Submitted by Leann Ryans
Raider’s Treasure
Chapter One - Lyric
It was colder than she expected as Lyric ran across the open field, the frozen grass crunching under her feet. The trees had blocked some of the wind, but now she was exposed and thinking twice about the wisdom of her decision to run. Maybe if she had submitted, they would have spared her, and she wouldn’t have found herself gasping the freezing air into straining lungs.
Lyric had never expected to have to leave the village she had always called home. Her father was the First Alpha, and the alpha that they promised her to as mate was someone highly placed and well respected. Though he wasn’t someone that she would have chosen for herself since he was much older, she was content with becoming his mate knowing that her father could have picked someone far worse. He was doing what was best for her.
She had looked forward to their mating in the spring once her first estrous hit, since being a mother was all she had ever wanted to be. The raiders had changed all of that now. The pleasant, unexciting life she had envisioned disappearing with the smoke in the air. Watching her father’s throat slit before her, and then finding her intended already dead when she tried to turn to him for help, Lyric had no other choice but to run and hope none of the raiders tracked her.
That’s why she had left the cover of the trees to cross the field. There was a river ahead of her she hoped to use to break her trail, but with how cold she already was, she wasn’t sure she could force herself to step into the water. Dying of hypothermia was not the way she wanted to go.
Pushing on as fast as she could run, her tired legs pumped until Lyric came to a sudden halt at the water’s edge. The crust of ice along the bank did not inspire her to run into it as she had planned to break her trail. Forced to think fast, she followed along the edge of the bank and pray that no one was tracking her, but it didn’t take long for her to lose that last bit of hope as she heard rough male voices calling out to each other in the distance. They weren’t in view yet, but they were close enough that she didn’t need to strain to catch their words, though she couldn’t understand them.
Gathering the last of her courage, Lyric waded into the water, gasping as the chill stole her breath. Beginning to shiver, she forced herself to slog in deeper so that the water would carry her scent away. Knee deep in frigid water, she wasn’t able to move as fast as she had on dry land, with the rocky bottom and the numbness seeping into her legs and feet.
Tears running silently down her chapped cheeks, she kept moving upriver until a rock turned beneath her waterlogged boot and pitched Lyric into the deeper water running through the center. Attempting to force air into lungs trapped behind muscles seizing from the cold, she couldn’t get her feet beneath her again, and was swiftly being pulled back towards her village. The river passed just outside the village edge, and her only hope now was that no one was watching the water when she passed by.
Giving in to the river’s pull, Lyric began moving with it, instead of fighting it. Propelling herself as fast as she could in the frigid water, she tried to make as little noise as possible as she moved past the edge of her home seconds later.
She thought she was doing well until something bumped into her shoulder. Looking into the blank eyes of a boy she had known in school, Lyric couldn’t stop the scream that escaped her throat as she struggled to distance herself from his body. Shoving against it to propel it away from her, she realized he wasn’t the only one floating limp and unseeing in the river. Thrashing to get away from the corpses lining the water along her town’s edge, pain bloomed in her left shoulder, causing her to swallow a mouthful of dirty river water.
Sputtering, she felt herself being pulled towards the riverbank as she choked on another scream. When she looked behind her towards the bank, she saw a large figure was holding the line that attached to the arrow now sticking out of the front of her shoulder. Lyric tried to fight against the pull, but between the cold, and now the injury preventing the use of her left arm, her body was giving up. There was just no strength left to fight as he reeled her in like a fish caught on a line.
Feeling one massive hand wrap around her upper arm, Lyric was lifted from the water, screaming again at the pain of her weight pulling on the injury. As the man reached out his other hand, she saw the glint of light along the edge of the long knife he held, and she accepted her fate. She hadn’t expected to live through the night anyway.
Going limp in his hand so he could get it done faster and not cause her anymore pain, Lyric barely had the energy to be surprised when he paused, pulling her closer to sniff at her hair. Unable to do anything more than shiver, she didn’t resist as he held her against his body and nuzzled her throat, licking over the pulse in her neck.
At the point where she was oblivious to anything but the warmth of his body, she snuggled closer to him as he lifted her limp body into his arms and strode back towards the village, his musky scent wrapping around her and telling her muddled brain that she was safe.