Chapter 1

Freya

6 months ago

I was raised as a rouge. It’s not quite the same as most people expect, we do live in groups, or a pack if you will, only there are no rules, no hierarchy. And yes, sure it does lead to a lot of dissidence and chaos from time to time. And I have no doubt that life would be simpler under the rule of a structured pack, but all things in life have their advantages and disadvantages.

I had no one to answer to, I was free to go where I wanted when I wanted, and I had been most places. With no pack to serve I had more free time than most and under the expert tutelage of my ‘uncle’ I had become well educated and well trained to boot.

I knew more than most about how the world works, about what was expected of me and how to play to my own strengths and weaknesses and the perceptions of those around me. And while that is mostly a good thing, unfortunately it can give way to trouble on occasion.

By the age of ten I expected I had seen more people die than most grown warriors in a pack. It was the way of life for the rouges, there was no court, no judicial system and no Alpha to settle a dispute. Arguments and grievances were settled under the old system, a no-frills fight, a battle of the fittest and a test of strength. After all strength was what we measured, only the strong survived.

I still hadn’t quite figured out how I seemed to be the exception to the rule, but that was a quandary for another day. Today I had more pressing concerns.

The three wolves circled me, teeth barred and snarling, a threat in their eyes as they prepared to pounce, and try as I might, I couldn’t see a way through them. I kept my human form and let the trembling of my body betray my strength as I kept my face screwed up in fear. It was better to let them think I was an easy target, that I would go down without a fight, until the very last second, so I was careful to stumble over my own two feet and let a whimper escape my lips while I tried to figure out how to survive.

There wasn’t a whole hell of a lot in this world that I feared, it was easy to be fearless when you have faced everything that nightmares are made of, but I had to admit there was a small part of me that was growing concerned here. The male wolves before me were well organised, they had obviously worked together on several occasions as they closed up the circle, they formed issuing warnings by way of growling and I stumbled back as I kept my head on a swivel, I needed to keep and eye on all three of them if stood any chance.

The trees of the forest around me provided no support, the land here was unoccupied, the trees too dense to run through, and besides, it was way too close to a human campground for any of our kind to risk staying here, the last thing we needed was a war with the humans to contend with, we already had to put up with the odd hunter who decided to try his luck.

“What… what do you wat? Please... please let me go.” I stuttered, forcing my words to sound broken and terrified in the hope that t would buy me some time. If good fortune favoured me that they might actually answer me, although I expected it was too much to ask for them to actually let me go. After all they had been tracking me for the better past of three miles, no one went through that kind of effort just to give up at the finish line.

The wolf behind me shifted to his human form but kept his claws extended as he snarled at me. He was around eight inches taller than my five-foot six frame and at least one hundred pounds heavier, it would take some skill to take him out alone, never mind his friends.

While I was busy focusing on the man behind me the other two wolves shifted, each as large as the first guy and now I felt a tiny bit of fear, I doubted I would be able to take them all out on my own. They didn’t look to be especially well put together, with their long uneven hair and several days growth on their faces, their claws were the colour of dirty dishwater, the way the looked after years of being stained by the earth. Their teeth yellow and their eyes wild. I was fairly confident in my assessment that the three men were rogues. Which meant they would likely know how to fight at least as well as I did, and even if by some miracle they didn’t, well there were three of them.

In the seconds it had taken for them to change I had fully assessed the situation to the best of my ability and given up on fighting my way out, at least for now. They were looking to capture me not kill me and given the part of the world we resided in, I expected that meant they were going to sell me. Unfortunately, slaves were still a highly sought-after commodity in these parts of the world.

So no, I wouldn’t fight, I would let them take me and I would bide my time until the opportunity arose.

No just to make it look real.

“Please.” I whimpered turning around and ‘tripping’ over my own two feet, landing on my hands and knees, looking to all the world like a terrified young girl as my naked body shivered and I forced tears out of my eyes and faked a hiccup. If nothing else I played a damn good damsel in distress.

Day 2 of captivity

Well so far so good. Kind of. I mean they definitely bought the act, they captured me with little to no damage, not that it would matter all that much in the long run, I like the rest of my species, had superior healing ability and just about everything would heal in next to no time. They obviously didn’t consider me a threat and had dragged me back, blindfolded, and cuffed, to a mostly wooden building about an hour’s drive from where I was taken.

So, everything was working out fine, perfectly to plan, only the room they dumped me in contained more girls, three of them, of varying ages, and these ones were actually scared. As far as I could tell they all seemed to belong to a pack, although getting any of them to talk more than a one-word answer was damn near impossible considering the amount of crying they did in between.

So now I was chained to wall in a cabin of sorts staring at four blank walls and three hysterical girls wondering just how the fuck my life had come to this.

I was one of those rogues who had no idea where they came from. I was raised by ‘Uncle’ Danny, although he wasn’t actually my uncle, just a rouge who happened across the crying bundle in the woods and decided to take pity on it. Something I would be forever thankful for. But of course, that left me with a whole hell of a lot of questions growing up and no way to find any answers. So of course, I did what most abandoned or orphaned children did, and made up my own story.

I had been just about everyone over the years, I had been Charlotte, the betas daughter travelling to see the world. Bethany the abused daughter of an unforgiving man, looking for shelter and compassion. Martha, the baker’s daughter. Judy, the traveller’s wife. Michelle, the starving artist. Opal, the musician. Tracey the writer. Louise the ‘dancer’ and Grace the stylist. But in fact, I was Freya, the abandoned rogue.

It didn’t have quite the same air of adventure, did it? then I guess that reality never does.

It was late on my second day in captivity we I got my first real look at what this life would be like, when the door to the room opened and one of the scruffy men stepped inside, wearing faded shirt and dirt-stained trousers.

He lumbered across the room as the girls all whimpered, his boots thumping against the bare wooden floor before grabbing hold of the petite, dirty red head across the room from me. With a handful of her hair he unlocked her cuffs and literally dragged her from the room kicking and screaming and through the open door to the man stood outside.

A man I had never seen before, dressed smartly in a lack suit with the top button undone, and neatly combed hair on top an attractive looking face, I watched in disgust as he eyed the girl top to bottom with a seer that had the hair on my arms standing up. Before declaring that ‘she will do’ and the door closed with a snap.

I never saw her again.

Day 4 of captivity

The two girls in the cabin had finally calmed down enough that I could actually get a legible sentence from them, although I still hadn’t learnt a lot.

The brunette was Chloe. A girl from the west, she had been travelling, wanting to visit as many places as she could before she started college in the autumn. Her father had arranged for her to stay with different packs along her travels but she got held up in a small human town not too far away and ventured into the woods to shift and let her wolf out.

The blonde was Amy. An orphan in a pack nearby who was supposed to have been meeting her boyfriend for a secret picnic, apparently her charges didn’t approve of the match and forbade her to see him, so she snuck out against their wishes. Something she had stated on numerous occasions that she regretted.

The door to the room opened and we all tensed, even I had started to fear the sound of the lock opening.

The opening of the door meant something good in the form of food and water, or something very, very bad.

No more ‘buyers’ had been by since the first girl had been taken, although I was expecting it wouldn’t be long before that happened again, but it seemed that the men got bored from time to time, or angry, or happy, or any damn emotion really, and liked to take it out on us girls. And tied up to a ring on the wall, there was very little I could do to ward off their attacks, so the other girls didn’t stand a chance.

I was sporting a broken rib from last night’s attack, that had me groaning any time I shifted, it was taking longer to heal than usual and I expected that it was due to the lack of car my body was receiving. They fed us once a day and not a huge amount, just enough to keep us alive, and gave us a small cup of water three times a day, or at least, they did if they remembered. The big curly haired one forgot yesterday so we only had two cups. Something we had all suffered because of.

I kept y attention rivetted as much as possible, but I couldn’t tell how many men were in the cabin at any one time, I didn’t know the lay out and I certainly would not be leaving any of the girls behind when I eventually got out of here. So, four days after being taken, and I was no closer to getting out. With each day that passed it was becoming more and more concerning, any time now one of use could be shipped off and then what was I supposed to do?

I had no idea how I would be able to live with myself knowing that I had left girls out in the world being tortured. Rogue or not, I at least had morals.