It was a swift death, if bloody. A simple flex of deadly claws that burrowed through fur and skin, tore through arteries, and cut off blood supply to the brain before the spinal column was severed. Efficient. Neat. Easy.
Chest rumbling with a contented purr, the hunter slung the young beast over his shoulder. Making a sling of forelegs and belly, careful of the horns just beginning to poke through their yearling felt. The razor-sharp edges encased in fuzz.
And with his burden secured, he began the trek through dense brush. Retracing his original path with full, confident strides. No longer stalking on the edge of shadows, but stealthy all the same. At ease in the wood, where few could challenge his dominance.
The hunter stopped at a small creek, dumped the grazer in a heap of stiffening limbs, then stretched his back until it popped. Hands on hips, crimson stains streaking across the contours of his back. Pooled in the dips and tracing the valleys, the blood had already drained away.
Fertilizer for the wild things that followed in his wake.
He made quick work of the carcass—in minutes, the abdomen was unzipped, choice organs separated from scrap, skin hauled from meat in three experienced tugs, scraped clean of the remaining pulp, and set to dry in the heat of the afternoon sun. Finally, when everything else had been done, a hook was run through the ankle tendons. An anchor set downstream, he tossed the meat into the narrow creek to wash away the last of the fluids.
He’d be long gone before any carrion eaters found their way to the scent of a fresh kill.
Stomach rumbling, the hunter claimed a jiggly slab of liver. Balanced on his haunches, he mashed the tender offal between his back molars. And no matter the acidic tingle of raw organ meat, it was creamy and rich. The earthy flavor of wild game still clinging to the memory of iron and the purpose it once served.
The rush of nutrients and vitamins made his head spin, his throat stick around a tacky swallow. And with a low groan, he stood, ambling toward the river. Pausing only to taste the wind, searching for danger that lurked beyond mere sight.
There was nothing but silence. The gentle breeze and the whisper of water bubbling over stone.
Kneeling, he dipped one massive hand into the creek, drawing up a palm full of sweet, crisp liquid.
All it took was a sip.
One wonderful, impossible sip and he knew.
Slick. In the water.
And not just slick, but a perfect match. He could taste it at the back of his skull. It lit up his brain with a barb of stark realization, of instant unwavering belief and dedication to a new path. A pulse of liquid heat shot through his nervous system, making his cock swell and bloat.
Bewildered, he turned wide, amber eyes upriver. Nostrils flared, head tipped back, he searched for any hint of that precious fluid on the breeze—and found none.
But the hunter needed no convincing. His body had hardened, pupils swallowing the sinister ring of color as his mane grew rigid.
The rut.
It struck hard. Fast. Descending with an unnatural weight that consumed everything, leaving behind only hunger. Possessive, ravenous starvation for the breeder producing that particular blend of scents and flavors.
His.
Cock weeping and painfully hard, his balls drew tight against his body. Giving greater access to a blend of deadly hormones not yet seen before, for the hunter had been infected with Trax for years. Mutated on a genetic level to endure the price of living so long with the deadly virus, he was changed. No longer Anhur, but something else. Bigger and faster.
Utterly feral.
Fixated upriver, he coughed up a snarl. Teeth snapping shut, lips peeled back. And then, as his testicles continued to dump white-hot fury into his veins, a guttural, bellowing roar erupted from deep in his belly. A primal challenge to anything with ears and a cock that a dominant male was staking claim on that pussy. Declaring ownership of the slick gushing from the cunt he would reshape to suit his monstrous knot.
Willing to kill any who might take what was his, he would lay their bodies at her feet. Broken into pieces and strung through the trees. Their screams a serenade, their innards a beautiful, gory mosaic of his devotion to the female that would whelp his young.
Vibrating with eager rage, the hunter crashed into the wood. Ignoring the shadows that begged him to melt into their embrace, he was a blur darting between the trees. A juggernaut on a mission.
In his wake, only a skinless carcass.
Prepared and forgotten.
Chapter 23
“Hadim, please!” she gasped, begging just as he’d commanded her to do—her voice going soft and ragged around the wrong name. One that shocked him sober, for there wasn’t a male alive who the Alpha despised more.
That they looked so much alike was a curse he’d long grown weary of carrying.
To be reminded of it now, in this precious moment of victory, served only to ignite his temper. Pouring lye in open, infected wounds that refused to mend.
But there was something else.
Something that soothed his fury with a far more satisfying reward. A revelation.
There was but one way she could have known that insufferable prick. But a single reason she would mistake him for Hadim—this miraculous, escaped Hathorian female had once belonged to the named Heir of the Karahmet throne. Hadim himself.
Trained to know only what Hadim had bothered to teach her. Wholly ignorant of her heritage, her biology, or the workings of her hormonal cycle that had ensnared her so fully, she was a creature of unfathomable value.
That she was here at all was a miracle, until he realized how much she must have gone through to simply survive. And then he knew it to be impossible that she was standing before him at all. In heat. Defiant. Healthy and absent any hint of the Trax virus.
But to know she was Hadim’s? That she’d escaped her harem, navigated through the city, and had evaded the packs of roving, desperate males starving for a taste of female flesh. Managed to get through the wall and survived the wilds only to succumb to her nature at his feet?
His cock pulsed, a band of hot steel flexing against her swollen walls.
She was a divine gift. A clear sign that he still held favor with the Nine in their fiery hall.
She was his to do with as he pleased. Soiled beyond cleaning. Ruined by Hadim… just as he had been.
To know that she might have contributed to his fall, to the scars mangling the right side of his face. The eye that had been popped beneath Hadim’s claws and now saw only the faintest shimmer of light? It was her fault, at least in part, for the hybrids who’d made his own army kneel had marched straight from this pussy.
One of her hybrid sons had slaughtered some of his.
A growl rumbled up, racing bile to be the first of the vitriol that spilled from his lips.
“I hate you,” she whispered, making him pause. Coiled to strike. “I’ve spent these last moons praying for your death. Begging the Nine to give me justice for the horrors you’ve committed. Just kill me,” she breathed, inky black gaze liquid as she glared, tears threatening to spill with a blink. “You might have my body. My womb. But I will never let your spawn live. They will never draw a single breath.”
And for a moment, as he stared down into the abyss of hatred and spite, the Alpha knew a moment of camaraderie he’d never had with a female. An Omega. That she had suffered abuse at Hadim’s hand wasn’t obvious, so much as it was expected.
But to see her stand against her demon, misplaced as her anger might be, gave him pause of another sort altogether. The edges of an idea began to form in the haze of a stalled rut.