Page 37 of Feral Keep

Something ugly turns over under my ribs at the marks. Sharp. Useless—whoever left them is already out of my reach. The feral brain doesn’t do justice. It does mate is broken, fix. And fix and fix until the broken thing is whole again.

“Sleep,” I tell her.

She’s almost there anyway. Her body is heavy with cum and food and the satisfaction of orgasm. The rut lets her rest because rest is part of the cycle too—rest and feeding and my knot bringing her closer to complete healing.

I stay awake. The rut doesn’t sleep. But I hold her against my chest. Her breathing rises and falls against me. Her heartbeat is steady now, steadier than it was. The satisfaction holds.

This works.

My living mate. My bond that holds.

The morning breaks too bright. Sun through the woven roof. I wake hard, my cock aching, my tail already searching for her before my eyes open. She’s pressed against my stomach, one arm thrown across my ribs. Her skin is warm. Good warm, not fever-warm.

She stirs when I move to position her. The rut has a rhythm all its own, and my body’s learned it by now. Her body knows what to expect. She tips her hips back, finds the angle. My cock fits into her like she was always meant to wear me.

Wet. So wet. The slick is copious, thick, her body preparing for the flood.

“Morning,” she mumbles.

“Mine,” I say.

It’s not a complete thought but it’s all the words the rut allows. She is. Completely. The bond wraps around both of us now, not tender but solid. Not safe—nothing about this is safe. But right. The rightness of it settles into my bones.

I drive into her. No preamble. No slow build. My cock is already desperate, already flooding with the need to come, and she takes it without hesitation. Her walls welcome the pressure. Her body opens.

My tail cinches. The pressure in my balls spikes faster now, the rut learning the pattern of her body, the rut learning her cues.

She comes before I do. Her cunt clenches and pulls. My knot locks. I flood her. My hand finds the curve of her stomach—the weight of my cum inside her, holding, staying.

Good.

The system is working.

My mate eats. My mate sleeps. My mate learns to come. Her bones knit. Her scars fade. The starvation scent that meant dying things is replaced by the scent of keeping.

I stay inside her while my knot holds, my forehead against her neck, breathing her in.

Everything is right.

Everything is exactly where it should be.

16

MAEVE

The second week is turning.

Somewhere behind the stone, water drips in a slow, even rhythm I’ve learned to sleep through, and the cave smells the way it always does now—packed earth, old woodsmoke, the dense warmth that’s just him settled into everything, the furs, my own skin. He’s feeding me again, the dried meat tearing easy between my teeth now—both sides, not just the side that didn’t break. The jaw works smooth, not fully healed yet—a tender edge where the new teeth are crowding in, where the bone is still knitting, but the pain is the pain of growth, not the pain of breaking.

I’m stronger.

It’s the kind of thing that sounds like nothing until you’re the one it’s happening to. A week ago my ribs were a xylophone. The skin stretched so thin the bone underneath looked like it was trying to climb out. Now when he wraps his hand around my waist, the rut-lull, after the knot softens but before the fast fuck, there’s flesh underneath the bone. My shoulders have weight again. When I lift my arm to reach for the meat he holds, the muscle doesn’t shake.

The grey is lifting from my skin too. I catch it in my reflection in the dark water of the pool at the back of the cave—the surface still as glass, undisturbed. The sallow brown is warming, pulling actual color back in. I’m not a ghost anymore. Just a girl who was starved and is being fed. Just a girl whose body is learning what it means to not be breaking.

“Swallow,” he says, more statement than command—a fact he’s checking. My throat swallows. The meat goes down. The walls of my throat don’t fight it anymore.

He watches. His gold eyes track every movement. Every breath. The venom marks on my neck are fading to scars but he keeps refreshing them, the punctures opening easy, the venom seeping in, the marks staying fresh. His marks. They’re the visible proof that I belong to something that isn’t dying.