Inevitable Conclusions

Chapter- Four

Chapter- Four

Of all the ways she expected the day to go when one of the werewolves told her they would be heading to a Royal party, her current predicament is not what she pictured; leaning by a toilet stall she is not even allowed to be in, next to a beautiful but seemingly equally senseless s*x slave who was busy barfing out what now seemed to be blood and pus.

It’s not the first time she is encountering a s*x slave, and it definitely won’t be the last either. She is not well versed on the werewolf laws, but the last she knew it wasn’t exactly illegal to keep human pets for s****l pleasure, mostly because most arguments against it ended at ‘human slave’ and no one bothered about just for what and why the human slaves were being used, humans were mere properties, and it’s solely up to the pack to decide what they wanted their property to do for them. Thankfully most werewolves’ classism was so integrated that they considered it a disgrace to touch a human.

Then there was a completely different face to human s*x slaves, and these were the public open brothels, while wolves usually preferred other wolves to f**k, humans were risk free, limitless, breakable and easily expendable, they didn’t have to worry about pack relations and vengeances and all that s**t. So the brothels came around, this wasn’t illegalized either, but the older and prideful packs ‘frowned upon it’, so it was quite a surprise to see one within Royal grounds. She figured she shouldn’t be though, she’s seen hypocrisy at its best, the werewolves weren’t the type to practice what they preached, not when it didn’t benefit them directly.

It was cold in the marbled bathroom; she was shivering a little despite being distracted, not a surprise considering she was in her bra and her stringy old pants. The blood still remained, but she got the worst of it out that she could easily change into the non-bloodied shirt Mato lent her and worry about getting the rest of it out when she was in her camp and had access to a shower and some food. She should leave, the last thing she needs to do today is interact with a delirious s*x slave that most likely belonged to someone of the royal pack, he had looked interested in her initially, she doesn’t think she could get the glimmering smirk on his face at the sight of her out of her head for quite a while, but now he just seemed pained, exhausted that he wasn’t even aware of his surroundings. Also known as, not her f*****g business at the moment.

So she does, despite her initial interest that had prompted her to take a closer look she walks back to the sink, washes her face as quickly as she can, discards the bloodied shirt and changes into the clean one with only minimum wincing when she has to twist her shoulder a little when the hem of the sleeve gets caught in her trackers, all to the echoing background noise of loud groans and more painful whimpers that she pretends not to hear. She needs to get back, see what Alpha Vikram has for her, try and report what happened so she won’t get killed just yet, and go back to what she was meant to be doing here in the first place, search for Bella, that’s all that mattered.

Bella

Eventually it’s the name echoing in her head that makes her turn back to look at the stranger on the floor again, he had finally stopped throwing up and was looking at her again, his eyes drowsy but yet reckoning to her in a way Astrid couldn’t understand, and that right there reflects the memory she had in her head, so she curses out loud again, gives up on trying to button up a particularly hard one with one hand and walks back to the guy in quick long strides.

“Who are you?” is the first words out of his mouth, she is not sure whether it’s because he is sick and in pain, but he doesn’t ask the question like most people would, it’s not the usual disdain and pomp, not even entirely curiosity or interest, but rather some kind of fascination, a charmed remark, a weak demand.

“Not anyone important” she thrusts her hands into the back on her pant pockets, the un-clawed one, and takes out the painkiller Mato had handed to her. Medicines were a rarity, a lusted after luxury among the humans, the werewolves didn’t get sick and most drugs didn’t work on them even if they did, so the production of medicine was something solely for the humans, something to keep them in line without having to turn to the whips and the dungeons, and hence something the wolves had absolute monopoly over.

And currently she was handing it over to the strange guy on the floor, her shoulder is already aching but the difference between her and the drugged up guy is that she knows she can handle pain, and the guy looks like he might just lie down next to his own piss and vomit and die any second, if anyone needs the numbness it would be him. So despite the survivalist part of her brain nagging at her, and the Bella- like part singing praises she hands over the pill that’s still in its plastic covering.

“Just take it dude, you’ll be fine. If you manage not to die tonight that is- but yeah regardless, I am sure you’ll be great, those marks don’t even look that deep-It could have definitely been worse, lots of blood and guts- real, Yuck!” Astrid is yet to learn how to be helpful to someone in pain.

The guy stares again, looking utterly confused, that Astrid sighs out loud before crouching down next to him and placing it in one of his open palms, the less bloodied one next to her rather than the messy one on the floor. He takes the pill, but also her offered hand and pulls until Astrid falls on her butt next to his smelly self.

“The f**k dude?” Her shoulder is aching twice as bad in a single motion; she sees red and would have punched the guy in the face if he didn’t look dead already.

“Stay” it’s another single worded demand that has Astrid glaring at him and pushing him back, which was a bad idea because he literally loses balance and keels over and Astrid has to hold him up before his head hits his own vomit, all with the f*****g rip on her shoulder that will not give her a god damn break.

He is sick, that Astrid had figured, with the delirious smiles, the stink radiating of him and throwing up blood thing, but he is really sick, like almost dangerously that Astrid is pretty sure his sickness is not entirely natural.

“You alright, buddy?” she finds herself asking much softer than previously.

“Hmm-smell good” is the next senseless reply with a flutter of eyes before he leans his weight entirely onto her.

“You don’t” she pushes him right back finally managing to have him leaning onto the bathroom wall again without falling, but the second she has her hands off his body, he is gripping onto her legs, squeezing a little at her thighs.

“I said stay” he murmurs drowsily.

“And I am seconds away from saying f**k off and leaving you here to rot in your own piss and vomit” she snaps back but doesn’t make a motion to move. There is something about his face that is familiar, beyond the flashbacks to Bella, she tells herself that’s the only reason she does comply, sitting opposite to an absolute stranger who reeks of alcohol and dried blood on a bathroom floor. Despite his lack of coordination and understanding his grip on her clothed knee remains firm and unwavering, all the while the guy keeps looking at her and then out of nowhere smiles again like the sappiest drunk in the world.

“Oh, for god’s sake stop looking at me like that. Listen man, you are obviously good looking-“

“You are not very bad yourself” apparently he can manage his sentences, and the tilt on his lips is anything but innocent and broken that it startled her for a second.

“Thank you, but I am not the s*x slave here-”

“s*x slave?” he repeats cutting her off.

“Will you stop cutting me off? I am trying to make a point to your senseless ass. I don’t know what the whole fancy part of the town call it, but we normal people tends to be very frank when it comes to forced human prostitution”

“The proper term in ‘Consort’, I believe” the longer he is speaking, the faster the ‘broken boy’ perspective Astrid had for him is disappearing.

“That’s nice, but do I look like I care? The job entails the same; you get f****d by animalistic pompous douche-wolves, Royal douche- wolves in your case I guess” she says pointing out to just where they were sitting.

The guy laughs, it’s so contrasting to the silent air that she promptly forget just what point she was trying to make, when the laughter subsides there is a smile in place of the cocky smirk, a soft dimple visible to her.

“You have a very interesting vocabulary for a human” he says at last, already starting to look better somehow, or maybe it’s the after effect of his laughter playing across his features.

“I don’t think I have heard a human use the word ‘vocabulary’ in a long while” she twists the question around, “Besides you also have that dickish accent too” she notes.

“’Dickish’?” there is that amused smile again.

“High-end, like the wolves’” she explains. She was once again feeling eerily strange at the look in his eyes and the sudden drifting calm in the room.

It’s not that she isn’t communicable, running her mouth was the most common trick she used to get sold from pack to pack, wasn’t the smartest but definitely the easiest, she has a tendency to speak but the sight of the trackers on her wrist and her attitude kept people away, so far she had always made sure it did in order to avoid causalities, this was strange, this was a conversation with someone who could have potentially suffered way more than she did, this was a conversation with the assurance of no continuation, a conversation held in an empty bathroom in an empty mansion with both of them hurt and bleeding, and he didn’t cry or moan or warn her to keep her mouth shut

“I was born into it a ‘high end’ pack, more or less. I was bound to pick up something from the so called ‘douche wolves’ was it?” he answers.

“You were never sold?”

He looks confused at her questions, as if the concept is new, that’s the first time he breaks eye contact without having to throw up or cough again.

“Not often” he says at last.

“Then how the hell did you end up here?” Astrid is confused. Brothels always had last picks, the ones who were sold way too many times and tagged useless or dangerous to be around packs; he was healthy, strong, and even in this state defiant. The only other means is if someone trained him from birth to be this, to be a ‘consort’, to please werewolves and be their punching bag like he was today, but he didn’t look like the type to be trained, the type to be submissive even in his current state.

He coughs a little, and Astrid thinks he might throw up again but his eyes remain fixated on her and a large smirk overtakes him.

“I like it, the s*x is good” He whispers the words out, eyes never wavering from hers.

Which is not what she was expecting to be entirely honest, Astrid is all for getting the best out of a shitty situation and she is pretty sure she has no right to judge here, her experiences with wolves seeking s*x from pre- pubescent children might vary from his, as she mentioned he looked well, he looked taken care of, and isn’t that what every human being wanted these day? To be stable, and if he is even able to enjoy what it takes him to gain the things he wants, that’s all the power to him.

“What?- It’s not fair for me to enjoy it?- or am I only worth the empathy when I am broken and sad?” it’s a challenge in his voice, smirk wide and open as he leans back into the wall a little, his hands still unmoving even if the grip had softened a little.

“No, I think it’s great that life as human isn’t a pit of misery and anger to you. I just don’t think you do enjoy it, because if you did you wouldn’t be here” is all that she has to say. The picture he was in right now, bruised bloodied and drugged by god knows who, it didn’t look he liked this part, but Astrid didn’t want to say that out loud. Life as a human in this world wasn’t very fun, you needed anchors to keep going from day to day without wanting to just end it all, no matter how destructive they might be an anchor helps you wake up the next day, he looked a little like he didn’t have one at the moment.

His smile flatters, as if she said something she shouldn’t have, which happens a lot actually and most of the time it isn’t even deliberate, she has a feeling that she might have just ripped of the pseudo-anchor he had built in his head and that is a very dangerous thing to do to someone who is trapped like him, someone who doesn’t know how to run away.

She adjusts her shoulder a little when she is alerted to the ache again, his eyes shift to her shoulders for a flash and then slowly to her wrists, to the trackers and his eyes harden. For a second she had entirely forgotten about them, the mild electrocution had stilled, she is not sure it was the Alpha Vikram’ doing or not, but she would have preferred to have the thing buzzing and shocking her every five minutes, because then maybe she wouldn’t forget, maybe then the guy would have noticed it earlier too.

She should get going, tell the guy to take the meds and go see her Alpha, it wouldn’t spare well for her to leave them waiting. But before she does she remembers the actual reason she wanted to be within premises of the mansion, her own anchor.

“What pack are you from?” she questions as she gets ready to leave, letting her shoulder get used to movement again so that it won’t hurt as much when she eventually gets up and starts walking.

He doesn’t say anything for a while that she assumes he doesn’t want to talk anymore, maybe the trackers spooked him off too.

“Not any that’s important” he says and it takes her second to realize it’s a reference to what she said earlier. She could enquire further, but it felt like she may not get an answer.

“Alright, have you ever heard of someone called Isabella Baxter?” she asks for the second time that night, but seemingly the millionth time in her life.

He shakes his head, and Astrid simply sighs out before she gets to her feet. He looks about ready to protest again, the grip on her leg tightening as she gets to her feet.

“I gotta get going so..” she points to the door.

His eyes tighten again, maybe because her wrist was more visible as she stood up. A howl echoes from somewhere, loud and booming and it had both their attention snapped.

He lets go of her leg before she can ask him to again.

“Uh-Do you need any help or something?” she ask nevertheless as he made no attempt of sitting up straighter or even taking the pill she handed to him.

“Not at the moment, love” he smiles again, simply staring up at her

“I do get why you are a s*x- No,’ consort’, you are very annoyingly charming. I wish to say I’ll see you again, but I probably won’t, so this was painful and gross, and you are kind of weird, so hopefully I won’t see you again” she hurries to get the words out.

The howl echoes as she opens the bathroom door again, she is so focused on the sound that she doesn’t notice that claw marks previously displayed on the stranger’s skin already heeling in mere seconds….