Chapter 26
This is … not what I thought
The Present
Moros
“What the … fuck?”
Walking back into this place nearly ten years later, I can still smell the iron from all the blood that stained these carpets.
Except … not these carpets.
They’re rugs now, colorful and messy and too bright to fucking look at as we walk them, tendrils of smoke leading the way.
“This is definitely not …” Wilson trails off, bewildered, and confused as his fingers slice through a hanging curtain of shining beads on strings. They rattle as he passes through, then holds them back for Amo and me to follow him.
The smoke is thicker back here, washing the room in a pink-tinted haze. It’s the kind that comes from an incense that the elders use to burn.
Something in it triggers … well … anyone infected.
“Did we eat the wrong mushrooms again?” Wilson asks and I grunt.
“Nope. This is … real.”
“Aw fuck, we have company,” murmurs a man I don’t recognize, his form struggling in a pile of giant pillows and rounded bags. They’re in the center of the room, the far wall lined with worn seating that appears to have some kind of floral pattern if you look past the brown shade.
The light source in the corner casts shadows over the guy's face until he finally gets to his feet, his partner more graceful than him, and he meets us with a grin.
He’s wearing the same robes I recall, though this set has popped threads and added stains.
The patch of dried white on his front makes my lip lift in a snarl.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Meeting doesn’t start for another hour, man.” He gestures around behind him where his friend flops onto the couch. “Me and Derek always come early to get the first round in so I’m ready for the second. Like a warmup or whatever.”
“I’m confused,” Wilson murmurs. “Where are the elders?”
“Oh!” The guy shoves his hand in our direction, his lips stretched in a grin over his really white teeth. “I’m Kyrt. The eldest of the elders.”
“No fucking way. You’re like twenty.”
His eyes light up in amusement, appearing purple in the pink light, and I scowl down at him.
He’s just too … pretty. Like all looks and no brains kind of guy.
And way too young to be anything other than a fucking joke.
“Yeah, I am actually. Well, twenty-four, but close enough.” Amo squeaks beside me as the guy speaks, and Wilson wanders around the room. “But what can I help you with?”
I blink at him, waiting for him to crack and tell me that this is all a dream or something equally believable over this asshole being one of the people that help run this fucking place. One of the leaders that directs teams and makes sure the masses don’t go hungry.
This guy.
Who’s still got dried cum on his fucking shirt.
That’s walking around barefoot and burning the incense that makes people horny and agreeable.
“Look, I know the silent treatment used to work on my dad, Moros, but I—”
“Wait, you know who he is?” Amo asks with an edge that has my head cocking as he takes a step that angles him in front of me.
What the fuck does the kitten think he’s doing?
“Yeah,” Kyrt answers with way too much enthusiasm, completely ignoring that Amo just got defensive. “We put him in the history lesson like two to three years back.”
“For what?” my kitten hisses out, and I grab his shoulder. Squeeze his too-tight muscles. Force a deep, rose-rich breath.
“The battle!” Kyrt snickers and spins away, flailing out the tail of his robe as he goes. I want to snatch it up. Wrap it around his neck until he answers the questions we have and then maybe choke him out some more.
He doesn’t continue until he’s settled in the lap of his companion.
His male companion.
My already itching skin starts to burn.
“You must’ve just missed the addition of the last decade into the class, Amo.
” My fists flex. This is wrong. All fucking wrong.
Where are the decrepit old men and their stuffy bullshit attitudes?
The sagging fucks with strict rules and hateful words?
“He can probably tell you the story better than I could, but basically we owe how this place operates to Death.”
Not this shit again.
I growl in Kyrt’s direction, but he doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest as he maneuvers around his seated and silent partner until he’s straddling him while facing us.
It’s an odd position to address us in, and makes him extremely vulnerable, but I would expect nothing less from someone that hides behind his people. Inside these walls. Behind closed doors.
He might be new, young, but he’s no different than the rest of the old men that cowered when the fight broke out on their very own doorstep.
My fingers curl at the memory of their shouts, and the way their flesh felt when I busted it open.
“Most of the elders Micheal had in place have turned or passed on, leaving me and six others in charge. Derek here is one of them.” Kyrt talks with his hands way too fucking much, this time gesturing to his partner.
“The old elders never recovered from the battle where Moros took out half of them and left the other half to pick up the pieces.” Like I give a fuck.
“They deserved it,” I mutter and cross my arms, my chest puffing up.
“They did,” Kyrt agrees, and clears his throat, “but we also had to, like, make changes.”
“How the hell do you know my name?” My kitten spits out, interrupting.
“Oh, ohhh, you’re our … first,” Kyrt emphasizes as his rubs his chin in a way that pisses me off. The whole man himself is just pissing me off.
My knuckles crack with how hard I flex them. “First what?”
“He’s supposed to be immune. Or fucking infected to be out there with us,” Wilson pipes up from the corner, his eyes sharp even in the low light. “He’s neither.”
“Our population is sixteen percent immune. And seventy percent pure. He wanted to go, so I let them.”
“That’s not how—him sitting in the guy’s lap is so fucking distracting,” Amo murmurs and turns into me, his red face burying in my chest to hide his next words said low into me. “It’s making me horny.”
The itch of my skin dulls when he subtly rubs his cock against my thigh.
“Slutty kitten can’t keep it in his pants?” My low voice, meant only for him, makes him shiver.
“Nope, not at all,” he whispers back.
Even I have to admit that seeing them openly show affection, Kyrt’s gaze wandering back to his companion unabashedly, is making my own cock plump. Putting ideas in my head of slipping inside of Amo, if just for a feel.
None of that changes that I’m pissed.
I’m just horny now, too.
Stupid fucking incense.
“Michael tried to argue at first.” The mention of his name has my stomach dropping and my attention flipping from a wide-eyed Wilson to the inexperienced elder with a prickle to my skin.
Even Amo has gone stiff against me, as if maybe he can sense the shift.
“But he caved eventually. We’re all pretty much just waiting for him to croak so we can replace him. ”
The too-white smile aimed at me seem knowing. Too knowing. Almost sinister.
Is he implying what I think he is?
“Kyrt,” Wilson rumbles in warning, but it does nothing to deter the man from staring down his nose at me.
“Oh, I just wondered if anyone in particular would want the job.”
I don’t have to ask him for clarification on what job to know exactly what he means.
He wants the old man gone.
As do I. My life is so much simpler when he’s not in it, dictating terms and limiting me from freely moving around inside the community like he has for the last decade. But when I’m out there, in my cabin or with Wilson and the recruits, it’s just me and the decomposed. Just me and the hunt.
Freedom.
I couldn’t do it then.
No one would want me as their leader, even with as much as my father swore he’d make me when he got the chance.
So why the fuck am I considering watching the life leak from his eyes now?
“Meeting starts in thirty minutes, boys. We’ll hear your complaints then,” Kyrt murmurs dismissively like he wasn’t just asking to take out another one of the elders and turns into his partner like we aren’t even here.
What a cock.