Chapter 28

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Callum

S omehow, and against all probability, I fall asleep. It is not a pleasant sleep for it is steeped in nightmares.

On waking, I lift my chin from where it rests awkwardly against my chest. I'm still chained against the fucking wall but slumped against it now, having slid down to my ass with my arms stretched up above my head. The slight movement brings a surge of pain to my dead arms. The gag must have been removed while I slept, although my lips feel bruised and cracked.

On the other side of the room, Ada lies naked on the bed. Gray has her spread with her ruined pussy on display as he carefully tends to her. A bowl rests on the floor beside the bedding nook. He dips and wrings a cloth before gently pressing it against her pussy.

I could say something, but I find that I do not.

My cock starts throbbing, which is not pleasant when my pants are stiff with dried cum.

He has broken both of us with the events of last eve.

She moans a little, and I hitch an involuntary breath.

He pauses and his head swings around to look at me.

I glare at the bastard. His eyes lower to my splayed legs and the telltale stain on my pants. His lips tug up like he is well pleased with my discomfort and the betrayal of my body.

I am convinced that he uses a shifter trick. Or maybe there is something in his scent or seed that has turned my once sweet wife-to-be into a creature desperate for dick. Before I can think better of it, my lips curl back, and I growl.

Ignoring me, he turns back to Ada, parting her legs a little wider, almost like he is taunting me with what he has done.

My body seesaws between outrage and heated arousal. I like that he has ruined her. He has stuck his cock in her ass, which I have thought about, knowing people do it. Some even prefer it, from what I have heard. I put my fingers in her there once, and all the while, I was thinking about putting my cock there instead. The little passage is very tight. I can only imagine how intensely pleasurable it might be to take a lass there.

If her wild moans were any indication, she was not averse to it, if a little reluctant toward the start.

My cock jerks vigorously. Fuck, do not think about that!

On the bed, Ada frets a little. He emits a deep, rumbly purr, and she instantly softens, settling back into sleep.

I want to rip the bastard apart for what he has done to her, but he is comforting her now in his strange, savage way, and I find I do not want to move lest I wake her. If she wakes, it might cause her distress as she remembers all that passed.

I want her to sleep a little.

Also, while she sleeps, he is not fucking her.

Finished with his duties, he sets the bowl and cloth aside on the table before the window and returns to the bed. Selecting the fresh pelt rolled up against the side, he carefully tucks her in with a tenderness that defies logic when one considers all that he has done.

He turns to stare down at me with a scowl that says he is thinking of thumping me, when a gentle knock sounds upon the door.

His eyes narrow as he turns toward it. Then he pins me with another glare before striding for the door.

His steps are surprisingly light. He opens the door a small way that still brings an icy breeze into the room. He barks a low order at whoever waits beyond, and quiet words are returned before he carefully swings open the door and steps outside, still fully naked.

I had heard that shifters do not care much about their state of undress and do not feel the cold.

The door shuts, and I hear the sound of the lock turning.

Bastard.

My attention goes back to the bed where the ravished lass is sleeping like a princess in her barbaric bed.

My fingers are going fucking numb. I need to stand and work some life back into them, but I don't want to wake her.

Carefully, I bend my knees and attempt to rise. It is surprisingly tricky given I am exhausted and my arms and hands are fucking useless. Moving brings a fresh wave of agony, and an involuntary grunt escapes my lips.

I check the bed—still asleep.

The chain rattles a little, making me grimace as I slowly stand, but I am committed now as the arrival of pounding blood into my arms brings yet more excruciating pain.

"Callum?"

Fuck, I have woken her up.

She pushes the furs aside, sitting up groggily before she glances around the room.

"He is not here," I say. My voice sounds rough from all my roaring behind the gag. I nod my head toward the door… because I cannot lift my hand to fucking point. "He left a few minutes ago."

She brushes knotty hair from her face, sighs, and then puts her head in her hands.

"Ada?"

She shakes her head.

Her pain hits me in the center of the chest. "Ada, please." I want to know if my Ada is in there—the one I fell in love with and who I still consider mine.

She lowers her hands, although her face is downcast. Rising from the bed, she pads over to me, naked.

My nostrils flare as I see the marks littering her body—the bite to the side of her throat is fucking savage and brings a surge of violent intent toward the shifter responsible for it.

Only, my cock is still fucking hard, and a strange darkness inside me is only pissed that the claiming bite was done by someone else.

She stops a pace away from me, her pretty hazel eyes lifting to meet mine, the lashes damp with tears. "Do you still love me?"

I blink, and everything inside me softens… even my fucking cock. "As if I could ever stop."

A small sob escapes her lips.

I reach for her only to be thwarted by the chains. "None of this is your fault," I say bitterly. "You cannot help what that bastard has done to you… Do you still love me?"

I admit my vulnerability with that question and how I'm scared to have lost her.

Her next sob breaks me, and she covers the small distance to throw herself against me. I can smell him on her, but if I focus really hard, I can also smell me.

My arms don't function properly, but I wrap them around her as best I can, drawing her tiny, precious weight against me, taking comfort in the hold.

"I love you, Callum. Forever. That is how it is between us. From the day you saved me. I don't... I don't know what came over me."

Relief crashes over me. "It is some shifter trick."

She lifts her head from my chest, and her eyes search mine. "I don't think it is," she says quietly. "I think this is all my fault."

I frown. What nonsense is she talking about? "How can this possibly be your fault?"

She tries to pull away, but I tighten my arms. Whatever she has to say, I want her to touch me while she says it.

"Let me go, Callum."

"Never. The bastard will have to pry you from my arms before I will let you go."

The fight goes out of her, but even though she softens against me, it instills a sense of dread. "I don't deserve you," she whispers.

My mouth opens and closes again as words fail me. I don't care that he forced her body to respond. None of that is her fault.

"I-I like him too," she stammers into my chest.

"Like him?" Her words make no sense.

"I wanted him. I wanted him to touch me. He has touched me before… pleasured me… at the tavern."

Pain lances through me. Hers, mine, and a combination of them both. It is like a knife piercing my chest.

It burns. How it burns.

Betrayal.

My hands shake.

I still do not let her go.

"I have always been drawn to him," she admits. "Right from the very first day he entered the tavern."

I swallow past the lump in my throat as my world unravels before me. Deep down, I have known this—known it and ignored it.

Carefully, and although it makes my heart ache, I force my hands to release her, letting my arms fall to my sides.

"You want to be with him?" My eyes feel gritty. Inside, I am cold.

She still presses against me, refusing to step away, and I want to hope that it might mean something, but I am too devastated to work out what.

The noble thing to do would be to walk away. Except I don't know if I can.

"You have said you love me. Now you tell me you love him, too."

"I do. Both of you. This is complicated. And I know…"

"I don't know how to share you, Ada," I say bluntly, fearing this is where she is headed. "I don't know if he will even let me."

Only the little voice inside my head tells me that is why I am here, chained up in this fucking room, forced to watch him rut her. He is a bastard. But his tenderness earlier says he cares for Ada in his twisted, bastard, wolf way.

Her hand against my cheek arrests all my attention and produces instant calm. Only now do I realize my chest was heaving.

"I will tell him to let you go," she says, her lips quivering. "To unchain you. I will tell him I was yours first. That he must let me go, too."

I know this is not what she wants. The selfish part of me wants to take her away, supposing Gray would let her go, to forget all this happened and go back to that innocent time when there was just us.

Yet that time has passed.

I understand that I am young, and she is young, too. But also that neither time nor maturity might help us to navigate this.

He has claimed her.

"He has put his mark upon you, Ada. He has bitten you. Rutted you in the way of wolves," I say, still drawn to believing he has ensnared her mind somehow, for that is the only plausible explanation. My lips tremble. I should take her away. Maybe the spell will break if I do… Or maybe it will hurt her in unrecoverable ways. "You are his as much as you are mine now. From this, we cannot go back."

Her mouth opens like she might offer a protest.

Before she can speak, the door bursts open, and Gray strides in, still buck naked.

I expect her to fling herself away from me. She doesn't. She clings tighter and issues the strangest, cutest little savage growl. "You will not hurt him," she says, keeping a possessive hold on me.

My chest puffs up a little. Gray's lips twitch as he closes the door and then turns to lean against it with his arms folded.

"I do not choose to hurt the lad. He is merely a whelp and needs to be put in his place. If he taunts me, as he has frequently, I cannot account for that… Now, he is fucking filthy. And probably hungry, too. The deckhands will take him out and not land a single blow… so long as he behaves."

Sermon delivered, he strides forward and plucks her from me.

The door opens, and deckhands enter with a tray bearing food and drinks. Two more enter, carrying clubs, and drag me outside.

I don't want to fucking go. I put up a fight and get a thumping for it. By the time they have wrestled me outside, I'm beaten black and blue, and I can hear Ada sobbing.

Fuck!

The fight leaves me, and the deckhands secure me to the mast.

"You could have handled that better."

I turn toward the voice to find Drake leaning casually against the ship's rail, watching the show.

"You're upsetting the lass for no reason."

"Me? Uff!" A bucket of water is tossed over me, dousing my temper. Goosebumps erupt across the surface of my skin. Gods, that was cold.

"Aye," Drake says as the water drips down me. "I understand the way of shifters are foreign to you. But the lass has latched on to both of you, and you need to work your differences out."

"Fuck—uff!" Another bucket of salty water is thrown over me. "Fuck's sake!" I snarl at the offending man.

The bastard shrugs and, with a determined glint in his eye, swaps his empty bucket with a full one from the man standing to his right.

I stand still, figuring I deserve the third dousing.

Shivers wrack my body. It is fucking freezing as the wind cuts across the deck.

At least it washes some of the disgusting seed and sweat from my body.

I glare at Drake like this is his fault.

"Gray asked me to coach you. Explain things to you. Ready for when we reach our pack."

"Fuck off," I say through gritted teeth, relieved there are no further buckets waiting for me.

Drake smirks as he pushes away from the rail and, taking a nearby barrel, makes himself a seat.

I glance toward the closed cabin door before I turn back to Drake.

The bastard talks, and I'm forced to listen, given I have nowhere else to go. Preaching to me about fated mates, how when wolves imprint, it is for life… how this is the Goddess' will… how Ada is likewise caught in the same pull… how this might seem strange to a man who has no experience with shifters, but how eventually, when I stop being ‘pigheaded' it will all make perfect sense.

"Bollocks, it will make sense. Your wolf bastard friend has bewitched my woman, rutted her, and somehow managed to convince her that she likewise wants this!"

He sighs heavily at my outburst, then continues on.

I have no choice but to hear the words. But all the while, I am thinking about Ada, my woman, alone with that shifter bastard.