In the aftermath of his orgasm it was all I could do not to cry; relief, shame, fear, arousal, too many emotions to process flooded my mind. I could barely even think... though I did manage somewhere in the chaos to hear the tiny voice saying, "That felt good, didn't it? Better than toys, better than Sarah, that felt good." I lay motionless under him, my still-hard cock pinned beneath us both. I wanted to move, to grind my hips against the sheets, against him, I wanted to feel a hand around me, I... I wanted to cum. I wanted it more than I realized I could want it.

Then I realized something else, something that had been nagging at me for several minutes. He'd screamed something, a name, not the one I currently bore and not the name of what I'd come to regard as my arch-enemy. He'd called me by the name I still wore when we first met. More than ever now I wanted to crawl away and hide. I couldn't, not with him trapping me on the bed and not with an order left un-followed. Sarah had been very specific about this one, and I knew she'd ask when she returned, she always did. Timidly I turned my head, looking back toward Kieran.

Drowsy, gleaming eyes met mine and I gulped, feeling as if I was choking on the words I needed to say. It took me a couple of tries to get anything at all past my lips.

"I... Kieran... um... thatisn'tmynameanymore," I stammered, then buried my face in the sheets again, somehow more embarrassed by what I just said than by the fact that he was sti... oh gods, he was still in me, he was inside me, he... I... but...

When my brain finally managed to function again it was just in time to hear him speak. His tone was gentle, apologetic.

"I know, and I'm sorry I slipped up. I guess I wasn't thinking too clearly. I-I'm sorry about..." he gestured, taking in us, the bed, the entire morning, "...I don't know what to say. I didn't intend..." His voice trailed off and he shifted, pulling carefully out of me before practically leaping off the bed. As he entered the bathroom I slid out of bed, nearly running out the door, heading back to what my mind registered as safety.

I spent the next hour alternately crying and cursing, curled up inside my cage, wrapped in a soft, almost furry blanket with my entire body covered. No light, nothing outside the dark little cave of cloth, only myself and my thoughts. After an hour, I heard footsteps enter the room. I could tell they weren't Sarah's, I would recognize hers anywhere, which meant they had to be Kiharn's.

The footsteps came over to the cage, paused a moment, then retreated slightly. There was a creak of springs as he sat on the bed. I shifted slightly, not quite willing to leave the security of my lightless shelter, fighting my instinctive urge to look at the bed, checking to see if Sarah wanted anything.

"Why didn't you refuse, boy?" His voice was quiet, again touched with that odd sadness.

"...Sarah wouldn't have wanted me to refuse you anything," I replied, my voice somewhat muffled by the blanket.

"She hasn't broken you that completely. You've still got a soul behind those eyes of yours. So, why didn't you refuse?"

It was harder to answer this time, knowing that he would keep pressing until he heard the truth.

"I was... you mentioned Rayne... you called me Rayne while you were still asleep I guess, while you were... touching me." I could almost feel his gaze burning through the blanket.

"That's not all, is it?"

"...no. It was at first, wanting to be better than him, and not wanting to disappoint you when you'd been so nice to me, and... and knowing that Sarah will only be upset because she didn't get to see it-" He started chuckling at that last bit, but quickly managed to silence himself, clearly waiting for me to continue.

"Then... then it just felt... good. Right. I didn't want it to end, I..."

After a minute or two of silence, he again verbally prodded me.

"You...?"

"I've never been fucked like that by anyone except Sarah. It was different than what I'd expected, better, easier. It felt like I was... whole." I dug further under my blankets, unwilling to let him see how much I was blushing. "Please don't tell her I said that. It'll just piss her off."

"Don't worry," and now his voice held more than a hint of warmth and pleasure, "I won't do anything that's likely to convince her to keep you where I can't see you occasionally. I know what it's like, and I won't leave you to face the wolves alone."

Baffled, my head popped out from under the pile of blankets to stare at him. He seemed completely serious.

"Wolves? What? You know what what's like?"

"I know what it's like to be Owned. For that matter, I know what it's like to be Owned by her. Look," he gestured toward his left thigh. I pressed against the cage bars to get a better look... then nearly fell backward as I realized just what I was looking at. Her Mark, set into his flesh. Not a tattoo like the one she'd taken me to get, but a deep, pale scar that screamed branding iron. She'd threatened a few times that if I didn't behave, she'd have me branded... I hadn't thought she meant it, at the time. Now... now if she threatened that, I'd be begging in terror for mercy.

"She... you never told me she Owned you."

"How could I? Until recently you were young enough and seemingly safe from her, and I wanted to keep it that way. Once she met you and started Hunting you, I didn't dare bring it up... she made it VERY clear that if I interfered, I'd end up taking your place. And now that she Owns you... there just hasn't been a good time to talk about it. You're almost always with her."

"How long?" I asked, barely able to form the question, afraid of the answer.

"Seven years wearing her collar. Two years about as free as it's possible to be after she's left her mark on you."

"Then you knew Rayne."

He just nodded, staring down at the floor, clearly lost in thought. I stretched, curled back up, and prepared to wait. It didn't take more than ten minutes before he looked back up at me.

"Yeah, you could say I knew Rayne. He was Sarah's favorite for... what, five years? Something like that. I think she actually loved him. He couldn't bear to belong to her after a while, though... she didn't just break him, she used him to break other slaves, forced him to hurt them while she watched.

"She was nothing if not thorough; everything was drilled into him, everything. You think you're suffering sometimes? You feel like you can't take it, like you want to go back to being who you were before she found you? Rayne couldn't. By the time she was done, all he could remember were faint glimmerings of his life before her. He had no other name, no other place, he was NOTHING but her property."

Puzzled, I asked, "So if he was that broken, how did he manage to leave?"

"It was when he realized that he couldn't remember the name he had worn before meeting her. He went to her, begging to be told what it was. She..." he shook his head slightly, as if trying to shake free of some unpleasant thought. "She beat him until he couldn't even walk, then told him that if he was so interested in a name other than the one she chose for him, so be it. She spit a name at him and told him he should leave.

"He did leave, as you know, and when he left he intended to make his way to the other side of the world if he had to, anything to get away from her. He got as far as the train station before he snapped. He ran back to her, begging for forgiveness, asking her to take him back. She refused."

"What happened then?" I was entranced, having heard bits of this before but never anything close to the whole story; Sarah didn't like to talk about it. "Did he leave again? Did he kill himself? She's never told me what happened to him."

"No, he's still alive. After a few months he approached her again, asking for friendship instead of ownership, and she agreed. He still wishes sometimes that he could turn back time and never ask that stupid question... hell, he didn't even get a real answer, he's never been sure if the name she called him when he left was his real name, or just a joke on her part."

The suspicion that had been forming while he spoke was cemented with those last few lines. He was watching me now, waiting... something in my expression must have given it away.

"Yeah."

"But... then why did you say his...your... that name?" I asked, still confused somewhat.

"Old habit. It's how she took away the name I used to have, part of it, anyway."

This time when he fell silent I didn't ask anything else, unwilling to interrupt the quiet, needing the chance to piece together what I knew of my friend Keiran and what I'd heard about Rayne. My mind was racing; why hadn't she told me? She'd talked about him like he was dead. Finally I shook my head once, emphatically, and burrowed back under the blankets, my words again muffled.

"I need time to think about this. I just... please, let me be alone for a while."

He didn't respond, just stood up and walked slowly out of the room, closing the door behind him.