My phone screen blurs, refocuses, blurs again.
I’m not crying or anything dramatic like that, my eyes are just tired, the way they’ve been tired for three hundred and sixty-five days straight. Pathetic, probably, but when your ex walks out without so much as a Post-it note, you get real familiar with the date she left.
The Orange Line rattles beneath me, all flickering fluorescents and that particular subway smell that’s half industrial cleaner, half human despair. I catch my reflection in the darkened window across from my seat and immediately regret it. The beard situation has graduated from rugged to homeless looking. My hair touches my shoulders now, which would be fine if I were going for some kind of aesthetic, but I’m not.
The thing is, Amalina left exactly one year ago. And for most of that time I’ve been operating on minimal functionality. Showering, most of the time. Eating, occasionally and working from home, because rent doesn’t pay itself.
But haircuts? Shaving? Caring about whether I look like I sleep in a dumpster?
That required energy I just didn’t have.
My phone buzzes. A reminder I set three days ago when I finally, finally called and made the appointment: Hair Today 2pm You can do this.
I can do this.
The train slows with that familiar screech of metal on metal, and the automated voice announces Downtown Crossing. I pocket my phone and stand.
The doors hiss open and I step onto the platform.
For the first time in a year, there’s this weird flutter in my chest that might actually be something like excitement. Not happiness, exactly, I’m not ready to aim that high but maybe its distant cousin.
I climb the stairs toward the exit, weaving through the usual downtown crowd, and push through the turnstile into the afternoon light.
The sun hits my face and I smile a little.
That’s the moment I hear it.
Metal screaming against air. I look up on instinct, squinting against the sun.
There’s a truck in the sky falling directly towards me.
My brain shits itself at the sight.
“Wha..”
And then it hits me…
*****
The clicking sound drags me out of the dark like a fishhook through my skull.
Cold metal closes around my throat with a soft snick, and my eyes crack open to see... nothing. Just gray sky and the blurred outline of trees that don’t look like any trees I’ve ever seen. My cheek is pressed into something wet and cold. My brain feels like it’s been stuffed with cotton and beaten with a stick.
“Huh?” The word comes out slurred.
“Put him in the cart with the others.” The voice is shrill, sharp enough to cut glass, and it comes from somewhere above me.
Another voice answers, breathless with excitement. “Can you believe how lucky we are? This one will fetch us more than the rest combined.”
My thoughts move like molasses. Cart? Others? What the hell is…
“What’s going on?” I manage, trying to push myself up.
Hands grab me, rough and efficient, and suddenly I’m airborne. My stomach lurches as I’m hauled off the ground and thrown. I hit wood hard, the impact knocking what little air I have out of my lungs. My wrists are yanked forward and metal cuffs snap around them, followed by the rattle of chains being locked to something solid.
I blink, trying to clear my vision, and that’s when I see her.
The woman standing over me is wrong. Something that shouldn’t exist. Her face is human enough, sharp features and pale skin, but her ears are pointed and furred, twitching like an animal’s. Her hands end in claws, and when she grins down at me, her teeth are too sharp, too many.
She’s some sort of wolf girl?
I scramble backward on instinct, chains rattling, until my back hits the wall of the cart.
“What the fuck?”
She smiles wider. One clawed hand reaches down and touches my face, almost gentle. The tip of her claw traces my cheekbone and I freeze.
“You are absolutely filthy, aren’t you?”
I glance down and that’s when I notice I’m naked. Completely naked. And covered head to toe in mud that’s starting to dry and crack on my skin. My arms jerk up on instinct to touch my beard, to do something, but the chains yank taut and stop me short.
“Where the fuck am I?”
She throws her head back and laughs, a sound that’s halfway between human and animal. “You’re in the Beast Kingdom, sweetling.” Her eyes glitter with something predatory. “And I’ll say, I ain’t never seen a human stud around these parts, before.”
Her gaze drops. Down past my chest, past my stomach, and lands directly on my cock.
She licks her lips.
“Wait, there’s been a mistake,” I say quickly. “Why am I chained up?”
She sighs like I’ve asked her the dumbest question in the world. “You’re a slave. Get over it and move on.”
She steps up into the cart, still looking at me like I’m a piece of meat on display, and I press harder against the wooden wall behind me.
“Don’t rape him!” The shrill voice from earlier cuts through the air. “He’s probably diseased and you ain’t no healer!”
The wolf woman pauses, her eyes running over me slowly, cataloging every inch of mud-caked skin. “Yeah,” she says finally, like she’s genuinely disappointed. “I guess you’re right.”
She hops back down and disappears toward the front of the cart. A moment later I hear the creak of a seat and the snap of reins.
I sit there, breathing hard, and that’s when I actually look around the cart.
There are other people here. Four of them, all women, all chained like me. One has scales running up her arms and the side of her neck. Another has horns curving back from her forehead. A third looks almost human except for the feathers growing from her shoulders. They’re all staring at me with expressions ranging from pity to curiosity.
“What the fuck is going on?” I ask nobody in particular.
The one with scales shifts her weight, chains clinking. “First time being a slave, huh?”
“I’m not a slave.”
She scoffs, the sound sharp and dismissive. “That collar around your neck says otherwise.”
The collar.
My hands jerk up again, chains rattling, and this time my fingers brush cold metal wrapped around my throat. It sits snug against my skin, not tight enough to choke but impossible to ignore now that I’m aware of it. The surface is smooth and seamless.
“What?” The word comes out hollow.
She leans back against the side of the cart. “You’re a slave. That’s it. Whatever you were before?” She shrugs. “Over.”
My brain is still trying to catch up, still trying to process the fact that I’m naked and chained in a cart with actual monster girls while my body is screaming that this can’t be real. “Someone can just do that? Just... decide that?”
“Well, usually studs like you have protection.” She tilts her head, studying me with those reptilian eyes. “Family, contracts, that sort of thing. But they found you on the road. Passed out. Face-down in the mud.” Her gaze drops again, slow and deliberate, down to where my hands are doing absolutely nothing to cover myself. “So yeah. They can.”
I stare at her, my mind still trying to process the words “studs like you” when she shifts forward. The chains clink as she moves closer, her scaled shoulders catching what little light filters through the gray sky.
“So,” she says, her voice dropping lower. “If I can get on your lap, will you throw me a pity fuck? You know. One slave to another?”
My brain short-circuits.
“Are you serious?” The horned woman snaps before I can even form words. “He literally just woke up.”
“What?” The scaled woman doesn’t look away from me. “I’m being nice. Offering comfort.”
“You’re being a predator,” the feathered one says flatly. “Look at him. He’s about to pass out again.”
“I’m just saying, we’re all fucked anyway. Might as well…”
“No,” the horned woman cuts her off. “Absolutely not. Leave him alone.”
The scaled woman doesn’t back down. She shifts her weight again, chains rattling as she leans even closer. “Look, I’m just trying to make the best of a shit situation. We’re all slaves now. Might as well enjoy what we can while we can, right?”
“That’s not…” I start, but the words get stuck somewhere between my throat and my brain.
Because it’s sinking in now. Really sinking in.
I’m naked. Chained. Collared. In a cart full of monster women who are also slaves, being driven to god knows where by actual fucking wolf people, and I’m not in Boston anymore. I’m not anywhere I recognize. The trees are wrong, the sky is wrong, everything is wrong, and my ex left me a year ago and I was finally going to get a haircut and there was a truck falling out of the sky and…
My breathing goes shallow.
“Hey, easy there,” the scaled woman says, but her voice sounds like it’s coming from underwater.
I can’t be a slave. That’s not… People can’t just… This isn’t real… This can’t be real.
But the metal around my throat is real. The chains are real. The cold air on my skin is real.
“Oh fuck,” I hear myself say. “Oh fuck, oh fuck…”
The scaled woman moves.
I don’t even register it until she’s right there, her weight settling onto my lap, her thighs on either side of mine. The chains rattle and clank as she adjusts herself.
Her hands are on my chest, claws pricking my skin, and somehow, despite the handcuffs chained to the cart wall, despite the impossible angles, she shifts her hips and I feel myself slide inside her.
“Wait…” The word comes out strangled.
She doesn’t wait. She rocks forward, taking more of me, and my brain is screaming that this is wrong, that I didn’t agree to this, that I can’t breathe, that everything is spinning.
“Stop.”
She moves again, pulling herself closer despite the chains restricting her arms. Her scales are smooth and warm against my mud-crusted skin. I try to push back, to get away, but there’s nowhere to go. The cart wall is hard against my spine and she’s everywhere, her weight pinning me down.
My heart is hammering so hard I think it might actually explode. The panic is a living thing in my chest, clawing its way up my throat.
“Hey,” she says, and her voice drops to something almost gentle. “You’re freaking out.”
I can’t answer. Can’t do anything but sit here while she takes whatever she wants.
“Let me help you.” She leans in closer, her breath warm against my ear. “Just breathe. In and out. That’s all you gotta do.”
But I can’t. I can’t think, can’t process any of this. My hands jerk against the chains, useless and trapped, and she keeps moving, keeps taking, and all I can think is that this is familiar in the worst possible way.
“Get off him! Are you fucking blind? He’s having a panic attack!”
“I’m helping,” the scaled woman says, but she doesn’t stop moving.
“You’re making it worse!”
The cart hits a bump and I’m jolted forward, deeper into her, and the sound that comes out of my throat is something between a gasp and a sob.
She smiles, wide and hungry, her reptilian eyes catching the dim light. “Oh, you love it inside me, don’t you?”
My vision is tunneling, everything narrowing down to the sensation of being trapped, of having no control, of my body responding in ways I can’t stop while my mind screams.
She keeps moving. Slow, deliberate rocks of her hips that make the chains rattle with each motion.
“Hey!” One of the wolf girls twists around from the front of the cart, her ears swiveling toward us. “No hurting the stud!”
The scaled woman doesn’t stop. Doesn’t even pause. “Don’t worry, he’s not in any pain.” Her voice is steady, casual, like she’s discussing the weather. “I’m not beating him or nothing.”
The wolf girl studies us for a moment, her animal eyes narrowing, then shrugs and turns back around.
“See?” The scaled woman leans in closer, her breath hot against my face. “Everything’s fine.”
Nothing’s fine. But my body doesn’t care what my brain thinks.
Because there’s something about the way she just... takes. The way she doesn’t ask, doesn’t wait for permission, just decides what she wants and takes it. The way Amalina used to.
God, Amalina.
The memory hits me like a second truck. Her hands on my wrists, pinning them above my head. Her mouth on my throat. The way she’d smile down at me when I stopped resisting, when I finally let go and just... let her have whatever she wanted.
“You’re mine,” she’d whisper. “All mine.”
And I’d believed her. I’d felt so fucking special.
The scaled woman rocks her hips again and I’m back there, back in Amalina’s bed, back when someone wanted me enough to just take and take and take, and my body responds before I can stop it. Heat coils low in my stomach, building despite the panic, despite everything.
My hips jerk up involuntarily and I come, shuddering, still trapped between the cart wall and this stranger who reminds me of the woman who destroyed me.
The scaled woman goes completely still.
Her eyes widen, pupils dilating, and for a long moment she just stares down at me like I’ve done something impossible.
Then her head whips around toward the other women.
“Well guess what, ladies.” Her voice is triumphant, sharp with glee. “He just seeded me. Right here in the cart.”
The horned woman’s voice cuts through the stunned silence. “Congratulations, Silvy. You just raped your first human stud.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Silvy snaps back. Her weight is still on me, her body still wrapped around mine. “That’s not what this was.”
“Really? Because from where I’m sitting, that’s exactly what it was.”
Silvy’s claws dig slightly into my chest as she shifts her weight. She looks down at me, and there’s something almost desperate in her expression now. “That wasn’t rape, right, sweetling?”
The question hangs in the air between us.
My head falls back against the wooden cart wall and I breathe.
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