Claimed by Callista

The crackle of the fires burning brighter signifies that he is coming.

We’ve all been waiting for him to choose a mate.

The king.

“The Sun of Sovrex, Callista!” calls our leading Healer.

We all line the Firewalk, a long, red-hot bed of coals, where Sovrex warriors dance forward left and right to introduce the Sun. No one can see Callista yet.

The Firewalk is the only light in the darkness of the broad savanna. I stand at the far back of the congregation of girls, keeping my head down as they chant.

Unlike the girls wearing nothing but beads and bright paint to attract Callista’s attention, I’m wearing nothing but a wolf’s coat, which I’m thankful for, as it covers my entire body.

After all, he’s here to choose what I consider a slave to his manhood.

The Sovrex Tribe rules the Dampwater—a place of plenty. For years, I’ve heard the people of Sovrex boasting about their leaders, who are rumored to be shifters.

Their closest competitors are the Viper Clan and the River Blood Tribe, while the rest of us are scattered in tiny familial tribes if we do not choose a clan. This is why I have to be strong: to help my mother.

We don’t have a tribe. All we have is each other.

Tonight, the Sun of all tribes will choose a Moon to bear an heir with. That’s how most tribal warriors view the role of women: to be child bearers. This girl, the Moon, will become his queen and the mother of his heirs.

But I have no intention of being chosen. I try to edge toward the back of the crowd, listening as the drums beat low, fading out.

Although it isn’t common or respected for women, my entire life, I have wanted to become a warrior. In order to be fully recognized as a warrior, you have to go through the Warrior Rite with one of the tribes.

But if you have already had a child, you are barred from entering, which is why I’m trying my best to be as forgettable as possible tonight.

Behind me, I hear the rattles of the older women cease. I know there is only one reason for the music to stop.

Callista is approaching.

There are at least one hundred of us. The girls alongside me at the back have been pushed aside by the prettier girls at the front. A lot of the girls have beautiful, enchanting voices; I pray he will like the sound of one of them.

Everyone, even the other tribes, knows that in Sovrex, presentation is everything. To appear unpainted is an insult, but I don’t care about provoking them—I just want to pass through the crowd, unnoticed.

This is probably why my mother, standing back in the trees, is so distraught. I feel her glare through the back of my head. She was persistent this morning.

Yehseeka, Yehseeka, Yehseeka.

Why don’t I eat fucking rocks? I wish I could do that instead, with how out of place I feel right now.

The only thing that makes me feel any better is the wolf skin I wear around my shoulders as I hide at the back. I killed the wolf when I was ten.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve understood that being strong is the only way I can survive.

As the music fully stops, I angle my face to my feet, trying to attract as little attention as possible. Then—I freeze as the girls in front of me stop chanting under their breath.

My eyes lift from the shoulders of the many girls in front of me to see Callista in the flesh, walking slowly over a bed of coals.

He’s enormous, a giant in the dark, but what makes him truly look like a god is the way he steps on the Firewalk, as if the red-hot coals aren’t burning him at all.

Callista looks thirty, give or take. But truly, Callista is beyond us all. He is on another plane.

The Shamanic Plane, to be exact.

From what I’ve heard, he can summon and talk to the spirits of bears. Of any beast from the land.

Torches burn alongside him. He’s covered in ink, permanent markings injected with poison. They cover every inch of him in tribal marks and whorls.

He’s beyond imagination, built by purest sinew and muscle. With a strong, square jawline and shoulders the width of a bear. His height is dominant over all other males.

His glassy black eyes reflect the orange glow of the coals, and I see a hardened warrior lives within them. I wonder what struggles Callista has faced?

I suck in a breath. He is everything a king should be and more. My skin prickles, my hairs standing on end as a shiver passes through me.

A strange spark in my blood makes a happy little rush flood down my spine.

I immediately try to squash down my innate response. This is not part of the plan. He may be handsome, but I am not going to fall for his looks.

There is no hint of a gentle soul in his hard stone mouth, which is unmoving, as he stands barefoot on the Firewalk, halting to look over the girls waiting.

The girls have stopped looking directly at him. They all look downward. I follow their gazes and try not to snort at how scared they all are. Many of them are Sleetr, like me.

The Sleetr are the people below Callista, outside of his tribe. All the girls here are gathered in order to try and become his broodmare, giving them the chance to join Sovrex and never go hungry again.

Now they don’t want to be chosen. Who would be? Only an experienced female should take him on, not girls becoming women. Most of us here in the lineup are between eighteen and twenty-one.

It is rare to be unmated beyond twenty-two. And I am twenty-three.

Someone cries from the shadows in celebration as Callista finally makes a move. I glance up as we all do to see him stepping off the coals, in front of the girls, just ahead of me.

Due to his height, he looks over everyone. And then his eyes happen to land right on me.

The Sun of Sovrex, Callista.

I stare right back, my smirk barely contained. My arrogance will sour his eyes.

I have a very ingrained habit of being challenging to males. I learned young to teach them their place, before they taught me mine.

I learned to be fierce immediately, or risk rape and death from lonely, fevered warriors caught by the Moon Above’s frenzy.

Behave like a wolf and you’ll keep other wolves at bay. That’s my mentality.

Without a word, the girls in front of me start to shuffle aside as Callista’s obsidian whorls for eyes don’t stray from mine.

When the line of defense in front of me has shuffled enough to make way…

I lose my cocky smirk.

Oh Sun Above, I am dead.

That is what it feels like in the pit of my stomach—a heavy, slow-moving death—as the Sun of Sovrex walks toward me and dwarfs my size by almost double.

Now in my space, Callista takes the wolf coat by the edges and rips it apart to see what’s underneath.

I have no paint.

No beads.

Nothing.

Just me.

I hear my mother crying in the sparse tree line behind us as Callista’s eyes rake over my insultingly unpainted, naked body.

“Your name?”

Callista’s voice is loud and unafraid as he slowly leans down to my level, looking to catch my eyes, which are moving anywhere but toward his.

I glance up at him briefly, my name stuck in my throat from the pure abandon of my senses.

“Yehseeka,” my mother gasps, coming forward to answer for me.

Callista nods at me and straightens, lifting an arm to point at my mother.

“Take her to Dampwater to drown for the insolence of interrupting me,” Callista orders.

The tribe members and Sleetrs fall silent, obedient to their king. I hear my mother making incoherent noises of terror. I stare at Callista, waiting for him to correct himself. Surely, he can’t be serious.

But when I turn my head to see the warriors roughly grabbing my mother by her arms, I know this punishment is real. And it will be feral.

As his mocking eyes rest on mine, I scream like a banshee, lifting my hands to fight him.

Callista snaps up both my wrists.

“It is time, Yehseeka. You are my Moon. I choose you.”

My heart pounds out of my chest, drowning out my senses as I feel the sudden palpitations in my eardrums. I have never felt so much fury and fear consume me all at once.

“WHY?” I screech, making him pause.

Apparently, Callista has never been asked this question, because he goes silent for a moment, raising his pierced brow. His ill expression for my soon-to-be fate is his only answer.

“Sovrex,” he drawls to his tribe, who come forward to take me.

Callista wants a challenge. He wants to break me.

I turn my neck and spit on the face of the warrior tying my hands behind my back. The warrior grits his teeth and makes the lash even tighter.

“I’ll remember that during the Moon Rites,” the warrior hisses at me. “My sister is competing. I look forward to seeing her spill your blood.”

I narrow my eyes at him and set my jaw.