24. Our Fierce Hunter
TWENTY-FOUR
OUR FIERCE HUNTER
Jack
“ S hit! Seven … wait!”
But she was a naked blur ahead of me.
Great fucking job, you creeper, I snarled to the monster, sprinting across the field. The grass was long enough to slap against my thighs. I winced when it grazed my still semi-hard cock. You scared her off with your filthy mouth .
Our filthy mouth … and you weren’t planning to stop. You wanted her to see. To watch.
I snarled. I couldn’t stop, I was too far gone!
But as I charged off in pursuit of her, a tiny part of me knew that I’d enjoyed the way she’d looked at me. With hunger … with want.
Shit! the monster growled. I snapped my eyes back to Seven. Or to the tiger now galloping away, much faster than my human legs.
Let me out, I’ll catch her!
I gritted my teeth. Don’t you dare fucking … fuck her. I’ll never fucking let you out again … and given how fast she’s running after what she just saw, it’s pretty clear it’s the last thing she wants.
I promise we won’t take her like this, the monster agreed. I didn’t fully trust him, but I didn’t have a choice but to believe him, for now.
I let him take control.
Our body tingled, and as he ran, our legs pumping, we fell to all fours, muscles, and bones reconfiguring so fast that I couldn’t work out what we were shifting into.
Was it normal to be able to grow wings and also to shift into … whatever the fuck we were?
We are special , the monster informed me. He glanced down at our paws, and shock hit me.
Gold and black fur on a feline paw.
We’re a tiger, too?
The monster let out a low growl as we plunged into the trees in pursuit of Seven. This body was so fucking powerful, muscles rippling under hair and skin as we ran.
We are whatever we want to be.
The monster looked ahead at Seven’s swishing tail. She slowed, her head lifting, turning back towards us. Her tail lashed, and she turned to face us, a rumble erupting from her.
Yes, Blossom. We are.
What are you telling her? I demanded, but the monster ignored me, stalking closer to her. She held her ground, tilting her head to the side and snuffing at the air between us.
No. The boy has made me promise to behave … for today, at least.
If I had a body, in the part of my mind I was stuck inside, I would have started hammering with my fists to get out.
What the fuck is going on?
The monster rolled our eyes.
The boy refuses to merge. So he ends up stuck inside our head when I take charge.
She shook her big head, her lips parting, baring long, sharp teeth.
Are you … what, talking to her mind-to-mind? I demanded.
The monster was silent for a while as if listening.
We stay close to the cabin—it’s good shelter. But yes. We should hunt. We are hungry.
Then, to me, he added, If you want to hear what she’s saying, we need to merge.
What the fuck does that even mean? I demanded. I don’t want to be a part of you.
He rolled our eyes again. You already are, fool. We are one being, whether you like it or not. You can either continue to fight it, like you are now, and be stuck in there while I control us, or you can merge … and experience all the things that being a Shifter lets us do.
I scoffed. I don’t want to experience those things. Fucking and feeding on blood, that’s all you’re interested in.
The monster growled with our tiger vocal cords. Right now I am very interested in ensuring that we are nourished with food. And in protecting what is Mine.
Oh , so everything is ‘ours’, until it comes to her, and then it’s ‘Mine’? You’re nothing more than a hypocrite.
She is Mine, and I am you. When we merge, you’ll cease these ridiculous semantics arguments.
Not happening.
Seven huffed as if she could hear everything he was saying. And perhaps she could. But I couldn’t hear her … and I didn’t think she could hear me.
She trotted off into the forest, surprisingly light-footed and silent, given the size of her. The monster followed, keeping close, alert.
So … we’re hunting now? Are we gonna take down a fucking moose or something and just rip into it here on the forest floor? I asked. The thought of being stuck in here, a witness to the monster tearing open some animal carcass and guzzling down entrails, was fucking disgusting.
We will find some smaller game that is easy to carry back to the dwelling for you to cook as you see fit. But I am hungry now.
Seven stopped, glaring back at us over her shoulder. She breathed deep, then opened her mouth and spoke in a growly voice that sounded like it came from a fever dream … from when I’d ridden her.
“Don’t eat in this form. We hunt, we kill, we return the game to our base. You don’t want to experience what will happen when you shift back if your stomach is full of raw flesh and organs.”
If I’d had control of our body, I would have shuddered.
You hear that? Don’t you fucking make me sick just because you’re hungry and impatient.
The huffing chuckle that came out of our mouth was a little sheepish, which was fucking validating.
The boy assures me that he enthusiastically agrees with you. Is there anything else you need to say so that he will hear?
“Just … focus,” she growled. “And don’t take down anything too big. We have to be able to carry whatever we kill back to the dwelling.” With that, she stalked off once more.
Lucky she knows what the fuck she’s doing, I thought smugly.
The monster snarled as he followed her.
G ame was weirdly scarce for late summer.
Or maybe, every critter in the forest knew there were two fucking tigers who weren’t really tigers skulking around in the undergrowth, looking for fresh meat.
We followed paths of droppings, of scent markings on trees. Seven seemed to understand this instinctively for someone who had never been outside of that facility before.
The monster followed along behind her, cocking our leg against tree trunks at regular intervals.
Classy , I grumbled when he’d done it for the eighth time.
I’m making sure our path back to the cabin is easy to follow, he retorted.
Suddenly, Seven lunged forward, a stripy blur leaping onto an aspen trunk, muscles bunching, claws gouging.
We stared from the ground as she ascended through the branches until we could barely see her.
The tree shook. The monster padded forward, placing our paw on the base, peering up.
The thump of something clocking us on the head shocked us enough that the monster roared sharply and staggered backward, shaking our head to clear the stars.
Seven clambered back down, scooping something up into her mouth. The monster paced closer, peering.
A possum.
The rumble that left our throat was almost laughter.
Blossom, our fierce hunter , he murmured affectionately. Something inside us warmed. And it didn’t fade, even when she dropped the kill at our feet and took another deep breath.
“I’ll kill, you carry,” she rumbled in that tiger voice and trotted off once more.
She’ll tire fast, constantly part-shifting so you can hear her , the monster informed me darkly as he padded off after her.
I wasn’t sure what he expected me to say, so I didn’t bother answering.
O ur mouth, and Seven’s, were both full of small, dead mammals when we returned to the clearing and the cabin.
The monster had managed to catch one of them, lunging as it tried to escape down a tree trunk. I’d pointed out that he’d basically just fallen on it rather than actually hunting it properly.
The monster was not in the greatest of moods as he dropped our haul onto the edge of the porch.
I was feeling very smug from my position of having zero control over our performance out there in the forest.
Don’t you like it when a woman shows you up in the tough, outdoorsy stakes? I mocked. Where’s your feminism?
He growled, but didn’t reply. Instead, he watched as Seven dropped her kills, giving us a stern, yellow-eyed stare before stalking back into the long grass.
Where is she going? I demanded, but the monster didn’t reply, instead dragging us out of the shift as fast as we’d fallen into it.
And then our body was mine once more. Naked, and human, and filthy again, with smears of dirt and blood.
I groaned, remembering that I’d left my jumpsuit, my one piece of clothing, in a sodden heap in the outdoor shower when I’d raced off after Seven, who was returning to the cabin, dressed again in her own shabby, stained jumpsuit. She glanced up at me and then away faster than lightning, her jaw twitching.
My face burned as I covered my junk with my hands and leaped off the side of the porch. I didn’t give a fuck if I was wearing sopping wet, stinking, torn clothing. It was better than being naked in front of her.
She’s seen it all, and she was impressed with what she saw , the monster informed me.
Shut it.
I squeezed as much of the water out of the suit as I could, struggling to shove my legs into the soaked fabric. My mind replayed every second of what had happened before we both shifted, before we agreed to put our other needs ahead of … acknowledging what I’d done … what she’d watched me do.
Fuck. I really hoped that we could just pretend it never happened.
The monster chuckled darkly. She’s not going to forget that any time soon. We put on quite a performance for her .
The worst part was, I wasn’t going to forget it either. I hadn’t come that hard since … well, since I’d panicked and opened a vein for Blaire.
The way her eyes had locked onto my cock … it had felt like she was stroking me with them.
And shit. I was hard again.
She might like to do more than watch this time , the monster cajoled. I ignored him.
She’d been forced to let males fuck her for who knew how long—that had to have screwed with her … traumatized her. I didn’t want what came with fucking, knowing that she was apparently ‘Mine’.
And given we’d both drunk each other’s blood, Baxter had been trying to get us to Join, or whatever the fuck it was called. I couldn’t risk it.
Not that I would ever try anyway. I mean, how would that even go? Would I just walk up to her, this girl who had been kept in a fucking vault her entire life and subjected to who knew what sort of fucking experiments on top of the rapey ones, and say, ‘Hey, I’m horny, wanna bang?’
The monster’s ire was like heat scorching my insides.
We have more game than that. Remember how we made Hannah Briggs moan so loud her mother thought she was having an epileptic fit?
Oh my fucking God. Not the time to bring that up! I grumbled. Because now all I could think about was the sweet, floral scent of Seven’s arousal. Couldn’t stop thinking about tasting that, about pushing my tongue inside her, drinking every drop of her.
I pushed the image from my mind as I forced my dick inside the wet jumpsuit and dragged it up over my torso and shoulders, zipping it. At least the cold and damp fabric helped to ease my boner. Slightly.
“Are you decent?”
I glanced up to see Seven standing at the corner of the cabin. Her face was tight, pale under her tawny skin. She was covered in dirt and blood. Her eyes were anywhere but on me.
“Yep. No exposed dangly bits,” I replied without thinking. Her cheeks colored just slightly. She glanced at me and then away, towards the forest behind me. Her eyes flickered, her jaw twitched. Both hands pumped in and out of fists.
She’s afraid of the outside , the monster observed. Agoraphobic.
Well, you can’t exactly blame her. She was stuck in that fucked up place her entire life.
I wasn’t blaming her … she’s impressive, to be coping with it as well as she is.
That weird, warm feeling was back in my chest again. Fucking monster and his extreme emotions.
Our extreme emotions.
“You coming to help gut these carcasses?” Seven snapped.
“Well, there’s a sentence guaranteed to help a guy lose his boner,” I muttered, even though I was secretly glad that she’d interrupted the monster and his—his, not my—feelings.
I started towards the porch.
You ever filleted a small mammal before? the monster asked. Oh, wait. I know the answer to that, because I AM YOU … this is going to be so much fun to watch.
Fuck off.