Chapter 1
Alone.
For the first time in my life, I was truly and utterly alone.
It had only been two days since my abduction from Eric’s home, right in front of everyone’s eyes, but it felt like much longer. The scene replayed over and over again in my mind. Me, supposedly safely stowed away in Eric’s bedroom, surrounded by two of my mates--Colton and Ramsay--in their wolf forms.
But even they weren’t strong or fast enough to stop a gryphon.
I didn’t blame them. The attack came suddenly, with barely enough warning for anyone to know what was going on. The only caution we had came from the Madame, my friend in the human settlement, who saw the gryphons flying over her territory and came to warn us.
But there wasn’t enough time. The gryphons were faster, bigger, and more powerful than a single wolf shifter.
I was grabbed like a ragdoll and lifted effortlessly into the beast’s talons--into the air, and away from my home, and everything I loved.
The initial shock of panic had passed. I wasn’t struck by sharp fear anymore, but instead consumed by a low, overwhelming sense of dread.
I knew exactly what was going to happen to me here, and there was no way to escape it.
Not unless my mates came to save me.
Since I’d been abandoned here in this empty room, my hands had rarely left my belly. My baby was growing there, and it was my baby who I was the most worried about. Would my child be born in a horrible place like this, and if so, what would happen to them?
I nearly whimpered at the thought.
Here, in a place where an omega wolf shifter was abducted to be a breeding slave?
Definitely nothing good.
I heard a noise outside the room I was being held in, and my head snapped up, and through the single window I saw that it was the gryphon who had abducted me. The one who ripped me from my home. From my family.
He hadn’t spoken past the words he said to me in the air.
“Hello, omega. Pleased to finally meet you. I suggest you get comfortable. You’re going to be with us for a very long time.”
I shuddered as his voice like nails echoed in my mind.
The gryphon yawned and stretched, showing off his wingspan that barely brushed the ceiling. My face twisted into a scowl. The interior of this place was enormous, unnecessarily so--as if it was made with the gryphons’ size in mind, and not their corresponding human forms. In fact, I hadn’t seen any gryphons assuming their human forms since arriving.
I curled up tighter, bringing my knees to my chest. I already felt small and helpless enough, a small wolf in a place full of massive winged beasts in a massive, sprawling building. My own body was my only source of comfort.
The heavy iron door swung inwards, and the gryphon prowled inside. He tucked his wings to accommodate the door’s threshold, but didn’t even need to duck his head to enter. Everything about this place was huge. The architecture was brutal, yet somehow luxurious. It was a strange, alien society to me, and it only made me long for home even more.
The gryphon paused and eyed me. I wasn’t shackled, or tied down, just loose in this holding room. And why wouldn’t I be? I was a single omega wolf. I couldn’t even take on one gryphon by myself, let alone a whole pride of them who desired me and my body above all else. There was no feasible way to escape on my own.
And they knew it.
His eyes never left mine as he loosely circled me, regarding me with fascination and quiet smugness, like I was some kind of precious object that his kind had finally acquired.
I glared at him. Maybe it was stupid of me to be openly defiant when I was always the weakest one in the room, but none of them had made any moves to hurt me--yet. I knew logically I was too important to physically harm. If their purpose for me really was to use me to breed for the rest of my life, then they wouldn’t be stupid enough to damage me.
I caught myself thinking in that way and felt disgusted. What was wrong with me? Why was I giving into this fate so easily?
Then again, what choice do I have?
The gryphon approached. He had an eagle’s head, with two tufted feathery ears coming out of the back, perched on the shoulders of a powerful lion. He could have looked magnificent if he weren’t my captor.
In a way, he resembled Noro, my only gryphon friend--or at least, he would have, if he had any of the same warmth and kindness.
