“Once you are healthy, they’ll come around,” Wren said, applying the swab to the wound with haste.
Vash hammered his teeth together, thick beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “That is the hope.”
Wren tossed aside the bloody cotton swab and taped down the fresh gauze. Vash looked down at the wound and nodded. “I know you have hopes, too,” he said.
“I am in heat,” she said reaching for his rising shaft.
“We will snuff it out of you before he can.”
Wren curled her head against his chest, providing him with a view.
“I want autonomy within the pack,” she said. “Once the baby is delivered, of course.”
Vash didn’t know how to take this, but he was too weak to argue. “Consider it done,” he groaned.
Eyes lighting up with childlike excitement, Wren hugged his stiffened neck, hand stroking his dripping shaft. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You’re our special girl. Remember that the next time you want to act up,” he said.
Vash closed his eyes and let the obedient kitten lap up the milky surplus. She was special. More special than she thought.
Chapter Ten
/>
“Think he’ll make it?” Lucas asked as they walked through the crowded arena.
Killian’s eyes scanned the bodies for Cassian’s tags, praying to the gods that no one familiar showed up. The truth was he didn’t have anybody else except for the pack. When Vash found him, he was a young soldier without a family. His village had been torched, and Cassian had brutally slaughtered the elders. Vash promised him revenge. For that reason alone he felt indebted to Cassian’s brother.
“I’m… optimistic,” he grumbled.
“We can only keep running for so long before they catch us. You saw him. He can barely move,” Lucas said.
Killian turned the corner and shook his head. “We made an agreement,” he said.
Lucas stepped in front of him. “And you’ll keep to that agreement?”
Sucking in a breath, Killian ran his palm over his close-shaven scalp. “You remember what he told us about the girl. The three of us need each other.”
Lucas seemed to agree with this. Before they reached Aidrick’s bunk, they both paused. “You ready?” Killian asked.
Without answering him, Lucas pushed through a thin curtain of beads. The two met a thin and wavering omega, clearly unfed and on the last threads of her life.
She sat in a medium-sized cage, blonde hair combed behind her ears with luminescent slick. It was clear she had been used to her full abilities and then some. A twisted smile formed on her face before she greeted them.
“A ride is fifty chips, no less. You pay up front, or it’s double and stamped to your thumbprint,” she said.
“Aidrick,” Killian clarified.
“Aidrick is out right now,” the woman said, spreading a leg open. “But I can help you.”
Lucas cuffed his palm around his revolver and aimed the barrel at the woman. “We will wait for him quietly,” he said.
The woman startled back and gagged on her words. Loudly clamoring against the thin metal bars, she alerted Aidrick of the men’s presence with a shrill cry.
Killian pulled out his gun and started for the back of the room. As he pushed through another set of curtains, he saw Aidrick startle out of bed with a custom rifle.
“Killian,” he said, blinking his bloodshot eyes rapidly. He dropped the gun. “You can’t be here. Your pack has been the talk of the sector.”