still, not even moving my hands. Finally, he turned away from me. I exhaled in relief.

I listened to my captors, whoever they were, moving around. Finally, the one who had spoken to me, probably the alpha, spoke again.

"Alright. Move out."

I was yanked roughly to my feet. There was a loose length of rope attached to my hands and it was grabbed by one of the men—no, by one of the beasts in human skin. He pulled me along and I had little choice but to follow at the rapid pace they set.

As we moved, my mind whipped through what I could remember, and caught on the horror of Jasper's assault. What had happened to me after I blacked out? A shot of paralyzing fear hit me at the memory.

I took inventory of my wellbeing. My face was still a bit tender from where Mrs. Lyndon struck me the previous morning, I had various pains from Jasper's rough treatment, and my neck and throat ached where he had tried to strangle me, but the place he had been trying to violate seemed untouched.

Relief washed through me and I exhaled deeply through my nose, since my mouth was still gagged. Unfortunately, my relief was short lived. The fact that the worst had not happened did not answer my other questions. Who were these werewolves and how did I fall into their clutches?

I would have liked to ask, but obviously I could not. They kept walking too fast for me to keep up easily, and I nearly had to run to avoid being dragged along by the rope. They seemed completely oblivious to my fear and suffering. I wasn't surprised by the harsh treatment. Who had ever cared about my misery before?

As they pulled me along, I stumbled more than once. The domineering one seemed especially irritated every time I tripped over my own feet. I supposed my human clumsiness was inconvenient for him, just like it had been for the hunters. I tried to hurry and I ended up saved from a face plant by rough hands on my arms.

I kept my face impassive at the angry expression in the grey eyes that were all too close to me. I steeled myself for the coming strike.

His brows furrowed even deeper. I cringed. I wanted him to stop looking at me. Looking off to the side, I kept my gaze lowered.

He released my arm abruptly as if my skin had burned him and stalked away. It was increasingly obvious that he was the leader of this band of wild mutts. He occasionally barked orders at his men, but mostly we travelled in silence.

We continued moving until I was exhausted and my accidents became more and more frequent in my exhaustion. I tried hard to keep up, because I did not want to push them too far. They all seemed tense and unhappy, and the silence other than the sounds of the woods unnerved me. Werewolves could communicate inside their minds, and that did not make me more at ease.

Who knew what they were talking about amongst themselves? What did they even want from me?

Before I could start to figure it out, my left foot slipped into a hollow. Twisting muscles and ligaments at an agonizing angle, I yelped through the gag before I could stop myself. The rope pulled taut and pulled me over, flat onto my face on the dirty forest floor. I pulled out my leg and rolled onto my side.

My ankle began to throb its protests and tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I held them back as best as I could and struggled back up to my feet.

Pain shot through my ankle as I limped forward.

The werewolf who I assumed was the leader strode back towards me. I held myself still and wondered if this was when he would finally lose his temper on me. I would have apologized to him quickly to try to calm his ire, but they had taken that ability from me with the gag. The best I could manage was a pathetic whimper.

He swore and I waited, keeping my gaze low. Then in a swift, fluid motion, he swept me up with one arm beneath my back and arms and the other under my knees.

I could barely think in my surprise. I did not struggle. Instead I just hoped that this new inconvenience I had caused would not be held against me later.

—————

Author's Note:

Thanks for checking out the story! As a writer, one of my goals is to write characters that seem realistic (aka flawed). Neither Amber nor the alpha are perfect people, so if you're expecting them to be, you're going to be sorely disappointed. They both screw up in their own unique ways that have seriously frustrated certain subsets of readers.

I welcome constructive criticism including grammar and spelling (using Canadian English) because I always want to improve in the future.