42. Red
RED
The Stained doesn’t dodge. Corrosion ate whatever should live behind those jittering eyes and left blind hunger in its place.
My shoulder catches it mid-chest. The impact throws us both into the dirt, my claws already raking for purchase, for anything that ends this before it turns toward her again.
Its scent floods my throat, venom soured past use, sweetness curdled into rot. My body wants to gag on it and fight through the gagging at the same time.
It gets a claw into the forearm the caged male already opened. The pain sits distant and unimportant. Nothing matters more than keeping this thing pointed away from Maeve.
I roar into its face. Not challenge. Warning. Stop. You will not reach her.
It doesn’t stop. The sickness in it leaves no room for reason, and hunger can’t hear a warning. Its jaw snaps toward my throat. I get a forearm under its chin and force the head back, feel the tendons strain against my grip.
Thirteen years feral taught my hands what my mind forgot how to say. They remember this. The angle. The pressure. The moment a spine gives if I commit the weight behind the twist.
I commit.
The Stained goes limp under me all at once. The jittering eyes finally still.
I stay crouched over the body one more breath, my chest heaving. The stink of its ruined venom clings to my claws and my skin and the inside of my throat. I want to be away from it. I want to be at her side more.
I find her against the barracks wall where I left her, hands laced over her belly, her whole body held upright by will instead of ease. Alive. Whole. The twins still inside her, safe.
I cross the compound in four strides.
She doesn’t flinch from the blood on me. She never does anymore.
“It’s dead.” My voice comes rough, scraped raw by the roar. “You’re safe.”
Her hand finds the gash on my forearm and presses careful fingers to the edge of it, like she could close it by touch alone. I let her. The arm doesn’t need the tending. I need the hand.
The compound has gone quiet. Lisa’s voice carries from the tree line, counting heads, herding women deeper into the canopy. Shayla stands apart from all of it, watching me. Whatever is in her face, I don’t need to read it.
I press my palm flat against Maeve’s belly. Both heartbeats are there, quick and steady, undisturbed by everything that happened six feet from them.
Mine. Still mine. Still here.
“Time to go,” I tell her, and pull her toward the trees.