A CALCULATED SCREAM

I stepped out of the trees wrapped in a stranger's cloak.

The fabric was too large for me, pooling at my ankles, carrying a scent that wasn't mine. I kept my chin level and my eyes forward. My thighs ached with every step but I did not slow down. The ache was mine to carry. I had chosen it.

The storage-room door stayed open.

I noticed that first. The darkness beyond it was too still and my feet slowed, sensing the danger ahead. I took three steps inside, felt the cold of the room replace the night air, and then his voice slid out of the dark.

"Smell that, boys? Our little wolfless whore finally got herself fucked."

Brian sat on the same chair he always claimed whenever he came to play, his throne of rot and dominance, and a thin smile played on his lips. Two guards flanked him on each side, each pair of eyes already moving across my skin.

My face stayed blank but my stomach dropped.

Moon goddess. Not again.

My blank face was not bravery. It was the only armor I had learned to wear and I wore it well enough that most people believed it. Brian was not most people but tonight I was counting on his arrogance to do the work for me. Men like him rarely looked deeper than the surface when the surface was already telling them what they wanted to hear.

He stood. Rolled his shoulders like a man preparing for sport. He walked towards me and I stepped back, in fear. He noticed and his rotten smile sharpened.

He circled me once, slowly, his nose working the air. I kept my gaze on the far wall and made my breathing even.

"Who was it?" He caught the edge of the cloak and yanked.

Cold air hit every inch of me at once. I did not flinch. I had practice not flinching.

"Tell me you didn't spread for one of my own men."

The truth come out flat, just the way I had rehearsed it on the walk back, stripped of heat and feeling and anything he could use.

"Does it matter? The heat's gone. You said it would burn me alive unless I begged. I didn't beg you."

His laugh had no humor in it. More exhale than amusement. He grabbed my jaw with one hand, fingers pressing into my bone, and found Ben's bite on my shoulder with his thumb. He pressed down.

Pain hit me hard. Sudden and deep. I twisted, trying to pull out of his grip, he held on and pressed harder.

"Let me go."

"You reek of another alpha." His voice was flat, as if commenting on the weather. "Some stray dog mounted my property and now you stroll back like you own the night."

Hot anger moved through me at his words.

He is not a stray dog. He is nothing like you. And I do not belong to you.

The words were right there, stacked behind my teeth, but I swallowed every one of them. I knew better. Men like Brian did not receive correction. Saying what I actually thought would only cost me something I could not afford to lose yet. My head.

I tasted blood where my teeth had cut into my tongue and I held it.

"Punish me or use me. I'm tired of both."

His grip tightened until I felt the separate pressure of each finger, the knuckle grinding against my jaw. He was looking for the break beneath my blank face. I held his stare, even though all I wanted was to close my eyes and sleep.

"Careful. I still own the right to carve that attitude out of you."

He shoved me backward. My head hit the thin mattress hard, and for a moment the room doubled, the ceiling splitting and sliding before it settled back into one. I blinked until my vision steadied. The guards had shifted closer, their intent sitting in their eyes. I saw it in the way they licked their lips.

My hands crossed over my chest in horror.

My fear wearing the shape of instinct. Then I screamed. Not for anyone outside these walls, because they wouldn’t care. The sound was for Brian, and for the calculation that had been building in me since I walked back through the tree line wearing someone else's warmth.