25. The Devourer
THE DEVOURER
I grab Aliana and throw her over my shoulder, loving the way she pounds against my back, cursing my name. Her ire… It fuels the beast inside of me.
Tesq does nothing, just stands there silently like a massive statue. I’m certain he’s glaring underneath his mask, but the brooding fucker doesn’t say a single word. And he shouldn’t. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
The other Terror is letting me take her without a fight, but even so, I want to bash in his skull and use the sharp bits to scoop out his brains and eat them. He touched her.
He touched what’s mine.
No one touches what’s mine.
I don’t give a damn what the other Terrors think—Aliana belongs to me.
The second I saw her onstage I knew it.
I don’t care if it creates a chink in my armor, a weak link, to have a human instead of a high-powered monster at my side.
This tiny little kitten is my mate.
I’d never deny it. Or her.
There were no words capable of describing my fear and panic when I returned from a battle with unruly Sevens and was informed by Filia that Aliana was missing. I practically destroyed the room I was in to pieces before the rage abated and I forced myself to focus, to track her down.
It took less than an hour to find the dead body inside the abandoned building, and the pride that filled me when I saw a screwdriver in that bastard’s eye was unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It burst through my meticulously stitched seams until I was reborn in its image. My girl…
My girl was a fucking badass.
But even as I stared at the corpse, horror inflated my lungs and gripped down on my heart. Was she hurt in the fight? Injured?
Then I saw it, and the world tilted on its axis as anger, fear, and trepidation battled it out inside of my chest. A clashing of swords, an explosion of gunpowder, the incessant booms of cannons firing.
On the ground, directly beside the dead monster, was a tiny piece of red fabric…
The same fabric that’s normally stretched across the Grotesque’s mask.
I release a low growl as we reach the pinnacle of the steep staircase beneath the bridge and the moon glares down at the earth.
I reposition Aliana in my arms so she’s held like a baby, one of my arms beneath her knees and the other behind her head.
Her eyes narrow into thin slits. She’s just as pissed as I am with all these fucking monsters.
Idiots who kill without reason, other fools who steal mates without reason—it’s fucked up.
I’m glad that we’re on the same page, my little kitten and me.
Sometimes, this world is a disgusting place to live in, so full of selfish thieves that it seems almost impossible to keep this kingdom running. It makes me wonder why the fuck I bother.
But then…the reason I bother slides her hand along my chest, and the luminescence of her eyes traps me.
God-fucking-damn. She’s a good reason.
I’m surprised and relieved I even found her, that a little human like her wasn’t snatched up and swallowed the second she stepped out of my ring of safety.
She’s just a tiny little human. So helpless.
Well, maybe not completely helpless, though how she killed a Seven with only hand tools is beyond me.
Even so, the terror of losing her is almost too much for me to handle. I just fucking found her, and I refuse to let her go. Not now. Not ever. We haven’t even cemented the mating bond yet, but I know that she’s a part of me, a facet of my twisted soul.
As I tromp down the broken road with Aliana in my arms. I have to resist the urge to drag my palms over her just to make sure she’s not hiding an injury. Is she in shock? Did something happen to her?
Or is it the fact that I said the M word?
Mate.
It may be too much for her to handle. I tried not to bring it up before, even when my instincts screamed at me to claim and mark her, to breed her little pussy and fill it with so much cum that she drips white for days.
But if Aliana was sold by night visions, it means she’s not a fanger, and the idea of having a monster for a mate might not appeal—
I don’t even want to think about that.
She’ll get there.
If other assholes would just stop interrupting us, we might be there already. Tesq snatching her and hoarding her when he knows I claimed her creates a rumbling fury underneath my skin, as violent as an earthquake. I have half a mind to turn around and make a eunuch out of that demonic gargoyle.
Fuck him.
When I was combing her hair a few days ago, I felt something. There was a spark. I’m fucking sure of it.
We just haven’t had time to kindle it into something more because the moronic monsters in my territory have gone on a killing spree that’s made the lower levels anxious.
Stupid fucks.
Now, I wish I’d ripped more of their heads off. Killing that two-headed son of a bitch who was killing off Threes wasn’t enough. Killing Tesq might be enough. No, maybe not even that. Gah.
All these idiots are conspiring so I can’t bond with my mate.
God…one day…I’m going to breed that little woman until her thighs are painted white.
But these fuckers are making everything harder than it needs to be.
Interrupting us and making her distrust me.
I kick a loose brick lying in the road and watch it clatter across the street and hit the deflated wheel of a burnt-out car.
“I wish Tesq had killed you,” Aliana mutters under her breath, but my sharp ears pick up the words anyway.
The temptation to twist her in my arms and swat her perky ass is almost too great to ignore. But I resist. “Yeah, well, I should have killed him for touching you.”
Maybe I still will.
“Don’t you dare, you fucking brute!” she growls.
One of her legs wiggles in my grasp as she tries to get free.
I clamp my claws down on her, but she keeps fighting, wiggling back and forth in my arms and trying to throw around as much of her body weight as possible.
I end up accidentally scratching her, making her hiss in pain.
I suck in a breath and swallow an apology.
“Don’t try to kick people, and you won’t get hurt,” I scold her as I check her leg to make sure the wound isn’t deep.
It’s not. Just a tiny scratch with a droplet of blood at one end. Her skin is so soft as I run my palm over her muscular calf. I hate that I marred her at all. If only she hadn’t gotten out. How did she?
“I. HATE. YOU!” She writhes, going wild without reason.
Does she not understand we’re in the middle of the street? She’s fucking bleeding. Why the hell is she yelling? She’s goddamned monster bait. All the mindless human eaters will have scented her by now. She’s painting a target on top of us.
Yes, I can kill a lot of lower-level monsters. But even the largest ship in the world can be swallowed by the ocean. If enough of them show up because of the show she’s putting on…
Motherfucker!
I start to jog, disregarding the way it makes her bounce in my arms uncomfortably. A few bruises won’t kill her, but a sandworm sure as hell will.
“I should have killed Tesq. Look at what he’s done! You’ve gone batshit!” I grumble as I scan the ruins for threats.
“Is it batshit to prefer a monster who’s nice over the hairy bastard who locked me up? Who thinks I’m some kind of fuckdoll?” Her retort is a literal screech of fury.
That does it.
Fuckdoll?
I haven’t touched her.
I have not shoved my dick into her unwilling pussy, despite the fact the law says I own her.
I have not shoved my tongue down her throat, despite the fact that my body claims she’s mine.
I have not done a single fucking thing to her other than buy her and keep her in her room for her own protection.
She’s made me into a bastard inside her head.
I might be a monster, but I’ve never—
I envision bringing her home and spreading her across my lap so I can spank that lush ass of hers the way she deserves, but the street starts to quake underneath our feet. The asphalt starts to crackle like it’s crème br?lée .
Goddammit.
I shift into my larger wolf-man form, my clothes ripping apart and shredding as I shoot up and my legs grow longer. Black fur sprouts all over my body, covering my short horns, emphasizing my pointed ears, and obscuring my mouth as it morphs into a muzzle.
Aliana squeaks in surprise, but one growl from me has her clamping her lips together, her eyes wide.
I sprint towards my place, two blocks ahead, my eyes locked onto the shimmering black mist that marks safety. Meanwhile, my ears track every sound—the rumbling under the earth that reminds me of the days when humans took subways.
Either my speed or the sound of our pursuer has stunned Aliana to silence.
Good.
About damn time.
I push my legs harder and faster until my lungs are burning just as hot as my anger.
There’s a telltale noise when a sandworm is about to erupt. Instead of sounding like a rumbling vibration, there’s this strange sort of suctioning slurp, as if dirt has turned liquid for a split second before the sandworm erupts from the ground.
I hear that noise.
A scream wrenches out of Aliana’s throat and paints the sky with a streak of fear as dark as a cloud.
I could turn and fight the fucker, but they’re faster than lightning and Aliana is just a human.
An infuriatingly stubborn, wrong human. But she’s my mate.
I can’t take the chance that she’ll get hurt, which means I can’t fight this bastard, even though he’s barely a Two.
I don’t look back. I double my speed, my clawed feet hardly touching the ground as I charge towards our destination.
The roar of the sandworm makes Aliana dig her hands into my furry arms, holding tight to me—finding comfort in me for the first time.
Primal satisfaction settles low in my gut, because that’s how it’s supposed to be. I’m supposed to protect my mate from the brutal world. I’m supposed to lock her away from all the bad like the sparkling treasure she is and hoard her smiles for myself.