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Samir was as anointed as she was, blood coloring his fur crimson. To Abby he was still the most magnificent male she’d ever seen. He stood before her regal as a king, his mane dripping and his green eyes burning with a fire she wanted to be remade in.

Zayman had been right, she was no hunter. Deep inside she’d been a monster all along. Perhaps that was what her own mother had seen inside her only daughter. Perhaps seeing it had convinced her that Abby needed to be controlled and tempered by marriage to another hunter. Perhaps even her father and brothers had seen it hidden behind her eyes, waiting to be set free. And now that it was, there was no going back. She understood that now.

Abby Sinclair, monster and huntress extraordinaire, stepped into Samir’s open arms relishing the connection that she felt with him and only him. She had made her decision in the desert and hadn’t even fully realized it, not until confronted with the evidence of what she would have been forced to defend no matter how sickening it was. She didn’t want that life. She wanted to protect the desert with Samir and to fall in love all over again with him every day.

“Samir?” she whispered.

“Yes, Abby?”

“I’ve already decided. Give me your sting. I chose you. I love you and want to remain in the desert with you forever.”

A soft growl echoed from his chest and his eyes slid shut as a tremor rushed through him. “Then forever you shall have, my mate,” he rasped. “And with it never shall my fire harm you for you shall be of my magic for as long as I breathe, and the salamanders roam the vast deserts.”

She heard an almost musical sound of his tail whipping through the air and the painful bliss of heat that drove deep into her belly. She knew it was his stinger but all she knew was pleasure as she fell into his arms, her fingers curling around the manacle still fastened around his neck. She continued to cling to it as he spread her beneath him, his massive body covering as he pulled free her clothes and his thick cock, already eager for her, drove between her thighs. She cried out her pleasure, her body rocking rapturously with his as the palace burned, and the columns and walls continued to crack, and stones began to fall.

They fucked to the purifying destruction of the palace, reveling it and screaming their release as the palace groaned with its final death tolls. No one saw them leave afterward or strike out across the desert, heading back to their cavern, but word of mouth spread of a monster and his monstrous wife who lived deep in the desert. That they came to the city to topple a generational legacy of cruel kings had also spread, and the people by and large believed them to be those who still continued to safeguard and preserve the people, destroying anything that threatened them that attempted to cross the sands.

They were feared and they were heroes, and in the desert Abby Sinclair and Simar reigned—with a supply of chocolate, coffee, and tea left regularly in offering, for the people had not forgotten the manticore’s favorites. Even the merchant he once accosted came to believe he was their special guardian so long as they left him offerings up on a high rock that stood well above the sands along their trade route.

And as for Abby—her parents gradually came to terms with the fact that she was mated to a monster-destroying manticore and worked to push reform through the guild that held hunters responsible for recklessly destroying sentient beings without thorough investigation to determine if an execution was warranted. Her family even made frequent desert-crossings to visit, especially once their cub came after many years of mated, monster-destroying bliss together. Abby had everything she wanted, renown as a skilled huntress, her duty, and a male and cub that she loved. Abby Sinclair lived happily ever after giving a “little death” to the monster she loved at every opportunity.

Thank you for reading The Manticore’s Fire .