Page 29 of Feral Keep

“Mine,” he says. Into my hair. Into my neck. The venom marking as he speaks. “Mate mine.”

The knot pulses. Massive. Each pulse wider than the last, the vibration climbing into my bones, making my stomach flip and flutter. His cock inside me curves and flexes, the prehensile tip seeking, testing every wall I have. The tip finds the spot on the front wall. Presses. Holds.

My hips buck, and his hand locks me down harder.

“No,” he says. Feral and definite. “Still. Need this.”

So I go still. And he works.

It’s hours. It might be minutes. Time doesn’t move the same way anymore. The knot just pulses and pulses, the vibration never dropping, my walls eventually giving up the fight and just staying open, flooded with the constant overwhelming presence of him inside me. His cum is warm. Endless. Dripping down the inside of my thigh where his balls are still pumping, pale against my dark skin in the light coming down through the canopy, the venom heat in his seed bringing the whole interior of me to a soft, humming boil.

The orgasm builds without urgency. Not chasing. Just rising. The vibration is enough. The knowledge that this is his rut need and I am the only thing that can fill it is enough. My walls start to clench. Gently. Rhythmically. His cock throbs in response.

When I come, it’s not a rip. It’s a long, rolling clench. A squeeze that holds and holds and holds. His breath goes sharp against my ear. His hand tightens on my thigh. For a moment the rational corner of me, small and sharp, knows this is his trigger, that his orgasm is tied to the feel of my walls clenching around his knot, that I’m not coming for me anymore, I’m coming for him, and⁠—

His cock pulses. Hot and thick and endless. Another flood of cum. The knot swells again, locking even tighter. The orgasm builds into something bigger, something that steals my breath, steals my thought, and leaves nothing but sensation.

I come again. Once. Twice. The contractions blend into one long squeeze that seems to drain everything that was thought or plan or strategy right out of my bones.

Then the lull.

His hand loosens on my thigh. Lifts. Comes to rest on my belly, warm and heavy, the familiar check for how much of his cum is sitting inside me. His cock softens, not weak, still thick enough that the shift moves through me when he breathes, but the prehensile flex goes lazy. The tail unwraps from his cock, slides back around my waist, the bone-white length looping once and settling there like it’s claiming the space where his arm was.

Time moves differently in the lull. There’s room for thought.

The thought that got cut off earlier finds me again now that there’s room for it. I’m coming for him. It sits in my chest heavier the second time, because in the lull I can’t blame the rut for thinking it. Somewhere between the third and fourth day, something in me started wanting his want as much as I wanted my own, and there’s no camp word for what that makes me. Useful isn’t it. Owned isn’t quite it either. It might just be small and human and exactly as dangerous as it sounds.

My ribs don’t hurt. That’s the first true thing. Not hurt less. Don’t hurt. The venom has knitted the cracks so completely that the bone underneath is strong, supporting my ribs the way ribs were supposed to, the way they haven’t in four years. My shoulder still grinds when I move it, but the grinding is just grinding now, no white flash of pain. Just resistance and the knowledge that it’s getting easier.

The hunger is different too. Not the scream of starvation. Just an honest hollow. A body asking to be fed.

He knows. His hand is already reaching, already finding the dried meat he keeps close to the furs during the lull. He lifts my head with one finger under my chin, barely a touch, and holds the meat to my mouth.

“Eat.”

I eat. The jaw works smoothly. The teeth on the good side grip and tear. Food slides down my throat and my stomach accepts it like an old friend. His free hand stays on my belly, feeling it work. Feeling the food go down, the cum still heavy there, the two filling me differently, the food nourishing, the cum claiming.

“More,” he says, simple as a fact.

I’m already opening my mouth.

It’s halfway through the third strip of meat that something breaks through the lull-haze. A want. A thought. Dangerous.

How long has he been in rut?

The thought is stupid. The thought is the kind of thought that splits focus, that makes survival harder. But it sits there anyway. Demanding. The camp-trained instinct in me knows the answer is important because ruts last, ruts are cycles, and every cycle he stays locked inside me is a cycle he’s not hunting for other females, not adding more of him to the world.

Some careful, counting part of me knows I should be satisfied by that. Relieved. Instead the want whispers something else: What if he doesn’t leave? What if the rut never ends?

The thought makes my clit pulse.

His eyes drop to my belly. To the spot where my clit is, hidden under the swell of my body. His hand is already moving, the heel of it pressing down, not hard, just enough to acknowledge the pulse he felt.

“Again,” he says. His voice is lower now, the word barely formed. “More.”

My breath catches—but I’m already getting ready for the fast fuck, and he knows it, and we both know I can.

A bird calls from somewhere below the warren—two notes, then silence.