Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction by Dominic K. Alexander, Kahlen Aymes, Daryl Banner, C.C. Brown, Chelsea Camaron, Karina Halle, Lisa M. Harley, Nicole Jacquelyn, Sophie Monroe, Amber Lynn Natusch Page A

death.
    She squeezed her eyes shut as he began to undress her, then whimpered, not out of need but out of fear. She felt his roughened hands slide across her face, over her lips, down her neck, up and down her arms, across her sternum, then settling on her breasts.
    Low growls erupted from his chest as he squeezed the soft flesh. She tried to react as a bitch should. Whining, she pushed forward into his touch, and he rumbled his approval.
    “On your belly, female,” he growled. He would mark her now, brand her with his pack emblem, the most painful part of the mating ritual.
    The first swipe of his claws brought tears to her eyes, the second stole all the air in her lungs. By the third, the fourth, and fifth, she’d bitten through her bottom lip and nearly swallowed her own tongue. But never did she scream, not wanting to come across as weak, as most half-breeds were thought to be.
    When he was done, her blood dripping warm and wet down her ravaged body, Grey began to lick her wounds, and she prayed for the strength not to scream. When the pain finally receded, she knew all that remained of her wounds were pink, puckered scars that would soon be white.
    Still holding her down, he moved to kneel between her legs, lifting her hips high as he positioned himself to enter her from behind.
    She suddenly wished she’d taken her senior prom date up on his offer to take her virginity. Grey was not going to go easy on her. A claiming was every bit as primitive as it sounded.
    He pushed into her and she winced.
    “Who am I?” he rumbled.
    “My alpha,” she whispered tearfully.
    He pushed harder. “Who are you?”
    “Your mate.”
    His claws dug into her hip bones and he thrust forward. It took every ounce of strength she had to remain perfectly still and silent as her body painfully stretched to accommodate the size of him and the force of his mating. Tears poured down her cheeks as silent sobs escaped her, no one but her knowing that this wasn’t what she wanted.
    When she felt his teeth graze her shoulder, she readied for more pain and he didn’t disappoint. His canines cut through her flesh, dug deep down into her muscle and clenched. It didn’t take long after that, a few minutes maybe, until he stiffened inside her, jerking through his finish.
    Grey slid out of her and rolled onto his back, pulling her with him. Settling her into the crook of his arm, he nuzzled against her neck, licking and sniffing.
    “You were a virgin,” he rumbled, sounding satisfied. His lips met hers, his tongue slid between them, and he stroked her slowly through their first kiss.
    “You’re beautiful,” he growled. “Even more so than Careen described.”
    She would never have described herself as beautiful. Cute, maybe. She was an average five foot five inches tall, an average size six, with average curves. She had basic brown hair that hung long and wavy down her back, boring blue eyes, fair skin that was lightly freckled, a heart-shaped face, lips that were neither full nor thin, and a distinctively average nose. But the way Grey was staring at her, his wolf eyes glowing with hunger, one would have thought she was a supermodel.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, wanting nothing more than to shift and run as fast as she could away from him. Soon he would be dragging her away from her father, her pack, the future she’d always dreamed of, and forcing her to mate with him over and over again, bear his pups, do whatever he wanted her to do.
    Her life was over. She wanted to scream and sob, rage at him, beat him, but she did nothing, afraid to betray her secret, afraid of the repercussions of disobeying both her alpha and mate. If anyone ever found out her secret, she didn’t know what her fate would be. Would she be cast out? Or worse, killed?
    Growling, kissing her harder as his hands explored her body, he shifted his body over top of hers. His part of the mating was over with. Under the belief that she was forever bound to him, he was