"Run, baby, please..." Uksean whispers with a groan. Yet, it sounds like a mosquito's chatter to Rawn's ears, as she simply slaps it off.
"You monstrous, bloodsucking Alpha!" she bellows. "You don't know what hell you've put me through these days!"
Rawn's voice is overcome with grief as she rushes to attack Lyecan without even waiting for him to reach her. But he catches her by the neck once again and swings her around so that her backside is grinding his front.
Facing his brother, he clamps one arm across Rawn's chest, while his other hand holds her jaws, forcing her head down so she can see Uksean.
"Is this the only thing you can offer, brother?" the Alpha spits. "She's weak, nevertheless. A tiny gulp of my cum and she'll bring down this building." He shoves Rawn aside before making for his brother again. "What on earth happened to you, little brother? Why flee like a scared bunny from war?"
"Why I returned is no business of yours," Uksean hisses. And Lyecan's gaze reddens with anger.
He places a feet on the former's chest, his boot's hard heel nearly snuffing the life out of Uksean's lungs.
"You have no will. No drive. Yet, you chose to power a weak Firne. What she needs is a strong man with the qualities you lack, one who can give her true power—me."
"Then give it to her. What will it cost you?"
"The idea of another powerful Firne breathing into my ass." Lyecan spilled the last word with disdain.
Uksean spits out blood. "You always think too much about everything, brother. Self insecurities has its root deep in you."
Lyecan's wrath drives fumes out of his breathe. "Don't speak to me about insecurities when it's you who fled from this pack to avoid being ordered around by your own brother. Yet, you scrammed back just when reality hit."
'Alpha, the girl just ran into the woods,' Lyecan's Beta speaks through the mind link. Only then does he turn around to find that Rawn is truly gone. 'What should we do with her, Alpha?'
Lyecan smirks while looking at his brother. 'Say that to the entire pack's hearing, Beta.'
'The girl is in the woods. She's heading east. Should I kill her?'
Uksean takes in a deep breathe and lets it out.
'For now, do not,' Lyecan responds. 'If you don't see my brother grab her in the most brutal way possible within two minutes, cut her head off her body.'
Uksean's expression darkens. "Brother—"
"Try going for a hunt, brother," Lyecan cuts him off. "And, I swear, if you try anything outside the script, you'll be overwhelmed at how artful our dear brother can be when you watch him slice your girl bits by bits, using her skin to make you the perfect fit for Christmas, yes?"
"You're fucking mad, Lyecan. I thought it's just the bastard, Nath, but you're just as crazy," Uksean hisses while trying to sit up, but Lyecan applies pressure to his feet, stopping the former from moving an inch.
"It runs in the family, baby brother."
~
Rawn doesn't dare look back as she keeps running, each step she takes drawing her strength.
Uksean's cum isn't strong enough to sustain her. It doesn't even take away the one thing that evades a Firne—fear.
She suddenly halts in her tracks and stumbles back when a wolf blocks her way, baring its fangs at her.
Rawn lands on the ground. She tries to crawl back, but her body has been seized by fear to move an inch. Now all she does is stare at the animal approaching her, looking at her like it'd do its prey.
She recognizes it as the wolf from last night. The beautiful one with silky black furs. Its eyes once looked like a gateway to heaven. Now it's hell itself, burning from within, daring her to move and have her blood soil the soil.
It's him.
Lyecan's brother.
Until now, she can't decipher why he offered her his cum and kept urging her to run.
Or was it just a trick, a plan to make the game more thrilling?
Rawn's shoulders drop as she loses all hope of survival.
There's no escaping the brothers. No.
She's trapped with them. They see her. X-ray her insides. Fathom her soul and very being. Now, her actions have led her down a draining hole that leads nowhere.
The wolf pounces on her. It sinks its fangs into most of her skin, pulling, tearing, and taking chunks of her flesh as she shrieks.
Loud laughter as well as the blurry images of shadows surrounding her sail through her head. There are too many of the shadows. And the louder the laughter gets, the more she sees people's feet gather about her.
When she traces the feet to their owners' faces, the most amusing face of them all happens to be Lyecan's.
He sips from his glass of whiskey, utterly pleased with the sight of her bloodied body.
~
Last she could recall, they left her in the woods to bleed out.
Rawn doesn't remember how she ended up lying in a cage, staring past blurred steel rods at a metal roof.
Her whole body stings and aches. She feels sick too, her head throbbing on its own as if it's a separate part of her body.
The tears rolling down her face stings the side of her eyes. And it doesn't help when the smell of flesh and blood whirls through her nostrils.
She can't bring herself to look at her body. Even if she could, she had no strength to move or sit up.
Other Firnes adapt faster. By now, they'd have healed completely. But hers would take hours. Probably a day to cover up wounds as brutal as the ones she senses on her body.
Now it makes her retrace her steps to why she got here in the first place. How one frustrating afternoon led from one thought to another.
That day, her Kyriar placed her in a cell with a seven-year-old Firne to battle. A play to humiliate her more than they'd already done.
The little Firne messed her up. She, a Firne that has seen nineteen years of life, was brought down to the floor by a child who hasn't even begun training.
The weight of the mockery rang in her head then, so much so that she had no choice but to do the formidable.
Whispers flew around the Horde. 'Never cross paths with Alpha Lyecan. Draw power from any man, even a gutter-side beggar, but the Alpha.' Still, she ignored these warning on that fateful day.
No matter how fear gripped her at the thought, she went ahead to commit the act. Now here she is; forsaken by her people and tormented by the Rhothelis.
She can't help the wail that rips through her lungs as her stiff body trembles painfully in the throes of her bawl.
The world before her ripples within her welled eyes, seeming unclear but smooth. Pure, like looking through the eyes of a child, where darkness is blurred in a way one can't decipher if it's darkness at all.
Rawn sniffles and hiccups, yet no comfort lays at her side.
Instead, the room gets colder. And colder.
And her voice grows louder and louder to the point it resonates back to her ears in threefold.
She looses all hope of escape, handing her future to fate.
"Shh!" someone hushes sharply. The room instantly falls in silence.
The person sounded annoyed, as if they would shove a piece of clothing into Rawn's mouth if they could. Except, Rawn can't tell if they can or cannot.
"You could actually move if you wanted to," the person utters. "Strength and power is in the mind, not bones or blood."
Rawn's eyes flicker over the metal ceiling as she tries to comprehend what the stranger meant.
"Sit up," the person voices again, this time firmly; an order. That motivates Rawn to slowly sit up.
Her body aches badly as she does that. But she had shoved all her pain to the back of her mind the moment she heard her intruder's voice.
Sadly, they are in another cage a few feet opposite hers, staring at her with monolid eyes, black straight hair fighting the near darkness as a smile creeps on the stranger's face.
The latter seems to be a person of culture—a person who values her tongue—because how on earth would one explain randomly putting on a cultural attire in plain modernity?
"Ju Xiang is the name," she says, "yours?"
Rawn tries to talk, but her sore lungs doesn't let her.
"I'm Ju Xiang. What is your name?"
"R—aw…" She clears her throat. "Rawn."
"As in, to run?"
"Pawn, Fawn, Spawn, Rawn."
"Oh."
A metal door creaks open before echoing footfalls irritate Rawn's ears long before their owner does her eyes.
To her, Uksean is a sore sight to see. So, she closes her eyes while trying to lean against the cage rod.
But when several stings prod the wounds on her back, she retracts immediately with a wince.
The footsteps get closer until they stop near her.
She opens her eyes again—grudgingly, rather—only to find him kneeling in front of her cage.
His facial features are no different from his brother's; wide lips and strong jawline.
But it's what makes him unique that matters. Like the bullets dangling between his hair, the intricacy of his tats, and his necklace made of pointed silver bullets.
Rawn pulls her eyes away from him as he mumbles, "Rawn, I want you to know that what I did wasn't my intention."
"So said a man with the plainest voice and the boldest expression," Ju Xiang chips in.
"I'm unable to show my subtlety."
"If you're here to play more games with her, you better be gone." Uksean looks down with a sigh as Ju Xiang adds, "Or else you'd free her and take her somewhere safe—"
"I've fallen in love with you, Rawn," he calmly cuts in. Rawn looks at him, quite shocked at his confession. No one has ever told her those words. No one. "I just wanted you to know that."
He gets up to leave. But his words triggered something in her. It awoke a feeling she has given up thought of.
The feeling of freedom.