Claimed by Callista

Chapter ✺ 1

I listen as the girls in front of me stop chanting under their breath as they stop breathing, to stare at the dark giant.

My eyes lift from the shoulders of the many girls in front of me, to see Callista in the flesh, walking slowly over the coals. Torches burn the light into his presence, and he's covered in Inck. Permanent markings injected with poison, cover every inch of him in tribal marks and whorls.

He's also beyond imagination, built by sinew and muscle. There is no hint of a gentle soul in his hard stone mouth which is unmoving, as he stands barefoot on the Firewalk, halting to look over the girls waiting.

All have stopped looking directly at him, all look downward. I follow their gazes, and try not to snort at how scared they all are. Now they don't want to be chosen.

Who would be?

Only an experienced female should take him on, not girls becoming women. He was on another plane. The Shamanic Plane to be exact. He could summon and talk to spirits. Of bears. And any beast of the land, from what I heard.

Someone cries from the shadows in celebration as Callista finally makes a move.

I glance up as we all do, to see him standing off the coals, in front of the girls just in front of me.

But due to his height, he looks over all.

And his eyes happen to land right on me.

The Magus Sovrex Callista.

I stare right back, my smirk barely contained.

I had a very ingrained habit of being challenging to the males. I had learned young to teach them their place, before they taught me mine. That could sometimes involve unnecessary violence. You had to be fierce immediately, or risk rape and death from lonely fevered warriors caught by the moon's frenzy.

Without a word, the girls in front of me start to shuffle aside, as Callista's obsidian whorls for eyes don't stray from mine.

When the line of defence in front of me has shuffled enough to make way...

...I lose my cocky smirk.

Oh, Sun, I was dead.

That is what it feels like in the pit of my stomach – a heavy slow moving death – as the Magus Callista walks toward me and dwarfs my size by almost double. Now in my space, he takes the wolf coat by the edges and rips it apart, to see what's underneath.

I had no paint.

No beads.

Nothing.

Just me.

I had never wanted to follow the tribal fashion. I just wanted to run free without getting caught on things. I hear my mother crying in the trees, as Callista's eyes wrack over my insultingly naked body.

Did I mention he sometimes ate the Sleetrs he punished?

"Your name?" Callista's voice is loud, and unafraid as he slowly leans down to my level, looking to catch my eyes, straying anywhere but his. I glance at him briefly, my name stuck in my throat from pure abandon of senses. I would not submit but I could not talk either, even if I wanted too.

"Yehseeka," my mother gasps and comes forward, answering for me.

Callista nods at me, and stands, lifting an arm to point at my mother.

"Take her to Dampwater to drown for the insolence of interrupting me," Callista speaks of my mother. My mother!

As our tribes are silenced into obedience, my mother makes incoherent noises of terror.

I wait for him to correct himself, but this punishment is real. As his mocking eyes rest back on mine, I scream like a banshee, lifting my hands to fight him, "You can't take my mother!"

Callista snaps up both my wrists.

"It's time, Yehseeka. You are the Morgan. I choose you."

"WHY?"

Callista has never been asked this question, because I have silenced him in turn, with his raised pierced brow and his ill-expression for my soon-to-be fate are all that greet me in turn.

"Sovrex," he drawls to his Tribe, who come forward to take me.

They come to seize me, and my fighting has nill effect as they apprehend every limb.

Taking me and my mother to Dampwater.

To die.

Callista wanted a challenge.

But he would kill me if he could not break me.

And I was unbreakable.