Page 40 of Maiming
“She’s beautiful. Fierce.” My palm lifts higher and her eyes close slowly.
“Do you want to feed her?” He doesn’t look at me as he starts to fill a bucket. Blood and slick meat slap into it with a disgusting sound, but all I can think about is how sweet he is right now taking care of these animals just because they’re here. Just because they need someone to help them and he’s the one who can do it. I’d reply if the faint pitter patter of my heart wasn’t fluttering and distracting me so much.
He’s been feeding her. The alpha male I know and love has been taking in little beasts left and right and feeding them.
An eerie feeling passes through me. I can’t explain it, but it’s such an unsettling sensation of being watched and I feel it crawl across my skin. My gaze searches the thick forests behind the house. Trees tangle together, making us very secluded to the rest of the village.
I shake the feeling away, but I can’t help but wonder about incident that’s still fresh in my mind. Could a beast like this harm someone in the way that Natalie was killed?
No.I chide myself. Her wounds were internal. Broken down without assault.
A drake, a dragon, nothing I’ve ever seen could do something like that.
He starts to feed the beast raw strips of meat. He’s so careful with her as her sharp teeth snap at the food. It reminds me of when I fed my own little asshole dragons. I took care of them. Loved them.
They were sweeter then.
Kind of.
But I never would have guessed when I found them, that it all would have led me here. Surrounded by people I love for the first time in years.
My hands wrap around him, my fingers slipping into his hair as I meld my body against his. His jaw is smooth against my lips as I kiss him there slowly. Bloody meat is held in his hands and he’s careful not to touch my coat or long yellow dress with it as I wrap myself around him.
I nod to him, but I keep myself pressed against every hard inch of his body. He kisses me slowly and the moment he’s distracted a demanding roar rips through the quiet. With one big swipe of her paw she flings cold dirt and leaves into the air.
It rains down on us as the creature glares at Kain and the meat he’s hoarding in the bucket within his hands.
“You should do your job before she uses your arm as a snack.” I arch a brow at him and he shakes his head at me, but he does get back to feeding the temperamental beast. He tosses her a strip of dripping meat and she snatches it right up, chewing and glaring and chewing some more.
“I swear she’s a mess. Hot one minute, cold the next. She reminds me of someone I know.”
My brow rises even more. A smooth bland expression is all he gives me.
The asshole.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. You’re not that much of an emotional mess, Kain.” My hip bumps his and I walk away from him as a wide smile breaks across his handsome face.
He curses at the stain that’s now covering his jeans, boots, and the forest floor but the beast only keeps happily eating among the mess she’s made.
“I named her Havoc. Seems fitting.”
Oh, no. He’s named her too.
He’s a novice beast tamer. He’ll never be rid of her now. It’ll be just like me and that time I made the mistake of naming these three baby dragons I found. Stuck with them for life, I tell you.
A long eek sound breaks through the ridiculing smile I’m pinning him with. The noise carries on, it trails on for so long like banter back and forth. I step back and peer under the large black stove near the house.
Lights blink, flashing and drifting out of sight several times. And then I see them. Tiny, creatures walk beneath the stove. Their spindly lime green arms work quickly to shove blankets and cubes of cheese into satchels and packs. One of them, with long twirling antlers poking out from her soft emerald hair squeaks orders in a trail of high-pitched words that I can’t understand. The other dozens frantically carry out her demands, their translucent wings looking too frail to lift their bodies but they do. And damn are they fast. They’re more of a blur of flashing white lights when they fly, gathering and preparing without stopping once.
“What are those?” Kain lowers himself down on his knees.
“Will-o’-wisps,” I whisper.
The moment I say it, the tiny demanding woman quiets and tilts her severely pointed chin up toward me. She eyes me and the large man at my side for several seconds, her glare just as sharp as the brown antlers on her head, and I feel the vicious intensity of her look. Slowly she pulls her gaze back to her people and starts talking even faster.
And they start moving impossibly quicker.
“How have I never seen them?” Kain looks to me and I sink down until we’re both watching the little blinking lights and the beautiful creatures that are no larger than my thumb.
