Chapter 113

Richie gladly left his cargo on the grass and helped me hold the animal’s legs still while Ivan brought the other “alpha.” Sebastian knelt quickly, growling and groping with expert, eager fingers at the terrified creature’s shoulders and neck, and before any of us could utter a word, he bared his fangs and lunged for the most vulnerable of flesh: the exposed throat. Blood gushed darkly from the wound; the muffled bellows from the deer’s snout merged with hungry snores from Sebastian’s own mouth. Richie and I held the animal still, patiently, until it stopped moving and relaxed into the embrace of death. It wasn’t quick; it took him a while to succumb to suffocation and blood loss, long minutes in which Sebastian didn’t relax the force of his bite at all.

When Sebastian sat up, his nose bloodied, he threw back his head and howled so loudly it sent a shiver up my spine. Chris joined him, Richie followed him, and I also gave in to temptation, my throat burning with the instinctiv