Free Axel's Pup by Kim Dare

much of a chance to look at the first room they passed through. Axel brought them to a stop in another kitchen.
    Axel pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and turned it around. “Sit down. Face the back of the chair. I’ll get something to put on your back.”
    “I’m fine.” Bayden shuffled his feet and ignored the pain in his back as best he could.
    Axel folded his arms. “You mean you’re scared that it will sting the same way the cream I put on your lip did?” It was halfway between teasing and a challenge.
    Bayden hesitated, but there didn’t seem to be any way to protest without contesting Axel’s dominance all over again.
    He straddled the chair. Resting his forearms on the back of it allowed him to take some of the strain off his back and breathe a little easier.
    As Axel moved around the room getting whatever it was he wanted to put on his back, thoughts ran more clearly through Bayden’s head.
    “Thank you,” he blurted out.
    “For what—standing around watching you get whipped by that arsehole?”
    “No, for counting.” He looked down. “I lost count.”
    Axel let out a bitter laugh. “You’d have been better off if you’d stopped when I reached four rather than forty.”
    There was nothing Bayden could say to that.
    “Was it worth it?” Axel asked after a few moments.
    “Yes,” Bayden whispered. To prove to humans that wolves couldn’t be broken so easily—yes. Even if it had only been for the three hundred pounds—yes, that would have been worth it on its own.
    Three hundred pounds. That was three fights if he could find men who wanted to bet against him, and they were harder to come by the more often he won. Fifteen back alley blowjobs if no one wanted him to prove a point. A whipping was easy money by comparison—even if it didn’t feel like it at that particular moment.
    “Really?” Axel asked. He moved another chair and sat down behind Bayden.
    “There are worse things to have to do,” Bayden whispered, more to himself than anyone else.
    Axel’s scent changed.
    It took Bayden a second to realise why. If it was a choice between anger and pity, he’d rather have anger. “I’ve taken bets which are much crazier than this,” he rushed out. “Lots of them.”
    Axel’s scent didn’t change. “Are you in debt, is that why you’re scrabbling for money?”
    Bayden straightened up. He winced as his back protested and stilled. If he tried to move again, he was pretty sure he was going to throw up. “The money’s not the point.”
    “Are you using?”
    Anger flared up inside Bayden. Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself up onto his feet, willing his body not to betray him.
    Axel’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Sit down,” he ordered. “If you don’t want to answer a question, you can just tell me to sod off. You don’t need to make a dramatic exit.”
    Bayden subsided onto the chair. He stared down at his forearms as thoughts raced around in his head. He still couldn’t think entirely clearly, couldn’t pin down any one idea. Did Axel think about wolves the same way as all the other humans did? Probably. He probably wasn’t any different to any other human.
    It was probably a lost cause, but as he felt Axel’s fingers moving gently against his back, cleaning his wounds for no other reason than he’d decided that it was right that someone should do that, Bayden couldn’t help but hope. “They’re wrong,” he whispered.
    “Who are?”
    “The humans who say wolves are all drunks and junkies,” Bayden told the back of the chair. “They’re wrong. We don’t do that.”
    Axel moved some sort of damp cloth across his back. “And it really narks you when someone jumps to that conclusion,” he finished for him.
    “We don’t do that,” Bayden repeated.
    “Like a religious thing?”
    Bayden hesitated, tempted to say yes, but no. There were enough lies between them already, and it wasn’t as if he was giving up information that could be easily used