Rain falls down in sheets against the window of Silverdown as the lady of the manor stares at the messenger with in surprise. She’s been found. The three words reverberate in her mind. She sinks to the floor sobbing. Lady Abordine has been found!

The messenger watches the woman uneasily as her maids fly into the room to comfort her. He wasn’t able to say the second part of his message, and now he isn’t sure he wants to.

The naked child stands in the center of the circular chamber watching the leashed lupus stalk around her. Above her in the theater seats, adults watch in judgement. She hears them whispering to each other and keeps her face carefully blank. She’s been through worse than this and survived.

The partially transformed wolf man huffs a word. It is repeated like the roar of an ocean wave from in a long forgotten memory of a trip with her father. A trip she will never have again. She raises her eyes to meet those of the woman who was once her mother and sees the truth reflected as the woman howls in misery. She tears at the pearls of her bodice, clawing at the people around her.

The child keeps her face impassive even as her heart breaks. She survived, but she may as well have died in that dusty wagon with its fine silks and satins. 

The adults stand and file out of the room, leaving only the final quorum. The word fades as the adults disappear. A judgement as final as the executioner’s axe. “Tainted.”

The remaining adults watch with hard faces. They say nothing, but the child can almost hear the whispers flowing between them. The air feels charged with their magic and the child rolls its flavor on her tongue. The lupus flashes a disgusted look at the quorum and drops his hand between his naked legs. His arm moves in short jerky movements as his gaze moves over the child’s scarred body.

The child can smell his growing arousal and is unsurprised to see his distended member as he breaks his masturbation to stalk toward her. His nostrils flare and the child can feel the quorums interest like a weight upon her skin. She turns to face the wolf-man, opening her stance slightly and revealing the moisture on her inner thighs. He grins and sips in her scent to roll it around on his tongue.

The child’s arousal is automatic. A defense mechanism that kept her alive through so many assaults she’s lost count. Her elevated heartbeat hides her true feelings, her real thoughts.

The lupus comes in close enough to touch. He has to crouch to come face to face with her. Disgust and anticipation play across his face in equal measures. This close, Autumn can feel the magic of his leash flickering over her skin. She can sense the spiderweb of magical tendrils that reach into his brain overriding his emotions. She can feel his defiance and the overwhelming lust being fed to him.

Another puppet on strings. If she concentrates she can follow the rainbow thin leash up to an impassive man in the grandstands. The movement is subtle, but the child can smell his arousal as well. His expression is like stone but his eyes are coals upon her skin. The child uses her disgust to feed her anger and her own arousal.

She shivers, as the lupus licks the wetness between her thighs. The long tongue feels wet and cool against the fever running under her skin. His nose bumps her clit and she sighs, clenching her fist reflexively. The first outward sign of the defiance running through her. She keep her eyes locked on the lupus’ master in the grandstands.

The wolf-man lifts one of her legs over his own knee for better access. His hesitation leaves him as he licks and nuzzles her vulva with an instinctual hunger. His cock straining between his legs, twitching with every heartbeat. Every time his teeth graze her clit she jumps a little until he grabs one hip in an iron grip. His claws prick her backside and she uses the pain to maintain her focus.

It is getting hard for her to keep her patience. She feels the tainted magic of her transformation rise and fall as the lupus’ talented tongue brings her closer to climax. It is a dark tide that promises her that no matter what the wolf does to her next she will enjoy it. She will beg for more until the pleasure and pain are so great that the eros shudderingly breaks. And she has to face the humiliation of remembering all the things he had her do, that he had her begging to do.

Her eyes flutter closed and she bites her lip as another shudder flows through her. Her tiny canines draw blood and she knows the change is close. The lupus knows it as well. He drops her down on the raised dais, knocking the wind from her. His impossibly large cock slides against her sopping wet mound. The child’s breath quickens. She knows what will happen next. She knows how much it will hurt and how much she wants it. And she remembers her promise to never let this happen again.

She buries her face into the lupus neck and growls, the sound deep and resonant as her anatomy shifts. She wraps her arms and legs around the wolf as she tenses in fear. The first fear she’s allowed herself to feel tonight. 

“I’m sorry.” The man whispers as the wetness of her tears lingers on his neck. He rocks her forward and slides himself inside.

The child feels like she is being torn in two and she whimpers against his neck. He starts sliding in and out of her, gentler than he ever did, but it still tears her inside. It doesn’t take long before the smell of her blood mingles with her juices and the scent removes whatever control the lupus had left. He begins slamming into her. His cock pushing against her cervix and he is still trying to fit more of himself inside. Her traitorous body transforms the pain into pleasure, another survival reaction, and she is finally brought to climax. With it the tainted energy in her body peaks triggering the full transformation.

She hears the quorum stand and begin murmuring among each other. She wraps her tail around the wolf’s leg and pins her ears to her skull as the wolf continues to drive into her. The orgasms begin to roll in on waves as every inch of her becomes a means by which she receives pleasure. With each wave she loses who she is, piece by piece. Adrift in an ocean of sensation, she clings one thought, the only thought, that has enabled her to survive for so long.

The lupus increases his tempo. He’s close and the child gets ready. He slams into her one last time and relaxes, crushing her with his weight. While he is still shuddering, she nuzzles the vein she located on his neck, opens her mouth and rips out his throat.

The room falls silent.

She kicks off the lupus body, already changing back into his human form. She’s shocked to see that he’s still a boy whose barely old enough to shave. Her stomach lurches, but she turns her attention to the men on the stands above her. No more. She locks her eyes on the man on the other end of the lupus’ leash drinking in the smell of his fear and the sickly sweet smell of his illness covered by the alcoholic smell of his aftershave. She coils her body and leaps for the top of the wall that separates her from the seating above missing the lip by inches.

The quorum screams for the guards to come as they press toward the exits. The lupus’ master sits frozen, locked by her amber eyes as equal mixtures of lust and fear pass through him. She stalks back and forth on the dais below, tracking footprints in blood on the white marble.

Before she can leap again ribbons settle around her, clinging to her skin like they were soaked in sap. Seconds later, pain like she had never felt before runs down the ribbons dropping her to her knees. She screams and manages to rip a tether free of the guard as she turns to face the new threat. More and more tethers continue to fall on her as she struggles to break free. Her screams become something separate from her as there is nothing but the pain.

The lupus’s master watches her fall and a greedy smile spreads on his lips.

“You can’t seriously be thinking of handing her over to him!” The middle aged hunter slams his fist into the wood of the door frame as he glares at the quiet group of elderly men and woman before him. The group is a strange mixture of the leader of the Silver Crescent, the high priestess of Kyranthia, and the high priest of Dominus. The high priest gives an oily smile that churns Victor’s stomach.

“You are here as a courtesy because of your connection to the girl’s family, nothing more.” The high priestess says sternly. “Think about what’s best for her.”

“A woman of such breeding shouldn’t be on the battlefield.” The high priest flicks his tongue to his lips. “She can have the luxury she is meant for inside the temple. She will be the prize of our stables, given sufficient training.”

“You know how difficult having an argent-feles is, particularly a female one.” The leader of the Crescent is still strong despite his greying beard. He moves with the quiet confidence of a warrior as he looks Victor in the eye. “Besides, don’t you think she has had enough violence for one lifetime? Judging from her physical we’re surprised she lasted this long. I can’t even imagine what she went through at the hands of the bard.”

“But that’s just it. You saw how she reacted to the libidi-lupus. She despised the sexual contact.” Victor resumes his pacing.

“She may despise it now, but she cannot change her nature.” The priestess says gently. “Belias can teach her the pleasant side of it.”

“Isn’t she young for a pleasure slave?” Victor tries again.

“It’s now her nature.” The priestess closes her eyes sadly. “I know how difficult this is for you as her uncle. But believe me that we are doing what is best for her. She will spend the rest of her life in safety, with every wish taken care of. Can you really say that the Silver Crescent can give her more?”

Victor frowns. Curse the thera anyhow. They’d taken his family away from him and now turned his niece into one of them. They’ve already announced her death to the people. As a feles she may as well be dead. She can never go home again. His sister is already morning the death of her child, refusing to even visit Abordine while she waits for this council to decide her fate.

The little girl already looks so mature. It is difficult to remember that she is only 6 years old. She’s become so good at hiding her emotions, but she can’t hide the way she flinches every time an adult comes near her. Maybe it is better that she join the pleasure harems of Dominus. It may be difficult for her now, but she will be prized for her unusual coat and her bloodline. As much as he wants to think of Belias as a pervert, he knows that the high priest has always treated his thera stables with respect. He was genuinely distraught over Evan’s death, the libidi-lupus he brought to test Abordine.

He sighs. Perhaps they are right. Being an argent-thera is impossibly difficult. He has seen true abuse amid the Silver Crescent stables, but it is all meant to harden the thera, to forge them into the weapons that the organization needs to hold the borders. It may be enough to crack Abordine entirely.

The child looks around the bedroom with wide eyes. Her back still stings from the recent tattoo that marks her as a libidi-feles and is the first layer of the mystical leash the mages will spend the next few weeks establishing. She tried to fight the first binding, but the power of the mages was so overwhelming that she could do nothing but hide as they dug through the surface layers of her memories.

She remembers a time when she used to find comfort amid the silk sheets and heavy down comforter of her own bedroom. How she loved the beautiful dresses her mother always made her wear. She dreamed of adventure and princes that would sweep her off her feet.

She thought that was what he was at first. She’d gotten so used to being barely spoken too that she it sent her a thrill of pleasure when the bard would ask for her opinion at the diner table. He seemed so calm and graceful. His voice was fit to seduce the gods. What happened next was entirely the child’s fault.

She walks around the room in the pure white gown the priestesses insisted that she wear. White, the color of purity. The child laughs at the irony. Running her fingers through the rich furs and delicate silk, the child remembers.

It was the child who chose to hide inside the bard’s wagon when he left their hold to approach the next one. By the time she was discovered it was too late to send her back. She’d already learned the bard’s secret. From a hidden compartment, the child watched as the bard transformed into a feles as he rapped his own apprentice. She tried to sneak away with the young boy, but was captured by the feles.

The child spent the next year and a half as the bard’s slave. The apprentice did not last very long and soon, the bard had her dressed like a boy to apprentice for him. He started teaching her how to sing and bits and pieces of bardic lore. When they were alone he abused her and used her to fulfill the voracious feles lust.

The first time was the hardest. She would have died if the bard had not healed her. His ability with magic was crude at best, and the healing process often caused more pain than the initial injury. But that may have been intentional. The bard was a sadist. He enjoyed nothing more than seeing the child’s pain. So she learned to hide it, and to bury her fear.

She wasn’t the only child the bard kept in his wagon. Every few months he’d pick up a new child. Some of them tried to run away with the bard like the child had. Some of them were stolen from their homes because they interested the bard. None of them lasted for long.

There were no classes in the bard’s wagon. From the lowliest commoner to the highest ranking noble child, all were treated equal, all were slaves to the bards lust.

This quiet feels strange to her. The calm murmur of the acolytes. The sighs of other feles as they assist temple visitors in their worship of Dominus, the god of pleasure as the scent of their joining lies heavy in the halls. She runs her finger over the tight fitting collar and frowns. She’s still a slave. There was no real escape after all.

Only a few of the other children changed like she did. Most of the children that died the bard fed to the survivors. He called the humans pigs and said that it was only natural that the predators of humans should eat them. Less than a handful of the other children he burned in a solemn ceremony.

It took time for Autumn to realize what the difference was. To realize that the other children started to smell different, to smell like him. For the child to realize that she smelled like him too. She will always remember the first night she changed. How the bard reverently stroked her new coat and whispered that she was now a god among men. That he would show her how to her pleasure among man and beast alike. He whispered sweet words and touched her tenderly and as he brought her shudderingly to climax after climax she cried. His kindness was somehow crueler than his rage.

She hurls the pillows across the room and rips the sheets from the bed. She survived. She fought so hard to be free again. She sacrificed so much. But it turns out that she only traded one set of chains for another.

They returned to the city of her birth. She was so different that not even her mother recognized her when the bard performed at court. Afterwards he slipped into the palace and walked out with the crown prince. A gift for her, he said. He remembered they’d been promised to one another when she was born. Now that she was ready to start her new life she should break ties with her old.

Sobs rack the child’s body as she wraps herself in the shredded blankets. It is too quiet. She can’t stop the memories and more than she can stop the beast inside of her.

For so long Autumn fought only to survive. She saw too many children come through and grace her dinner table. Autumn always ate and was always proud that it wasn’t here. That she was still alive.

But somewhere along the way, she realized that she couldn’t keep just surviving. Each of those broken lives had a meaning. There were people who loved them. They had a future. The more that the child realized that she was never going to be able to go back, the more she fought for the other children so that they could.

More and more she took on the bard’s anger and his lust. She’d watch the frightened faces of the children as he took her in the most painful ways that he knew. The bone spur in his glands tearing up her insides every time he thrust as he raped her as a gigantic white cat. If she hadn’t already been infected, hadn’t already started changing, she would never have survived. But like a curse, that famed thera healing always ensured that no matter what wrath he carved on the canvas of her skin she was whole within a few short days.

She couldn’t always save them. The bard was too clever for that. Eventually his curiosity and his lust would fall on his new prizes. And he would still break them. Like he knew that with every victim, the child’s soul would crack a little bit farther.

The prince was to be hers to break. Her’s to make like they were. If she didn’t, the bard would ensure that the prince would wish that he had never been born. She was to seduce him, and the young pre-teen prince found himself happy to oblige.

The bard found other play things, leaving the happy couple alone. The child didn’t fully understand what it meant to be a feles but she quickly learned. She tried so hard to avoid sleeping with the crown prince, but the longer she held out, the more her body craved being touched. The bard would laugh as she writhed on the floor unable to find release until the prince started to touch her. And she’d take him, like the beast she had become.

She knew she couldn’t continue. She knew she couldn’t be responsible for turning somebody into the same thing she was. Every day she faced the horror of her new hungers and realized that every day she was becoming more and more like the bard. Cruelty was becoming easy and her ideals were crumbling.

The feles are not typically battle oriented. Their primary drive is to have sex with others. On some level that drive always exists, coloring a feles every interaction. It is what makes them so well suited to the pleasure stables of Dominus.

But the bard had become twisted, and he twisted the child as well. Mere pleasure was not enough to satisfy him or her. A desire for pain was tied up in the desire for pleasure. To experience it, to give it.

The child turned that desire for her own ends. She became perfect for the bard. She even cut the prince and turned her disgust and fear at his screams into a source of pleasure deep within her belly. So that the bard would smell on her just how much she had become his. So that he would finally want to reward her, in a way that only he could. His half-man form searing her with equal measures of pleasure and pain until she becomes lost in it, lost in him, while her prince watches in terror.

But she had prepared. Slipping through the back of her mind, buried so deep that neither her scent or her actions would betray her beat the one thought that kept her sane. And as he ejaculated thick and sticky inside of her, she took advantage of his one moment of weakness. She planned better than she had in the arena. The long silver knife that she had kept hidden for so many months as she contemplated taking her own life was stashed under her bedroll. She hid the movement of her arm with the shudders of her own climax as the thought of finally causing the bard pain caused pleasure to roll through her.

Using the knowledge she had gained after butchering the bodies of so many of the children, she slid the blade through his ribs and into his heart. She used her own transformation to give her stroke speed and strength. The bard dying before finishing his climax.

She took the prince and ran. Into the dark woods she ran until weak and starving they were found.

The prince returned home. But it was too late for the child. Now she’s in another prison. She may no longer be served human and there are more luxuries than even the bard could have dreamed of having, but it’s just another cage.

“As you can see, she is fitting in quite well.” High Priest Belias murmurs, his hand lingers overlong on the crown-prince’s shoulder as he guides him through the garden.

The prince fought hard to be allowed to come here. While just across the city, the pleasure gardens of Dominus where they train future libridi-thera seems like a world away. During the short walk here, he’s already seen things that leaves him rubbing his cock uncomfortably. His mother was scandalized, and his father wondered he would not use one of the feles at the palace harems.

Support came from a grizzled old hunter who was briefing his father on the border situation. He owed the child his life and no amount of reports could take the place of seeing with his own eyes whether she was alright or not. The veteran hunter held the boy with his eyes.

“She’s not human any more. You understand that, right?”

The prince murmured his understanding. As a feles she ceased being a citizen of his realm. In order to protect the realm from the taint she carries inside of her she had to be bound. To live, she had to become a slave.

The large black collar is ugly on the small girl’s neck as she watches her instructor demonstrate the art of fellatio on a complacent feles. The child looks so small as she kneels among woman more than twice her age. Her classmates take turns practicing on several male feles scattered around the room. The one closest to the child glares at her where she sits playing with the metal dildo in her hands.

The teacher walks through the class making corrections to their techniques. Where a couple of the girls are laughing she slides her hand under their short diaphanous skirt, soon having them squeezing their legs and moaning as they give the feles head in turns. She casually wipes her fingers dry as she approaches the child.

“Why aren’t you practicing girl?” The teacher smiles sweetly.

The girl watches her with eyes so green they look like jewels. She smiles sweetly and performs the complicated maneuvers on the smaller dildo in her hand. But she doesn’t stop there. The prince groans at the memory of her hot mouth as he watches she segues into to infinitely more subtle variations that she learned from the bard. The clearing falls silent as every eye watches the child until one of the feles groans and she pops the dildo out like a sweet.

She turns to look directly at the prince and the high priest in their hiding spot in the bushes. The prince gasps as he reads terror in her eyes before the child goes back to her bored demeanor as the instructor goes back to her model to demonstrate another technique.

“Why is she still wearing the collar?” The crown prince demands.

High Priest Belias drops a couple of sugar cubes in his tea and stirs with a small silver spoon. The sound it makes on the china is delicate and seems out of place for a man so large. He smiles to hide his annoyance at the boy’s pesky questions. He’d hoped he’d have been able to entice the boy into bedding one of his libidi-thera so he could share the experience through the link of the mental leash. But the man-child was only interested in the one feles he could not risk him with.

The lady Abordine has been given a new name to mark her joining the ranks of the libridi-feles, but Belias notices the prince doesn’t bother to ask for it. He continues to refer to the feles child by her human name and Belias does not bother to correct him.

In truth the child has been a nightmare for himself and his fellow priests. She has fought every stage of the mental leash and a process that should have been completed weeks ago is still ongoing. Which is nothing to how she behaves when anybody tries to touch her in any way.

“She still has difficulty controlling her beast,” Belias says with another smile. The bulky rune bound collar is typically used on the rare lupus that makes the choice to become a libidi-lupus. For the first several months, their instinct is to rend their partner apart during coitus. The collar prevents them from being able to transform in any manner. While they can still be physically strong, other restraints are used to keep the cliental safe until the lupus is properly broken.

Unfortunately, Belias has never had to train a thera as small as the child. They’ve improvised as best they could but Belias has yet to fulfill the dream he has of dressing her like the princess she once was, tying her up and humiliating her. The nobles think they are so much better but Belias knows what they do with his libidi-feles. While they look down their noses at him, he knows the Dominus rules in their hearts, not his gentler sister Subdina.

The child will beg for him to take her. She will beg to be humiliated. She’s feles. She will have no choice. Now that she is his to control, he will show everyone what really lurks in their hearts. 

“Is she really alright?” The crown prince looks down dejected.

Belias smiles and pats the princes knee. Surges of pleasure at the too familiar contact cause his dick to twitch, but the prince’s guards are too distracted by the feles practicing outside his window to notice.

“She’s a feles. She may not understand now. After all, she’s young for these kinds of feelings. But this really is the best place for her. Our top priority is to make sure she is safe. She will always be able to get what she needs here.” Belias flashes his best politician smile.

The crown prince shakes his head. He gazes out the window with troubled blue eyes as the feles outside shudders into a climax before shifting positions and continuing their ongoing sexual play. 

The child grits her teeth in frustration as the instructor continues her class on fellatio. This time she has the girls practice on each other as she talks through the various techniques for generating pleasure in a woman. This child listens distractedly as she glances back at the break in the bushes.

He was here! Her heart beats like a butterfly trapped in her chest. Several of the nearest libridi-thera turn to look at her with interest, but none dare touch her. They misinterpret her flush as they believe her interested in the topic of the current class.

The child steals another glance and the bushes before dropping her gaze to the paltry toys before her. Specially made for her size the objects still reek of the tinkerer who made them. Made out of gold, they are toys fit for a princess and are embellished with jeweled butterflies to make them more friendly. Every day they are taken from her to be cleaned and returned. Every day she does nothing more with them than perform the basic techniques requested so they don’t have to tie her up and force the technique on her.

She does this much and they will leave her alone. They tell her that when she gets older she’ll understand. That she’ll want to be touched. They tell her that she feels the way she does now because she won’t let them touch her.

And it’s true. The child can feel the eros building within her making it difficult to keep her feelings in check. Part of her wants to join in the sucking and teasing going on around her. But her disgust runs deeper than that. When she looks at the woman next to her she remembers. The memories are so thick and real that she has to shut everything out and rebuild herself. 

Sex and death. The smells are inexorably linked by a predator that took whatever he wanted from their bodies. The ones that broke, the ones that surrendered to him died. The knot in the child’s belly tightens. No, she refuses to give in.

She knows that eventually she won’t have a choice. The curse of the feles. The disease is spread by sex so all feles crave it. Even as the leashes neuter them preventing them from spreading the disease further, they still are driven by their lust. She once asked her instructor if magic could take even that away but she was sadly told that it was impossible without also destroying the mind. To desire is to be human just as to hate is. That is what makes the thera curse so horrible and why even a leashed thera is never allowed to live free. Inevitably the disease will turn a thera against those they love the most because that which makes them human is taken out of their control.

Please save me! She bites her lips and shudders, willing her unspoken wish to reach her golden prince. The rich smell of the girls’ come washes over her as one after another they make each other climax. The child crushes the tiny dildo in her hand as she fights back the memories. The bard was unable to break her, but if she doesn’t leave here soon, the pleasure gardens of Dominus might.

“He said that?” Victor laughs as he remembers the sounds his niece made when the lupus entered her. If he never hears that sound come out of another child’s mouth he can die a happy man.

The young prince paces the room before him, truly distraught. It is easy to forget that the young man experienced some of the nightmare that his niece survived through. He still seems so innocent, so pure. But to hear the prince speak of it, Aborine protected him from the worst of it. He trusted her with his life, and she got him out.

“You should have seen her. I have never seen her look like that. She was always the strong one. She fought for all of us, even when we gave up hope.” The prince’s voice cracks and Victor looks at him surprised.

The young man is in love. Victor supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised. Surviving traumatic events together does tend to create a bond. He doubts the prince can even admit it to himself. But the way he speaks of Abordine holds a kind of reverence that he does not use when talking about other people.

Victor lets the boy talk. Since he came home he was told to forget about everything that happened. It was in the past and has nothing to do with the man the prince will someday become. But Victor knows how trauma can scar the soul. As a hunter he has had to do things he wishes he could forget. It is only through the loving graces of his wife that he’s been able to unburden himself. No one her was willing to do that for this boy, so Victor listens. 

The prince had only been missing for weeks. It is difficult to imagine the kinds of horrors the bard managed to provide in such a short time span. And it chilled Victor’s heart to hear how many times the realm had come close to reclaiming their jewel.

To hear the prince speak, the bard was a demon who walked the surface of this world. Who knows how many children he took during the course of his rampage. There is no good way to track how many commoners disappeared. His journeys took him all over the world and no one ever suspected him. He was a chameleon, even with the children he’d taken. He could be the most chivalrous gentleman, or the cruelest monster.

As the boy continued to talk, Victor tried to imagine what his niece must have gone through. She was with that monster for almost two years. If what the prince said was true, she must have watched dozens of kids be captured. She watched and helped bard do horrible things to them. Victor would never have suspected that the child who was more interested in lace and frills would become so hardened that she would butcher a still screaming child for meat for the evening meal.

This is wrong, Victor thinks as he remembers the arguments he had with the committee that decided Abordine’s fate. The more the prince describes, the more convinced Victor becomes that he has to rescue her from that temple. His niece will never become one of those soft feles women that wait in the alcoves so the commoners can worship Dominus. The bard wasn’t looking for an obedient woman he could make his wife. Everything the bard had Abordine do was meant to transform her into a goddess of death. Abordine survived horrors that any soldier would be pressed to match.

“When the time comes, lend me your support.” Victor pats the young prince on his shoulder as his words stumble to an end. He rises and the prince looks up at him with his striking blue eyes.

“Can you help her?” He asks plaintively.

Victor grimaces. “You probably aren’t going to thank me, but yes. I have an idea.”

The cries of the child have every thera in the compound fixating on her. Even the humans pause in their work as look in the direction of the sounds, absently rubbing themselves. Her eros is in full swing and her pheromones are drawing every man, woman, thera and child toward her like flies to honey.

The child can hear the frantic rutting in the temple above as patrons here to worship Dominus get caught in her spell. She kicks out at the lupus who struggles to finish her bindings, her small wrists slipping free of the padded leather cuffs as she takes a swing at him. He barks in surprise and several more of the men wolves enter the room, their straining cocks swaying at between their legs.

The child claws at her collar desperately and lashes out at them with her free hand. They circle her, licking their lips in anticipation. She gives up on trying to disconnect the lead that tethers her collar to the floor, fixing her eyes on the largest of the lupus.

Despite her pheromones he remains almost entirely human. Scars dribble over his neck and down the rich expanse of his muscular chest. He smiles at her sadly, holding a coil of rope in his hands.

At his unspoken command the wolf pack moves in to attack. Unlike the libidi-thera these lupus move with lethal intent in a coordinated attack that the child has no hope of fending off. It doesn’t stop her from trying, however.

She claws at the first wolf’s eyes and lashes out behind her to kick at a second wolf’s groin. The lead prevents her from being able to maneuver well and a third wolf gives a crushing blow to her head dropping her unsteadily to her knees. A fourth wolf kicks her forward driving the breath from her lungs and twists one of her arms into a joint lock.

The child twists through the lock intentionally using the larger lupus’ weight to snap her elbow like a twig. He drops her arm in surprise and she uses the opportunity to lung for his throat with her still human teeth. She gets pulled up short by the lead at her throat, snapping at air.

The lead lupus tosses the rope to a packmate as they back off as a unit. He smoothly drops to all fours becoming a terrifying gigantic wolf. Her arm swinging uselessly, the child squares up against the monster, her heart racing in fear.

This was a hopeless fight from the beginning, but the child did not let that stop her from trying. She’d rather die than become one of those helpless mewling things in the rooms above. Almost faster than she can track the giant wolf moves in, snarling and biting the air. His pack of four also begin to move.

No longer seeking to restrain her, the pack dashes in for the kill. They come at her from all sides, dashing in and out leaving bloody wounds through her torn shift, overwhelming her with their numbers. The child struggles on, the lucky blow causing the occasional lupus to leap back with a whine, but she is soon overwhelmed.

When the large wolf closes his jaws around her throat she finally submits. He glares down at her with his alien eyes and growls a warning whenever she tries to move. His subordinates angrily twist her arms behind her as they string the rope around them, her chest, her throat, and her legs leaving her completely immobile.

She glares angrily into the eyes of the wolf as his men rape her, one after another. Her traitorous body shudders with the pleasure of it. A pleasure that becomes overwhelming as the eros continues to build until the great wolf clambers on top of her ripping out her clavicle as he climaxes causing the eros to break in a great into a pleasant numbness that follows her down into unconsciousness.

“By Kalos’ horn.” The men in the dark chamber look at each other nervously. Several shift trying to hide the erections they gained from the sympathetic feedback of the link.

“Did you have to kill her?”  They turn as one to glare at Victor as he stares thoughtfully at the candle flame.

“That wasn’t enough to kill her.” His voice is calm.

Whispers run through the room like wildfire and Victor hides his smile behind his hand. As he had hoped the temple had contacted the Crescent for some argent-lupus to take his niece through her first eros since coming home. None of the libidi-thera were willing to try touching her, much less taking her after the reputation she’s developed. 

He can’t blame really. Even locked in her human form Abordine was terrifying. Through the link he could sense the strain the collar was taking. Powerful waves of tainted energy were rolling off the small girl causing the runed wards on the collar to glow with heat. Her back was bleeding where the incomplete leash seared into her back as it too was pushed to it’s limits.

The child kept her human form but she gained some of the speed and the strength of her feles. Couple that power with a willingness to sustain any injury to achieve her goal, and the child had even the argent-lupus afraid. 

Victor had carefully selected the pack that entered that room. He had extended invitations to each of the pack’s masters to experience what was happening through their individual lupus’ senses. He could not predict what his niece would do, but if what the prince said was any indication, Abordine would destroy herself before allowing herself to become a slave to her eros. 

“Do you understand?” Victor’s eyes bore into those of the leader of the Silver Crescent sitting across from him. The man is rubbing his shoulder in sympathetic pain from a lucky blow that dislocated his lupus shoulder before she could be restrained.

“You know what will happen if she refuses the leash.” He says gravely.

Victor nods. For a feles there are only three choices. To become a pleasure slave at the temple of Dominus. To join the Silver Crescent if they pass the tests. Or die. A feles will inevitably succumb to the leash of Dominus. It is in their nature to desire and to grant pleasure. The leashes are designed to neuter the thera and to keep them from transforming beyond what is pleasing to the human worshipers.

Acceptance into the Silver Crescent goes both ways. The leash of the Crescent goes deep into their thera’s souls. Few outside the Crescent understand just how deep the bond is between a hunter and his thera. Tricks like allowing their hunter to see and experience everything the thera sees and experiences are just one aspect of this deeper bond. A true hunter/thera team can operate like a single organism. In a crises, there is no separation of identities. They share the same thought and the same will.

A leash of that depth and magnitude is only possible with the thera’s acceptance. They have to open themselves up completely to the mages and the hunter they are bound to. It is the rare thera that can survive the death of their hunter after the leash is put in place.

“I think she’d rather die then remain in the temple.” Victor says.

The older man nods, and turns to the other men in the room to confer. Many of them are eager to see the child brought into the fold of the Silver Crescent after seeing her fight. Her time with the bard granted her many of the qualities they look for in the thera they select for the order. A certain level of ruthlessness is required to be willing to become the enemy of their own species.

Victor has done what he can. He just hopes Belias is willing to let her go for a reasonably sum.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.” The prince’s voice is clear and haughty. Across the garden they watch as Belias reluctantly hands his niece’s leash over to the leader of the Silver Crescent. Belias drove a difficult bargain that Victor hopes, Abordine will be willing to accept. He’d rather not have to force her through it, assuming she survives her initiation into the Crescent.

The prince runs his hands through his hair and shakes his head. “I don’t know why I let you convince me this would be the better choice for her.”

Victor smiles. “She’s already Crescent, she just doesn’t know it yet.” The prince looks up at him surprised. “The Silver Crescent protect the weak. Everything you’ve told me about what she did when you were together is exactly how a member of the Silver Crescent would act.”

“I suppose you want me to take her.” The large man covered with scars nods towards the exchanging ceremony. The Silver Crescent hands over a bag containing a large number of jewels. A gift by the prince to ensure that this exchange goes smoothly.

Victor shakes his head. “I want you to take care of Phillip for me. I’ll be taking on my niece.”

Berserk frowns. “She’s feles. Won’t that be a problem.”

Victor shrugs. “We’ll figure out some way of dealing with it when the time comes.”

Sunlight gleams through the dense pine trees as movement catches Autumn’s eye. Without thought, she takes off running after the shadow, gliding over fallen logs and past thick underbrush like she was born to it. Past the heavy scent of the trees, Autumn catches the pungent odor of the taint and her mouth curls involuntarily. 

Behind her, she hears her partner crashing through the woods sending the birds from their nests with loud calls of alarm. Autumn hears Victor’s curses and knows that he does not appreciate this sudden and unexpected chase. She starts to pick up her pace as the scent of her prey drives her blood pounding through her in exhilaration but falters as a sharp pain travels up her spine to clench down on her brain as Victor gives a mental tug on her leash.

She loses track of the distant shape of the goblin she had been following as she drops back into a pace Victor can sustain. She bounces with impatience, but long years of training and fear of the leash keeps her from taking up the chase again. Now that she has his scent, she knows the goblin won’t be able to get far.

Her senses are alive, searing their input into her brain and dragging out her instincts to hunt and kill. They break into a clearing and Victor drops his hold on the leash letting her run fly across the open space to the goblin desperately running toward a pile of rocks at the far end. The exhilaration fills her and her body begins to shift in response to her emotions.

Her compact form starts to lengthen. Her muscles become more defined as she draws the large blade she keeps at her back in one smooth motion. Her stride lengthens as she overtakes the goblin, running past him to block his access to the cave no doubt hidden in the boulders. She can taste the honeysuckle pollen from the plants crushed beneath her feet as she runs her tongue over her canines and grins.

The goblin falls back with a sharp cry bumping into the older man behind him. Victor draws his blade swiftly over the goblin’s throat, but not before the cry is taken up as half a dozen more goblins boil up out of the rocks to attack the hunters. In one smooth motion Autumn turns, sliding her blade through the bellies of two goblins before they can even react. Victor steps back and lets Autumn dance, awed as always at the beauty of her ferocity as the young woman turns every movement into a deadly pattern. He feels that familiar touch of fear knowing that one of these days she is going to cast off that leash that lets him guide that ferocity toward noble aims.

The pile corpses burns merrily under the stars as the goblins black blood pops in the heat. Autumn sits meekly across the campfire daintily pulling meat from the bone of her portion of the rabbit. No matter how many times he goes through it, it is difficult for Victor to equate this child with the fierce creature who single-handily tore through those first six goblins and the following nine they found hiding in the goblin’s den.

Once the rage of the beast leaves her, Autumn always finds herself drained and somehow filthy. She looks up at the bright moon and offers a brief prayer of thanks to Kyranthia that she was able to find her way back again.  A faint echo of Victor’s thoughts radiate down through the leash and Autumn smiles faintly to herself.

It has been a long time since Autumn thought of herself as being innocent. She’s not sure if she ever really was. Under Victor’s watchful eye she pulls back the red brown robes to access the numerous cuts covering her arms and backs from the goblin’s teeth and nails. The narrow quarters of their tunnels did not let her maneuver like she normally would and numerous small injuries cover her arms and back. She feels Victor’s familiar lust as she unwraps the bindings that keep her small breasts still in combat and ignores it.

The time of her eros is coming and is becoming a growing distraction for both of them. There is a reason why the Silver Crescent keeps so few feles among their thera stables. It is much easier to deal with the lupus’ aggression than the lust their feline counterparts inspire.

Black ichor oozes from her many wounds. This is the reason why Victor let Autumn do most of the fighting and is leaving Autumn to tend to her wounds alone. The ichor is a physical manifestation of the twisted magic that is the taint. If Autumn were normal, her wounds would carry consequences. While graphic, the effect of the taint from the goblins is minor. Their poison corrupts, making Autumn feel even more unclean than usual. It wakens uncomfortable memories as she scrubs the ichor from her skin with sand in a bowl.

Victor shifts uncomfortably before excusing himself. Autumn blushes. Now she’s the one sending thoughts down the leash. She struggles to compose her thoughts while scrubbing the last of the ichor out of her wounds. She takes a stick from the pyre and sets the bowl of sand aflame and the ichor burns like firewater. From a second bowl, Autumn clenches her teeth and pours clear moon-blessed water down her back and over her arms washing the last of the sand and ichor away. Smoke rises from where the water touches as the blessing seeks to clear not only the goblin’s taint, but Autumn’s as well. Autumn uses the pain to drive away the last of the memories and regain control.

By the time Victor returns, Autumn is dressed and has packed her bags. He returns to his bedroll without comment, but Autumn can feel his eyes on her long into the night. His thoughts echoing down the leash have her unconsciously wiping her hands on her robes trying to get rid of a stain that lies in her soul.

“Stop fiddling with that.”

Autumn drops her hand and glares at Victor. She’d rather have a fight with goblins or worse any day than go through this.

“This is necessary.” Reading her thoughts through the link he catches her hand and pulls it away from picking at the red silk dress flowing over Autumn’s curves like water. After working with her since she was a child, Victor suddenly realizes she’s finally become a woman in her own right. The silk clings in all the right places and Victor suddenly finds himself jealous of the man who will be sharing her company tonight.

Autumn frowns and clenches her fist in frustration. As Victor moves around her to pin up her hair and put the various pieces of jewelry on that her suitor for the night sent with the dress he is closer to her than he needs to be. Every time he brushes her breast or lets a steadying hand drift down to cup her ass a shock of lust and shame drives straight into her belly. She feels his corresponding lust feed back up the leash leaving her quaking until he closes the collar around her throat. 

The magic in the black and silver runed leash trailing down her back overrides their mental link leaving both of them shuddering. He slams the last box on the table and abruptly leaves their tiny inn room.

Autumn grips the edge of the table and struggles to regain control over herself. The feel of the silk next to her skin causes her skin to crawl with both revulsion and lust. It reminds her of the one who took her innocence away and turned her into what she is today. 

But Victor is right. This is necessary. Until the eros is complete it will only get worse. Not just for Autumn, but for everyone around her as the pheromones she emits will start to drive off all reason. It is much better when it is planned, even if it leaves Autumn feeling like some cheap whore.

Autumn attaches the last of the jewelry, steps unsteadily into her ridiculous shoes and walks downstairs to the waiting coachman.

Gideon frowns at the opulent gathering. For some reason these border lords seem to insist on throwing these ridiculous parties whenever he is on official business. It is like these lavish meals and over the top gifts are supposed to prove their loyalty to the crown. A distraction to keep the Queen from reaching for what really matters to these lords, the power and wealth they have managed to reclaim from the wildlands.

He smiles and nods at yet another merchant family here to meet the visitor from the capital and chaffing in the stiff court clothes he must wear at these gatherings. Of the old families there aren’t many of royal blood living on the fringe of the wildlands. Mainly just the Lord of Shadowdown, his son and a handful of retainers that are the sons of allies. Few of the old families would risk living this close to the wilds when they have better lands to the north. But for the young and untested, the border has long been grounds for proving their worth to the crown. And land that is gained from pushing back the border is easily granted.

A flash of red catches his eye. Standing at the top of the stairs a strikingly beautiful woman looks nervously down at the crowds in a silk gown that leaves little to the imagination. She leans and whispers something to her companion, a man old enough to be her father. He grips her arm tightly and drags her down the stairs as the herald announces, “Lord Victor Redwood.”

Why didn’t they announce the woman? But when they reach the bottom of the stairs the couple turns, Gideon catches a glimpse of the runed leash sliding over her bared back, and the tattoo of the more permanent mental one and it suddenly makes sense. The man shoves the woman toward a group of young gentlemen. He grabs a jug of wine from one of the servers and brazenly walks up to Lord Shadowdowns for a heated discussion. If that man is a lord, Gideon is the Emperor of Odomia The woman bows her head meekly as one of the men grabs her leash and the group of them disappear into the gardens.

Gideon’s stomach lurches. He’d heard rumors of the border lords using the leashes to control wild thera’s for their own gain. He supposes the capital is to blame since they were the first to enslave the thera’s to be used as border guards. But to see it used for this? He just wants to pick up his tracker and leave this backwoods place as soon as possible.

On the inside Autumn is furious. She can’t believe that Victor would be so malicious as to put her on public display like this. Not only that, but she has to serve as entertainment to the keep’s guests as well. And he has the gall to not only put the physical leash on her, but also to further dull their mental connection by going off and getting drunk.

But the eros is on her in full, and she can’t stop herself rubbing against the young men around her as they lead her to a secluded section of the garden. She recognizes one of them as the son of the lord of this manor. He keeps a firm grip on her leash. She feels his lust coming down the line and the fear with it from their last encounter when she gave him the scar down the right side of his face in his carelessness.

He takes her to an iron bench and orders her onto it. She can do nothing but comply even as she catches images of his plans through the leash. They chain her arms behind her and have her hook the heels of her shoes through the wrought iron before chaining her legs to the bench as well. They carefully pull her skirt up and tuck it out of the way revealing that last piece of stupid jewelry. Crystals drape down her labia and roll against her clit, making her pant.

“Ass only gentlemen,” the young lord announces flicking the crystal on her clit making her moan and shudder. He grins triumphantly, his own cock straining against his breeches as he feels Autumns excitement and disappointment continue to radiate down the leash. He stuffs his handkerchief in her mouth as the first of the lord’s friends enters her, tearing her from lack of lubrication until the blood and his cum ease the passage for the next man and the next. And despite everything, she is brought shudderingly to climax after climax as the eros builds, but never is fulfilled. The young lord never losing his grip on her leash.

Gideon watches as the feles’ master tries to get drunk as quickly as possible. Judging from the master’s reaction, something is happen to his feles that he finds distasteful yet he does nothing to stop it. Gideon starts toward the gardens intending to put a stop to whatever is happening to that poor woman when the band of young gentlemen returns laughing. Lord Redwood turns so that he doesn’t have to watch his feles rub against the young lord like a cat in heat.

The feles drapes herself against the man holding the leash in a manner best reserved for the bedchamber as the man hands the leash off to his father. She instantly drops to all fours, pressing her cheek to Lord Shadowdown’s boot. The lord claps his hands and the room falls silent.

“Thank you for joining me in welcoming our guest of honor, Lord Gideon.” The nobles turn to Gideon clapping politely. “But I’m afraid it is time for us to say goodnight and give him time to rest before his long journey on the morrow.” The nobles laugh and cheer.

Lord Shadowdown turns and with the feles following on hands and knees swiftly exits the chamber. The conversation changes pitch as the servants bring in more wine as the gathering becomes less formal in the absence of the keep’s lord.

“This will be a night you won’t forget.” A passing noble clasps Gideon’s arm. A ragged cheer breaks out as several more woman arrive bearing leashes on the arms of fierce looking bodyguards. None of them are as young or as beautiful as the feles that left with Lord Shadowdown.

“Your chambers are ready, sir.” The young boy gestures toward closest entrance to the halls leading deeper into the stone keep. Gideon hands his half drunk glass of wine to a passing servant and follows.

The boy leads him through the maze of identical hallways, chatting all the while about the history of the keep. How Lord Shadowdown great-grandfather took the keep from the feles lord that once ruled over the region.  And how he captured the feles lord’s daughters for his personal harem.

“Why didn’t he take one to wife?” Gideon asks.

“Everyone knows that the females are infertile sir.” The child responds. His eyes get all dreamy. “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to try one. My big brother says his first time with a feles was what really made him a man, not that time in the hay with one of the serving girls.”

Gideon shakes his head sadly. He’s heard rumors of how addictive being with a feles can be. But he’s also seen the aftermath of feles attacks. Which is why they are restricted. But here in the borderlands where wild thera attacks are common, slavery through the leash or being hunted down and killed by the border guards are the only options for those who become infected. It doesn’t make seeing them as slaves any easier to bear, however.

The child opens the door to an expensive guest suite. A large copper tub steams in one corner. Exotic furs cover the floor and the bed where the beautifully nude feles writhes. Firelight gleams on the chains at her wrists and ankles, the delicate gems encrusting her earlobes, and at her breasts, belly and labia. 

The boy’s eyes grow wide and his little prick rises as he stares at her stunned.

“Thank you for your service.” Gideon recovers quickly. He presses a luna into the boy’s palm and shuts the door in the child’s face. 

“That’ll make you a man, it will.” The boy mutters to himself as he walks down the hall stunned.

The smell of the feles juices fills the room along with a more subtle odor, like spice. Gideon turns to see the woman watching him silently. Her eyes are an intense green going into gold with slit pupils. She touches a tongue to her lip and Gideon can see the white tips of her canines in the moist cavity of her mouth. Partially transformed and in the full throws of an eros phase. Lord Shadowdown is either hoping to make him an addict or to kill him.

There is nothing left of that frightened girl in this creature. If she didn’t bear a mental leash, this feles would be a fully transformed tigress in heat. Gideon is surprised her master let it get this far.

Suddenly disgusted by this charade, Gideon pulls a pin from his belt and starts to pick the lock at her right wrist. She groans in disappointment trying to twist her body to touch his. The leash falls on the pillow next to his hand.

“Please.” She begs, her voice husky with lust but startlingly pure and beautiful beneath it. “The leash… please.”  She starts writhing in the furs again. Gideon gently strokes her face and continues working on the lock. No matter how beautiful, he is not going to sleep with a woman who has no choice in the matter. Even if she’s begging him.

The lock pops and her arm is a blur, even as he launches himself back he feels her fingers closing around his throat, her claws drawing tiny pin pricks of blood. He struggles to peel back her fingers even as he registers her other arm is pulled back at an impossible angle. She dislocated her own shoulder to reach him.

“Put him down!” The master’s voice thunders behind him. Cat eyes shift and the woman bares her fangs in a challenge that turns into a scream of pain as a knife blade suddenly blooms in her arm. Gideon falls to the floor as the feles drops him. He hears another pop and her other arm reaches toward him, her thumb hangs at a useless angle but her shoulder is back in place.

Fear drives him back against the dresser as the older man strides forward to twist the knife in her arm. “Run you idiot.” He barks as he reaches for the leash on the bed, balling it in his fist as he glares into the alien eyes of the feles. With his other hand he begins working his belt loose.

Gideon runs.

Victor glares down at his sleeping charge in disgust. He hates having to do this to her. Bruises bloom at her right eye, her jaw and down her rib cage. His finger marks are etched in purples and blues at her wrists and her throat. Blood turning purple from the silver poisoning still flows from the wound in her arm because even when she started healing from it, he had to keep digging his thumb into her flesh to maintain control.

He knew he should never have come back to the Shadowdowns after what happened last time. Unfortunately there are too few who are willing to meet Autumn’s particular needs. Most are like that pansy assed lord who think of the leash as an abomination instead of a tool. They certainly can’t push Autumn to give her the mixture of pleasure and pain that she needs to release her eros.

One of her ribs pops back into place and Autumn’s breathing eases. She rolls to her side pulling her face to his hand. A sense of wellbeing floats up the bond as she takes in his scent. He strokes her hair and sings to her the nursery rhyme he used to sing back when she was given to him at six years of age. He couldn’t let her die then, even though nobody else wanted to tame a child infected with the feles.

As she settles into deeper sleep, he moves across the small inn room to their bags to pull out his healing balm and a bandage. Holding her arm firmly, he rubs the balm into the wound. She hisses in pain and tries to pull her arm back in. He sings a few bars stroking her hair until she relaxes again. By then her blood is flowing red once more and he wraps the wound in the clean bandage. By morning it will be little more than an ugly scar on either side of her arm and with any luck will only be a light mark on her skin after a week.

Gideon had retrieved Lord Shadowdown, who apologized profusely for the mix up once Victor let him in. He would wave the room damages of course and Victor could keep his fee. And he hoped that Victor would still get in contact should he need any further assistance with Autumn’s eros in the future.

Victor wrapped Autumn in his cloak. He shoved the jewelry she was wearing into Lord Shadowdown’s hands and walked away without comment. It was only then that Shadowdown realized how much he needs the Silver Crescent and their border guards. He followed after Victor sniveling eventually calling for his coachman so that Victor can take his personal coach to his inn after the old hunter did not respond to offers of a room for the night.

Gideon just watches Autumn’s small form cradled gently in Victor’s arms. He’s struck by how bruised she’s become in the short time he’s been gone. But he has difficulty equating that to this man who carries the feles like a child, carefully tucking the clock around her to preserve her modesty.