I bred her that night with extra intensity. Something about watching her design killing systems while carrying my offspring had triggered a possessive response I couldn't control. I pinned her to the furs and took her hard, my knot swelling faster than usual, my seed flooding into her with almost desperate force.
"Mine," I growled against her neck. "You're mine. Both of you."
"Yours," she agreed, her voice broken by pleasure. "Always."
The ferals probedour defenses on the fifth night.
I felt them before I saw them. The displacement of air. The shift in scent patterns. The subtle wrongness that meant hunters were approaching.
Three of them. Testing. Searching for weak points.
I woke Kerris with a hand over her mouth. Her eyes went wide, then focused. She understood immediately.
"How many?" she breathed.
"Three. Scouts." I released her, moving toward the main entrance. "Stay here. Stay quiet."
"Bruk..."
"Stay."
She stayed. I went to defend my territory.
The scouts were clumsy. Ferals always were. The degradation that came from years without a mate affected their coordination, their planning, their ability to move with purpose. They'd found the secondary entrance and were circling it, testing the approach.
I watched from concealment as one of them stepped forward. Tested the ground. Stepped again.
Fell.
The pit trap worked perfectly. The feral dropped through the concealed surface and impaled himself on the sharpened spars below. His scream rang through the bone formations, a warning to the others that this territory was defended.
The remaining two fled. I let them go. Let them carry word back to the others that approaching the Keep meant death.
When I returned to the main chamber, Kerris was sitting up, her hand on her belly.
"I heard the scream," she said. "It worked?"
"It worked." I sat beside her, pulled her against me. "Your trap killed a feral."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Good."
No hesitation. No regret. Just satisfaction that her design had performed as intended.
I'd chosen well.
Seven days until the portal.The ferals numbered twelve now.
They'd stopped probing. Started gathering instead. Massing at the edge of my territory, drawn by her scent, emboldened by numbers. The one I'd killed in the pit trap hadn't deterred them. If anything, it had made them more desperate. More dangerous.
"They'll attack soon," I told her. "Within days."
She was studying our defensive layout, checking calculations, looking for weaknesses I might have missed. Her belly had grown more prominent in the past week. Not dramatic, but visible now when she stood in profile. My offspring, growing inside her.
"We have three operational traps," she said. "The pit, the deadfall, and the snare near the eastern approach. That's maybe five kills if they all trigger perfectly."
"That leaves seven."
"Can you take seven?"
