The Wolf's Mistress

"Come, sister," Gordon clucked at her, still watching Alec. "Greet our host."

Exhaling sharply at the display that met him, Alec watched the girl at Gordon's side with appreciative eyes. She glanced quickly, nervously, at her brother before sending a brief curtsy Alec's way.

"My -- my lord," her eyes met his briefly before she dipped her head, clasping her hands before her, looking down. Submissive, subservient.

His cocked stirred, and he shifted in his seat.

"Well?" he said flippantly then, passing Gordon a suspicious once over, even as he watched the girl in his peripheral.

When it came to lasses, he had few preferences -- blonde, red or dark-haired, he didn't give a whit so long as they had a face that wouldn't curdle milk and so long as they enjoyed bed-play as much as he. But Isabel Gordon with her dark beauty appealed to him in a very specific way that he couldn't not deny nor quite understand. He was annoyed by his swift response to her for he was not short of amenable women and would not do himself a disservice by mooning about what he could never have like a green lad. But he got over his automatic reaction to her. He'd ever been an admirer of fair women and Isabel Gordon was certainly a welcome sight in his hall.

"I am in need of your...expertise."

"What?" Alec frowned, trying to clear his mind. He tried to focus as Gordon approached him, stopping a few feet away.

"I need you. As an ally. My father's so-called bastard son thinks to usurp me as alpha. He is claiming that his slut of a mother married my father first. He has nothing to prove it, of course, but he's getting...braver, shall we say?" Richard's thin lips twisted, a look of unease passing over his usually smug face. "We cannot fend off their pack alone."

"Oh, aye? Why should I care?"

"If they wipe out you Gordons, they'll be doing us all a favour!" Gavin crowed beside him, and his kinsmen roared approval.

Alec threw his cousin a sharp look, for it did little good rising to likes of Gordon and his goading presence.

"Wipe out the Gordons, you say? My sister here, you mean? For she is a Gordon. The defenceless women and children? Raped and slain?" Richard spread his arms expansively, and Gavin's previously aggressive expression dimmed for a moment.

Gordon's words left a sour taste in Alec's mouth, too. He did not advocate brute violence against innocents, but surely the man was exaggerating, no doubt thinking of playing at warfare to prove himself, to assert his authority now that his swine of a father had passed, leaving him as the clan's chief -- and alpha. A bloody joke.

"Do not think to guilt me in aiding ye. I'd not spit on ye were ye set aflame, nor would ye me. Ye've allies. Go to them. This is yer war."

"No one else will do as well as you, curse you," Gordon said in reluctant praise. "You Frasers have fought against the Duncans before, you-"

"At war with the Duncans?" Alec uttered low, sitting straighter in his seat, a chill passing over him despite the roaring fire in the hearth beyond.

His cultured tones dropping, his burr deepening, Gordon said, "Aye, wi' Reese Duncan, bastard of Lydia Duncan. I'll reward you richly, Fraser-"

Alec grunted, looked away, refusing the prick to his conscience, for he knew well enough what the Duncans were capable of. Aye, Richard Gordon had not been exaggerating.

"We don't want yer filthy money," Gavin all but hissed, the prior spark of conscience that had lit his blue eyes before suddenly darkening. "And it's no wonder the Duncan bastard's insane, being of both Duncan and Gordon blood. Christ almighty, the buggar never had a chance!"

Richard Gordon's milk white cheeks developed a blotchy, pink stain. His eyes narrowed. "You're fools to be so proud. Other than your lands and cattle, your clan and pack is lean in all ways. Fraser Castle is nothing but a pile of bricks! Aye, sneer all you want," he mocked at the wave of dissent that met his words. "Think what a tidy sum could do for your dwelling, your kinsmen? Especially with winter fast approaching."

Gordon's cajoling words of promise ringing in his ears, Alec stared around the careworn hall, still standing despite centuries of warfare and revelry -- and only just. Frasers had never been wealthy; it wasn't in their make-up to be prosperous in any way but on in battle. Aye, the money would do them good, but no amount of coin was worth risking his clan's welfare for the benefit of the Gordons.

"It's not only my money I was intending to gift you with, Fraser," Gordon continued, his voice bleeding into Alec's tentative thought-process on the matter, and so-saying, the man suddenly grabbed at his sister and placed her before him, presenting her like a trophy. But Alec had guessed at this from the off, for why else would he have brought the girl here?

"I saw the way you watched her at Elaine MacDonald's wedding -- I saw how you watched her all those years you were living on Gordon lands. How you've watched her today. Like a starved dog hungering over a tasty morsel. Don't deny it!"

Alec cocked a brow. "I'll not," he returned steadily, smiling slightly at the ruffled look on Gordon's face. "I admire comely women unashamedly."

Richard dismissed this with a flick of his head, refusing to be beaten, clearly. "Aye, but admiring them is one thing, Fraser -- coupling with them is quite another. Say the word -- say you'll join fight for me, and she's yours. Come, it's a gift from God Himself! After all, how else would a bastard like you ever be able to touch the likes of her?"

Gavin hissed in Alec's air, engaged on his behalf. "Thrash him -- want me to do it for you?" he started to rise from the bench but Alec gestured for him to stay.

Beneath the table, his hand flexed, tightening into to the fist he so wished to slam into Gordon's smug face, but he schooled the violent urge, angered by it: he'd been taunted with that epithet -- and worse -- too many times in his twenty-four years to count. It didn't bother him. Then why did he feel his calm teetering so? After all, this was Richard Gordon, an insignificant fool hardly worth the effort of his ire.

"Tempting as the offer may be, I've no wish for a wife. They're more trouble than they're worth-"

Gordon's rich laughter cut him off. "Who said anything about a wife? Do what you will with her - make her a serf, subject her to backbreaking labour: a Gordon serving your every whim, wouldn't that be a sight!" A few of the braver serfs heckled at this, buoyed by the image, and Richard continued, "Or use her as your mistress. If I could get a hefty dowry out of her, don't you think I would? Stupid chit already gave it away for free to Ian MacDonald -- a bloody mortal! She's no untried maid. She'll service you well, man," Gordon promised, getting excited, trying to sell her to him, trying to secure Alec's compliance.

But Alec barely paid him mind, taken aback at Gordon's incentive to secure his compliance, but something else had caught him.

Ian MacDonald. He stared at Isabel Gordon, watched as she pleated the fabric of her skirts, her hands shaking; he watched as her eyes looked anywhere but at him.

"Why am I no' surprised that ye'd subject the lass to such a fate. At least wi' marriage, ye'd protect her a measure. Ye really are a feckless swine, Richard Gordon. And my answer is still no," he said hardly then, inexplicably feeling the need to hurt the girl -- to make her hate him. "While it's true I imagined her spread before me many a cold night as any stupid fool would suffering his first calf love, I was still green, yet to lay my first woman. Well, Gordon, I've lain my fair share in that time and have come to learn that one is as good as any other. Unlike ye, I've no need to pay for it. No woman is worth what ye want in exchange. Besides, why should I want a well-used wench?"

Something in his gut twisted as Isabel Gordon flinched in the wake of his speech, at the hurt on her lovely face, but he refused to be swayed by her.

Still, Alec was lying in one respect, for he didn't care a whit if a woman was a still a maid or not -- well, he did. He preferred practiced women, those who enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh as much as he. He hadn't the patience for innocent maids, was not aroused by shy timidity in the bedchamber, but for some reason, it rankled that Isabel Gordon had given herself to Ian MacDonald, the black-haired little sod with his princely features -- his sisters' words. It rankled at his male pride, aye, but it was more than that...

A beautiful woman was not a hard find. He had been completely truthful with Richard Gordon -- as a young lad still wet behind the ears he'd looked upon Isabel Gordon, a summer or two older than him, with a kind of reverence: like a sotted knight mooning over his lady fair. But it had been a different kind of attraction, more chaste than anything. He'd been in awe of her solemn, lady-like manner, so different to the ladies of his acquaintance.

Now that he'd had his fill of women, he knew they were all alike. Aside from bed play, they were a burden. She was no different.

"So that's it, is it?" Gordon spat then. "Aye, just like a bastard to turn his nose up at a fine thing! She was too high for you anyway, you filth."

Alec exchanged an amused look with Ivan. None of his clansmen, however, looked remotely humoured. In fact, their hands were poised before their dirks, ready for the signal to carve a signature into his face, ready to toss his out bodily, giving him a few broken limbs as a farewell gift. Not necessarily out of the need to honour the besmirching of his name, mind, but just out of pure Fraser principle: no Gordon had ever set foot in Fraser lands and walked away in tact - save for to tonight.

He watched the siblings depart broodingly before dismissing them, staring at his mug of ale.

"Looks like Hugh MacGregor it is then, sister."

Alec's head whipped back to his guests. But that had been no whispered aside to his sister. Gordon had wanted him to hear.

"Ye can't mean to sell her to him," he said low, eyes narrowed in disbelief.

"I can and I will. MacGregor has been randy for her since she started her courses -- before, even," he snorted. "Of course, his clan doesn't have your skill in battle, but he'll do. I'm not in much of a position to be picky," Gordon snorted. "But here, Fraser - you seemed shocked! Didn't think a savage like you was capable of such tender, moral feeling," he goaded.

Alec shook his head in disgust. MacGregor was a reprobate. He'd raped his own niece and gotten her with child, the poor lass dying in childbirth. His first four wives had died under mysterious circumstances, and his mistresses were not treated much better once he tired of them. They were a pack without discipline. Everyone knew of his perverted ways, of his abuse. He kept himself to himself up in his expansive keep, a miser with his gold, a miser with his womenfolk who he used and abused. And judging by Isabel Gordon's pale face and desperate eyes, she knew it all too well.

For the first time, Alec looked at her. Properly.

My God -- beautiful. So chaste, so pure, even in spite of Ian MacDonald's taking of her maidenhead. What was it about her that still stirred him after all these years, that caught his attention? Wanting what he couldn't have, most likely. If he'd gotten under her skirts, easing the itch that had first arisen as he did with any other woman he liked the look of, he'd think nothing of her now, he reasoned.

He took in Richard Gordon's freshly hopeful face. He looked at the girl, her eyes finally trained on him -- equally as hopeful.

Then he looked away, looked at his tankard. There was the answer. Dismissal.

He could not endanger his pack for the Gordons sake. Could not ally with the clan who had killed his step-father. He could not ally with the clan who had taken his mother from him - after all, she'd died birthing Samuel Gordon's offspring after he'd taken her as leman some years ago. Nay, he could not and he would not.

And though something in his gut twisted at the decision, he turned away from the guilt gnawing at him. Curse it; he had nothing to feel guilty about!

"Wait!"

He stiffened at the feminine appeal, lifting his eyes to imploring, liquid eyes, the jeers from his men and women sounding distant. He hardened himself against Isabel Gordon, lifted his tankard and sipped at the warm ale slowly, his stomach roiling in slight protest, now sickened by the drink.

Isabel Gordon moved out of her brother's hold, ran the length of the long table, stopping before Alec's chair, lowering herself at his feet, the submissive position stirring something within him best left dormant.

She grabbed at his hand curled around the tankard, her fingers cold and biting, her eyes large and pleading as she peered up at him.

Alec looked at her pale hand on his scarred, sun darkened one. Loveliness against coarseness.

"You - you cannot be so unfeeling, Alec-"

He snorted at the whispered reproach. "You know nothing about me, lady," he said brusquely, pulling his hand harshly out of her hold, staring straight ahead all the while acutely conscious of her kneeling before him. "Your brother asks too much - I'll not recklessly lead my pack to-"

"But you'll lead me to it? You'll lead me to MacGregor? Or lead me to a certain fate, my clan at the mercy of the Duncans?"

Alec winced at her softly spoken words.

"This is your brother's war - not mine," he bit out, pushing away from his table, standing, dragging her to her feet.

He took her by the shoulders, intending to push her away but she refused the rejection, hands fisting his linen tunic, saying swiftly,

"I'll do anything Alec. Anything-"

Alec snorted and uttered low, "Anything? Aye, I'll bet. I need no more serfs, lady, and I've plenty of women to take my ease on -- even should I not, ye'd never give yerself to me freely and I've no stomach for rape nor for a frigid wench, lying there to be taken, stiff as a corpse. So what would I get out of this cursed bargain? Naught-"

Isabel Gordon shook her head quickly. "It wouldn't be like that; I would come to you willingly. I would please you. I would please you," the frenetic promise floated up to him, fogged his mind.

A small hand flattened on his chest, rubbing a slow circle over him.

The whispered words tugged low at his gut, her little caress burned him. Alec searched the sweetly featured face poised towards him, and then his eyes jerked to the tentative hand still stroking him.

His balls tightened in needy response. All that and she barely touched him! Curse her. Curse all Gordons! His birth father's words echoed through his head, raw and bitter.

Ne'er give yer heart to a lass! Once ye do, ye'll have given them everything and they'll leave you, lad! Aye, they'll leave ye for the next man and leave ye wi' nothin'!

Physically, Isabel Gordon and his mother were complete opposites, the former dark and abundantly feminine, the latter fair and delicate. The proud, easy-going Alasdair Fraser had been crippled by his mother's abandonment, and so too had his step-father after him when the fickle, greedy woman had started an affair with Isabel Gordon's father, leading ultimately to his step-father's death.

Beyond their looks, Isabel Gordon seemed to share a fair few traits with his late mother, namely that she was trouble -- she'd already bedded a MacDonald when she'd been betrothed to a Morgan, though lord knew what had gone awry there -- and he'd heard a fair few rumours of a romance she'd had with the Cameron chief's heir.

She'd aroused Alec's interest with a few mere looks as a lad, but he was no lad now. While he knew he'd more than be able to guard himself against her wiles as he did every other calculating female, the fact remained that, if he agreed to fight Gordons cause, it would undeniably be mostly for the lass's benefit, out of guilt and conscience.

He caught her maddening, caressing hand then in a vicelike grip, caught and held her away from him.

Bending low to meet her slight height, he uttered for her ears alone, his eyes never leaving hers -- hoping to disturb her, hoping to earn an outraged slap from her, "You know exactly what I'd want, woman. I'd want no serf out of ye. No quick coupling. There'd be nothing chaste about it. I'd use ye well. Fraser's whore, a bastard's whore, that's what they'd call ye Aye, everyone," he repeated at her wide-eyed look of distaste. "I'd use ye when I wanted where I wanted. Ye'd likely bear my bastards the rate we'd go at it -- after all, for what ye'd cost me, I'd be sure to get my use of ye. And after I'd tired of ye, I'd send ye packing. So -- do you still say ye'd do anything?"

He watched as Isabel Gordon stared at their joined hands before tossing her head back, her loose raven hair gleaming blue in the fire-lit hall. "Yes," she said firmly, her green eyes flashing with something he didn't care for. "Now, what do you say?"

***

Isabel paced the small chamber, restless. She approached the door again and pressed her ear to it, listening to the raised voices beyond, the roars of protest, the shouts of displeasure -- both male and female -- clashing, all trying to be heard.

How long had she been in this stale smelling room since Alec Fraser had ordered a hostile serf to take her away from his hall? She had not had a chance to say a further word to her brother, no farewell. Good riddance. But what was to become of her now?

She peered warily around the chamber, illuminated only by the moonlight and a single candle the maid had begrudgingly acquired for her, taking in the single chest, the bed pallet. Other than these two things, the room was bare. Although the room was immaculate, the blanket over the pallet straight and un-creased, she rejected the inclination to perch against the pallet fearing that, should she settle upon it, a swarm of insects would come for her. Save for this small room, Castle Fraser was a sty, and she'd not chance it.

In the end, she curled herself on the floor, leaning against the cold stone wall, watching the door with hard eyes, but half the night passed without the Frasers' violent debate in the hall ceasing.

Though she was glad to be tucked away from the spectacle, the anxiousness of not knowing what was to be done with her mounted. Time dragged by, and she felt herself wearying as the sky darkened further, exhausted from the emotionally fraught day, but no sooner did sleep claim her, she was starting to wakefulness by a thunderous crash coming from below, the sound so loud it felt as if the stone walls trembled.

She came quickly to her feet just as the chamber's door was pushed open to reveal Alec Fraser standing at the threshold.

He looked grim, his eyes running over her briefly, before he closed the door behind him.

He walked past her, removing his tunic, his large hands moving next to his plaid. He hesitated, and Isabel felt her face heat.

"My lor -- Alec?" she said softly after a long, heavy silence after he'd removed his plaid and stalked to his pallet completely nude before spreading beneath the thin blanket, flinging a thick arm over his eyes.

He grunted, and she took that her cue to continue.

"Thank you --I mean, I-"

"Ye've nothing to thank me for. I didn't agree to do it for ye."

At the cool pronouncement, Isabel wavered, warily taking in Alec's suddenly set jaw.

"Gordon doesn't stand a chance against the Duncans. Reese Duncan is a vicious bastard. For once, yer brother wasn't talking out of his arse."

Eyes still covered with his lightly furred, thickly muscled arm, Isabel wished she could see him, wished she could read him. Softly, she said, "Then why did you agree to ally with him?"