The Alpha took a breath, but was cut off by the approach of his second.
“Quit fussing,” Balkazar snapped, mane flaring briefly in warning before he settled on the Alpha’s good side. “Doesn’t need your motherin’, boy. He’ll live.”
Startled, Sickle stepped back as if struck. Arms crossed around his ribs, massive velvety ears pressed flat against fluffy blond hair. “Scars can cause horrible pain if they’re left untreated—especially on the face.”
“Scars’ve been there for what, six months now?” the war chief chuckled, claws extended as he scratched at his jaw. Eyes locked on the slender male’s decorated face—the gaze of a predator looking for a fight. “Leave it alone,” Balkazar rasped. “They’re healed.”
Soft Hathorian features grew hard, and Sickle took a breath. Determination settling into his every muscle, he flashed sharp teeth at the war chief, then dipped his fingers in a warming pot beside the fire. Brandishing a fresh cloth soaked in the stinging scent of medicinal herbs. “All I’m doing is—”
“Fretting,” Balkazar drawled, goading the slender male. Legs crossed at the ankles, lips twisted in a derisive sneer. “You’re motherin’. And unless you’re aiming to lift the tail for him and sate his rut, piss off.”
“Fine.” Color touched the Hathorian’s decorated cheeks, a band of heat glowing pink across the bridge of his nose. “If you have need of me, I’ll be motherin’ the new recruits. And that’s a willow bark and peppermint compress,” he added, meeting the Alpha’s one-eyed gaze. “It’ll help with the swelling and itching. Leave it on until the cloth goes cold, unless you’d prefer to suffer.”
The Anhur males were silent as they watched him go, but it was the war chief whose lips parted over a grin. “Good for him. Nice to see the boy finding his balls, eh? Didn’t even call you Alpha once.”
“He’s older than you are,” the Alpha said, his claws extending once more. Straining not to scratch.
Balkazar shrugged. “Then it’s about time he grew a spine.” Jerking his chin in the direction Sickle had gone, toward the trio of hybrids working to take down their tent, the war chief said, “Just need a few more recruits like those three, and we’ll be on our way.”
The Alpha snorted, not bothering himself to engage with this argument again. To do as Balkazar demanded and build an army of rejects in the beyond. Storm the Silver City. Take vengeance for being exiled and stripped of his inheritance. His army of hybrids had been slaughtered, his harem seized, pillaged of hard-won noble Hathorian bloodlines that had produced fine, powerful hybrids.
All of his females had no doubt been distributed amongst the Sultan’s favored sons. Any hybrids still on the breast dead or made into eunuchs.
He had nothing.
No longer was he a favored son of the Karahmet bloodline, but an exile. No better than any other he might rule.
To fight back now was hopeful nonsense—he’d been dealt a mortal blow. Knew when to yield, where the war chief did not.
As execution of a Firstborn son was forbidden, he’d been sentenced to a lifetime of wandering in the wilds. Cast out as custom demanded, he’d been given nothing but the life of his war chief and was made to watch the others fall beneath the blade.
His father had laughed as their sentence was dealt. Cooing in mock remorse as his favored son was banished, docked, hybrid sons slaughtered, his harem ravished. No longer a threat to his father’s vast holdings. His title. And then his father had taken his mother’s favorite pet behind his golden, Hathorian ears, and shoved him into unwilling arms. “A parting gift to see you through the withdrawal.”
As if a prince would sully himself with a queen’s plaything!
No, he’d gone through the withdrawal alone. Without his Omegas, without a harem of dedicated females to induce his rut and catch his seed. The testosterone burning as it was purged from his system, and still, not an instant of unwanted attention was paid to his father’s final gift. Sickle left unmolested, if traumatized by the abrupt change in living circumstances.
From pampered pet to survivor.
But through it all, the war chief held out hope. Even after all these long months of the hunt, after only managing to find three hybrids that weren’t infected with the Trax virus, Balkazar continued his hunt. With one lone male and two underfed brothers to show for it.
Hardly an army of blood-thirsty rebels, though Konjo and Keever certainly had the appetites of several dozen males.
At the rate they were going, generations of the royal blood would rise and fall before his ragged pack could gather the resources to attack.
If they survived the winter—and all the beasts who would awaken with the first snow. Those who hibernated while the summer children were fattened by long months of easy meals.
The Alpha hadn’t the luxury of hope. Knew just what lurked in the wilds, for he’d seen it when he was a child. His father had taken he and his siblings into the beyond to impress a young Anhur consort. Guarded by a hundred of his hybrid sons, he’d sent his natural children out of the carriage so he might breed a female that was not their mother.
And then the wilds attacked.
A wave of ravenous predators descended from the skies. Raining acid and cooing over blistering wounds, they’d formed a beautiful, deadly cloud. Tiny winged lizards who sang while they feasted. The swarm capable of bringing down blooded warriors by the dozens, he’d watched his only sister crushed to death beneath the weight of her personal guard.
It was only the beginning of the horrors that came pouring from the wood while the carriage rocked above them. His father serenading his new treasure to the sounds of death and horror.
Nearly seventy hybrids died that day—and every one of his siblings.
But he survived. He alone was showered in praise, named Firstborn, and given every advantage afforded him by his position of favor.
No matter how many new siblings his father gave him—of which there were many dozens—he was the one who stood at his father’s side. Groomed to one day challenge the Sultan himself.
No more. Not after—
“Alpha!”
His hackles bristled, mood soured by the hated shades of the past, by the sound of a hybrid’s voice that was not one of his own.
“My Alpha, please! You must come!”
Turning left, into his line of sight, the Alpha glared at the hybrid jogging across their camp. One of the twins. Konjo. An unmistakable silhouette clenched in his large hand.
Smooth. Polished. It was a carved length of maple, complete with veins and bulbous glans.
“Is that—” the Alpha swallowed, his attention caught by the breath of the sweet impossible scent wafting from between the hybrid’s thick fingers. The words died on his tongue.
His brain stuttered to a grinding halt, recognizing that scent in an instant.
And for a long moment, as he stared at the thing being presented to him, he couldn’t speak. Couldn’t do much of anything really, except gape at what was clenched in Konjo’s fist. Stupefied.
And then, “Is that a cock?”
“Yes, my Alpha,” Konjo replied, his voice a deep gravelly rumble, his eyes unable to break away from the false phallus. Pupils narrowed to tiny points of black. “It stinks of”—the hybrid swallowed, then glanced over his shoulder as he whispered, “slick. It even tastes of slick… but…” He licked his lips. “But it can’t be, right?”