Page 1 of Bound to Four Alphas (Silverthorn Alphas #1)

The long warm evenings of summer had begun to fade into the golden-red haze of autumn when they finally came for her.

Selena had spent the day like she always did. Tending her small garden, grinding herbs for medicinal poultices, walking into the village to trade with hunched shoulders and downcast eyes against the sneers and mockery.

It was worth it for the wool that she could spin into a thick, warm fiber for a new winter blanket. The days were getting shorter, the nights colder. And she was an omega, alone, unmated. Rogue. The villagers called her witch.

In the end, it was no surprise when they came for her.

The rough ground of the forest beyond the village was cold and unyielding beneath her bare feet, stray rocks and sharp thistles biting through her skin as she was half-dragged through the foliage. A bag was over her head, blinding her to every tripping root or twisting hole. But she was in the forest. Beyond the borders of the Silverthorn Kingdom.

The wilds.

Monsters lived in the forest.

The jeering was loud, snatched insults and cries ricocheting through her aching skull, the hands grabbing and pushing at her cruel and bruising.

“… Told you we’d get the bitch, she never heard us coming!’

“… Fucking disgusting, look at her, crying and screaming like a whore …”

“… Always so smug, look where it gets you, filthy omega pig!”

Alphas, nearly all of them were alphas. Their scent, acrid and rotten, caught in her throat, choking her. They had whipped themselves into a frenzy, manic and dangerous, and even though Selena knew they were hungry, knew they were underfed, she also knew she didn’t stand a chance against even one of them.

And from the shouting voices and grabbing hands, there were a lot more than one of them.

She thought about crying, about begging, pleading to their protective instincts, but it wouldn’t work. She wasn’t a part of the village pack. She was a rogue, an outcast, just another mouth to feed for all they cared. She had no alpha to invoke pack protection on her behalf. She was alone.

The air grew colder the further they traveled, and Selena’s hands and feet ached at the lack of warmth. Seeing her shiver, one of the alphas waved a blazing torch near her, the heat of the flames licking near her arm, and she flinched away from the burning sensation. There was a fresh round of laughter, mocking.

Fear choked her.

What were they going to do to her, dragging her so far from the village? Even when she was younger, her mother had made it clear that she was never to be alone with an alpha she didn’t know, never to go anywhere where there might be lots of alphas unless she was bonded to one. Selena had asked her mother why, but had always been brushed off.

It’s for your safety, Selena, you’d be in danger alone with alphas. Just remember that.

As she grew older, wiser to the ways of the world, she had come to realize what exactly her mother had been warning her against.

There weren’t many omegas, certainly not enough for the number of alphas, so many went unbonded and wanting. And any omega that was stupid enough to find themselves alone with a group of angry, unbonded alphas, well…

Selena knew she would rather die. This wouldn’t be a forced bonding. This would be something far, far worse.

Their taunts didn’t help. Comments about her curvaceous body, her breasts, her hips, her stomach. Some of the things they said, the dark desires they voiced, it turned her insides. She tried to fight, to shuck their grip and disappear into the woods, but it was no use. Her wrists were bound behind her back with rope, her vision cut off by the bag. She was cold, bare-footed, and outnumbered. She was not escaping them.

After what felt like hours, they finally stopped, and a hard shove pushed Selena to her knees. She whimpered at the jolt of pain as she connected with the hardened earth, although blessedly it seemed covered in soft grass rather than sharp stones. The myriad of cuts and scrapes on her feet and ankles made her whine out, and she huddled into herself, pulling uselessly at her restraints.

The bag was ripped from her head, and she squeaked in fright, blinking against the sudden onslaught of light and movement and chaos around her.

There were at least ten men, all alphas from the village, circling her with peeled back lips and hard, cruel eyes. They were in a clearing of sorts, surrounded on all sides by the forest, and Selena had been dumped beneath a lone silver birch, its twisting limbs reaching up against the clouded night sky.

Some of the men branched out, slashing their burning torches into the night air, whooping and hollering. Warning anything that might be lurking in the darkness.

They were fools to think they were safe here.

A few tears slipped down her cheeks as one of them yanked the rope tying her hands together backwards, fixing it to the trunk of the tree, knotting it several times over. The skin at her wrists burned, rubbed red and raw, and she half-heartedly tried to buck away from the man behind her.

But she was tired, so tired, fear and cold stiffening her limbs and making her movements slow and shuddering.

“Why are you doing this?” she begged, eyes skittering wildly from one man to the other, unable to stop the fresh wave of tears from streaking down her face.

One of them gave her a disgusted look. “Fucking hell, Derry, she fucking stinks .”

“What do you expect?” the man behind her, Derry, responded. “She’s a rogue omega in distress, she’s putting out hormones.”

“Yeah, well, it’s fucking disgusting.”

Selena whimpered and pulled her legs in tighter to herself, shrinking at the alpha’s cruel words. She couldn’t help her scent, her distress, and right now she wished more than anything that she wasn’t an omega at all.

“Alright, easy there, darling.” Derry finished tying her to the tree and stepped out in front of her, kneeling to peer down at her. He was one of the stronger alphas in the village, slightly older but no less horrible to her. Of this bunch, she could smell that he was in charge. Her body was wracked with trembling.

Derry’s smile grew sinister. “Not getting out of this one, are you?”

“Please,” Selena whimpered, “please just let me go. Don’t do this.”

His eyebrows furrowed for a moment before he threw his head back and started laughing. “Listen to this, boys, she thinks we’re going to fuck her!”

The alphas all howled with laughter, mocking and cruel.

“Like any of us would ever touch a filthy rogue like you,” Derry sneered. “I mean, look at you! You’re disgusting! A dirty little witch who’s cursed our crops and called down the plague.”

“That wasn’t me, I’m not a witch, I didn’t do anything!” Selena was sobbing now, wrenching and pulling at the rope, ignoring the slickness of blood as she shredded her skin.

“Doesn’t matter now,” said Derry. “You’re a sacrifice. The village elders decreed it today. Maybe if we feed you to the forest, it will grant us peace for a season.”

A sacrifice.

They were sacrificing her to the forest.

She had to get out of there.

As the men began rounding up, casting watchful glances to the tree line, she shrieked and cried and fought against her restraints with all her might. Somewhere, out in the darkness, a wolf howled. It was faint, miles away perhaps, but distinct. She fought even harder.

The alphas cast wary, watchful eyes to the horizon.

“Come on,” said Derry, “let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be around when whatever’s coming for her gets closer.”

With murmured agreements and final, scornful looks towards her, the alphas turned and disappeared back the way they came, taking the warm glow of the torchlight with them.

Selena called out to them, begged them to come back for her, not to leave her alone, but all too soon their footfalls faded away and she was left alone in the clearing.

She swallowed, shaking hard against the cold and the fear, and scooted backwards until she hit the trunk of the tree.

The night was oppressively dark, the wind whipping through the forest, haunting and dangerous. Every rustle, every creak, every tiny noise set her teeth on edge and sent a fresh wave of panic coursing through her. She was paralyzed, unable to move, unable to speak.

There was a reason her mother had taught her how to protect her property from whatever monsters lurked in the shadows of the forest. Selena had never seen one, only heard about them. Nightmares made flesh, she had heard, great monstrous beasts of tooth and fang.

A rustling in the tree line caught her attention, and she sucked in a breath, eyes wide, trying to see what it was.

A brief moment of silence, and then…

She shrieked as a great, golden hawk broke free of the canopy, its huge wings like sun fire against the black of the night. It hovered there for a few seconds before swooping towards her, a blur of color and claws. She ducked her head down into her knees just as it flew over her head, a few wisps of her dark hair blowing around her face. She braced herself for the attack.

It never came.

Slowly, she lifted her head and saw the hawk settling on a branch above her, its gleaming body unnaturally big. It cocked its head at her.

She couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out. A bird. It was just a bird out hunting, curious about the noise, no doubt. And if it was bigger than any hawk she had ever seen, then she supposed that was just another mystery of the forest.

Letting her head fall back against the tree, she thought through her options. The shock of the hawk seemed to have snapped her senses back into place, and she needed a plan. Right now.

The rope, while tight, was not impenetrable. If she could find a sharp stick, she might be able to saw through it. Failing that, she could try to injure her wrists a bit more, get enough blood flowing that her hands could slip through. She grimaced. It wasn’t ideal, but she needed to get out of the forest as quickly as possible. She was a sitting duck in the clearing.

With a fortifying breath, she began pulling at the rope again, wincing as the scrapes reopened.

“That’s an interesting tactic you’ve got there, mind talking me through it?”

She shrieked and fell backwards as the voice, smooth and charming, spoke from seemingly nowhere.

She looked up, heart racing. Though the hawk hadn’t moved, its eyes glinted with amusement.

“I-I … can you talk ?’

The hawk fluttered its feathers. “Silly girl,” it said, its beak not moving, “you’ll only hurt yourself more if you do that. I watched those little men tie those knots. You’re not getting out of them alone.”

Selena’s mouth opened and shut a few times, no words coming out, and somehow the hawk rolled its eyes at her.

“As fascinating as it is to watch you flapping your mouth, we don’t have much time, and you need to answer some questions.”

The hawk spread its wings— his wings, if the voice was anything to go by—and floated down to the ground before her. Up close, his golden feathers seemed to shine from within, and his eyes were flecked with green. Sitting down, the hawk was taller than she was, and looked down at her with gleaming condescension.

“Tell me, little omega.” His voice was a low purr. "What exactly have you done to—"

A branch snapped, and the hawk whipped around, feathers bristling.

Selena shrank back, desperately searching the tree line for any sign of movement, but there was nothing. Another branch snapped, then another.

“W-what is that?” she whimpered as the hawk launched upwards back into the branches of the tree, never taking his eyes off the forest.

“That,” he replied in a voice full of dark excitement, “is why we don’t have much time.”

More branches snapped, and Selena’s eyes whipped to the tree line, stomach roiling in fear as a great, dark shadow moved just behind the first few trees.

In a voice barely louder than a whisper, the hawk said, “Greetings, Malek.”

The answering rumbling roar shook the very ground beneath Selena’s feet.