Uncaged (16 page)

             
Bruce opened his eyes and found himself lying naked in the woods and alone, out of breath, his cock lying spent across his wet thigh.

~*~

             
Wren awoke the next morning with her head throbbing. She couldn’t remember finishing her bath or going to sleep for that matter, but she felt a new knot near her temple and guessed that her captor had hit her again. The other women were gone. She was wondering where they had been taken when her captor unlocked her cell and barged inside. He unlocked her shackles and pulled her to her feet.

             
“Time to burn, witch!”

             
“No!”

             
“Don’t fight me, hag! Quite a racket you were causing last night. Trying to conjure up a spell while you were in the tub, aye? And to think I felt sorry for you! All that spooky moaning!”

             
Wren stumbled forward when he pushed her out of her cell an
d up a flight of stone steps.

             
“The sooner you’re burned, the better. For all the town!”

             
Wren cried out when she missed the top step and fell onto one knee.

             
“Onward, witch! There’s a pile of kindling waiting for you!”

             
Wren shuddered as he pushed her into daylight. The sun hung low in the western sky. Glorious orange, magenta and lavender layers striped the horizon. She sniffed. Her last sunset. Today she would die. She was sure of it. She was convinced now that she had dreamed of Bruce and their lovemaking. She must have fallen asleep in the warm bath and cried out while dreaming of her lover. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she thought of his face. She knew she would never see him again, never feel his arms around her, never experience his love.

             
Her captor led her to the center of town where a large crowd waited. Wren scanned their faces, all of them blurred from tears swimming before her eyes. Her captor tossed her over his shoulder. Wren kicked and screamed to no ava
il. The man spanked her ass.
The crowd howled with laughter.

             
“Die, witch die! Burn the witch!”

             
“Burn in hell, you hag!” Wren heard from a woman.

             
Then the crowd began to chant. “Burn, witch! Burn! Burn witch! Burn!”

             
Wren screamed and covered her ears while the man tied her to a wooden stake, bounding her at the waist and then her feet. Then he pulled her hands off of her ears and tied them behind her. She kept her eyes shut tight, screaming in vain.

             
The crowd grew louder as they moved closer, all of them anxious to see a witch burned at the stake. “Burn, witch! Burn! Burn witch! Burn!”

             
The man lit a massive torch and showed it to the crowd. A wild cheer ripped through the autumn air as he touched the torch to the first log, setting it ablaze. Wren screamed, flailing hopelessly as flames leapt up the tower of
sticks, licking at her feet.
Black smoke filled her lungs as it billowed in thick clouds, seeping through the cracks and piles of wood. She coughed and opened her eyes for half a second as smoke stung them. She resigned herself to her fate and began to pray fervently for a swift death.

             
God in heaven, hear my cry. Take me now, Lord! Carry me on swift wings of death!

             
Wren!

             
Flames licked at her calves. Wren screamed as pain shot through her.

             
Wren! Shift now!

             
Bruce! The pain! It’s unbearable!

             
Bruce could smell her flesh burning, reminding him of a love he once had in the heart of the jungle. They had killed her, cooked her and taken her from him. He wouldn’t allow it this time.

             
Shift, Wren! Now!

             
Wren focused, unsure if she was near death and hearing God or Bruce or both. She imagined herself as a lioness, remembering the last time she shifted and how it had felt. Flames licked at her knees. She shut off the pain and melted into herself, reaching for the past, reaching for her other half.
Her muscles began to quiver.
Silver sparks began to travel from her head and flit over her singed skin, mingling with the fire below, turning it electric blue. A surge of heat leapt forward, engulfing her trunk.

             
Wren screamed inside herself and forced herself to fight, to shift into a creature she despised. The crowd watched as strange sparkles of circular light swirled around the dying witch. Her head hung low. She appeared dead to her captor and the crowd when the ropes burst from her as she expanded in size. Her long hair quickly shortened and disappeared, looking as if it melted. The crowd gasped as her face grew. Her nose lengthened into a sandy colored muzzle. She had
cast a spell for all to see.
Before the frenzied sea of onlookers, a lioness roared to life, springing from the pile of sticks and flames like a nightmare intent on revenge. Her fangs and claws shone like sharp white daggers of death as animals leapt from the crowd. A lion, leopards, panthers and wolves sprung from out of nowhere. The crowd screamed and ran as the captor and his men aimed their pistols, all of them too stunned to shoot and too afraid they would injure onlookers.

             
An owl swooped down, clawing out the eyes of the captor, seconds before a male lion pounced on him, spilling the man’s blood onto his yellow fur with one mighty crushing blow to his neck. Wolves took down the other two armed men as the crowd separated and fled to their homes. The lion searched through the chaos looking for her, sniffing the air. He found her almost instantly, licking her wounds near the edge of the woods. He sprinted to her, nuzzling her, licking her face, wrapping his giant paws around her lovely neck.

             
From behind a tree, a girl watched. The same girl that had spoken to Bruce on the road, the only person brave enough to
speak. She watched the two cats
walk into the woods. She saw them change into a man and a woman and watched their naked bodies cling to one another as they kissed with a love she could only hope to one day know.

The End

About the
A
uthor

Alisha Paige lives in the deep South with her husband and three children. She writes under the pen names Alisha Paige (paranormal, fantasy and vintage romance), Ruby Vines (
contemporary romance
) and Wolfgang Pie (children’s fiction and young adult novels).

Canyon Wolf Bride was her debut novel in 2007. The book was nominated for best paranormal romance of 2007 by Long and Short Reviews and received rave reviews by Night Owl Romance, My Book Cravings, Two Lips Reviews, Coffee Time Romance and Fallen Angel Reviews. Her paranormal romance Circle City: Lord of the Wolfen sat on the best seller’s list at Amazon for ten weeks, causing a stir among the romance reading community, labeled by some readers as too dark, argued by others as seductively rich, dark paranormal romance at its finest.

She loves to mingle real life history with fiction while blending genres. Her characters have lived in Colorado, The Grand Canyon, Alaska, traveled to the Salem Witch Trials, visited the Italian Renaissance, traveled to Hades and back, romanced in Palm Beach, Florida, London, Africa, and Montego Bay, Jamaica. They have suffered through the Texas Dust Bowl, The Great Depression, The Holocaust and lived through the last great Ice Age when sabre tooth tigers and woolly mammoths walked the earth.

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