Page 61
Story: Feral Creed
The bond inside all of us goes tight and high-pitched, like the shriek of a falcon.
The gun goes off.
15
knight
IT’S LATER.
THEREare bodies downstairs.
We have retreated to the nest, where we huddle together, guns sitting on the floor in front of the mattresses.
Lotus is in the middle of all of us and we have spent the last however long it has been frantically licking at the bite marks on her body, sometimes our own, sometimes our mates’ marks. Sometimes, I lick Arrow’s and Striker’s marks too.
We are frightened.
Someone is at the door to the nest, which is barricaded with a haphazard stack of chairs we took from the kitchen.
Before we did that, before…
There was a moment after shooting the men in the living room, where the blood short-circuited us somewhere. We turned on her, our omega, all three of us hounds, and we could smell blood on the air, and she was there, omega, and we all remembered, the voice, the other voice.
My good boys know what to do with an omega.
But our omega stopped it, easily, something I realize now she could have done all along.
We feel shame for having tried to hurt her, but we all know it will never happen again. If it does, she has the power to stop us.
The someone at the door is saying my name. “Knight, I know you’re in there. You don’t have to open the door. We can talk this way. I know you can hear me.”
I nuzzle into Lotus, who holds onto me.
I feel us, all of us, through the bond, as if we have one shared heartbeat, and it hasn’t slowed since we woke.
“Knight, it’s Theodorus. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m not going to hurt your omega. Say something.”
Say something.
I turn to look at Lotus, confused, seeking… what? Permission? Assistance?
“There’s backup on the way. The place will be crawling with police in no time. They’ve called someone from that facility you got out of. Colter? Colvin?”
“Coltrain.” It’s Calix, his voice barely audible.
“I hear you,” says Theodorus at the door. “I volunteered to come and try to talk you down. Kyvelki thinks she can help. But we need to gonow. You can’t stay here.”
I start to make sense of the words that I’m hearing, and I have a sensation, as if I’m underwater, and I’m looking up and I can see the surface above me, but distorted.
I hesitate for another long moment.
And then I fight my way up, to that surface above, and I break through, feeling sluggish and strange. My head hurts.
But I can think again. I climb out of the nest and go to the door. “Theodorus,” I say.
“Knight,” he says and he sounds relieved. “What happened?”
I don’t know what happened. I have memories of the past few days, but they are all so very strange that I can’t seem to put together anything coherent to even make sense of them, letalone find words to describe them. “We…” What? Went crazy? “Bit our omega.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61 (Reading here)
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107