Page 11 of Feral Monsters
Merit
I stared at the last man to own me, something cold and dark slinking up my spine. It spread along my nerve endings, then burrowed itself into my veins like poison.
I wasn’t typically a violent person, not after all the shit that’d happened to me through the past several years. I’d always wanted peace, nothing more. To just be left alone so I could heal. But as I stared at the mother fucker who’d tortured me over and over and over again, blood lust bubbled inside me like a fountain that’d been turned on for the first time. It started in little spurts until it ran freely, damn near drowning me in it.
I wanted to make him suffer. I wanted to carve his organs from his fucking body one by one, then bathe in his damn blood after what he’d put me through.
Ike opened a packet, then waved it under Michael’s nose. Michael jerked awake with an alarming gasp, his eyes frantically taking in the room, landing first on Wraith, then Ike.
Finally, they landed on me. A snarl twisted his lips, and anger bled from his pores.
I vowed that wouldn’t be the only way he bled today.
“You,” he seethed.
I inclined my head to him as I crossed my arms over my chest. “Me,” I said, my voice low and smooth. It hadn’t even been a full three days since Wraith and Ike kidnapped me and made me theirs, but already, I felt stronger knowing they were backing me up. That they were willing to help me tear this entire fucking world apart if I wanted it.
They said they didn’t own me, but I didn’t buy that. But the difference between their ownership and my previous owners’ was that they worshiped me. And they were absolutely feral about it in a way I craved.
“You think you’ll get away with this?” he snarled, trying to wiggle free, but it was futile. I just blankly stared at him. “You’re in the database, kid. You’ll never be free.”
Fear grew in my stomach and bloomed, making me nauseous. The thought of anyone taking me away from Wraith and Ike made me sicker than the thought of being tortured endlessly again, abused in every way imaginable.
“Wrong,” Wraith said, using a knife to clean his nails. “Whoever tries to come for Merit will be slaughtered like the pigs they are.” When he lifted his gaze to look at Michael, Michael paled. Wraith had dropped his mask, his humanity bleeding away to leave behind the monster he truly was. Even my heart tripped with fear for a moment, but it quickly went away.
Wraith and Ike would never hurt me. I knew that on a cellular level.
Michael looked back at me. “So, what’s your plan then, Merit? You’re obviously feeling ballsy with the little… friends you’ve made.”
I grabbed a hammer, testing its weight in my hand for a moment. “You remember that time you took a hammer to my back because I snored while sleeping and it disturbed you?” I asked him, slowly making my way closer to him.
He eyed the hammer in my hand warily. Ike made a small growling sound from behind me at the sound of just one of the punishments I’d suffered for something so fucking stupid. “You told me the next time I disturbed your sleep, you’d carve my heart out from my chest.” I adjusted my grip on the hammer. “You’ve been disturbing my sleep for a long time now, Michael. So… guess what?”
He screamed when I slammed the hammer over his chest. Leaning in close, I gripped his jaw, bringing us so close, our noses touched. “I’m going to carve yours out instead.”
Shoving his head back, I stood up straight again and swung the hammer again and again and again, mutilating his chest bone and shattering it. When I tossed the hammer onto the concrete floor, Ike was already there, holding out a wicked, sharp knife to me. Once I took it from him, he wordlessly stepped back.
But the pride in his eyes told me everything I needed to know. He was proud of me, and he was gleefully watching me get covered in the blood of the mother fucker who’d tortured me.
Michael was a sobbing, broken mess. Blood was already trickling from his lips, so I figured I didn’t have much time due to the internal bleeding already beginning to happen. So, I just ripped his shirt open, then began to carve into his chest. I worked quickly, making a huge mess, but he was dying fast from blood loss.
I needed the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes to be me holding his heart in my hand.
His breaths were stuttering from his lungs, and he was choking on his blood. Finally, I cut his heart free, then stood back, holding it up in my blood-soaked hand. His eyes widened in horror, his brain not completely dead yet. And then, he slumped, soaked in his own blood, his eyes wide open as he lifelessly stared at the floor.
One down. Several more to go.
Ten
Ike
The moment the three of us were alone in our bathroom, I crushed my mouth to Merit’s, inhaling him like he was a fucking drug, and I needed a fix or I’d die. Seeing him take control and cover himself in Michael Smith’s blood had me fucking salivating for him. I’d never wanted anything more in my fucking life, and if I had been able to, I’d have fucked him right there on the basement floor next to his previous owner’s dead body.
“Let him breathe,” Wraith rumbled as he worked Merit’s bloody t-shirt up our man’s torso. “And he needs to shower.”
Merit looked at me, his eyes all hazy and his lips kiss swollen. He was a picture-perfect picture. I groaned and rubbed the pad of my thumb over his bottom lip, drinking in how fucking mine he was.
“I plan to fuck you,” I rasped. “You better tell me now if that’s not on the table.”
