Chapter 44: Initiation

DRAVEN’S POV

"Didn’t you fuck your mate’s sister in the open?" Rex asked.

I didn’t respond. I was in the hot seat and I knew it.

"This shouldn’t be a hard thing to do. Come on ... you’re already there. Unless you want to lose your life tonight?"

That landed. Hard.

I looked at the female they’d brought to me. She was already ready, already waiting. No hesitation on her end whatsoever.

Then I looked at Jade. She gave me a single nod ... do it ... and something like courage shot through me, fast and sharp, like a needle to the vein.

The woman they’d brought leaned over the bar table, back arched, ass facing me, and waited.

I pulled my dick out and the room erupted in cheers.

This is so fucking awkward, I thought, glancing around at the wolves watching with their drinks in hand, grinning like this was entertainment. And it was, to them. People were genuinely strange. I’d lived my whole life without crossing paths with someone like Rex, and standing in that bar, I wished that was still the case. He was a parasite ... to my freedom, to my peace, to my very existence.

"Fuck me, baby," the woman hollered over her shoulder.

So I did.

I pushed in deep and she moaned like it was her first time ... loud, unrestrained, completely unbothered by the crowd. She made me feel like I was something special, which I knew was the performance, but it worked regardless.

"Ohhh ... yes ... harder, baby, go deeper..."

The table was shaking. The wolves watching were hollering, raising their glasses, making noise like we were putting on a show. Someone had even set up cameras. I clocked them and told myself not to think about it ... either they were recording for private use or it was going to end up somewhere I didn’t want to think about. Either way, I kept going.

At some point I slowed down, ready to stop.

"Why are you stopping?" Rex called out, like I’d personally offended him.

"Neither of you has finished yet. Keep going."

I kept going.

I pushed deeper ... deeper than before ... until I could feel every inch of distance between us disappear. She flipped around and I worked her from the front, mouth on her breasts, hand stroking between her legs while I felt her climbing toward the edge.

I was getting there too.

But it wasn’t her that pushed me over.

It was Astrid.

The thought of her slipped into my mind without permission and suddenly I was fucking harder, driven by a memory rather than the woman in front of me. I went back to the mating festival. The library. The way cheating had never felt so good and so wrong at the same time. Every moment we’d had together flashed through ... but the first time hit the hardest. The first time with Astrid was a banger. Nothing compared.

I sucked at the woman’s breasts until I felt myself at the peak, then pulled out and she took me in her mouth. The blowjob she gave me nearly broke something in my brain. Only a woman who knew exactly what she was doing moved like that ... and she didn’t prove herself any less than that.

I came inside her mouth. She squirted on me.

The little audience we’d gathered started clapping like we’d just finished a performance at the opera.

Rex clapped the loudest. Only him, actually ... everyone else had settled back into their drinks and conversations by the time I was pulling my trousers back up and getting myself together. The woman I’d just fucked bolted straight to the bathroom without a word.

Rex walked over and patted my back, then grabbed it with both fists and pressed down hard.

"You did good. The sky is your starting point, Draven. That’s what I have to say to you."

He looked over at Jade, who had apparently been watching the whole time.

"Let me now introduce you to what we do here ... or should I let Jade do it, since she’s been watching free television this whole time?"

Jade turned her face away the second he said her name.

"Never mind," Rex said, smiling, smacking his lips like something amused him deeply.

He turned back to me.

"Welcome to the club. The Mafia Wolves. We are fearless. We steal. We rape. We run prostitution. We are the underdog government of Valdris ... nothing happens in this territory without going through us." He spread his arms wide, gesturing at the bar around us. "This place is where we generate our money. The whores we bring in and the wolves we take become our workers here. Jade runs the bar."

He kept walking me through the space, pointing things out like a proud business owner giving a tour.

"It is so fortunate that you joined us," he said, laughing low. "I believe the goddess herself planned this. Ha."

He stopped and turned to face me fully.

"Before I forget ... one more thing. Always remember that I am your boss. Here, outside here, everywhere. Even the Alpha of this territory was chosen through me, so he has no say where I am concerned. Is that understood?"

I nodded.

I understood him perfectly. What I was also understanding ... slowly, with a cold settling feeling in my gut ... was that there were eight wolves in this group. I was about to become the ninth.

How exactly was I going to survive this?

"What are you thinking?" Rex said, watching me. "Nine is a good number."

I stared at him. "You can hear my thoughts?"

One of the other wolves ... a male, built wide, arms crossed ... scoffed from across the room. "Why do you think he leads us? Nothing escapes him. Didn’t you just hear that, or are you deaf?"

Rex raised one hand slightly and the wolf went quiet immediately.

He told me to go and rest. Freshen up.

"As a welcome gift, eat and drink whatever you want tonight," he said. "Rest well. Work starts soon."

I nodded and went inside ... back to the room they’d first put me in when I arrived.

I sat there for ten minutes just letting everything settle.

Astrid. I thought about her first. She was probably doing fine ... she always landed on her feet, always found a way to move forward even when things were burning around her. Then Selene. The one I’d betrayed. I thought about her too, and the guilt sat in my chest like a stone I couldn’t move.

I told myself they’d both be alright.

Someone at Bloodmoon used to say it ... as long as there’s life, there’s hope. I’d heard it so many times it almost lost meaning. But sitting in that room, in Valdris, inside the walls of a Mafia wolf den with nowhere to go and no plan for getting out, I held onto it. Circumstances didn’t cancel the truth of it. I had to believe that.

Then Jade walked in.

First aid box in hand, same as before. She set it down, opened it, pulled out cotton wool and spirit, and came toward me like she already knew I was going to be stubborn about it.

"You did well out there today," she said. "You survived."

She moved to press the wool against the cut on my head.

I pulled back. She looked at me.

"I’m fine."

"No, you’re not," she said flatly. "Give me your head. There’s a cut there ... I saw the way he hit you. That spot won’t heal right on its own."

I let her do it.

The truth was I was in real pain. I’d just been performing strength because that was all I had left to offer in a room full of wolves who would eat me alive the second they sensed weakness.

"You think I did well?" I said quietly. "I almost killed someone tonight."

"But you didn’t," she said. "You were surviving. That’s different."

"I behaved like someone I’m not. I don’t rape people."

"That wasn’t rape," she said, moving around to my side, pressing gently at my ribs.

I hissed sharply at the contact.

"Pull your shirt up," she said. "Let me check that properly."

I didn’t argue. She must have watched the moment one of Rex’s wolves landed a punch to my side during the earlier fight. Nothing got past her either, it seemed.

Shirt off, she looked at my bare chest. The tattoos caught her off guard ... I saw it in the brief pause before she composed herself. She pressed a warm cloth to the bruised area and kept going.

"You survived because a female wolf helped you," she said. "Remember that. Be grateful for it."

The words pulled my mind straight to Astrid ... to what she must have been doing to survive on her end. Fucking Ethan Allen. Finding her own demons to run from. I supposed we all had them. None of us got to choose the corner we ended up backed into.

"Thank you," I said. "For what you keep doing for me."

"There’s more to come," she said simply. "You’re only just starting here. I’ll help where I can. Just keep surviving."

She checked my temperature, packed her kit, and left without another word.

Rex appeared in the doorway before I could even exhale.

"Ol’ howl ... you settling in?" He grinned. "Good. Get ready. We have our first mission coming up."

"What’s the mission?" I asked.

"You’ll find out soon enough. We still have some catching up to do first."

He left.

And I sat back down on that bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering exactly what kind of hell I’d just signed myself into.