Griffin
I wasn’t sure at first whether his teeth had broken skin. His saliva had been warm on my arm, and I’d been sure he’d bitten me deeply enough to draw blood. He hadn’t. It wouldn’t have mattered much if he had because it wasn’t like anyone was going to see my arm, but it was the principle of the thing.
I should’ve expected him to fight at some point, and I had. I kept expecting him to come at me, but he hadn’t done that. He’d waited until I’d been distracted — until I’d been kind to him, even! — then lashed out with his teeth like some unruly, cowardly beast.
I’m sure people would’ve considered me the cowardly one, keeping him locked behind bars where I didn’t have to face him in a fight. But this was kennel training for a feral creature that didn’t know its proper place.
After I left him alone downstairs to think, I fixed myself my own meal, eating it in silence — alone, as always, and wishing I’d picked someone who might’ve surrendered a little more easily to me. It would’ve been nice to have the companion I’d paid so handsomely for.
Maybe I should’ve paid extra to have him trained before he got here.
But no. He had to learn from my hand. I didn’t want his loyalty going to anyone else, forced as it might be. I didn’t want him yearning for some other master or mistress.
I wanted him to wantme.
It sounded so pathetic even to me that I abruptly shoved my half-full plate away, my appetite gone. I couldn’t let the boy figure out just how much he was getting to me. He’d play me like a fucking fiddle if he realized just how desperate I was for him to surrender.
There was a knock on the door, unexpected and out of place, and I froze. Could I pretend I wasn’t there?
It was probably some delivery person, come to deliver one of the countless packages I ordered on a regular basis, but I wasn’t used to them knocking. They usually just left the box and went on their way, knowing I wouldn’t live this far off the beaten path if I didn’t want privacy.
I glanced down at where my arm was a little red from where Toby had bitten me, shaking my head. I didn’t have time to slip into a long-sleeved shirt, so I dared going to the door without it.
On the other side, as expected, was a bored-looking delivery woman.
“Yes?” I asked her, willing her to justgo away.
“I have a package that needs to be signed for,” she told me. Her eyes flicked over me, avoiding the sight of my face and where the scar went down beneath my shirt. It went instead to my arm, and I could see her looking curiously at the mark.
Goddamnit. I should’ve just ignored the fucking door.
I took the device and stylus from her, explaining offhandedly, “Training a new dog.”
She brightened at that. “Oh yeah? What kind? I have two German Shepherds at home.”
“Just a mutt,” I told her, flashing her the most charming smile I could manage from beneath the deterring mask of scars.
“Oh, those can be the best dogs,” she said, taking the thing back from me and starting to tap different sections of the screen.
“He will be,” I said with a nod, ignoring the way my heart raced in my chest. “He’s just semi-feral right now. He’ll calm down soon.”
She chatted with me about dog training, and all the while, I could only think about the fact that I had ahuman beingin my basement. I was training him to be a dog, calling him a mutt, resigning him to a fate he knew but wasn’t ready to accept yet. But it hadn’t even felt real to me until that moment.
It felt real to me then, as I picked the package up from the ground. More supplies. More things to use against my unwilling pup. More training tools.
More. So much more.
I was genuinely smiling by the time I closed the door behind her, but that didn’t stop me from locking it with all three of its locks as always. She might’ve seemed nice, and she might’ve bought the dog story hook, line, and sinker, but that didn’t mean anything.
I was breathing normally even though it felt like a near thing.
The exhaustion that adrenaline had mostly kept at bay was coming back to haunt me with a vengeance, and I realized just how few hours of sleep I’d gotten over the past few days. I’d been too busy trying to break him down that I’d lost track of time, and it was past time for me to sleep.
Part of me felt bad for leaving him down there with no water, but I wasn’t going to give in. He was going to have to drink water my way now, and he wasn’t going to like it. He was going to wish he’d just put on the collar.
Never mind that this had been inevitable anyway. He’d give in to one thing after another, each worse than the last, until he no longer saw a reason to fight.
That would be when things would get dangerous. He’d seem trustworthy, but I’d have no way of truly knowing when he gave in…
