Drugged, bound, and left as bait on the cusp of the lunar cycle, Wyatt Redding is faced with a terrifying set of no-win scenarios. Best case: he survives the coming days as a werewolf pack’s plaything and returns to the city as a second-class citizen with the mark—and protection—of the pack. Worst case: the wolves sate their lusts with Wyatt’s body, then send him home without their protection, condemning him to live out the rest of his short life as a slave to the worst of humanity’s scorn and abuse.
Wyatt’s only chance is to swallow every ounce of pride, bury his fear, and meekly comply with every wicked desire and carnal demand the wolf pack makes of him. He expects three days of sex and humiliation. What he doesn’t expect is to start enjoying it. Or to grow attached to his captor and pack Alpha, Cole.
As the lunar cycle ends, Wyatt begins to realize that the only thing to fear more than being sent home without the pack’s protection is being sent home at all.
Reader discretion advised. This title contains the following sensitive themes: dubious consent, explicit violence, heavy kink, non-consent, non-consensual drug use.
Kimi’s thoughts:
This was 80 pages of missed opportunity. Wyatt lives in some dystopian version of our world where humans are seen as sexual prey by wolves. Jut who the weres are is secret and there is a stigma attached to becoming their property. In fact, once taken by the wolves, the best scenario you can possibly hope for is to earn a token so that you have SOME standing in the human world afterwards, albeit seemingly at the very bottom. You lose everything else except your job, but you no longer get to keep your salary or any of your possessions. That token though does keep you from being raped at will by non wolf raped human males though. You read that right. If Wyatt doesn’t get killed and doesn’t earn a token, he’ll go back home only be raped by any man who wants to have a quick fuck. We know Wyatt’s father suffered this way for years until one day he simply disappeared. We know Wyatt is dumped trussed up and naked because his own greedy brother wanted Wyatt’s earnings and possessions in order to pay off gambling debts.
These things could have made the framework for some fascinating worldbuilding, particularly if expanded into a novel. Instead, what we get is a straight man who becomes gay for the alpha werewolf after being gangraped repeatedly and then fed some of the alpha’s blood to make him a lust driven plaything for said alpha. That’s it. Lots of hard core rape with Wyatt suffering and not enjoying it, talking himself into taking it as submissively as possible so that he can make it out alive. Praying he pleases them enough that he’ll at least be left a token so he can have some semblance of his old life once it’s all over. Only it doesn’t end. The alpha is very pleased and decides to knot him with consequences Wyatt has neither forseen or while his mind was chemically unaltered, would he have consented to.
We do get some chatter by the wolves that gives glimpses into what is really going on with the weres and humans, and it’s not quite when the humans seem to think. It’s brutal stuff though, as we witness what happens when a claimed human doesn’t please them, and it’s definitely not for the faint hearted. Poor Wyatt was forced to watch in excruciating detail, so we get to see it too. I don’t mind reading push the envelope stuff, but this just didn’t sit well. There was no romance, nothing to really redeem what is happening to Wyatt and the other humans at all. It’s simply lust driven brutality. It left me feeling disappointed, having read Gregg before and really enjoyed the depth of her previous works.
Rating:
