The man was dead.
He was on the menu.
Nothing I could do would change that.
So I took the damn ceramic bowl and chugged, mentally fighting the urge to return the meal all over Hasel’s face. I slammed the bowl down and licked my lips. Then I put my knife on the table. “I am his mate. He lives for me, so I’m feeling pretty important here. Next time you serve me a person, I will carve a piece of meat from your left thigh and make you eat it.”
Silence resumed.
“All hear Reagan of Mayhem,” Hasel said.
“Hear,” I told her and left them to it.
Sienna jumped me in the hallway. I reared back, poised to stab someone, then rolled my eyes at her. “Please don’t do that again. I’m gonna lose my nerves.”
“Sorry. Did you eat it?”
I followed her down to the end of the hall, where a brooding beast male guarded a door. I greeted him. He didn’t respond. I shrugged and opened the door, anxious to speak with Sienna, but she didn’t follow me inside. Probably because beasts had superior hearing, and the guard would’ve heard us. “Yeah, I ate it,” I replied and closed the door.
The room Sienna had prepared came with a clean bathroom. A pair of homemade wax candles cast a light on a pile of thick brown furs on the floor. That was my bed. In the bathroom, I stuck a toothbrush down my throat and did what any sane human would do. Then I brushed my teeth and washed up with a cloth. I curled up under the furs and sobbed.
After a few hours, when I’d calmed down enough to fall asleep, Mayhem curled up behind me and told me he was proud of me. Perhaps, I really did belong with these savages, and for the next couple of days, I lived with them, mostly alone since Mayhem hunted for Hanna. Men of Earth tried to escape the incoming hunt. Hanna and another girl survived. The other girls? Suffocated in the back of the transport truck.
After he rescued her, Mayhem hunted for Maurice. He went out without me, even though I pleaded for him not to leave me behind.
During the day, Sienna avoided me as if I had cooties, and when Dewlyn—whose name I finally associated with Hanna—came to collect her rescued baby sister, Hanna, Sienna was nowhere to be found again. I hadn’t even had a chance to tell her about the day I spoke with her dad.
I wished I’d made time for her. I wished I wasn’t so wrapped up in my own head. Most of all, I wished I didn’t feel this awful jealousy toward Sienna and Hanna for having people who looked out for them. Jealousy burdened me, and no matter how pretty Mayhem thought me or made me feel about myself, I wasn’t the good girl Mike had wanted me to become. When push came to shove, I did bad things. Maurice told me so. “You are a killer.”
Mayhem would come home in the morning, but every time he left at night, I feared he wouldn’t return. I feared I’d be left to fend for myself again, and every time I thought about that day my parents had left me, I thought about Mike too and asked Mayhem if he’d found the body after the circus area search. Mayhem brought me Mike’s body. Despite my asking for his burial, the hunters gathered around a fire, burned Mike’s remains, and let the ashes spread on the winds. Mayhem had said to let go of human ways. He’d said Mike and I were wanderers. Those who wandered and didn’t settle were souls whose ashes should fly on the winds, not get trapped in a box. Such were his people’s customs.
Tonight, footsteps awoke me from dead sleep, and I turned my head to look at the light coming from underneath the door. Mike’s watch on my wrist read three in the morning, the hands stuck at that time ever since I’d left the circus.
“Baby, you awake?” Mayhem asked as he walked into our bedroom.
“Mm-hm,” I said.
He closed the door. “Come undress me.”
I crawled to Mayhem’s feet and felt for his kilt but caught sight of his pale eyes. I rose and threaded my fingers through his hair. Under my fingertips, it was coarse and rough. Mayhem had come back in middle of the night. Maybe he’d finished up a hunt early, had washed up and then, come to sleep. He was still excited, and I felt his excitement pressing on my belly.
I knew we weren’t gonna talk about anything because my body responded to his feral beast. I stripped in record time while Mayhem watched me. I knelt and fumbled with the kilt. God help me, I loved this kilted beast. I untied the string and unsnapped a few buttons. His cock sprang out, ready for my mouth. I licked him from the balls up to the top, understanding I loved him most when he came to me all raw and feral after a hunt. It drove my arousal.
I needed him to fill me. I snuck a hand between my legs and found myself sopping wet. I pushed two fingers inside me and sucked his cock at the same time, bobbing my head up and down on it while Mayhem fondled my breasts, played with my nipples, stroked my back.