Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(12)

"No, I'm good."

Lyon clapped him on the back, slipped his arm around Kara's shoulders, and turned to leave.

Wulfe went to stand by the cage with the brother and sister, his gaze lingering on Natalie's tear-streaked face. A lightness filled his chest at the thought that for once, he looked damned close to normal. At least in the eyes of this woman. It was a novel experience.

Behind him, he heard the other female, Lip Ring, stirring. He turned slowly, watching as she sat up, as she opened her eyes and stared at him.

As she screamed.

Chapter Three

"Hi, Mr. McCloud. How are you feeling today?"

As Ariana strode into the ailing patient's hospital room, the elderly human looked up. Eyes tight with pain lit with pleasure at the sight of her.

"Hi, pretty girl. Did you finally transfer down here to the oncology ward?"

"No, I'm still in maternity." The poison inside her leaped to feed on the poor man's pain. Goddess, she hated feeding on others' misery, though it didn't hurt them. She took nothing from them and gave back what she could. "I'm off work and heading out, but I wanted to stop by and see you, first. I hear you're leaving us tomorrow."

He nodded, his face a mask of resignation. "Hospice. There's nothing more they can do for me here."

Stage-four bone cancer. Not only was he the quickest feed, but she'd learned he had little family and far fewer visitors than the others on the ward. So they gave to one another, though only she understood the true nature of the exchange.

An Ilina's natural energy was pleasure, not pain. But the poison inside her was another matter--a living thing that demanded the misery. Long ago, she'd discovered that the hungrier the darkness became, the less able she was to control it.

She gripped his frail hand. "I'm sorry."

"Me, too." He was silent a moment, then visibly shook off the pall. "Tell me about the Orioles. I hear they won."

As much time as she'd spent among humans these past centuries, she'd come to know and understand them well. She never failed to be humbled by the depth of their courage in the face of impending death.

"They did. They beat the Mets seven to six." She'd never acquired much of a taste for human sports, but Mr. McCloud was an avid baseball fan, and she kept tabs on the games so she'd have something to talk with him about. Something that might take his mind off his own terrible pain.

"You should have seen them in '96. What a team." While Mr. McCloud regaled her with stories of the Orioles' pennant race, the poison inside her exhausted body feasted.

For most of her years in exile, she'd acted as a midwife or maternity nurse, her Ilina nature feeding off the joy of childbirth even as the dark poison gorged on the accompanying pain. But sometime over the past couple of years, the balance had tipped. Either she was growing weaker, or the darkness inside her had grown in strength. Her feeding had had to grow along with it.

Deep inside, she felt a fluttering of panic that she was losing control. The fear that, after all these years of struggling to hold on, her strength would fail before Melisande caught the Mage sorcerer and forced an antidote from him.

And now, to make the disaster complete, Kougar was back, demanding explanations and aid she couldn't provide, their mating bond reconnected and endangering his life all over again.

She felt beaten, pummeled by emotions that had her torn between screaming and crying ever since Kougar walked back into her life three days ago and turned it upside down. She ached at the pain she knew he was in over the impending deaths of his friends. Yet she could do nothing. Nothing but ensure that he continued to hate her.

Letting his friends die ought to seal that hatred for eternity. Maybe someday she'd be able to make it up to him, when this nightmare was finally over. When they were both free of the threat of the poison.

It would happen. Melisande would find the bastard. Though she'd been saying that for nearly a millennium, she couldn't give up hope that someday this would all be a bitter memory. For a long time, she'd thought Kougar would be part of that future. Now she wasn't so sure.

If she didn't keep him hating her, he wouldn't be alive to see any future at all.

As the elderly patient's voice slowed, his eyes beginning to droop, Ariana patted his hand. "Get some rest, Mr. McCloud. You have a busy day tomorrow."

His eyes softened. "I won't see you again, pretty girl. Thank you for brightening an old man's last days."

Ariana bent down and brushed his cheek with her lips. "You'll have the best seats to all the games, soon."

His eyes crinkled. "From on high. I'll save you a seat, though you won't be needing it for a good many years."

He had no idea. She'd already lived nearly thirteen hundred and might live thousands more, despite her current inability to turn to mist. Killing an Ilina queen required cutting out her heart, which took a speed and slyness few possessed.

Ariana smiled softly, sadly. "Save me that seat." With a squeeze of his hand, she grabbed the purse she'd left on the chair by the door and headed home, her heart heavy, but the poison back under control. For a while.

The night was cool, a light fog blurring the edges of the streetlamps that lit the parking lot. As she made her way to her car, she shrugged, trying to ease the tension twisting her neck muscles, a tension she laid firmly in the lap of the mate she'd hidden from for a thousand years.