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Sekai had been surprised to learn that she didn't hate the rogue lands, and that she actually felt far more comfortable there than she ever had living with the pride. Even thinking that made her feel guilty, like she was betraying her mother, but she had grown up feeling as if she was betraying her mother merely by existing, so that wasn't exactly a new feeling.

But what she liked about the rogue lands was how empty they tended to be. She was a competent huntress, for the most part, as long as she didn't get too ambitious, which she never did. Her competence meant that being on her own was not a death sentence. It was just peaceful. She didn't have to worry about interacting awkwardly with other lions, or embarrassing her mother by having been born, or any of the things that had made her so wretched at home.

Sometimes she got careless, though, and forgot that she was not truly alone in the rogue lands.

Tall's stomach was growling because of his refusal to do a thrall's job and hunt for himself. He knew he should have brought another lion with him on this expedition. If for no other reason than that another lion could maybe be bullied into hunting to spare Tall that particular chore, which he found incredibly dull. The similarities between hunting for sustenance and hunting for plunder were lost on him. One produced food and the other glory, and there could be no comparison made.

So his stomach was growling, but over the sound of rain hitting the ground it was unlikely the lioness he had been stalking for the past day and a half would notice. He hadn't needed to stalk her for that long. It would have been simple enough to take her down and bring her in at any time, but she had been making her way closer to the pride and he was content to follow her as long as she did so. She would probably move faster that way than if he tried to make her go that way as a captive.

Sekai was completely oblivious to the fact that someone had been following her for nearly two days. It had not been part of her training to detect when she was being hunted. She was a lioness, after all, at the top of the food chain. Why should she worry about things like that?

She was considerably more concerned about the rain that was beginning to fall. She had lived through rainy seasons in the past and she had found them miserable, even though had been a mudslide which had done her the dubious favor of permanently parting her from her pride. The mudslide had still injured her and for a time it had been frighteningly likely that she would die. This kind of weather made her leery.

Had it not been for the rain making her nerves raw, it was entirely possible that Sekai would have gone on failing to notice that she was being observed, but the rain had made her look around for shelter, and that was how she saw a silhouette that might be a lion hunched under the only apparent shelter in sight.

Tall could tell the moment his quarry spotted him. He wasn't close enough to see her expression, but he could read her body language fairly well. She was unhappy to be rained on and debating whether she dared risk a stranger's company for the opportunity to share the partial shelter he had found. He wished he could say that he had planned it this way, but really he had just been lucky.

To make her decision easier and to give himself a closer starting point in the event she decided to run, Tall stood up and left his shelter. It hadn't been all that effective at keeping the rain off, anyway. He was still damp down his spine and sides, though his thick mane had kept his neck and head dry so far. He knew it wouldn't stay that way. Eventually the rain would work its way through. It didn't concern him.

"Aren't you soaking?" he called to the thrall-to-be.

No expert at reading people, Sekai assumed that the lion was moving toward her to invite her to share his shelter. She still wasn't entirely convinced she wanted to do that, him being a stranger and all, but there was only one of him and he sounded friendly enough, despite the fact that he also seemed to be enormous.

"Yes," she admitted, jogging closer. At this distance she could see that he was wet, too, but she believed that was because he had left his shelter. "Do you think we'll both fit?"

There was something in his posture that made her uncomfortable, but she was so accustomed to feeling uncomfortable around everyone she ignored it. He could hardly help being intimidatingly large, and there was no law that said being large automatically made him a threat. If only she was more experienced at interacting with other lions. Particularly males. Sometimes she was certain they were another species altogether.

"I expect we can," he said truthfully enough. The shelter wasn't large, but it could fit two adult lions. "If you don't mind close quarters."

He watched her body language, observing that his remark made her uncomfortable, and that she was uncomfortable in general. He couldn't tell if that was instinctive wariness, or some personal thing where she didn't like to get close to strangers, or perhaps she simply didn't like to be rained on. Whatever it was, it would make her more likely to bolt, and so he wanted to be sure he got her into a position where that wasn't an option.

The lioness was pretty, in a way that reminded him a bit of his relative Brynja's adopted daughter. The one who was engaged to one of the warlord's sons, just as Tall was engaged to one of the warlord's daughters. In theory, anyway. Part of the reason Tall was out here in the rain was to bring a thrall back to the pride and his bride-to-be as a sort of apology for how badly their initial meeting had gone.

Sekai stepped gingerly around the large lion and moved cautiously into the sheltered area behind him. Once she had done so she drew up short, realizing that it was not quite the shelter she had expected. She wondered if she had been had, or if the lion truly didn't see anything wrong with the shelter he had offered to share with her.

"It's pretty small, and a bit leaky," she observed, somehow feeling more nervous because of these facts. Then she realized how she must sound and ducked her head apologetically. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful. It's certainly better than being out there."

As he turned to follow her Sekai did her best to make herself very small to accommodate his larger proportions in this space. She didn't think it would be as effective as she would like, but she wasn't actually very comfortable with close quarters, especially not when there were strange lions involved.

Tall let the lioness move past him and watched as she automatically tried to become smaller. When he moved in, deliberately crowding her, she shrank in on herself even further, confirming a suspicion he'd had that she was not a lioness who would fight him. She might attempt to flee, but in a few moments that would no longer be an option for her.

"Let's see what we can do about that," he said, moving even closer to the lioness until his forepaws touched the curve of her side.

His stomach gave an untimely rumble that sounded almost like a growl and he could feel her flinch. Before she had the chance to make up her mind to flee or permit this violation of her personal space Tall covered her just as he would a lioness he was mounting, capturing the back of her neck with his teeth and pinning her to the ground with his superior weight.

Sekai screamed and felt the teeth break skin. Punishment or accident? Either way, she was certain that she knew what came next. She could feel it in his unwelcome closeness and the unfamiliar touch against the flesh below her tail.

Terror paralyzed her for a moment, actually probably saving her from the fate she feared for the moment. Then she began to weep, fortunately without moving very much, or making enough noise to be heard over the increasingly heavy rain outside the shelter. The lion trapping her was warm and covered her sufficiently that she couldn't feel the leak, but Sekai did not feel that was sufficient recompense for what he would take from her.

"Please," she whimpered, when he released her neck and brought his mouth to her ear. She could smell her own blood on his breath. "Please don't do this."

It was the please that did it, even more than the quivering and weeping. Tall could no longer resist his ardor, and in a moment he was doing precisely what she had begged him not to do, taking his pleasure loudly and at length. There was no one to hear when she screamed or he roared.

When he finished he did not get up. He actually let her take more of his weight, delighting in the soft gasp from beneath him when she realized how easily he had overpowered her and would always be able to overpower her. He shifted to lick the blood he had drawn from the back and sides of her neck, and finally he began to explain what her life would be like from now on.

"You are mine now, thrall. You will return with me to my pride, where you will be available to me at any time to be used as I see fit. When I give you to my betrothed as a gift, you will never tell her anything that has passed between us. Say you understand."

Sekai was hoarse from her protestations and all her muscles ached from her futile attempts to escape and from the violence that had been visited upon her. When the lion crushing her to the ground licked her wounds she shuddered, certain it was not a tender gesture. When he began to speak her head dropped to her paws, defeated. This was a horror that would never end, then.

She took to long considering her future, apparently. The claws of his left forepaw raked jagged slashes from her collar to her shoulder and he repeated his question. Sekai began to weep once more as she gave him the words he wanted to hear, hoping that would mean a cease in her torment, but it didn't. As he explained, licking blood from the wound he'd just made, they would remain here until the rain stopped or he had his fill of her, whichever came first.

When he took her again he warned her that he would cripple her if she even thought about trying to escape, and gave her a vicious bite to illustrate his point. She believed him. She wanted to die.