Page 26 of Prey for Me

“Me no caveman. Me just giving advice,” he sneers, and I can’t help but laugh as he snuggles closer to me.

I’ll give Leo more credit than I thought I should’ve given him when he started talking like a caveman and acting like one, too. He saw through my pathetic attempt to grab his knife before I’d even fully formed the plan.

He’s right, and that pisses me off even more. Where would I even go hopping around on one foot? With a busted hand, and now a dripping slick filled pussy sounded like the dumbest shit imaginable. And yet, that was my plan before he put a stop to it.

I lay in his arms for a long time, waiting for the others to return. But they don’t, and for some reason, that makes me more uneasy than if they were here with me. Withus,I correct myself, as Leo’s breathing finally evens out, and he drifts off to sleep like he’s not in charge of making sure their hostage doesn’t escape.

Like I ever stood a chance, even if my plan succeeds, I think, scowling as I bury my face into a pillow and will myself to rest. It would be the first time in Providence where I’m not under the threat of danger or in a coma, so I should savor it.

Not under threat by an unknown enemy,I correct myself against, as I reluctantly press myself harder against Leo to soak up a bit of his warmth.But make no mistake, mated or not, these men are your enemies.

All I have to do is hold out long enough to save Faith. If that means I have to use every weapon at my disposal, so be it, including my long forgotten omega charm. I’ll do whatever it takes to spare her the horror of this place if she’s still alive. Not if. She is. She has to be or what’s the point of hanging on? I didn’tspend my life protecting my sister from our family’s demons to have her dragged into hell.

But first, I have to fight and survive. I can’t trust them. But I do have to rely on them, Leo and Nakoa in particular. And I don’t know what’s worse: the lack of trust between us, or the fact I have to relinquish control to these untrustworthy bastards.

CHAPTER TEN

GRACE

Thenextmorning,Iwake up under a pile of sleeping alphas cocooned in a fortress of heat. I’m too sleepy to complain about it, a warm, bare chest pressed to my back, and in front of me is a wall of solid black. Nakoa and Raphael, I guess. Which confuses me because I fell asleep being forcibly cuddled by Leo. I can’t see much over the mountain of muscled chest and back boxing me in, but what I can see makes me curious. Instead of a normal cave, what I see is something more akin to a hideout. There’s shelves cut into the wall stacked high with supplies seeing as I’m only looking at the top shelves, and they’re lined with tin cans of every vegetable and fruit under the sun, including powdered milk.

So this is a shelter of sorts,I think, yawning but unable to stretch out.

I attempt to catalog what I can of the cave, but soon give up on it. What does it matter if I steal their supplies if I have no way off the island? I don’t trust myself to make it back to the lifeboat. And once again, I have to come to terms with the factthat I pissed myself at the sight of a shark fin. What will I do on the open water? Spotting a sea turtle might make me flip the raft because of my phobia, and that’s be extremely optimistic about my chances of navigating the tide. If I see a whale I’d have a heart attack.

Yeah, too many unknowns given my lack of specialized skillsets. So my best bet remains using whatever leverage I can gain from the resource throbbing between my legs.

“Good morning,” Leo says, shocking the shit out of me.

How can a big guy like him move so silently?I think, as he beams down at me, leaning over to spoonfeed me some liquid before I can clamp my mouth shut.

It’s clear and bitter, and I want to spit it out. But suddenly the sleeping giants begin to stir, and I’m so shocked by the earthquake their rolling bodies make, I accidently swallow.

Great! My jaw still aches from last night. My throat’s raw like sandpaper. And now it tastes like dry cum and what I imagine melted plastic with lemon zest tastes like. What a wonderful start to my day!

I grumble and groan, as Leo grins, twirling the silver spoon he snuck into my mouth in the air with a triumphant grin. As I shift to pull away from my number one enemy, who must’ve been so exhausted from his rut he mistakenly snuggled up with me,to my surprise, the black-clad alpha to my right isNakoa!His steely gray eyes melt into a warm platinum hue.

He rests his chiseled cheek and chin on his forearm as I look up at him, whispering, “Morning, mate.”

Wait, I think, whipping around, fighting the furs, to looking into the stunned face of, “Raphael?”

It is him, and he is shirtless, and he pulls away from me like I’ve burned him. He stumbles back, and knocks his head against the stone pantry, grumbling something between fuck and ouch as he bites his tongue. I want to laugh, but I’m still too shockedthat the nudist holding me so tenderly was him and not my bonded mate.

Slowly, I roll back to Nakoa and remember my manners, my game plan, and our deal, whispers sweetly, “Good morning…mate.”

The last word taste like I’ve been chewing on rocks, wetting my dry lips, throat lined in dusty. Oh wait, no I just inhaled the cave stink as Leo stirs the ashes of the dead campfire near us. Still, my body did physically reject calling Nakoa my mate which is… odd, to say the least. All my etiquette books taught me that after the mate bond, life became much easier with the stranger I would be forced to marry. Nature would do the work for me to make me the perfect omega wife.

So why don’t I feel that instrict submission from what should be a constant pheromone exchange? Why, instead of that automatic response to flip on the warm fuzzies in my brain, do I feel my heart flutter from his gentle smile?

Maybe I’m experiencing world-record breaking Stockhold Syndrome, and my brain is recieging too many mixed singles. That seems to make sense as we sit up together, Raphael helping Leo rearrange things in travel packs I assume are meant to be carried to a new location.

Yeah, that sounds about right, I reason, pressing my back and the back of my head to the stone wall to cool off, chucking off the furs as the

“Oh?” I say, noticing my dress is back on. What’s left of it, anyway.

“Thought you’d want it on,” Leo says, crouching near a pack filled to the bursting.

“Thanks… I guess,” I say, trying to sound thankful. But all I can think about is him getting up in the middle of the night to redress me, palms moving over my bare skin.

---