Page 16 of Feral Keep

Through the roof opening, the mound is visible. The flowers pale against the packed earth in the last light.

The mound needs tending. The flowers are wilting. But my cock is inside my mate and the rut won’t let me pull out and I don’t want to. Tomorrow I will carry her to the mound. She weighs nothing—I will hold her against my chest with my cock buried inside her and walk to the grave and pick flowers with one hand while the other holds her in place.

Mate is in the ground. Mate is in my arms.

The dead one didn’t smell like this. Different scent. Different body. The dead one smelled like fear the whole time—from the claiming to the end, the fear never stopped. It soaked into the furs, into the warren walls, into my skin. I washed it out after. Spent days clawing the scent from the root wood. Couldn’t get it all. Some fear goes too deep.

This one smells like fear too. But underneath the fear: something else. Warm. Getting warmer.

I hold both. The grief and the keeping. The dead one waits. The living one breathes against my chest with her cracked ribs and her broken shoulder and her body that weighs nothing. She needs to get better. She needs my cum and my food and my warmth until her ribs aren’t so easy to count.

Morning.

The light changes through the roof. Grey going gold. She smells different. Not much. A degree. Still the sharp sour tang of a body running on fumes—still starving, still not enough. But underneath: something softer. Warmer. She feels better when she eats. More like mate. The food and my cum doing their work. Better. Not good. Better.

She’s awake.

I know before my eyes confirm. Her breathing changes, the rhythm of sleep breaking, the ribs expanding differently. Her muscles tense against my chest. A full-body clench. The fear hits my nose like a wall, sharp, acrid, drowning the scent that means mate in something sour. She thinks she’s in the camp. Her body thinks it’s waking up to be beaten.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t open her eyes. Lies against my chest with her body rigid and her breath shallow and the camp-fear pouring off her skin.

My cock is soft inside her. Soft but never out. The knot hasn’t unlocked—never fully does. It’s there, waiting. She gripped my cock in her sleep when I fucked her in the night. Now she’s awake and the gripping stops and her muscles lock around me instead.

I want to move. My cock wants to harden. The rut doesn’t care that she’s afraid—the rut wants to fuck her, fill her, breed her full. But her ribs are too close to her skin. Her bones are too easy to find. If I fuck her the way I need to I will break what’s left of her.

So I wait. Not for the fear. For the bones to have more between them and the outside.

Her breath hitches. Holds. A long moment where she is rigid and my cock is soft inside her. The rut is screaming at me to move. I don’t.

Then the breath releases.

Her eyes open a slit. She feels my chest under her cheek. My cock inside her, not a camp bunk, not a guard’s boot. The fear fades off her skin, not gone, just quieter. Replaced by something confused. Her body going slack against my chest. Not relaxed. Empty. She doesn’t have the calories to stay afraid.

My hands reach for the pot.

“Eat.”

Her eyes open. Gold-dark eyes, mine, looking up into whatever she sees when she looks at me. I don’t care what she sees. I hold food to her mouth and wait.

She takes it with her teeth. The jaw working on the side that still has them. The swallow. The settling, in my body, the pressure in my chest easing a fraction. A fraction. She’s eating. She’ll get better. She’ll get stronger. Her body will fill out, and I can breed her the way I need to—hard and deep, fill her until she’s dripping with my cum.

My cock hardens.

Not slow. She smells different when she eats—the tang of starvation dimming, the warmth underneath getting brighter, more like mate, better able to breed—and my cock responds before I can think about it. Thickening inside her, swelling against her walls. The tip flexing forward, pressing against her front wall with a purpose that left patience somewhere behind. My cock wants her, hard enough to ache.

She goes rigid again. The food still in her mouth. Her jaw stopped mid-chew.

“Eat.”

She chews. She swallows. My cock presses deeper and her breath catches around the food going down. Both things are happening at once—the feeding and the hardening—because my body makes no distinction between putting food in her mouth and putting cum in her belly. Both are the same ache. Both are the same need. Both are my palm pressed low on her stomach, saying more, more, more in a voice that doesn’t use words.

I need to fill her. I need to fuck her full of cum and make her better. I need her belly round with it, warm with it, need her body to stop smelling like dying and start smelling like mine.

My tail wraps around the base of my cock. Cinches.

Her eyes go wide.

I drive in.