Page 152 of My Monster’s Keeper

Every moment in that fucking cage pulses in my brain.

Every moment they kept me from her.

Every moment away from my murder.

She had a heat. She needed us.

The rage builds, and I attack. My talons flash, my teeth sink easily into flesh. I hear screams in my mind and with my ears. I tear them apart, laughing as they try to run, try to hide from me.

I’m thrown and land hard on a tree. An involuntary yelp is torn from me. I hear her scream my name, and the rage intensifies.

I shift again, fur replacing scales, my teeth longer, my claws harder. I square up with the army of shadows, and I let out a deep, low growl.

I throw myself back into it. Blood fills my mouth and coats my fur. The ground gets wet and slippery under my kills.

A momentary change in the air alerts me and the happiness inside my chest when the blond princeling and the hunter appear is unnerving enough that I almost forget about killing the Slinking-belly Rotcher before me. His form wiggles and tries to escape me, but, with one slap, I crush his spinal column, turning him into a breathing rock.

“Puppy,” Frost says when he sees me. His eyes track over me for a long moment, and I realise he’s checking for injuries.

My chest tightens, and I feel warm inside. Is this what a family is?

I stand up, and he does something even stranger. He sweeps me into his arms and hugs me tight.

“I was worried.”

It’s all he says.

My heart is beating too fast. This is odd, nice, but odd. Before I can think of what to do, he smacks a kiss to the top of my head and then steps back and spins away.

Wilder puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Good to see you free, big guy.”

I peer up at the huge Fae. He’s much older than I am, perhaps as old as Stix. Wise. He is pleased to see me?

“Why do you care?” I mean to say it angrily, but it comes out confused. The growls come out, but he seems to understand my intent clearly.

“Because we’re a, what does Stix call us? A murder? A family. We’re mates. Her mates. She is our omega, and we are her alphas. Just us. That binds us against everyone else.”

I bob my head, letting that information sink down into my soul. The beast that I am chews on the words and absorbs them. Us against them.

A fundamental change in my thinking.

Very well.

They keep on coming. I continue to tear them down to scraps of flesh, of bone, but they push us back, over and over, to the edge of the cliff.

She needs time. We just need to give him time.

I grit my teeth and wince as a wound pulls. Frost and Wilder look beaten and weakened, too, but they, like me, aren’t giving in.

“Did they send the whole of this realm here to attack us?” Wilder snaps.

I peer out at the legion of black, writhing shapes in the growing darkness.

“They come to challenge for his crown. If they can challenge while he’s weak and kill him, it’s theirs by right. It’s our laws,” I explain the little information I have gleaned over the years.

“I didn’t know you had laws.”

“We don’t have many,” I mutter and glance over my shoulder, trying to see down there. “Is he awake yet?”