Page 342 of Pucking Feral: Part Two

This one goes better. He catches fewer noodles, tips his head back sooner, and swallows them almost whole. Broth runs between his teeth and down his chin. He wipes it away with the back of his scarred hand.

I finish my noodles and set the bowl beside the fire.

Valek somehow eats both trout, stripping every bone clean while firelight slides over his bare chest and catches on the scars scattered across his body. His swollen lip makes him look even more criminally attractive.

Across from him, Wraith drains the last of his broth straight from the bowl before setting it aside. He stretches his enormous legs toward the fire, forearms resting across his thighs, rain still glistening on the scarred planes of his chest.

Two shirtless, scarred alphas beside a campfire.

I'm one lucky omega.

I stand and stretch, the blanket slipping down my back. Wraith’s gaze tracks the exposed curve of my spine before snapping politely toward the trees.

Cute.

Valek doesn’t bother pretending. His silver eyes drag slowly from my bare legs to my face. “Cold?”

“Nope. Not with this glorious fire.”

I gather the blanket around my shoulders and go back to the cooler. “I’m going to make s'mores."

The fire is perfect for it now. Valek built the base wide, and Wraith’s campaign against every dead tree he could drag to the campsite has given us a thick bed of glowing coals beneath the flames. I skewer three marshmallows on long forks, hand one to Valek and one to Wraith, and start rotating mine slowly over the heat.

"Thank you," Valek says, even though I don't know how he could possibly have room after two trout—the man is lean—and he immediately sticks his straight into the fire.

It ignites, a bright blue-and-orange flame eating the entire marshmallow in half a second.

He stares at it in dismay.

Wraith watches the burning marshmallow with deep concern, still holding onto his. You should put that out.

"It's fine, Snow White. I'm not going to burn the forest down with all your woodland friends in it," Valek promises him, dropping the goopy charcoal mess into the dirt and dropping a rock onto it to put it out.

"You're supposed to roast them," I say, holding mine higher over the fire. "Like this. You don't have to cremate it. Low and slow. You want it golden."

Valek spears another marshmallow and reluctantly holds it beside mine, following my instructions with an unnecessary amount of focus to make sure he doesn't fuck up.

Wraith doesn’t try just yet. He leans forward with his forearms braced over his thighs, blue eyes moving from the marshmallows to the graham crackers and chocolate laid out on the cooler lid.

The wariness is back.

"You want me to roast yours?" I ask him as Valek's second marshmallow ignites. I ignore the stream of curses in Russian and him smashing the marshmallow into the ground again.

He shakes his head and takes the remaining fork, reaching for a graham cracker. He turns it over in his scarred hand, studying the perforated lines, then snaps it neatly in half.

I resist the urge to watch directly and focus on crisping my marshmallow to perfection instead, but I can see him out of the corner of my eye. He sets the pieces on his thigh and adds chocolate, then skewers a marshmallow. His hands are steady while he assembles it, but his movements are stiff.

He holds the marshmallow well above the flames, copying exactly where I had mine. His eyes track it as he rotates the fork carefully, keeping his head turned down slightly, like he's ashamed of how he looks in the firelight.

Valek’s third marshmallow goes up in flames.

“For fuck’s sake,” he growls.

Wraith jerks away as Valek waves the burning marshmallow too close to his arm.

I snatch the fork and blow it out. The surface is black and blistered, but the inside is probably okay.

Valek takes it back. “Perfect.”