Page 22 of Brutally Mated
“Okay, well, I don’t want to go to bed. I stay up late. And I slept earlier today.”
“You napped for a few hours. That is not enough rest. Come with me now,” Skor says.
I look him in the face, and find myself filled with pure rebellion. “Or what?”
“Or this,” he says, not skipping a beat as he pulls me up from the table and lays his palm across my ass three times in swift, harsh swats.
“Ow!”
“You have a lot to learn about behaving,” he says, releasing me. “We’re going to the hotel, going to get some real food, and we’re going to bed.”
“Real food?” Thorn cuts in. “What have they got?”
“There’s a stew on. Can’t you smell it?”
I rub my butt, then kick Skor in the shin. Hard.
“You don’t get to hit me. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t… hey!” I shriek as he picks me up and throws me over his shoulder.
“You need to learn to behave yourself,” he says, smacking my ass again hard. “And you don’t kick me just because I spanked you. This is what happens when you disobey. You get punished. You know that. You grew up in a pack. You know how to obey.”
I obeyed my father because he is the ultimate authority in the land. These three are nobody in particular. Sacrifices I saved. Males who owe me their life. The sting in my ass only encourages me to escape. We are not yet too far away for me to run back to the mountains overnight. I plan to make my move once they all fall asleep, so I suppose I should at least pretend to submit.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
I let him carry me into the hotel. Unlike the candy shop, this place does not smell good. The scent of food is the least offensive thing about it. This place smells like… I don’t even know. I guess there was a faint waft of it in the candy shop, but here it’s thick and it gets in my throat.
“What’s that stink?”
“Quiet,” Skor says as he starts to carry me up rickety stairs.
“Why?”
He carries me to the very top, across a landing, and into a room, where the smell is even more intense. Now it is coming from the bed, a big thick oversized thing that looks about five times larger than literally any other piece of furniture I have ever seen in my life.
“I’m going to be ill if you do not open a window,” I say as he sets me on my feet. “This place smells like death.”
“It’s not death,” he says. “It’s the scent of people. Humans. You’re not used to them.”
“Oh, my gods, did they rub themselves over every inch of this place?”
“Effectively, yes,” he says.
“Please open the window.”
He cracks it, which doesn’t help at all. If anything, it stirs up the smells and makes them more pungent somehow by giving them small air currents to drift on. I think about hurling myself through the window, but force myself to be patient. My time will come, and it is not yet.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask the question, not because I care about the answer, but because I want them to think I give a damn. If they know I plan to run away, they will keep a tight watch.
“We’re going to go on the train. We’re going to go to Eclipse City.”
“Why?”
“Because we want you to see the wonders of the world.”
The door opens and shuts behind me. Thorn has come up. He casts a look at Skor that I find interesting. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was suspicious about something.
“I don’t want to see the wonders of the world. I want to go…” I pause, stopping myself from saying that I want to go back to the mountain.
