Page 98 of Feral Keep

“The Stained,” he says. “Close. An hour. Maybe less.”

The word drops through my body like a stone through water. The Stained. The thing Red described three nights ago with his hands shaking and his voice flat, the ruined Shade, the venom-sick, the one that hunts bonded females for the fresh venom in their blood. Coming here. To a camp that reeks of forced venom, that has been broadcasting the scent of a chained male’s excess for weeks.

An hour. A Stained, drawn by the venom scent that’s soaking this camp like smoke. A caged feral Nethershade chained to a wall. Twenty-three women, one of them drugged and soft-bonded. A dead generator. No fences. No guards.

And Shayla, standing in the barracks doorway behind me, watching her world collapse for the second time in a week.

“Get the women out,” I say to Lisa. “Now. All of them. Into the canopy.”

Lisa moves. She’s through the barracks door before I finish the sentence. Her voice carries, sharp, commanding, the camp-voice that women obey because Lisa’s voice has never led them wrong. “Everyone up. Now. We’re moving. Grab nothing. Move.”

The barracks stirs. Slowly. Women rising from bunks, from the floor, moving with the automatic obedience of bodies trained to respond to authority. Some are shaky—the venom-dosed ones, their limbs loose, their eyes still glazed. Lisa grabs the nearest by the elbow, steadies her, keeps moving. Her hands touching shoulders, arms, backs, the camp-touch that says I have you, keep going. She’s done this before. Not this exactly, but the bones of it: getting women moving when the world is falling apart around them.

I turn to Red. “The Shade in the cage. Can you free him without a fight?”

His jaw works. “He’ll challenge me. Feral—a feral male, caged, another male entering his space. He’ll challenge.”

“Can you handle it?”

The gold eyes find mine, steady, the answer already there before he speaks: I can handle anything. Point me.

“Free him. Don’t kill him. He’s a victim, not a threat.”

Red nods. Crosses the compound toward the supply building. His stride purposeful, his wings folding tight, making himself smaller—the body language of a bonded male approaching a feral one. It might not work. The caged male might see nothing past his own rage. What I know is this: Red walked into a supply building that smells like captivity and rot to free a male who will try to kill him, because I asked. Because I said don’t kill him, he’s a victim. Because somewhere in the man who used to teach children, the word victim still carries weight.

From inside the supply building comes the roar—the territorial challenge, the caged male seeing another male enter his space. Then a crash. Then silence. Then Red’s voice, low, speaking in fragments I can’t make out—to the feral on the chain, not to me. A voice that carries presence more than meaning.

Another crash. Smaller. The chain rattling. Then: a sound I’ve never heard a Shade make. A whine. High, thin, broken. A male’s rage running up against something bigger than his cage. The whine continues, and underneath it, Red’s voice. Still low. Still present.

I turn back to the barracks. To the women. To Shayla.

“You too,” I say to her. “Move.”

“I’m not leaving my⁠—”

“Your camp is about to be hit by a Stained that can smell the venom you’ve been farming from a chained male. Move or die. Your choice.”

For the first time, Shayla’s composure breaks completely. The face underneath isn’t the administrator’s—it’s the face of a woman who is afraid.

I wait for it to feel good. Watching her crack, watching the woman who ran my whole world for four years finally look small. It doesn’t feel good. It feels like nothing sitting on top of something heavier I don’t have time to name right now, so I push it down and shove it in with everything else I can’t afford to feel yet.

She moves.

41

MAEVE

The whine breaks off into a snarl, then a roar of a different pitch, the caged Shade throwing himself at Red instead of the chain.

I’m in the compound. I can’t see inside the supply building, but I can hear it — a body hitting a wall, hard. Then Red’s voice, low, not words but sound. It’s the rumble he used on me during the rut, the vibration that says not a threat, not a threat in a language older than speech.

Every impact lands in my chest like it’s hitting me instead of a wall. Not seeing him is worse than watching. My mind fills the dark with a cracked rib giving way, a claw finding somewhere soft. My hands have found each other over my belly. There’s nothing else here to hold.

The caged Shade doesn’t listen. Another impact. The building shakes. Dust sifts from the roof joints. A plank cracks somewhere inside.

“Maeve.” Lisa’s hand lands on my arm.

She’s gotten twelve women out of the barracks. She couldn’t get all of them. Some wouldn’t come — they pressed themselves against the far wall when she opened the door and stared at the light like it would burn them.