Chapter 7
Seven
Fawn was angry.
Absolutely, incandescently angry. There had been a while in her marriage where she thought she had solved her anger, deadened it and flattened it until it no longer existed. But here it was, hot and raging.
How dare Zax be so kind? The monster who kidnapped her and ate her husband was treating her better than anyone had in her entire life: making her meals, tending to her healing ankle, drawing her a bath every day.
And how dare she, against every instinct and desire, genuinely like this creature of nightmares?
How dare she feel safe with him, this huge, hulking beast who could rip her apart with a single claw?
She had seen him do it. Zax had ripped Renly apart with minimal effort and extreme joy. And now he was letting a butterfly land on his claw while they sat on a tree branch just below the house that he had made for her.
Fawn leaned back against him, keeping her grip firmly on a nearby branch. She trusted that he would catch her if she fell. But she still felt better when she was clutching a branch and not looking at the ground looming so far below them.
“Zax,” she said as he examined the butterfly on his claw. “You said you would let me join you on a hunt someday.”
“Yes,” Zax said, admiring the butterfly’s wings in the afternoon light. “Would you like to?”
Fawn ignored him, moving on to the next question. “What if I wanted to, say, travel?”
“Where would we go?”
“It doesn’t matter. Would you say yes?”
Zax hummed distractedly. He was still examining the butterfly, its iridescent blue wings shining in the light.
“Zax,” Fawn said.
The butterfly took off. Zax looked up, his tail swishing. “What? We can go anywhere. But they do not like me in towns or cities.”
It was the reply she had expected. And still, she had to brace herself before she asked the next question.
“What if I didn’t want to have sex?”
Zax’s glowing eye widened. “Why would you not? Do you not like it anymore?”
“I like it,” she assured him. She didn’t even have to lie.
He had eaten her out several times in the days—or maybe weeks, she had lost count—that they had spent together.
He always finished himself off, and he didn’t even ask for her to join in.
Which she appreciated… mostly. Part of her was starting to hope he would ask her to use her hands on him next time. Or even her mouth.
“What if I said I wanted you to wash my clothes?” she asked next, banishing the thought of his twin cocks from her mind. “And make my food, and tend to my needs? Even after I healed.”
“I was going to do that anyhow,” Zax said with a frown. He cocked his head, his tail wrapping around her good ankle. “My love. What is wrong?”
He could smell her anger again. Fawn gritted her teeth, wiping at her burning eyes. One good thing about men was that they could never tell how she felt—they never bothered to look close enough. Now she had a man who could smell her emotions? How was she meant to hide what she felt now?
She sighed, annoyed at herself for her burning eyes. “It’s nothing. I just… I was always told that it’s a wife’s role to serve. Do you understand? I thought it was my—my duty in life to make my husband happy.”
“Oh,” said Zax in that curious tone he often used when she told him something about mortals he did not understand. “What is the husband’s role?”
Fawn laughed. “To do whatever he wants, of course!”
Zax hummed again, troubled this time. He wrapped an arm around her waist, and Fawn hated how relieved it made her feel to have him hold her. Even the fact that they were high up in a tree made it hard to justify to herself. He was a Skullstalker; she should never feel safe around him.
“Mortals are confusing,” Zax said. “Why would anyone tolerate that? If someone told me to serve them when I did not want to, I would eat them.”
Fawn had entertained the same fantasy. She could not count how many guilty fantasies she had about ripping open her husband’s flesh with her teeth and nails.
Only when he had really upset her, of course.
And she would never actually harm him. After all, he had never really harmed her.
As husbands went, he was never that bad. Just… predictably disappointing.
Then she had traveled out of her small town and realized, to her shock and mild horror, that some husbands would not bark at their wives like servants. Some husbands took their wives’ opinions into consideration. And some men—some monsters—even made it their life’s work to make their wife happy.
“Maybe you have the right idea,” Fawn said hoarsely.
Zax nuzzled her hair. Fawn winced, waiting for him to bring up its undesirable length.
“I am glad he is dead,” he said instead.
“Yes,” Fawn said softly, a dozen unthinkable thoughts racing in her head. “Me, too.”
Guilt thudded at her heart. She was lying to him.
She had to be. What kind of wife would want her husband dead?
Gone, maybe, but not dead. Not ripped apart while he screamed.
She had been horrified when it happened.
Hells, she had tried to stab the monster who did it!
But sitting here in that monster’s arms, high above the ground and underneath the house he had built for her, it was difficult to feel anything about Renly’s death but relief.
Fawn shuddered, squeezing her eyes shut. The drop below was dizzying, making her head spin. That was it—the height. Not the possibilities that had started to appear with each day that passed in Zax’s company.
“Earlier, when I asked about children,” Fawn began. “You said you could find some if I wanted them. But do you want them?”
“Children?” Zax swung his leg lazily, making Fawn clutch at the branch above them. He noticed her panic and stopped. “I do not feel an urge for children the same way I have an urge for a mate. Do you?”
Fawn ran her fingers over her injured ankle. The swelling was gone, and she had successfully walked on it this morning. Not for long, but enough to make her suspect that she might be able to make a run for it soon.
But until then… well. Then she would escape. She wasn’t really considering staying with Zax. She was just asking questions.
“Fawn,” Zax said.
Fawn fought back a shiver at his deep, attentive voice. “I don’t know. I always thought it was inevitable. Children just happen to married couples. It was my duty to give my husband children. And of course, I would love and care for them as best I could. But if someone gave me the choice…”
She trailed off. She couldn’t say the words yet. It didn’t feel real. She was going back to her real life soon, and all this would be over. She couldn’t entertain these silly fantasies.
And yet…
Distant voices yanked Fawn roughly out of her thoughts. They were barely audible, but Zax stiffened like they were on top of them with fire and pitchforks.
“What is it?” Fawn asked. “You said nobody can see us up here. Those hunters passed by easily enough.”
Zax said nothing. He was scanning the ground, which was hardly visible through all the branches. His tail was frozen around her leg, where before it had been gently stroking.
Fawn opened her mouth to ask again. Then she realized.
The voices. She knew those voices.
“They said it was holding something,” came Chastity’s irritated voice.
Then came Errol. “So what? It was probably taking its next meal back to its dungeon.”
“They said it was a woman. They said she was laughing!”
“So, Mother? You expect me to believe that my brother’s Fawn—my Fawn—would be gallivanting about with some horrid monster?”
She didn’t hear the rest. Zax scooped her up, holding her against his chest so hard that her injured leg slammed into his side.
She hissed in pain. It was much fainter than it was that first week, but still very much present.
For the first time, Zax did not stop and apologize.
He only spirited her up the tree, bounding between branches until he slipped through the window.
He even drew the curtains after, something he routinely forgot to do after a lifetime of living with no curtains or even windows.
He set Fawn in the nest, where she lay, reeling.
They knew. Someone must have spotted them and passed on the story. What would they think? Surely, they couldn’t believe she would run off with him voluntarily. Errol likely wished he had agreed to hunt Zax down after all, that he was cursing himself for letting her go.
Her thoughts slammed to a stop as she watched Zax hurry to the window and pull back the curtain to look outside. He hadn’t taken her away like that when the hunters had gone past. Only when he had heard her husband’s family.
Which meant…
Fawn stared at him, a suspicion brewing. Did he know about her husband’s family? How did he find out? Why didn’t he tell her?
Because he wants to keep you, she reminded herself. He would never give you back without a fight.
She had been so blinded by his sweetness that she had forgotten the most important thing about men—even Skullstalker men. They didn’t really care what their wives wanted. Only how their wives could serve them.
Fawn had to get out of here. She couldn’t let Zax know she had heard.
“What’s wrong?” she demanded hoarsely. “You didn’t do that with those hunters. Is it something dangerous?”
“Yes,” Zax said, still peering out the window. “Another Skullstalker. Not one that I know.”
Fawn sat up, careful of her twinging ankle. “I thought there were so few of you left.”
“There are,” Zax said after a beat. “I never expected to see another around here except Wick. But it is not Wick. It is someone new, and young, and feral. Like I warned you about. Do not look outside!”
The angry, bitter part of Fawn wanted to point out that her dull mortal eyes couldn’t possibly see her husband’s family from all the way up here. But she kept silent, as she had done so often when she knew men wouldn’t like what she had to say.