Page 46 of Claiming Starlight
A little before the sun came back around, hitting the horizon as Avó opened the back door of the house. She always knew what was needed, left blankets, towels, and clothing for him, and bags of covered food. His battle, the wounds, and the subsequent mating left Micah with a stomach ready to dissolve his own organs if he didn’t put something in it. He ate two big plastic tubs of pasta salad, tasting nothing along the way. Shame to treat good food like that, but he couldn’t help it. It wasn’t the nutrients he needed, but it kept him from treating the meat in the bag the same way. Saved from his hunger pains, the rest went into the back old black gas guzzler.
Wrapped up in Avó’s clean blankets, Sophie dozed on the seat next to him, his fingers in her hair. She’d done well, facing his fur without giving in to her fear, taking his cock, and begging for what she needed. She’d been fucking perfect. His, Starlight.
Her readiness to take everything from him once she got out of her head was the reason she was his mate. She was made for him. Sophie might get big-eyed with shock, scared and overwhelmed by new things, but she ate up his touch like she couldn’t get enough of it, then begged for more. There was no hiding her lack of fear-scent. There was no hiding from her own words.
He couldn’t wait to get more of that.
Checking to see that she was warm and comfortable, he saw the birth control Syrinx gave them on the floor. Fuck. So much for that. He chuckled, laughing at himself. The idea of his little bit of Starlight fat with child appealed to him as a beast and with no restraint at all. He was ready to settle in, and this little girl did it for him, but she was young. He was gonna be wise about it, but that was yesterday.
Today there was so much of his cum in her unprotected little pussy that he had to put a rolled-up towel between her legs. Seeing what he’d done to her there, he almost asked Avó for an icepack. When they got back to his place, she was getting a bath, an icepack, and anything else she wanted, for sure.
If a pup showed up in ten months, no one could claim to be surprised. Well, except maybe Sophie.
So much for being wise, driving out to see the naiad, and striking his bargain. He thought he’d make her first time inside, in his bed, in his skin, with total privacy.
But the result of the battle with his old rival had left him no choice. There was no way to escape a mating hunt after killing Ranalf. The pack needed it. They needed to know they were still alive, and that they were still a pack, still shifter. They needed a tie to their old ways, from their old lives, to tie them together, and it would have been cruel to deny them that just because his mate was a virgin.
He drove to his flat with just Sophie, but Ranalf’s death and Micah’s own formal ascension gave him a refreshed sense of all the South Bloc pack connections from all the shifters. They were content.
And Sophie was irrevocably his now. Claimed in the way of his kind. She was gonna wake up and not know what to do when she discovered that meant they were as good as married for life. She’d asked about boyfriends and dating, like he was some young meat-head to play at courtship, as if he couldn’t decide what he wanted. She was so fucking adorable it hurt.
Driving home, the destroyed world glistened with a fresh, pink light. Everything was fucking rosy. He had a mate; a sweet, precious, rare woman, who had planned to live her life-giving parts of herself as a sacrifice to others. He’d spent enough time with her to know this was her identity. Baby girl wanted to give, to please, to yield, as much as she wanted security and love. Micah could do that. She made that easy.
Looking to the north, he saw a flat, floating pancake of a black cloud on the horizon, rolling in with the day in the lake’s direction, turning things red. It looked like one motherfucker of a storm front. The food Avó had given them was going to come in handy. And he was glad that she had even more leftovers for her own people, because this type of storm usually lasted a full day or two and knocked crap down on its way through.
The clouds reminded him of epic battles and power shifts among the gods back before his world had been destroyed. Shit. Had the Reaper found and judged the Morghanna already?
He hoped so. He really hoped so.
*
Two days later, Dante and Jumper rolled into the flat, smelling like the women they’d been with. The storm lasted thirty-six hours, trapping them on the other side of town. Not that Micah minded cuddling up with Sophie in privacy.
She blushed every time he asked how she felt—lied and said she was fine—didn’t want to talk about anything. Still high on her submission, his claiming bite new and red on her neck, he let her shit go. For now. But reckoning was coming, and he looked forward to that.
Dante tried to get past him to shower, but Micah wasn’t letting that slide. Little brother smelled like Liz. There weren’t that many female shifters to choose from. There never were—a genetic thing.
In his youth, Micah played with Liz, and she’d tried to come back for more a couple times. Had schemed to get into his bed, going as far as to threaten another woman Micah showed an interest in. Liz wanted power and position. Nothing wrong with that, in its way. But she wouldn’t get it by way of Micah’s cock. He told her she’d have to earn that on her own. But she didn’t need to do it through his brother either.
“You got news you think you should share before you shower and sleep for another twelve hours?” Micah asked. He shook his vanilla-cup-o-nasty protein shake in a sealed cup to mix the powdered ingredients.
“Yeah, there’s a little news. But thought maybe it came out in that fight.” Dante shifted gears and went to the kitchen to make his own drink.
Avó had once told the story of the old days when abandoned pet alligators lurked in the sewers of Old City. Micah’s people found and caught them when they could. They needed an absurd number of calories to stay strong; despite the occasional alligator, this area didn’t have the right prey animals to keep him healthy.
However, if they wanted food like that, there were plenty down South. In fact, the armored, long tooth errserra from home that shifters loved to hunt might even show up with the alligators in the warmer climates after Apocalypse Day. No one knew what was in those swampy waters. Stranger things had happened.
With few alligators and no errserra, Avó introduced Micah to high protein muscle-building shakes, vitamins, and chicken eggs, hoping to fill shifter bellies. Other than rituals, shifters did not eat other shifters or people. And they were picky. Rats, pigeons, stray pets were not gonna do it. Not every day was feast day and resources were limited, only so much of Avó’s sausage to go around. The shakes were an available, if disgusting, alternative.
So they drank nasty and smiled. Anything with a cracked seal was worthless, but like other things in the former North America, this stuff stood the test of time.
Jumper, lagging, came in a few minutes after Dante. He smelled like a human woman and another shifter. Looked like he had to share his mating-hunt prize. “I didn’t think Pek would concede without spewing all over the place like a red-blood who drank too much home brew. He turned a fine shade of green.”
“But he ate. And Eli? The others?” Micah clarified.
“Not one bit of that bastard went to waste,” Jumper said fiercely. Jumper’s older sister was with Ranalf’s pack on Apocalypse Day and didn’t arrive in South Bloc with them. Ranalf always claimed he didn’t know what happened to her. It was true, but they all knew the truth had different shades. The man would never answer why he didn’t know what happened to her, when he should.
“So we checked on all the crap you wanted us to check on. Diaz was still at the boarding house, but he took care of his brother, like you said, and sold him to the hags. He won’t be raping any girls or trying to pimp them out to any blue-bloods anymore. But you were right. That was Ranalf, too. Fucker was paying him in salt and sugar,” Jumper explained.
