Frigga
Deep in the furthest recesses of my mind, Whisper was panicking. It was such a human word. Panic. The moment that fear overtook you to the point of madness. My human felt deep existential dread. More human emotions. She was filled with them. The highs and lows were so exaggerated that it made my head ache.
In contrast, I had no use for panic. No use for dread or fear. In Whisper’s human skin, my body was humming. Our mate had us tucked up tight against the wall as he faced the guards, his deep even breathing telling me he had lost his battle with consciousness. A pity. I was prime for mating, and would have struck if we weren't being watched. The first whiff of my mate had sent me into a tailspin. He drenched the small cell in his scent. Filled my nose with how good we would be. Each breath brought me higher, and caused Whisper to slowly spiral in our gut.
After our upbringing, Whisper had sworn off anything to do with a lover’s touch. Safe in Ironwood, she had been free of any of those worries, pushing me instead to the background while she had built herself up with the freedom of safety. My human only giving me the bear skin, never the human one I had enjoyed manipulating so much. But in the bowels of Paradigm, she came crawling back to the safety of the dark part of our soul, and let me sit once again behind her human face. And now our mate was in our cell. The threat of his monster of a cock left her terrified and shaking. A mate meant sex, and sex meant pain.
Just that thought pulled me back from the front of the mind. Terror pushed me back into my cage as Whisper surfaced, breath sawing in and out of her lungs too quickly. Even locked away I could hear her quiet mumblings. The room turned sour as she let the demons that she imagined rampage through the cell. The male might be our mate, but to her that made him far from safe. My little broken human didn’t understand he was the safest thing in the world.
“Too close,” she whispered into the cold, damp little cave. “It hurts, Frigga.”
It’ll only hurt if you let it, I breathed across our link. Sending my human soothing thoughts. The first taste of spring, and the crisp cold forest behind our home. Snow so deep that it spilled over the top of her boots, freezing our toes. Cups of steaming chocolate, and the buzz of the little machine she used to mark the skin of others. I pushed thoughts of our den. Dark colors and warm scents of our home.
“We’re never going to get out of here,” she breathed, panic crawling up our throat until I felt like we were choking on it. “They’ll never find us.” Feeling our heart racing and the haze at the corners of our vision, I sat quiet. My Whisper was too far into her dread to be pulled back.
If they aren’t coming for us, then we will have to go to them. I too longed for the simple things of our home. The little dens we had stashed all over our clan. In the homes of the men she had found solace with, her brothers who kept her steady. We will escape, I promised, as her eyes fell heavy, her body closing down to keep her from damaging us.
Slowly I pulled myself up from the darkness, pressed her back down to the back of our mind, stretching the human limbs and yawning. Sleep was a luxury, and not one I was interested in until I had captured my prey.
Peering into the dark over my mate’s shoulder, I could just see the guard leaning against the wall, spinning keys around his fingers. The bright jingle of them rattling together barely met my human ears, but the slight flash of the polished surfaces dazzled my vision. That was my goal. Those little metal bits. Bits that fit so snugly into the locks that kept us trapped. I just needed to get those little tools from the bigger tool. Laughing mirthlessly at my little pun, I pressed into the wall, the damp sinking into the cloth that covered me.
A plan was hatching in my mind. Possibly born from listening to too many romance novels with Whisper’s friends. But the plan had so many merits, that I couldn’t see the downside. Might even earn me a shiny new mating trophy that I could show off to my clan. There had been so many pairings, and I wanted my turn. I wanted my cubs to raise with my chosen family, even if Whisper didn’t.
I want a cub, Whisper grumbled indignantly, finally pressing against me as we both pushed against the skin, and took in our mate’s scent. I just don’t want the male with the warm smells to touch me. I don’t want him to hurt me.
“Our mate will not harm you, little bear. And anyone is better than the reptile with the sour stench,” I hummed, eyeing the guard who was clearly not paying attention to us. If he had been, he would have seen I was still awake.
He ambled towards the cell, craning his neck to see past my mate to see my bare skin. The shift I was wearing covered almost nothing, and wet, it stuck to me, revealing tantalizing bits that males found intriguing. I never truly understood the human need to cover their skin, but I did understand what the guard was doing, fucking voyeur was trying to get his tingly bits off. He was stealing from Whisper and her pretty mate.
“Go to sleep, my friend,” I told her, hoping that she didn’t see the man palm his crotch and bite his lip, fangs dropping from the roof of his mouth and pressing into the nearly human lips that marked his face as other.
My mate noticed, though. The rumbling growl that shook my chest where I was pressed to him made my insides warm. He thought to protect us. It was sweet. My male was dominant. Not nearly as big a monster as I was–few could be, for I was born from anger, pain and abuse–but feeling his beast fill the room made me want to roll over and present myself to him. Wanted him to cover me and show this interloper that I was a claimed female. Claimed and thoroughly satisfied, if the girth and hook of his cock was any indication. The thick head was wider than any I had seen, and the empty little holes that dotted the underside, said he had adorned himself for his female’s pleasure. I would happily help him rethread those bits of metal through his skin, kissing each one, and savoring the taste of him on my tongue.
“Need your females caged to get your nut off?” my mate hissed, slowly rolling to his feet. He stood between me and the guard, doing his best to shield me from the reptile’s lecherous gaze. It was unnecessary, but the thought was appreciated. “Can’t get a woman on the outside to touch your tiny prick, so you have to creep on one your employer has captured?”
“What's it to you, monster?” the guard spit, saliva dribbling from his lips. He wiped it away with the back of his hand. He was inching away from the front of our cell, slowly backing to the position that he had probably been ordered to keep. “Your kind has been hunted to extinction, you should be praising Paradigm for seeing the merit of keeping you alive for this little project.”
“Hunted.” My mate rolled the word around in his mouth, the hint of an accent I couldn't place flickering from the short syllables, making them feel just a tad bit exotic. “Is that what you believe?” He reached back to me, taking my arm in his hand, and pulling me against him. I was all too interested in being pressed up against skin, even if it scared the human hiding in my belly. “You are in for a rude awakening then, little man.” My mate, the Beast–and he felt like one–tightened his hand around my bicep. “There are creatures you could never even dream of on this earth, boy. Creatures that would have you quivering in fear.”
“Good thing we have them under lock and key, then.” The guard spun the keychain around his clawed finger, making them clash together. “Keep you all contained.”
“You truly are the village idiot, aren’t you? You haven’t even begun to see what we are,” I hissed, poking my head around the Beast.
Pressing my nose close to his skin, I could almost smell the musky tint of feathers, but also the warm sun dried skin of thick fur, the juxtaposition made my insides clench. I couldn’t identify his animal, but he smelled like fucking heaven, and I wanted that scent all over me, filling my den, staining my sheets. But not in a cell. I wanted him to cover me good and proper in each and every one of the dens I had. Mark me as his, and fill me with his seed.
“He isn’t worth our time,” I told my companion. “His mind is too small to even begin to comprehend. Shrunk by the chemicals they used to turn him into that.” I waved at the scales that crept up his neck in a sickly green. “Half-shifted abomination.”
“What about yours, little bear.” He turned to tip my chin up, towering over me, he pushed me against the wall, the cool moisture wetting my skin as his body warmed me from the front. “Can you even begin to imagine what is out there?” He nodded over his shoulder, past the guard, all the way up to the surface. “Or have you been safe in your little den?”
“Safety is an illusion,” I confided, pressing up to my tiptoes so the warmth of his breath fanned over my face. “The human world is filled with horrors, Beast. Or didn’t you know?”
“Full of horrors like us,” he growled before dipping to take my lips in a kiss.
Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pulled him down for more. I needed his scent on me, in me, filling every last inch of space. Safety might be an illusion that we wove into existence to keep the human mind from unraveling. But I would happily explore those human needs with him, if only he would keep touching me.
My legs circled his hips, pressing that impressive cock against the apex of my thighs through the rough fabric that covered me. I needed more, needed all of him. “Little mate, are you ready for all of this?” he asked as he ground himself against my sex, coating his skin in my scent and my dress in his. “Before you even know my name?”
“I told you.” I reached up and dragged my teeth over the skin of his throat. “I’m going to be the one to claim you.” Letting his cock drag between my legs, I sighed as the head of him bumped over my clit as I rocked against him, my body drenched with the need to be full to the brim with him. “I’m claiming you,” I moaned before dropping back to my feet. “But not until I can see stars overhead again.”
His frustrated grunt followed me back to the shitty excuse for a mattress we had to share. “Fair.”
“They call me Whisper,” I said quietly, it wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough. There was no need to split hairs, and no reason to call attention to the fact that my soft human underbelly was too scared of him to poke her head out and take a look. He lay back down with me, arms circling around me, body protecting me once again from the guard who still stood too close. “I don’t believe for a second that your name is the Beast.”
“My family named me Theron, but those close to me call me Scar.” His lips ghosted over my face, leaving flickering kisses on my skin. “You may call me Mate.”
“I’ll call you more than that,” I laughed, shivering against him as our bond tugged at my chest. Deep in my soul, I could feel my human again. She was shivering as well, but not in delight at being pressed against our mate. But in fear of the monster that jutted from his thighs and pressed into our belly.
Trauma.
I had tried to shield her. My poor human, too small and quiet. Too easy to take advantage of. Her broken pieces were jagged and cut deep. I had been born from the tortures that the world had rained down upon her skin. But my little human wasn’t nearly as submissive as she had tricked herself into being. My human was just as big a beast as I was. And our mate was going to show her how to claim that title and own it.
* * *
It was easy enough to convince Scar to follow along with my plan. The scent of his excitement drove me wild as he followed my instructions to the letter. The cold and craggy floor of our prison bit into my back, scratching and tearing at the vulnerable flesh of my human skin even through the meager gown that I wore, but the warmth that my mate created between us was too delicious to ignore. The heavy weight of arousal pooled in my belly, as Scar’s hips worked futility between my thighs in a ruse that had already started to work.
More than anything my body screamed for my mate to complete the bond, to pierce my core with his cock and fill me to the brim. But by the skin of my teeth I held back, pushing my attention from my grunting mate to the guard who stood only feet away, hand on his meager dick as he watched us move together.
Scar was glorious. His muscles thick and corded, skin the sunkissed olive that I could never attain. The scent of him filled every inch of the cell, mingling with mine to push away the sour aroma of terror that my human was trying to hide.
Slowly, the guard inched closer. His feet shuffled over the concrete loud enough that I didn’t even need to turn my head to know he was within touching distance of the bars. He smelled of cheap gun oil and even cheaper drugstore soap. Paradigm wasn’t taking good enough care of their failed experiments.
Leaning up, I pressed my lips to Scar’s. His mouth opened to me, letting our tongues dance together, drawing the guard in even closer. The more lost we appeared in our own world, the closer the idiot inched towards us, until I could taste his fetid breath through the haze of mating hormones.
Nipping at my mate’s lips I reached up, as if to thread my fingers through his luxurious hair. Instead, fast as a cobra striking, I grabbed the guard by the front of his uniform shirt and pulled.
His skull made a sickening crack against the bars, my fist twisted in his shirt tight enough that he couldn’t pull away. Hands scrambling at the bars, he tried with all his might to release himself from my hold, only causing me to dig my claws in deeper, pull him tighter before rolling to my feet and yanking him against the bars again.
Blood dripped from his nose and lips, the metallic scent covering everything, including Scar’s scent behind me. “It was only a matter of time,” I whispered against the stunned guard’s cheek. “I’ve trapped you in my web, little fly.”
“You’ll never get out of here,” he mumbled between split and swollen lips.
“I have to say, if I hadn’t heard that phrase uttered by so many men before you, I might actually believe you.” With a clang I split his skull. “But everytime it has proven to be a lie. A lie on the lips of men who I have ended. Do you truly want to be one of them?” I asked.
“They’ll kill me.”
“So will I.” I bit my lip and gave the guard the best sinister grin I could muster. His scent changed. Going sour as I slammed him once again into the bars. “And I’ll make it hurt.”
The Beast watched me as I worked, beating the guard against the bars of our prison, my fist clenched tight in his shirt, until he finally stopped struggling and went limp in my hands.