Page 34 of Feral Keep

It’s the second or third piece before the care of it lands. Not the feeding—I’ve gotten used to him managing food like my mouth is something he has to think about. But the size of the pieces. The deliberate softness.

He knows. He’s been watching my jaw.

He’s been counting how many pieces I can swallow. Measuring the swelling. Tracking the exact curve of my face as the inflammation goes down. His massive talons are so gentle they barely graze my lips, and his eyes never leave the line of my cheekbone. I’m not being fed. I’m being studied by something that’s decided I’m worth the attention.

My hand comes up on its own. Just my fingers, reaching up to touch where his jaw meets his cheek. His skin is warm. Crimson under my palm, hard with the bone structure underneath. Real. Solid.

He goes still.

It’s not the stillness of him sleeping or resting. It’s the stillness of something caught off guard. His breathing pauses. His tail, coiled around my leg, goes rigid. The vibration deepens—not louder, but deeper, like his entire body is becoming a string drawn tight.

I pull my hand back. Fast. Like I’ve touched something hot.

His eyes open. Gold, slitted, fixed on my face.

“Again,” he says.

The command sits in the space between us. Demanding. And underneath it—something else. Something that sounds like need.

I don’t move. I can’t. Because touching him—choosing to touch him—is something the camps made impossible. They taught me that my hands aren’t mine to direct. That the only reason my fingers exist is to do what I’m told with them.

But he’s asking me to reach. He’s asking me to choose. He’s making it mean something.

That choice—the choosing itself—is too much to carry. If I reach again, I’m accepting something I’m not ready to accept. If I touch his face again, I’m saying yes to something I don’t have words for yet.

My pulse is going too fast for something that’s just a hand. My chest feels like it’s trying to climb out through my throat.

I don’t touch him again. I can’t. I’m already at some kind of limit, already drowning in what this is. The camp took my teeth. Took them one by one, took them as punishment, as a way of reminding me of what my body was for and what it wasn’t for anymore.

But he’s growing them back.

His cum is rebuilding me fast—faster than damaged things are supposed to repair. The pressure under my gums isn’t going to be pressure for long. In a week, maybe two, I’ll have teeth where the cult left gaps. Not teeth I was just born with. Teeth that grew—teeth that exist because his body decided mine was worth fixing.

He feeds me another piece of meat. Smaller this time. I swallow without chewing and don’t think about what it means that I can’t chew yet, can’t do the basic thing a mouth is supposed to do, and he’s solving that by feeding me like I’m something that needs managing.

I’m not managing. I’m being managed by something that doesn’t have the words for it, so he just does it—the venom, the food, the vibration spreading through his chest, all of it saying something is happening to him too.

“More,” he says, and I can’t tell if he means more food or more of my hand on his face.

But I open my mouth and let him feed me, and I don’t pull away when he presses his jaw against my cheek afterward, holding me there while the venom continues its work beneath my skin. His tail vibrates against my leg. His cock pulses inside me. Somewhere under the numbness, the press of him, something in me that’s been locked since the camps starts to crack.

Later—hours later, maybe, or just minutes that feel longer—the thirst hits. My gums throbbing with a dull ache now that the venom is wearing off, my mouth dry, my tongue thick. I need water and he’s still knotted inside me and there’s no version of this where I walk myself anywhere.

He knows before I say it. Maybe the swallow. Maybe the way my tongue moves against cracked lips. He shifts—lifts me against his chest, one arm under my thighs, the other braced around my ribs, his cock still locked deep, the knot pulling at my walls as he stands. I make a sound at the shift in angle. He rumbles something that isn’t a word.

The movement is strange. Being carried while knotted—the weight of him inside me doesn’t shift the way it would if we were untied. The knot moves with me, pulling at my walls in a way that’s not quite pleasure, not quite discomfort. It’s like being held inside my own body by something larger than myself. Each step he takes sends a subtle pressure through me. My cunt clenches around the knot and he makes a small sound—not pain, but acknowledgment.

He carries me to the water vessel. Settles into a crouch, keeping one hand anchored around my waist, the other supporting my thigh, his knot still pressed deep inside me. The stone rim of the vessel is cold against my hands, worn smooth and pale where a hundred hands must have gripped it before mine. The water is cool, filtered through stone, clear enough that I can see the bottom, the light from the cave mouth breaking into small moving coins across the surface. I cup it, drink, and the motion pulls slightly at the knot. He growls something soft and approving into my hair.

I run my tongue across the pressure-points in my gums while I swallow. The hard ridge is pushing closer to breaking through. Multiple ridges. A whole arch of teeth preparing to emerge from my bones.

New teeth.

My body is rebuilding itself. Past broken. Past just healing. Toward better.

Better is not a word the camps left room for. Better implied a future, and futures were the first thing they took, right along with the settlement, my mother, the taste of anything that wasn’t ration bread. My chest goes tight around the word anyway, hopeful and disbelieving at once, the way you’d look at food you’re not sure is real.

I touch my jaw, feeling the swelling begin to reduce. Still firm in the knot, still holding me full, his cock pulses inside me. Somewhere deeper, the base of him swells slightly in response to my touch. He likes when I touch myself while he’s inside me. He likes knowing that I’m aware of the space he’s taking up in my body.