Sickle turned away, having already seen too much.
Having heard far more than he’d ever needed to hear.
“Filthy fucking savages,” the Alpha hissed, his mane fully risen about him in a pale halo. Vibrating with disgust.
“Better they’re down there eating each other,” Balkazar rumbled, still watching. His face impassive even as the sounds of ripping meat echoed up from the ravine.
Silence descended upon their small pack. The only communication a fleeting glance of their eyes, and Sickle knew they were all thinking the same thing. About a certain female going into heat.
The reckless net she’d cast throughout the entire forest.
If she was unfortunate enough to get herself caught by a feral…
Well.
There would be no saving what was left.
Even if she was lucky and was taken by a feral whose lust outweighed his gluttony, she’d fall to the virus and find herself beneath the rutting hips of an entire hoard. Just another statistic no one would ever think to record.
Fingers clenching about the handle of his blade, Sickle flashed his teeth in the gloom. His cock swelled, a throbbing ache tied down and restrained behind his leathers, consumed as he was by her scent. Her slick.
“Let’s go,” he whispered, ears pressed flat, pointed teeth flashing in the shadows. “It’s not safe for her to be alone. We have to find her. Before—”
A thick hand landed on his shoulder. The Alpha squeezed Sickle’s narrow shoulder in a silent offer of comfort. “The Nine didn’t send her to us just to take her away so soon,” he said. “Not even they could be so cruel.”
Nodding, Sickle clung to that fragile hope, falling into step when the pack moved out. On the hunt, once more.
Deep down, though, he knew—there were no gods in the beyond.
Only demons who ate without bothering to kill.
Chapter 13
Heads low, the pack ran as one. Their senses saturated with the distinct and rare bouquet of slick, focused entirely on the elusive scent of breeding female where it hung heavy in the air.
The Alpha grinned, taking up the rear as he kept pace behind his pack. Pleased at how easily they meshed as a unit, all castes working together to catch their little runaway. It would be a nuisance to train her, to break her in and teach her what it was to belong to a prince’s harem. But perhaps Balkazar could be tempted to take on the chore? The Alpha had never been fond of teary virgins, and the war chief had earned a reward. The chance to mold her tight slit to his knot.
She’d been running, that much the Alpha knew for certain. It was the undeniable taste of adrenaline laced through the trees, married to her scent. In the way her footprints had lengthened when they were visible in the fluffy loam lining the forest floor.
Bristling, a low growl erupted from between his lips, making Sickle startle, a yelp wrenched from the Hathorian’s throat. And sending a wide-eyed glance over his shoulder, Sickle’s shoulders hunched while he ran. Cringing.
It was an instinctive thing, Sickle’s reaction.
That of prey.
A lowly Omega who knew his place without having to learn a hard lesson, the way this female did not.
Baring his teeth at the small male, the Alpha found cause to be furious with Sickle’s entire species. With this Omega female for putting herself in danger, when she should have come to him and begged for his knot.
It was the way of things. Already he could imagine the satisfaction of it. Of seeing her pregnant yet available, grateful for the opportunity to breed for them…
Snarling, he barked orders at their backs. Faster. Harder. “Bring that little bitch to me!”
He needn’t have bothered.
Each male knew the taste of her, now. All had drunk deep of the creek laced with her need. Her slick.
A precious thing he’d never have shared with common hybrids before his exile.
But… now?
He was no longer a prince. Docked. Baring horrific scars as proof of his failure. Who was he to stand over lesser males? To deny them the one thing that could bind them all closer together?
What did it matter, anyway? She was just a breeder.
No matter how perfectly she’d gripped his knot as he bred her, nor how tight the seal, she was not an Anhur female. She was a tool to induce rut, no more or less than the cock she’d tried to carve to relieve herself. An Omega. She could give him an army of hybrid sons to defend his territory, but only an Anhur female could give him a legacy.
If she’d been a member of his species, things would have been different. He and Balkazar would fight to the death to claim a female who could give them that.
But a breeder? One whose sole purpose was to give pleasure and create warriors? To induce rut and beg for more. The Alpha was glad for the chance to see her stretched by his pack, to reward his new brothers for their hard work. Even if the hybrids were sterile, they would punish her with their girth and length alone. Her innocent sheath would be trained by hybrid cocks, for only the Anhur could offer a proper knot.
What did it matter if the kits whelped from the girl were his or Balkazar’s?
The war chief was content in his place as second, but giving him a few hybrid brats was an easy way to buy Balkazar’s obedience and eternal loyalty.
Growling low in his throat, the Alpha leapt over a fallen tree, almost landing on Sickle’s heels.
The dainty thing was beginning to flag, his stamina sorely tested against superior males. And yet, with a toothy grimace, Sickle forced one foot ahead of the other, his breaths coming in great, heaving swallows. It was the first time the Alpha had seen him this animated, this engaged, no matter the pain of denial.
Teeth bared, unable to quit or surrender, Sickle’s body would fight the hardest to claim something he could never really have, for the girl would belong to an Anhur, first.
In the distance, came the echo of a pained cry. A single, haunting wail that echoed through the forest.
Without being told, the pack renewed their charge. Not a word spoken between males who knew just what sort of danger lurked in the beyond.
And then Balkazar skidded to a halt, the war chief standing with feet spread, his hackles rising in a great cloud of fury. Clenched fist held aloft in a silent command for them to halt immediately—a command not even the Alpha dared rebuke. No matter the consequences.
“Priiigussss…” came a hissing rattle, the voice distorted by the rumble of a phlegmy growl.
An eerie sound that made the Alpha bristle with a dominant, yet hesitant shiver.
The war chief flicked two fingers of his raised fist, signaling them to tighten their ranks. To protect the weakest and prepare for bloodshed. His hackles, too, were standing tight and high. Muscles shivering with restraint.
Frozen on the cusp of action, the pack went utterly still. Six pairs of eyes focused on a single figure ambling through the brush.
A feral infected with the Trax virus.
Stripped naked and rolled in filth. His skin bore the marks of a loner who’d been challenged and lost, his shoulders were raw and bloody where he was ravaged by the hardships of the wild.
Freshly infected and showing the early signs of his long, slow demise, he was already touched by the grotesque physical mutation the Trax virus was infamous for causing. But only just.
They’d been too late to save him.
His wounds still wept, showing how fresh the infection really was. That the pack had been mere days away from adding this loner to their ranks, instead of being forced to put him down.