Marked by the Predator

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Marked by the Predator Page 12

by Milana Jacks


  Screens pop up all around him, showing us the terrain Feli designed for the games. I recognize some local places here in the village, others in the middle of nowhere inside Ra territory, and one that looks familiar, as if it’s one of our villages in the south.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I ask Mas. If it is one of our villages, then Feli is telling us he has a portal hidden inside our territory.

  “Possibly, but I can’t be sure. I gotta get in there.” Feli might have breached a territory inside Ka land, one that contains Mas’s portal controls. While we all have entry points into each other’s territories, we keep them secret so that our spies can safely move in and out of enemy land.

  “Fuck. It could be a trap, Mas.”

  “I know, but I have to check it out anyway.”

  “You could get stuck in there for spans on end.” If it’s an illusion, a replica of our land to lure Mas and me into it, we’d get stuck inside a dead-end portal leading nowhere. Such illusions are hard to breach and could prove deadly if there’s no way out.

  “Don’t worry about me. Worry about Gur.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s not here, and separating us works to their advantage.”

  Mas presses a claw over his lips and taps them. “Where’s the prize?”

  I shrug as if I don’t care while my fingers itch to reach into my pocket and pull out the prize’s underpants, a piece of red cloth that hides the place between her legs. The scent has faded since I first found it, so I can’t wait to sniff straight from the source. Just thinking about the smell makes me hard.

  I adjust my erection.

  Mas taps his nose, telling me he can smell I’m hard, and no amount of lying would convince him otherwise. Our Kai, the alpha of my tribe and my brother, sent me to kill Gur. If I can secure the prize, the womankind, in the process, that’s great. But if I can’t, Gur takes priority over the games. I should be worrying about where Gur is and not when I’ll get to see the prize and how I’m gonna sniff between her legs.

  “One hundred ninety-two males entered. Closing the games in…” Feli lifts a hand and counts. “Five, four, three…” I search for Gur.

  “He’s not entering,” Mas says.

  “Fuck.” The games get deadly out there. It would be easy to eliminate Gur. Out here, killing a Ra earl could incite another conflict. If he won’t enter, killing him with nobody seeing me do it becomes almost impossible.

  Feli closes the entries to the games, and the bitchhole Ra cheer. Pissed, Mas and I growl low in our chests. We expected Gur to enter. An Earl usually enters even when he doesn’t want the prize. It’s a show of support for his people and makes for fantastic competition because everyone wants to beat up their superior for fun and games. Normally, you couldn’t beat up an earl, or a Kai, in our case, or he’d kill you. That’s why the games are fun. They always have been and always should be. But over the turns, our people and the Ra alike have grown so bloodthirsty that we don’t know what fun means anymore.

  Even my brother killed our own males during our games a few spans ago. It set a bad precedent, but I trust he did it because they left him no choice. I heard those males were protesting because he admitted a Ra tribal alpha into our games. It rubbed some of our males all wrong, and a sub-tribe formed, intent on killing my brother. During our last war, Ark, the Ra tribal Alpha, killed more of our males than I have of his, and that’s saying something. Despite that, my brother let him compete and even let him win.

  Rain pelts the weapons strapped around my waist, drops hitting the hilt of my dagger and ringing in my ears. I rest a hand on the hilt and wipe water off my face. It accumulates again, and I shake my head, annoyed I’m getting wet. Mas secures his hair at the back of his head and shakes off his body. We’re predators, hunters, and we dislike standing in the rain.

  The Ra males start growling.

  Everyone’s getting irritated because Gur’s taking forever to bring out the prize. It’s on purpose, I’m sure, to get us all worked up and agitated. If he’s not competing, then he’s watching the games and monitoring with Feli, sitting right near the prize, guarding her so nobody steals her. I snort. As if any male would stoop so low as to steal a prize instead of winning her fair and square.

  Between the grunts and growls, I hear the males on the other side of the podium cheering, so something’s coming. The crowd parts, revealing a moving green feather. Gur’s easy to spot as he’s always got this green decoration on top of his head. He thinks his mother was descended from Herea, goddess of the hunt, so he wears the bird’s feathers.

  Gur climbs the platform, wheezing a bit over his bulging gut. He’s been eating well, slowing down. He couldn’t compete even if he wanted to. Fitness is everything in the games, and the female will take notice of mine. Naturally. I’m fucking fit.

  “Where’s the girl?” I growl, then stare, needing no answer because Gur’s climbing up the stage holding a leash attached to a female who’s crawling behind him.

  Silence falls over the camp. Even Mas adjusts his erection. A female on a leash teases our darkest fantasies, the ones I believe every male in the lands harbors since a very young age. We just haven’t ever seen it play out in front of our eyes.

  “Don’t even think about competing for real,” I hiss into Mas’s ear.

  He purses his lips, eyes twinkling with lust.

  “I mean it.”

  “Quiet while I work out what I’m seeing. I can’t believe he brought her out this way. It’s so wrong.”

  “They’re gonna want her bad.”

  “More reason for you to figure out how to kill Gur now and not compete at all.”

  “Yeah, let me just arrowhead him from here and walk away.”

  Mas chuckles.

  We are so fucked. And not only because Gur is practically unkillable now. Ever since I found the underpants, I knew I wanted to sniff where the smell came from again. It’s a breeding instinct, nothing more, nothing less. And I expected the same sort of female as my brother’s female. But this one is smaller, thinner, with long black hair that’s dragging in the mud left from Feli’s boots over the platform. She’s wearing blue pants like my brother’s female, and a white shirt.

  As she climbs the chair and sits with her head down, instinctively, I move toward her. Mas grabs my wrist. Turning toward Mas, I snarl when Feli shouts, “The prize!”

  His shout breaks through some of the fantasy fog in my brain and brings me back to reality where we are two males against two hundred, not to mention the other two hundred are spread out between the camp and the village.

  “We need to stay alive,” Mas hisses, then releases my wrist. “Get it together.”

  I roll my shoulders and return to my place beside him. “Maybe she’s ugly.”

  He snorts.

  Yeah. If she’s anything like my brother’s mate—small, cute, submissive, with round, colored eyes and a perky nose—I’m fucked. Huddled in on herself, wet black hair shielding her face, she rubs her arms, looking lost and alone on a chair large enough to fit a grown hunter. Gur tucks a claw under her chin and forces her to lift her face. She slaps his hand away and leans as far as she can away from him. Which isn’t very far.

  He tries again, and she leans away more. At this rate, she’ll fall off the chair. Gur grabs her by the throat and moves her hair away from her face, then steps back.

  Pale face. Small nose. Pretty plush lips, colored blue-gray unlike red as I’ve seen on other humans. Slanted eyes with black irises in stark contracts to the white around them.

  “Real ugly,” Mas says.

  “Mm-hm.” I give him a side-eye, and sure enough, Mas is staring at her.

  “You can’t compete for real,” I tell him.

  “Neither can you,” he reminds me. “Make it look good, but you’re here for Gur’s blood.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He glances at me and grunts.

  The female turns her head, and we lock gazes. The world vanishes, and my heart beats loudly. I h
ear it in my ears. My hunter, as if waking up, takes notice of the female, stirring my bones, making my muscles relax.

  Mas slaps the back of my head.

  I wince and slap him back.

  He points to his eyes. “Eyes off the prize, hooker.” Hooker is a derogatory term for a male who releases a hook and marks a female. A selfish male who wants a female only for himself. Both my father and brother are hookers. I’m no hooker. Just because I find her attractive and pitiable on that platform doesn’t mean I’m gonna compete in the games. And it definitely doesn’t mean I’m gonna mark her…Read more!

  Alpha Breeds teaser

  Alpha Horde book 1

  Kingsley

  I get my phone and angle it for a selfie. The bright glare behind me is messing with my picture. I turn around in my chair and see something glowing on the floor. Oh, someone dropped their phone. Holding my cup carefully, I creep through the bushes to the fence, then set the cup down. This isn’t a phone. It’s a light coming out of thin air and expanding. “What the hell?” I slur. Someone must have slipped something into my drink. Fuck, I’m tripping. Better go back and sit in my chair.

  I freeze and look around. I’m sitting on something soft. I look down and around, and it’s a bed. A huge bed supported by a carved black headboard and footboard. It’s a room, and it smells…sexy. My nipples perk. Holy crap, I’m turned on. Oh, shit, someone really slipped something into my drink. It’s making my body buzz and making me see crazy things. How did I get here? I was just gonna go back and sit in the lawn chair. Where’s my beer?

  There’s a single nightstand, brown sacks on the floor, and some animal rugs. I have no clue what happened. I don’t see a door either. Nothing but dark green walls made of no material I’d ever seen before. They’re deep green, almost black, with gray scratches and cracks that look like wear and tear. I dare not speak in case a serial killer drugged me and stashed me somewhere in his den. Or maybe he’s got an underground house where he’s gonna skin me and make clothes out of my hide.

  I try not to breathe as I scoot over the covers. I swear these things are made of skin too. It’s not cotton under my fingertips, the bedding feeing more like leather. I get to the headboard and prop my hands on it, then lean over to see the floor. It’s something like cobblestone. Dungeon. Someone stashed me in their dungeon of horrors.

  Or I could still be sitting in the green lawn chair and tripping about the dungeon. Oh man, this is some seriously fucked-up shit.

  A click sounds, and the wall in front of me slides open.

  My heart stops.

  My breath ceases.

  There is a monster at the door. A seven-foot-tall sage-green creature with pitch-black eyes, no ears—no ears!—a short nose, protruding cheekbones, and a forehead that blends with his scalp because he’s bald on top. We stare at each other for what feels like forever. At least he’s blinking. I’m not doing anything. I’m frozen and yet hyperaware my body is buzzing with something. It’s as if ants are running all over my skin and making my nipples hard.

  The monster lifts his face. His nostrils flare, and he tilts his head as if confused. On the bed, I back up and hit the headboard. Nowhere to run. He’s blocking the only exit. When he steps inside the room, all bets are off.

  I scream at the top of my lungs and spin around. At the wall behind me, sharp objects I recognize as weapons are stacked on the shelves. I grab the first thing I can reach, a sword, maybe, and swing. It falls at my feet. Too heavy. I grab something smaller and throw it. The sharp circular thing spins toward the monster.

  He turns emerald green. Some sort of…body plates form over his body. They’re like reinforcement plates for his abundant muscles, and they cover every inch of him. The sharp weapon I threw bounces off. I scream like a banshee, reaching for everything on the wall, throwing things at him, but he stands there as if I’m not even trying. Then he peels back his lips and shows me four sharp four-inch-long canines, a pair of them on each side of his mouth.

  He opens said mouth. The sound that comes out is unlike anything I’ve ever heard, aside from horror movies, of course. I scream back, now in tears. “Oh my God, save me. Oh my God, what is that? Oh my God, this is the worst trip of my life. I swear I’ll never take drugs or drink again. Please, please, take me to the hospital. I can’t take this.”

  I sit on the bed, pull my knees toward my chest, and cover my head. I rock back and forth for a bit, then look up. Oh Lord, the monster is still there. At least his body is back to sage green. The emerald body plates no longer cover his muscles.

  “I’m tripping hard,” I tell him. “And I’m terrified. Is Jill around?” Monsters don’t exist. He could be a frat boy I don’t remember meeting, and I’m the crazy bitch in his bed who sees a monster instead a California boy-next-door in surfer shorts and flip-flops.

  The monster speaks.

  It’s a language unlike any other, mostly hissing and growling. My throat and tongue can’t produce these sounds, which leads me to believe I’m definitely on some hard-core drugs someone slipped into my beer. I gotta swim out of this and wake up.

  The monster speaks again and moves away from the door. He motions with his hand. I think he wants me to leave. But I can’t because I’m paralyzed on the bed, and I have no idea what’s out there waiting for me. I’m afraid to get arrested. I’d lose my scholarship if that happened.

  The monster stays quiet as he watches me. I hear a sound. It’s barely audible. I think it’s coming from him. It reminds me of the sound a rattlesnake makes when it shakes its tail. If he hisses at me, I will pee myself. “I don’t understand you,” I say and wipe my eyes.

  He scratches his head, spins around, and I see his back. His hair starts in the middle of the back of his head. It’s long and black, neatly braided down his spine. A pair of snakes are imprinted on his skin as glowing yellow tattoos. I’m making up some serious shit here.

  The monster leaves, and the door slides closed behind him.

  I’m alone in my own nightmare. My brain has conjured up monsters. The fear of losing my mind paralyzes me, and I grab the sheets and cover my body. I close my eyes and hope to God I sleep through this. Yes, I just have get through the trip until the drugs wear off. Then I’ll find myself inside one of the frat boys’ rooms, no worse for wear. Nobody’s gonna hurt me. If the man who appeared in my mind as a monster wanted to hurt me, he would have. I’m just really messed up. That’s all. Read more…

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  Read the Complete Horde Series:

  #1 Alpha Breeds, #2 Alpha Bonds, #3 Alpha Knots, #4 Alpha Collects

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  Short stories in IADB World: Jake 1.5, Eddy #2.5

  Read the complete Age of Angels series:

  Court of Command, #1 • Court of Sunder, #2 • Court of Virtue, #3

  About the Author

  Milana Jacks grew up with tales of water fairies that seduced men, vampires that seduced women, and Babaroga who’d come to take her away if she didn’t eat her bean soup. She writes sci-fi fantasy romance with dominant monsters from her home on Earth she shares with Mate and their three little beasts.

  • Sometimes she releases stories for the readers on her mailing list as they await for books in the series. If you want in, join other readers at http://www.milanajacks.com/newsletter/ •

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