Page 6 of The Howling (Monsters of the Yeavering #2)

M y prick is ram-rod hard, no matter what I do, no matter how much attention I pay it or how often it goes off. It stays in this state, aching and raw.

Since the incident with the little female where she shoved me into the oubliette, I’ve had to deal with the increased attentions of the Hartshog, the jailer of this dungeon who regularly checks to make sure I’m not attempting to escape again.

I hate the Hartshog with a passion. I fought against them in the Night Lands, so why Lord Guyzance would want such a creature in his castle is anyone’s guess. For me, I want to kill him like I killed so many. But the wily demon isn’t going to give me a chance.

Not when he has the most potent wolfsbane this side of the veil. He carries a vial of it around his neck and makes sure I know it.

Although his threats are the least of my worries. My prick is, instead, the cause of most of my troubles.

It has been hard before, but it hasn’t required much in the way of a beating since I was a youth, barely beyond being a pup.

My father had been captured and killed by the Faerie not long before they came for the rest of my pack.

The Barghest were always a threat to their power and when they saw an opportunity to deal with our kind, they did.

But such an act cannot go unnoticed. They left me barely alive, bound me with a curse and abandoned me.

Surrounded by death, the Reaper took me and made me his.

The last Barghest. The only Barghest and the singular creature filled with enough rage to be his feral proxy.

It was a way of using me and I didn’t care.

Until now. Until her heady scent fills my nostrils and I want… more .

I want her to walk past my cage. I want…

There is a rattling of metal, and I leave my prick be, rolling off the straw bedding which clings to my fur. Another thing which has been bothering me, the desire to remain in my were-hound form. It feels…better…somehow.

I cannot see the source of the noise, and what I get is the sharp smell of something which is used to clean this place.

Why anyone bothers has to be due to the Faerie lord and not of any such need. A dungeon is a dungeon, and it goes hand in hand with the dirt. He wants us to be punished which means we have to survive, not thrive.

I shake my head, snorting at the overpowering scent as the sound of water sloshing in a bucket reaches me.

The tiny female makes her way along the cages opposite me. They are all empty save for one which holds a hapless warlock, his powers stripped from him and his body broken by his time in the cage.

He is no threat to my female, but it doesn’t stop me growling and pacing.

She does not look in my direction, merely continues to slosh the water and the foul-smelling concoction within over the floor with a hairy broom.

Not quite the one she used on me last time, but similar. I rub at the place on my chest where it touched.

Where she touched me.

I’d give anything for her to do it again.

She makes her way back up past the other cages again, this time a little closer to me. Having followed her trajectory, I reckon she’ll make one pass and then she will be next to my cage.

My heart pounds. I want her as close as possible. I want to be able to scent her, to touch her even, although the multiple bars on my prison are so close together I can hardly get a claw out between them. My chances of touching her are zero.

Probably.

I watch her as she works her way down and back up again until she has to pass by my cage. Her movements have slowed, and it seems like an age before she gets close, her head bowed, concentrating on her work, on putting the water on the floor and moving it around.

Her long hair, a beautiful confusing colour, covers her face as she continues. The hem of her blue dress is soaked and clings to her feet.

“Female,” I hear myself growl.

My prick is harder than ever. Thoughts which I don’t recall ever having in my life tumble through my head, confusing and terrifying.

I want to put it inside her. Not into my hand like I have often done, but into the female.

It doesn’t seem right, but it is what I want.

She reaches my cage, ignoring the growls until finally she drops the broom into the bucket with a loud clang and faces me, hands on her hips and her incredible blue eyes glaring at me.

“You can’t eat me.”

“Want to.” The words push past my huge fangs. “Smell good.”

“I can assure you I taste horrible,” the little female retorts. “And I’m full of bones, so you’ll be picking them out of your teeth for weeks.”

I drop to my knees, making myself her height, and shove my nose against the bars, inhaling deeply.

“Eat you. Lick you. Taste you,” I manage to get past my fangs, my ability to string a sentence together somehow deserting me.

“Not happening.” She taps her foot, sending a spike directly through me to my prick.

“Hold you,” I force out.

“Nope…wait? What? Hold me?”

I don’t know the word for what I want. I don’t even know how to make her understand my desires because I don’t understand them myself.

“You…mine.”

She takes a step back from my cage.

“Lord Guyzance…” She stumbles over the name. “He’s coming down here to see you. I had to clean. That’s why I’m here.” She takes another step back.

“Reavely,” I growl. “My name.”

“Reavely,” she repeats, her face filled with fear, but I don’t know if it’s fear of me or the Faerie lord who is my captor.

All I know is the scent which rolls from her makes me want to rip this castle to shreds.

“Wynter,” she says as there is a loud clatter somewhere else in the bowels of the dungeon. “I have to go.” She grabs the bucket, and before I can do anything, she is gone.

Which means all there is left is the rage. And I let rip with it. No cage can hold me forever and I will get to my Wynter.

She will be mine.