The Pride of a Slave Ch. 05

I smiled, "I wasn't stopping you if I remember right."

A half smile flashed on his face and he helped me stand up and put my clothes back on, my panties becoming soaked quickly as his seed dripped out of me. I couldn't see much, because the moon was a sliver in the sky, and it left our surroundings black. I stepped towards him, having always been wary of the forest at night and he chuckled.

"Come here Sera."

I stepped into him and he wrapped me up in his large arms and lifted me up, "You are still afraid of the forest at night?"

I nodded, "not everyone can see in the dark."

He nuzzled my neck and took a deep breath, breathing me in before walking towards the Palace. We were quiet, me pressed to him, to keep warm and to keep myself from shaking in fear of the darkness, and him with a thoughtful look on his face.

"I need to tell you something."

I felt my stomach tighten as I looked up at him, "What?"

He smiled at the tension in my voice and kissed me briefly, "I didn't mean for that to happen Sera."

I got rigid wondering if somehow I did something wrong. Ryder had more than enough experience and I felt myself become afraid that it hadn't been as good for him as it had been for me. He felt me tense and paused walking and looked down at me, "what are you thinking?"

I swallowed nervously and said softly, "I didn't do it right?"

His laugh startled me and I relaxed into him, "Only you would jump to that conclusion Sera. No, you didn't do anything wrong. In fact it was very, very right, too right. I couldn't control myself and I thought that I had hurt you."

I smiled, "I'm tougher than that."

"Lets not test it, shall we?" I heard the smile in his voice.

"Agreed." I said softly and felt him start to walk again, and pull me closer for a moment in a brief hug.

"I want to keep you." He said suddenly. And I looked up at him worried but he sighed before I could say anything, "I want to keep you but I cant. Tomorrow morning I have to leave for about a week."

"Why? What about class?" I felt anxious at the idea of him leaving after we had just been together.

He set me down on the ground and pulled me down onto a fallen tree and sat next to me. I noticed the lights of the Palace immediately and realized why he had stopped and grabbed his hand and waited.

"Class, is not really that big of a deal. What I am worried about is you."

"Me? Why?"

"Because, you deserve to be with someone who does what we just did together, and then can prance you around showing off how much they love you. And I probably would have given it a try if you would have been receptive to this sort of thing earlier, but now..."

I heard him groan and rub his hand across the back of his neck roughly, "I, have to go for a week to visit the other packs that I'll be lead Alpha of. I have to go to each pack, spend at least one night there, while I'm there they will show off their eligible girls, and I am expected to take at least one to my bed."

"That's barbaric Ryder." I muttered good naturedly

"It is not, its genetics, the lead Alpha has come from my pack for three generations, this is the first time it is a male that is Alpha, which means that I can strengthen their genes a little. And since Werewolves don't have the same stuffy ideas about sex, and children as other races do, I have to think that way as well."

"Oh." I wasn't necessarily upset as much as territorial and insecure. I knew that Ryder would always come back one way or another to me, mostly because he was my best friend and he had always been there for me, no matter what. But I was insecure that he would have so much with which to compare me to that when he'd come back he would find this new aspect of our relationship less than appealing.

Ryder wrapped an arm around me, "I don't want to make you feel like I used you Sera, because I didn't. I love you very much, and I am well aware of what this all may seem like to you. I'm not supposed to have you as a mate Sera, because of my family, because of Dimitri, because of politics. I would, though, if I could. I would have proposed to you when I was four if I had thought I could marry you."

I smiled, "So your afraid that your making me feel like a mistress?"

"Yeah."

"YYou kinda are though, unless you plan on never touching me again."

He growled and his eyes glowed in the dark for a moment and his arm tightened around me and he pulled me to him, kissing me aggressively for a moment before releasing me, "I plan on touching you as often as I can, I plan on doing more than touching too."

He pressed me to him one more time and released me and I chuckled, "So here I am worried that you wont want to touch me anymore once you go and mate with all these Werewolves, and you are here worried I don't want you to touch me after you have done it."

His breath froze and he grabbed me and pulled me onto his lap, straddling him as I did so. I looked at his face and ran my fingers across the rough planes of them, "There is one more thing we have to talk about Ryder."

"Hold on, I'm still enjoying the fact you were upset at the idea of me not touching you anymore."

I laughed and leaned forward and kissed him, his mouth responding instantly, his tongue licking across my lips and gently caressing my tongue before breaking away.

"Okay, I'm ready, what do we need to talk about."

I took a deep breath, "Its about Dimitri."

Ryder froze, his face concerned, "What about him."

"I'm not going to, um, deny him any more than I will deny you."

Ryder's grip on my hips grew painful as he dug his fingers into my flesh. I watched closely as his face went from angry, to pained, to jealous, then to resigned, "And if I said I wanted you to deny him?"

I sighed and touched his hands with mine reminding him that he was digging his hands into my hips. He mumbled an apology and took his hands off of me and braced them onto the wood of the tree.

"I would remind you, that you are about to go out and mate with who knows how many girls and that I cant say a word about it."

"And what about Dimitri? What if he says that he doesn't want you with me?"

"I would remind him that he cannot keep me anymore than you can, if nothing more than because he could never make me a queen, he has to marry an Vampire in order to do it."

I heard the tree crack and groan as I felt him flex, "You are his mistress then?"

I sighed and grabbed both sides of his face and kissed him softly, "I am yours too, it would seem."

He hugged me to him and rested his chin on my head, "Sera, what have we done?" He sighed sadly, "you deserve to be someone's wife not a couple of idiot Princes' mistress."

I got off of his lap and rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the slave brand there, "wThat doesn't matter, I'm a slave, I don't get to marry, I can be here, like this with you or I can be sold off to breed or to have my essence sucked from me regularly."

I chewed on my lip and felt him get up and wrap his arms around me from behind. He rested his chin on my head and said softly, "I have a feeling you wanted to say something else."

I turned in his arms and rested my head on his broad, muscled chest, "To be honest I was scared about what would happen once we graduated. I was afraid you both would find your mates and I would never see you again, or I would never be able to be close to you two ever again. No wife is going to want to have some human slave as the best friend of their husbands."

Ryder lifted my chin up so I was looking at him, "I may have mates Sera, but I will love only you."

I laughed lightly, my heart light, "I feel bad for your mates."

Ryder bushed his warm lips across my now cool ones, "Don't, they can have as open a mating as I can."

I sighed and leaned into him deepening the kiss for a few brief moments before we broke and laced fingers and walked back to the palace.