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“You sick fuck.” The insult slips out before I can stop it. “That's her husband.”
A slow shrug rolls through his broad shoulders. “Perhaps. Now he is food.”
This creature sounds… nothing like Orion. No broken sentences, or head tilting in confusion and curiosity. If anything, this mangled-faced beast watches us both with an air of apathy that has me cowering back against the wall.
I glance toward Paula again, who still hasn't blinked. She simply stares at Earl as though her mind has abandoned her body, leaving behind an empty shell. “Paula, look at me.”
Still, nothing. She might as well be as dead as the sheriff lying on the floor.
“She will eat when she is told,” the monster growls threateningly.
“What do you want with us?” I shout, balling my hands into fists. Before I can react, a massive hand smacks me so hard across the face that I go flying.
Stone slams into my shoulder before the side of my head bounces off the cavern floor. A high-pitched ringing drowns out everything else as I lie there, blinking through the dark spots dancing in my vision.
Warmth trickles from the corner of my mouth. The side of my cheek throbs where he'd struck me. Every heartbeat sends another pulse of pain through my jaw, and when I gingerly prod it with my tongue, I let out a relieved breath. No broken teeth, at least.
The monster strolls toward me without the slightest hint of urgency. He crouches until we're eye level, and one enormous hand wraps around my throat with just enough pressure to remind me how easily he could snap my neck.
“I do not owe prey answers,” he rumbles.
“Then why keep us alive?” I rasp with watering eyes.
His nostrils flare as he studies me. Slowly, one claw hooks beneath the collar of Dennis's security jacket and lifts it just enough to expose the embroidered name stitched above the pocket. “Blood,” he says.
“What?”
His gaze shifts past me to Paula. “Her blood.”
She finally blinks, reddened eyes tearing away from her husband's body.
The monster releases me and stands tall, looking down at her with unsettling intensity. “She is the last living descendant of my mate's line.”
Massaging my sore throat, I let out a cough. “Your... mate?”
“She is long dead,” he says dryly. “Her blood is not.”
When I glance down at Dennis's name, it all starts to finally click into place. All the sightings, the times he felt this creature watching him in the dark. Stalking him. Maybe even explains why the thing nearly killed me in my car if it thought I was a threat. But…
“Paula and Dennis make sense,” I murmur, looking back up at the monster. “But me… you're keeping me alive for what? This jacket?”
A cruel, sinister smile creeps across his scarred face, his lone eye boring into me. “No. You are alive because you smell like kin.”
Cold shivers crawl the length of my spine. “What does that even mean?”
Genuine amusement flickers unsettlingly across his face. “It means,” he growls, crouching down once more, “that my progeny has claimed you.”
My nose wrinkles. “Progeny? Like… You mean Orion?”
“You carry his scent.” The beast's nostrils flare as he inhales deeply. “His mark. And something more.”
I go rigid when a claw taps against my stomach. The touch lingers for only a heartbeat before he withdraws his hand. “What are you talking about?”
“Within you, human, my blood continues.”
Staring at him blankly, I focus on those two words.
My blood.
