She keened, one last defiance before she obeyed. A broken whimper pressed into the scalding heat of his chest. And then, “I… I was trained to be a whore… I can’t be…this…”
He adjusted the swollen length of his prick and pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “You can,” he rattled, redoubling the weight of his purr as he settled her liquid body over his lap. Feet tucked in the bend of his opposite elbow, cautious of his wounds—willing to suffer anything for this one tiny female. “Prove yourself worthy of the name you bear.” He traced the length of her spine with a single extended claw, making her shiver in his arms. “Be a Renegade, and as a reward, I shall have these etchings struck from your skin.”
“How?” She yawned, pressed her nose to the spot that bore her mark. Breath feathering against the underside of his chin as she succumbed. “We’re… in a prison…” she murmured, and went limp in his arms.
Giaus purred for his mate until the fight left her, and so she didn’t hear him when he said, “Perhaps, but not for long…”
20
Staggering, fingers pressed to the jagged marks left by Balkazar’s claws, Sickle clung to the shadows. His knee throbbing only half so viciously as his hip, where he’d hit the stone hard enough to bruise the bone. Every step a fight he couldn’t lose, one stride closer to tending his wounds.
Skirting the welcoming warmth of fire ringed by hybrids who hadn’t come to his aid, he did little more than glance in their direction. Keever, Konjo and Micha—all huddled together, side-by-side-by-side, their backs to the river. Shoulders hunched.
Sickle’s lips curled around a sneer, though the gesture held no real heat. Not for males who’d been bound together by circumstance, who knew what it was to scrape for survival. To look the other way and preserve self above pack.
Blood oozed from the deepest of the wounds, making his fingers slip in the gore. Sickle hissed, readjusted his grip to encourage the bleeding despite the shiver it sent through his blood. Hoping the wound might flush itself of whatever horror was beneath Balkazar’s claws.
That it wasn’t already too late.
Ears flicking back and forth, scanning the simmering dark for any whisper of looming attack, Sickle braced for the next violation in a way not even female Hathorians could empathize with.
Not really, for they were kept safe—guarded—deep inside their harems. Raised on sisterhood, used only for a few nights while in season before they were left to the comforting dark. Ignored as one might disregard a table laden with delicate, breakable finery until the occasion warranted their use.
But his kind?
Hathorian males?
He’d been a pet.
Raised in the courts. Traded amongst warring queens, he’d learned too young that the aggression of Anhur was above gender or status. That he was nothing, hadnothingbut his wits and the scraps of information he managed to steal.
But his choices had never been his own. What to wear, who to serve, right down to the changes made to the flesh on his body. Subject to the whims of a predatory species that cooed over him just as readily as they swung a merciless backhand.
Even his banishment, the loss of his tail,all of ithad been a means of punishment for another. His presence in this pack meant to torment the prince through his withdrawal from the rut—from the near constant breeding of his harem Omegas. Sinadim’s addiction to Hathorian slick that had left him in agony when he’d been made to go without.
An agony the prince’s father had meant Sickle to endure, despite his lack of lubricating glands and that he was missing one key hole.
And yet, despite being raised on a diet rich in cruelty—and that any other high-born male would have succumbed to the temptation without much prompting—Sinadim had never once looked at Sickle in a way that made his tail stub flex in terrified submission.
Until now.
If everything Balkazar had said was true, if he was destined to be nothing more than a source of Hathorian seed, it wouldn’t be long before Sickle’s other duties to the pack were called into question.
Wouldn’t be long before the Anhur found him… anewposition.
One that suited a breeder…
On his knees… bent over the dinner table… a fist in his hair and a knot sealing him from both ends.
It wasn’t the first time he’d fallen beneath the snapping hips of Anhur males.
But it would be the last.
Limping toward the yawning mouth of the cave, Sickle hobbled past the steaming drop pools. Skirted the heap of soiled clothing that was all that remained of Renegade’s nest, and entered her den.
Ears twitching at every tiny sound, he scanned the gloom for any sign that the Alpha had noticed his entrance. Moving on the balls of his feet, silent in the way he’d been born to be, his breath intentionally held so he might keep his head clear of the scent of slick… of any hint of what might be happening where he couldn’t see it. His attention divided, Sickle knelt and hooked his fingers beneath the strap of a tidy leather pack.
His medical supplies.
