Darius pulled his fingers free, held them up so I could see how wet they were. Then he licked them clean while he stared straight into my eyes. The sight punched low in my gut.
They moved me to the bed without asking. Furs swallowed my back. Darius settled between my thighs, knees spreading me wide. Kane and Rylan flanked me, hands roaming. Kane's palm settled over my breast, thumb brushing the nipple until it tightened. Rylan traced the bruises on my ribs like he was memorizing every mark the guards had left.
Darius freed himself from his trousers. Thick, heavy, already leaking at the tip. The knot at the base was swollen, angry red. My stomach flipped. I knew what that meant. Every wolf story I'd ever heard whispered about it.
He notched the head and brushed it against my entrance. "Last chance to beg nicely."
I bared my teeth. "Fuck you."
He drove in with one thrust.
The stretch tore a cry out of me. Full, burning, too much. He didn't pause. He fucked me in short, brutal strokes that forced the air from my lungs. The bond sang. My body opened for him anyway, slick and greedy.
Kane caught my jaw, turned my head, and kissed me. It wasn't soft. It was teeth and tongue and the taste of blood. Rylan sucked a mark onto the inside of my thigh while Darius pounded into me.
The first orgasm hit me without warning. I clenched around Darius so hard he growled. His rhythm stuttered. The knot started to catch on every thrust.
"Not yet," he ground out. "Not until all three of us have had you."
He pulled out. I whimpered at the sudden emptiness. They flipped me onto my stomach. Kane took me next, from behind, one hand fisted in my hair. He was thicker, longer, meaner with it. Every thrust shoved my face into the furs. I came again, screaming into the pelts.
Rylan went last. He pulled me up onto his lap, back to his chest, and lowered me onto him slow enough that I felt every inch. His grin pressed against my shoulder blade. "Ride it, little fighter. Show us what that mouth can really do."
I did. Hips rolling, nails raking down his thighs. The bond fed on it. The more I gave, the hotter the fire in my veins burned.
They took turns for hours. One inside me while the others touched and bit and marked. By the time Darius finally knotted me the room smelled like sex and blood and pine. The knot swelled, locked us together. He came with a groan that sounded like it hurt. Hot pulses deep inside me.
I shook through my own release, tears I refused to call tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.
They stayed locked like that while Kane and Rylan stroked my back, my hair, the fresh bite marks on my shoulders.
Outside the windows the moon hung full and red. Inside, the curse had its anchor for the first time in twenty years.
I closed my eyes and wondered how long I could hate them before the bond made me love them instead.
Morning light stabbed through the windows and I woke alone in the massive bed. My body ached in ways I didn't know were possible. Every muscle felt used. Bite marks throbbed on my neck, my breasts, the inside of my thighs. Between my legs I was sticky and swollen. The knot had left me raw.
I sat up slow. The furs slid down. Cold air hit my bare skin. No clothes anywhere. The brothers had stripped me completely sometime in the night.
A tray waited on the low table by the hearth. Bread, cheese, roasted meat, a pitcher of water. My stomach growled so loud it embarrassed me. I ate anyway, tearing into the food with my fingers because no one had left me a knife.
The door opened without a knock. Darius walked in first, dressed in black leathers and the iron crown. Kane and Rylan followed. They looked rested. Satisfied. Like men who had just solved the problem that had been killing them for two decades.
Darius set a bundle of clothes on the bed. Simple gray dress, cloak, boots. "You'll wear these today. Tonight we'll have proper things made."
I pulled the dress over my head. It smelled of cedar and wolf. "I'm not your doll."
Rylan dropped onto the edge of the bed beside me. "You're our mate. Same difference."
Kane stayed by the door, arms crossed. "The pack needs to see you. Court in one hour. You sit at our feet until we say otherwise."
I laughed once, bitter. "Of course I do."
They didn't argue. They simply waited while I laced the boots. Then they walked me down to the great hall.
The pack had gathered. Fifty wolves at least. All of them watched me like I was fresh meat. Whispers rippled. Human. Weak. The one who'll break the kings or get broken by them.
Darius took the throne. Kane and Rylan sat on either side. I knelt on the furs at Darius's feet because fighting it right then would only get me dragged upstairs again. Court dragged. Disputes over hunting grounds, a raid on the eastern border, a young wolf who had challenged his beta and lost. Darius decided everything with three words or less. Kane watched faces. Rylan sharpened a knife and smiled at anyone who looked too long at me.
I stayed quiet. Inside my head the bond hummed steady now, like a chain I could almost ignore.
Until the messenger arrived. A Shadowpine scout, battered and bleeding, thrown to his knees in the middle of the hall. He looked straight at me.
"Your father sends word," he rasped. "He thanks the Blackthorns for taking the trash off his hands. Says the pack is stronger without the human stain."
The hall went dead quiet.
I felt the brothers tense around me. Darius's hand settled on my shoulder, heavy.
I stood up without permission. Walked to the messenger. Looked down at the man who had once trained with me in the yard. "Tell my father I'm not trash anymore."
I kicked him hard in the ribs. Once. Twice. The sound of bone cracking echoed. No one stopped me. When I stepped back the brothers were watching me with something new in their eyes. Hunger that had nothing to do with the bond and everything to do with the violence I'd just shown.
Darius spoke loud enough for the whole hall. "The girl stays. Anyone touches her, they die screaming."
The messenger was dragged out. I sat back down at their feet, heart hammering. The bond purred.
I was starting to understand the rules.
The next three days blurred into a rhythm I hated and craved at the same time.
Mornings they fed me. Afternoons they took me to the training yard and made me watch them spar. Evenings they took me back to the chambers and fucked me until I couldn't remember my own name.
The knotting never got easier. It always hurt at first, then it didn't, then I was begging for it. The bond made sure of that.
On the fourth night Kane found me alone on the balcony overlooking the ridges. Snow fell soft and silent. I had a cloak wrapped tight, but the cold still bit.
He stepped up beside me. No words at first. Just the two of us breathing frost.
"You're not eating enough," he said finally.
"I'm eating what they give me."
His hand brushed my lower back. "You're carrying the weight of three wolves now. The bond takes fuel."
I turned to look at him. Scars on his fingers caught the moonlight. "Why do you three even need me? You were managing before."
Kane's jaw tightened. "We weren't. Our father raped the wrong woman. The witch cursed us so we'd feel what he did to her daughter every single day. Without a mate the wolves take over. We start killing. First strangers. Then each other. Then everything."
He pulled a small pouch from his belt and poured something into his palm. Three teeth. Human. "These were the last men who tried to take what wasn't theirs before you got here."
I stared at the teeth. I should have been disgusted. Instead I felt the latent alpha in my blood lift its head and bare its own.
Kane closed his fist. "You bit a man's ear off on the way here. You kicked a messenger hard enough to break ribs. Keep doing that and maybe we won't have to chain you to the bed every night."
I smiled then. Small and sharp. "Maybe I like the chains."
His eyes darkened. He kissed me right there on the balcony, slow and deep, like he was tasting the lie and the truth mixed together. When he pulled back he said, "Tomorrow we ride out to the border. You're coming. Time you learned what your new pack looks like when it's bleeding."
I nodded. The bond hummed approval. Inside, something colder than the snow settled in my chest.
I was learning the rules fast. And I was already planning how to break them when the time came.