Page 7 of Own to Obey

Four columns spread out evenly, holding up the deck above but along one length of the side a high balcony gave a restricted view of the ocean. The whole area was filled with people, all busy and moving about in a confusing jumble. Strangely, all of them shone with sweat and hardly any sound was made apart from low murmuring. The only still area was where a group of men stood around several huge gray boulders.

Shaya peered at them, wondering what they were doing but it seemed they simply watched the boulders—barely moving as they stared. She craned her neck to see why the stones were capturing their attention so intensely, but other than having slightly different color tints, the stones seemed normal.

She glanced around the deck, but nobody else seemed to notice them acting strangely. Even though the men stood still, they shone with sweat, and as she watched them, a wave of nausea rippled through her.

A hand gripping her arm brought her attention back to her immediate surroundings. The woman was leading her by the arm toward the side of the deck where the boulder men stood.

Shaya looked around for the shinno, but he was walking ahead of them, veering in a different direction. She was somewhat relieved. She hated being around him. He made her feel… out of sorts; nervous, fearful, and something else she couldn’t figure out. There was a strange jittery feeling when she was in his presence, and when he touched her, it transmuted to a feeling she hadn’t been able to resist. When he had first wrapped his arm around her in the cabin, she’d been terrified, but after a moment it felt so pleasurable; his thick body against hers, his face tucked into her neck, his hand running up her stomach as he breathed her in. She couldn’t help succumbing to that feeling, but now she knew what it led to, she would try to avoid doing it again at all cost.

The woman came to a stop by a bucket with soapy water and a cloth and pointed at it, speaking in that strange language of the tribe. Relief filtered into Shaya. Was that all she’d be doing? She could certainly clean. The woman then pointed at the floor next to the bucket where black pipes wound between the floor and wall, and every few inches along was the open end of a pipe. They were caked in grime and soot.

Shaya nodded enthusiastically and set to work.

As her sister’s servant, cleaning was a normal and natural chore she did everyday, so this wouldn’t be a hardship. Shaya set to work scrubbing the pipes, hoping that this would be all she would be doing. However, the pipes took a lot more effort than she would have thought. By the time she managed to get a small area of a pipe shining, she was almost panting with exertion and sweating from the heat of the deck. As she rinsed out the cloth in the bucket, she glanced around the deck again and noticed that a few feet behind her was the men and boulder area… and also the shinno. He stood with the strangely motionless men who still stared at the boulders. Except the shinno wasn’t looking at the boulders. His fierce gaze was on her.

A jolt shot through her and she quickly looked away, fear and nerves spiking, but out of the corner of her eye, all the men began to move simultaneously, and her curiosity brought her gaze back to them.

In pairs the men moved each boulder, tackling one at a time as they lifted and rotated the rock before placing it down carefully then stepping away, to again remain motionless; however, this time, it only lasted a few moments before they hoisted a different rock and rotated that one. They continued this behavior like some kind of organized dance that they all knew the moves to.

Shaya stared at them, confused. What were they doing? Why would they have boulders on a ship? And what was the point of moving them in that way? But the more she watched, the more she realized that the rocks actually changed color at the point of rotation. Their tints ranged from blue to purple to orange and then red, but it seemed as though the different tints required a different number of rotations, because the orange and red tinted rocks were rotated and held longer than the other colors. Finally, the men all placed their boulders down, and stepped back, sweat streaming from them as they stood still, staring once again at the boulders.

Shaya watched them entranced by the behavior, her eyes drawn to the shinno. He was bigger than the rest of the men and his chest didn’t heave as rapidly as the others. His muscles contracted and bulged through his strangely shaped tunic, and somehow Shaya couldn’t pull her eyes away. But then his eyes lifted and met hers, and another jolt shot to her core, as well as horror that she was caught watching him. She quickly turned her eyes away and back to her bucket and continued her efforts to get the pipes clean.

Within an hour she was exhausted and nauseated. The heat on the deck seemed to pull all energy from her muscles and her stomach rolled constantly, but the stern woman wouldn’t allow her to stop working. Any time she did, she was slapped on the arms and head with a flat wooden paddle until she continued cleaning again. Eventually a girl with brown eyes and curly bronze hair, who looked about Shaya’s age, came to change her bucket water and that was the only time she was permitted to rest. When the girl returned, she lowered and pushed a cup of liquid into Shaya's hands and then mimicked her drinking, smiling and nodding to encourage her. Shaya took a sip and sighed as the cool water slipped down her throat. She gulped some more down, but the girl stopped her from drinking too fast. She mimicked sips, small little sips from the cup, and Shaya nodded that she understood, then sipped down the water while the girl fiddled needless with the bucket, blocking her from view of the woman.

Shaya glanced at the shinno and he was already looking back at them, the frown on his face deep, and she quickly gave the girl back the cup and continued working.

Hours passed before the stern woman indicated she could stop, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she staggered to her feet, rubbing her aching knees, only to find the shinno looming at her side, that gaze piercing her.

“Yamves ash,” he instructed and began walking.Follow me.

Shaya cautiously followed him back up the stairs and along the decks, struggling to keep up with him. Thankfully when they passed through another crowd of his tribe, the shinno grabbed her again and held her against his side, taking most of her weight, and she couldn’t help but lean on his hard, bulky body in relief.

He escorted her to her cabin but when he entered, he didn’t release her. Pulling her around to his front, he held her still and looked down at her, examining her face.

Shaya battled the nervous fear inside her once more, hoping he would leave soon. Her insides jittered wildly and it was beginning to feel pleasurable being against his body, which she didn’t want. There was also a slight peppery but warm scent coming from him, faint but enticing enough for her to breathe in deeply for more of it.

“Dess effet choyett, Shaya,” he murmured, his eye roaming over her face.

A blast of annoyance swept through her and she turned her head sharply to the side.

The shinno grabbed round the back of her neck, and turned her head back to him. He spoke again, different words this time, a warning tone in his voice, but when he repeated “Shaya,” she turned her head again sharply.

Using every ounce of courage, she said firmly. “My name is Katashaya.”

The shinno’s arms tensed and a rumbling growl vibrated between their bodies as he grabbed the material that covered her head and forced her head back to him, gripping her tight as he roughly rumbled his strange words.

Shaya pressed her mouth together firmly, aware she couldn’t move her head, determination blazing through her as she glared at him, but she couldn’t help but notice that close up, the shinno was even more handsome than she thought. No, he was beautiful. His features were strong and tiny curls of blonde hair sprinkled over his square jaw. His unique eye color was so pretty in this light, but his menacing glare seemed to puncture right into the core of her, peeling back her layers to reveal how weak she really was.

When he said her name incorrectly again, she shifted her gaze to the wall behind him, tears filling her eyes as she fixed them on a spot beyond him.

The shinno bellowed, and she flinched at the vibration of it pulsing through her like she was nothing but air. He released her, and she stumbled backward on her weak knees, but not far enough. He grabbed her by the shoulder and ripped away the entire front of her tunic with his other hand.

Shaya gasped, trying to cover herself up. No. This couldn’t happen again—not while he was angry. He would tear her apart. But even as the panicked thought registered, her sister floated to the top of her mind and she took a breath. There were some things she had to be strong about, some things that were worth defending. That’s what Kyus always believed—that’s why she did the work she did as a spy. It didn’t matter what this Alpha did to her, he would never truly break her or her love for her sister.

So Shaya dropped her hands and straightened.

The shinno had stopped speaking at the sight of her body, though he still breathed hard and his fists were clenched, one of them still holding the strip of fabric from her torn tunic.

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