“So you fucked her. Tasted her flesh. Was it as sweet and innocent as you always imagined it would be, Bryn? You spent the last years staying your lash because you knew what would happen if you bared her hips and saw the chalice between her thighs. You knew you could not resist the temptation.”
“Silence, evil thing.”
“And now you’ve had her, you’ll have her again, and again. You will part her thighs whenever the hunger takes you, and the hunger will be great, will it not, Bryn.”
“She’s a grown woman. She’s no blood of mine. We have done nothing wrong.”
The shadows lurched forward as the Dark leered with sick triumph. “Then why does it feel so wrong? Why are you sick within yourself, and at the same time, desperate to repeat the sin? She has three holes, Bryn, will you claim the trinity?”
“I’m taking her home. I’ve won.”
“You haven’t won yet,” the Dark laughed. “The bargain was not whether you would make pedestrian love to her. It was whether you could break her as I have broken her, if you could make her a willing slave to your will. And you cannot go home, can you, now that she is wanted for attacking the guard. You cannot leave this realm without leaving her to me. And you are not going to do that.”
Bryn cursed as he realized how perfectly the Dark had trapped them both. Through his whelp, he had been caught.
“That’s right, Bryn. This was never about the scrap of flesh you call Hail. This was about you. You and I have many reckonings to come. You will live in this realm of the Dark. You will perform for me with your whelp, and you will atone for all the acts you took against me. Or…”
“Or?”
“Or you could reload, Bryn. Sacrifice the happiness of all your whelps, all the lyrakin saved. You could start over and make different choices. You could keep Hail home instead of casting her out. You could live in a world where you have not just fucked the virginity out of your most beloved whelp.”
“No.”
The Dark’s handsome face spread in a smile of joy. “Then you will remain here, and you will perform ever more depraved acts on her until you finally break her as she needs to be broken, until her will is your will.”
Fourteen
No Way Home
“When are we going home?” Hail woke from a nap she had not noticed she was taking. She was sore, but in a good way. The question she asked Bryn was one in place of the question she truly wanted to ask him, one she could hardly form. Had it really happened, what she’d felt between them? Had he truly fucked her? Yes. She could feel the loss of virginity inside her, or rather, she felt the gain. Bryn hadn’t taken something from her. He had given her something. Something incredibly precious. Himself.
“We’re not going home yet,” Bryn said simply. “You attacked the guard. New Rahvin is no longer your home. Or mine.”
“Where are we going then?”
“Nowhere.”
She felt a heavy sickness in her gut. “What do you mean, nowhere?”
“If we leave now, before you are…” Bryn hesitated before saying the word. “Broken… you will inevitably create the same chaos in New Rahvin elsewhere. You will be unable to help yourself.”
“How do we break me?”
“Daddy needs to fuck your ass,” the Dark laughed.
“Don’t call him that,” Hail blushed.
Bryn took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and directed her gaze to him. “It’s not about what I do to you. You have to submit to me, Hail. You have to give me everything. You have to truly find your place at my feet. There is no other way out.”
“I gave you my virginity,” she said, her voice catching in her throat at the idea it might not be enough.
“You did, and you were such a good girl. But I need more.”
Hail glowed at Bryn calling her a good girl. “I was good, wasn’t I,” she said, her voice soft and light, imbued with more of the innocence she was supposed to have lost.
"You were, in so many ways.” He ran his big hands over her arms in an affectionately sweet caress. “But it is not enough. Not for him.”
Hail looked around Bryn’s massive bulk to glare at the Dark. “What do you want? Blood?”
“Blood would be acceptable,” the Dark mused. “Certainly. Let’s have blood. What an excellent idea, little human female.”
It snapped its tendrils, like a whip cracking. The shadows shifted, power was exerted, and a roar came from dead in front of her. Hail screamed as the comforting, strong figure of Bryn was transformed into the most hideous, heinous creature.
A bearoark.
But not any normal bearoark. It had the maw of a bear as was to be expected, but it had the face, if such a thing were possible, of Bryn. She could see her master in the monster, but the monster could not see her. It was controlled by its instincts and impulses, and those both told her that it should kill her.