Kings of Carrion

by Keri Lake

  “You want to escape, Cadmus?” I reach down into the satchel at my side, where I stored away the last of his peyote, and throw it in his face. “Be my fucking guest! I’m not going down with you!” Anger explodes to the surface, as I push at his chest, but it fails to move him, like ribbons flitting against an unmovable boulder. “I’ll find Valdys myself!”

  Slipping from him, I stride toward the back of the truck, my heart on the verge of exploding into a bloody mess inside it’s solitary cage.

  A stab of pain strikes my abdomen, so hot it feels cold, sending me straight to my knees. I cry out, clutching my side, and press my palm to the dirt to keep from collapsing.

  “Calithea?” Seconds later, Cadmus falls to my side, his hand resting at my back.

  Another intense throb explodes between my hips, and I tumble off balance. The ground slams into my shoulder, but the pain is forgotten for the jolts of electricity flaring inside of me.

  “I’ll get Titus.” An air of panic clings to Cadmus’s voice, and I grip his arm, trembling with the tension wound so tight inside of me, as I wait for the next wave.

  “No! Please! Don’t leave me!”

  “Cali, you need relief. It gets worse every day.”

  More bullets of agony pierce my womb, shooting straight up into my ribcage, where they steal my breath. “Ah, God!” Curling into myself fails to quell the war that has erupted within me. “Cadmus!”

  The world spins at a dizzying pace, and my chest turns cold with the nausea stirring there.

  “I can’t do this, Cali. I have to get Titus,” he whispers at my ear. “Just hold on.”

  Nails scoring down his arm, I silently plead him to stay, the tears in my eyes blurring out the troubled look on his face.

  “Titus!” His roar echoes over the empty stretch of land, and in the pause that follows, there’s no response. “Titus!”

  More seconds pass, and my stomach muscles tighten on instinct, as the next round of pain makes itself known. A horrific sound rips from my chest, when the agony spears my gut, as if someone has peeled my organs from it.

  Solid arms slide beneath me, lifting me up into the air, and the world spins again in my periphery, the light turning to dark, as he hoists me onto the back of the truck. It bounces with his leap inside. Again, he lifts me into his arms and lays me down onto the unmade bedding from this morning.

  Water trickles down my face from the canteen he presses to my lips, urging me to drink. Cold sweats bead across my skin, the burn of a fever heating my cheeks.

  “I want to help you, but I can’t. I can’t do this.” Pressing his forehead to my temple, he strokes my hair, damp with sweat. “I wish I could make it better for you,” he whispers.

  Blades of misery slice across my abdomen, my thighs trembling, and I reach down to cup the ache in my core that reaches up into my womb.

  Breathing hard, Cadmus sits back against the wall of the truck, his muscles tense, pulsing with blood and adrenaline. His body urging him to do what his mind refuses. Hands stroking his skull, he stares at me, while I writhe and squirm like bait on a hook. His eyes are lost, his face screwed up in panic, and he opens his palm to the peyote buttons captured there.

  Through stomach-twisting cramps, I watch him consume the drug, his eyes on me all the while, as if he’s taunting me, leaving me to suffer alone. Tears streak down my temples and another round of pain slices through me, like broken glass across a flower petal. I grunt with the agony and glance up to see Cadmus shaking and twitching. His pupils dilate wider with each passing minute.

  Sobbing through the contractions and tightening of my muscles, I fail to notice Cadmus has moved over me, until his breath hits my neck.

  “Shhhh,” he says, and I know it’s not me he sees. If it is, it’s some altered version of me, trapped behind the veil of the drug’s hallucinogenic properties. “Do you hear him, Cali?”

  Through the shield of tears, I stare back at him to find his eyes are vacant and unfocused, but his question is distracting enough to block out some of the pain. “Who?”

  “Valdys.” His palm slides down my arm in a soft caress, and his words push the pain away, as I allow myself to fall into this trance.

  It’s been months since I’ve been touched. Months since I’ve surrendered to the feel of palms against my skin. As much as I want to fight him and stay in this anger, my body is hopelessly primed to his touch, already wired to his voice and his scent, which reminds me so much of Valdys. If I close my eyes, I can picture my beloved Alpha. His hands on me. His breath on my skin.

  It’s wrong. All wrong.

  “No!” I turn away from him, my lips peeled back in disgust. “Don’t you dare touch me like that. I don’t want gentle from you. I don’t want to enjoy this. You’re not Valdys!” I turn to face him, catching the flinch of his eye, as I verbally wound him with my anger. “I want to hate every minute of this, Cadmus. Make it hurt. And remind me why I’ll never find him.” Tears stream down my temples as the words fly past my lips. “Remind me why I never deserved him!”

  His jaw hardens, muscles visibly bunching with his ire. “He’s destroying you. Tearing you apart every time we come up empty!”

  “And now’s your chance to do the same. Finish me off. Destroy me like you promised back at Calico. You get off on pain, right? So, now’s your chance!”

  “My pain, not yours!” Eyes blazing with fury, he leans into my face, nostrils flaring like an angry bull.

  I tip my chin in defiance, holding his stare. “Well, I’m giving you permission. So do it.”

  “He gave himself over, Cali!” The words hit me like a sledgehammer, swinging out of nowhere, and I sit stunned for a moment, wondering if I heard him right. “The night they came for us at the waterfall. Titus told me he turned himself over. Willingly. Quietly, without a fight.”

  My muscles vibrate with tension, dancing around the words that render me in shock. The ache in my womb flares, and I curl into myself, focusing on the breaths that flutter in and out of my lungs. “He would’ve only given himself over if he thought it would’ve saved us, and you know it.” In spite of the pain, I push the words out for Valdys.

  “Does it matter? The point is, he’s where he wanted to be. He chose to go back there, Cali. It’s time you let him go.”

  “Fuck … you, Cadmus.” An outcry slips past my teeth at pain jarring enough to steal my attention and spring tears to my eyes.

  “This is what you want?” He grits his teeth, sneering while his shoulder jerks with the unlatching of his pants. “You need to keep punishing yourself for him? Fine. I’ll be the fucking bad guy. I’ll be the one you hate.” The lucidity in his voice is confusing, given the spacey look on his face, and it occurs to me, this is what Cadmus needs to do to help me.

  Strong palms grip my other thigh, and he grinds his hips against me.

  I turn my head away from him, letting the pain destroy me from the inside out. My body jostles with Cadmus’s rough handling, as he tears away my pants and growls out his frustration.

  I need this. I need this hurt. This anger. This humiliation and disgust. I want it to seep into my skin and sour every part of me that’s held out hope for Valdys.

  I wrap my arms around his neck, and allow him to pull me onto his lap until I straddle his thighs. For a moment, I’m weightless, unburdened by the misery I’ve awakened to every day since that night.

  My muscles ache for the feel of rough hands, and I hate that my womb throbs with the need to have him inside of me, taking me away from this darkness and the haunting truth that hangs on the horizon every night. I run my hands over his shoulders and search for the metallic scent of Valdys on his skin.

  His build reminds me of Valdys’s, the same roughly hewn fabric of an Alpha, riddled with scars, as I mentally recall every one on Valdys’s battered body. The thought of him spurs more tears, and I finally break. The sob rips through my chest, while I sit waiting for Cadmus to thrust himself inside of me, as viciously as I’ve imagined sex w
ith him to be. To tear through me in rage and jealousy.

  Instead, a gentle finger traces down my temple, and I lift my gaze to where the shine of tears glistens in his eyes. “Please don’t cry, Cali. I can’t do this. Not to you.”

  “I need you to do this.” I can’t go weeks in misery like Neela.

  “Not like this.” His brows flicker, his muscles trembling, and it’s then I realize, he’s not saying this for my benefit. I’ve set off a trigger in him. Forced him back inside whatever dark vault threatens to pull him in for good.

  My chest tugs with a another sob, but I lean forward and kiss his cheek. “I’m sorry.”

  I pull away just enough to see the tears in his eyes, and I know he hasn’t succumbed entirely to the drug. He’s forcing himself to comfort me, in spite of whatever horrific visuals it brings to mind for him.

  I did this to him. Shoved him back into that place that it seemed to take so long to pull him out.

  Cadmus lowers me back to the blankets, the sorrow and conflict burning in his eyes as he stares down at me. “I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry for everything. What I said. What I’ve done.”

  He’s endured as much as any of us, fought as hard as Titus, and carried out every task I’ve asked of him. He doesn’t deserve this.

  “Cadmus … If what you say is true ...” I’m trying not to cry, but I can’t help the emotions commandeering my body right now. “And Valdys is--”

  “Forget about what I said.” He slips his hand beneath my head to hold his gaze on mine. “Understand? Forget all that. You don’t have to give up on him. Okay?”

  I don’t know why the words hit me so much harder, coming from him. Perhaps because Cadmus has always slapped me with the brutal truth, that even his lies feel like blatant honesty. At my nod, pressure at my entrance gives way to his first thrust inside of me, and I arch back, gasping as my body stretches around him.

  “I’ll do this … for you.” His voice is shaky tense, and I don’t have to look at him to know his teeth are clenched. “I won’t be as gentle as Valdys, if that’s how you want it. But I won’t hurt you, either.”

  Digging his nails into my fleshy cheeks, he groans, then he falls forward, caging me between his outstretched arms, as he ups the pace.

  Mouth gaping, I struggle for breath between panting and clawing at the sleeping bag while my body jostles with his assault. “Cadmus!”

  He says nothing in response, and only his moans and the slapping of flesh fill the back of the truck. Gritting my teeth, I reach down to grip his muscled thigh, lodging my nails into his flesh. Gentle hands are for making love, and that’s not what this is. This is anger and pain. What I imagine Cadmus is like when his head isn’t twisted with the darkness that calls to him more frequently now than before. I need to feel this punishment, to absorb it inside of me, because without it, I’d feel shame for the relief. This is Cadmus. This is how he brings me back from the dark depths without blinding me to the light. This is how he steals away my pain and makes it his own.

  The truck rattles and jostles, and I dare to look up and see his face red, jaw clenched with the unseen agony that brings tears to his eyes.

  His forearm rests against the bed of the truck next to my head, and I watch his fingers flex into a tight fist. He grips my hand, curling his knuckles over mine, and breathes hard in my ear as he pumps in and out of me.

  The pressure builds inside my belly, while he squeezes my hand, nearly crushing it in his. Tears stream down my temples, and I close my eyes, willing my brain to transport me somewhere else.

  On a curse, he explodes inside of me, the hot jets of fluid pulsing with his release. His body shudders, and his breaths turn shallow in my ear, until he stills against me. I feel his forehead pressed against my collarbone, and he shivers, his panting hot breaths warming my skin.

  The relief is instant. The anguish is not.

  It takes a few moments for the gravity of this to bear down on me, for the guilt to consume me. Palm covering my eyes, unable to contain it anymore, I break into tears, while the shame wraps itself around me, yanking me down to it’s suffocating depths.

  Cadmus pulls out of me and backs himself to the wall of the truck, drawing his knees up. He strokes his skull back and forth, and I realize, he’s not okay. In spite of the drugs, something bigger and darker has taken over him. Something more powerful.

  The only thing that can possibly distract me from my own self-loathing right now.

  “Cadmus?”

  Brows furrowed, he stares off, as if he’s lost in another world again.

  The ache in my chest is almost worse than the one that moved through my womb, as I watch him break, too. “I’m sorry for … putting you through this.”

  “You’re not the one who did this.” His eye twitches, and he rolls his shoulder. “This is my atonement, for all the wrongs I’ve committed. This is how God punishes me. By reminding me that I’m smaller. Weak.”

  “You’re not weak. You’re one of the strongest men I’ve ever known.”

  “You asked about my scars. Back at the waterfall.” He swipes his wrist against his eyes and sniffs. “Szolen didn’t give me those scars. I did it to myself.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “They wanted to send me back down into the tunnels, but I refused. So they put me in isolation.” Hand rubbing the back of his neck, he shakes his head. “They know things. Things I’ve never spoken of. I don’t know how, but they know.”

  This is where he tells me the truth. The mystery of what happened to him, and a part of me isn’t ready. Not after what we just did, but I have to know. I have to know what happened to him. How they could turn such a strong and unrivaled Alpha into a broken husk of a man. “What kinds of things do they know?”

  With a frown, he stares off, and for a moment, I think he’ll blow it off again. Seal up the vault so I’ll never be privy to those dark clouds that constantly shadow his bright eyes. Tiny fissures of his suffering bleed through in the twitching of his face, as though he’s desperate to hold back the emotions. “Back in my hive, when I was about thirteen years old, I liked a girl. She was maybe fifteen, or sixteen.” A tearful smile sheds a small measure of light onto the darkness of his expression. “She liked me, too. But my old man was a rotten prick. He had his eye on her, too.” Leg still bent in front of him, he sits naked and vulnerable, splitting himself open to me. “So one night, we snuck out, and met up under the stars. She taught me things about the sky and the constellations. And how to kiss.” Lowering his gaze, he picks at his fingers, as if he’s nervous. “My old man found us. Him and a couple of buddies. He said I was too small and scrawny for a woman like her.” Lips twitching, he lifts his gaze enough to show the disgust coloring his face. “They raped her in front of me. I couldn’t help her. All I could do was listen to her screams as every one of those fucks had a turn with her. And when my old man was done, he told me she was weak enough for me to have her.” A tear breaks from his eyes, glistening down his cheek. “I laid with her all night under those stars, holding her as she cried against me. And in the morning, I found her lying beside a desert thornapple. White petals broken beside her. She’d committed suicide by eating the plant.” A long pause follows, and while I should say something to him, to fill this empty space with words of comfort, I can’t. There isn’t anything I can say to him. He stares off at nothing in particular. “I must’ve been the only kid at Calico who had nothing better outside those walls.”

  My heart breaks for Cadmus, as I watch him unravel before my eyes.

  “When they put me in isolation …” Eyes screwed shut, it’s as if he’s seeing it all over again in his mind. “I had visions of being my father. Raping her. Over and over and over,” he says through clenched teeth. “Every time I closed my eyes, I heard her screaming my name. I felt her struggle beneath me. And every fucking time I opened my eyes, the girl was you. Staring up at me. Begging me to stop. Your face pale as those flowers.”

  Tears well in my eyes
as his broken pieces finally begin to come together into a picture that explains his equally broken mind. It’s not what they knew about his past, but how they manipulated his mind, twisting his most traumatic memories into a nightmarish reality. “You’ve never hurt me. Not once.”

  “You were the only light for me. They stole that away, too, and threw me into blackness. Things I can’t stop seeing, whether my eyes are opened, or closed.” Eyes filling with tears, he presses his fist to his temples, and a harsh breath expels from his nose as he fights to hold back. “They didn’t have to put those scars on my body. They were already inside my head.”

  On hands and knees, I crawl toward him and push his massive arms aside, wedging myself between his bent legs. Head pressed to his chest, I feel his muscles spasm beneath me as he sobs, and his arms wrap around me.

  “I’m sorry I did this to you,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry, Cadmus.”

  Chapter 6

  Wren

  The fire crackles beside me. My hands tremble, as I reach down between my thighs, to where a wet sensation woke me from dreams, and I gather the moisture onto my fingers, lifting it to the light.

  Blood.

  Thick and red, it coats my fingers entirely. The last time blood leaked out of me during pregnancy, I lost the baby and woke to Ragers feeding on it.

  As the ache in my belly flares to life again, I grunt, curling myself into the pain.

  “Wren? What is it?”

  I don’t answer Six, for fear that he’ll blame himself for this, but I suspect, with this being my second, my body just isn’t made for pregnancy. Instead, I quietly sob to myself, trembling as the agony takes over me.

  “Wren!” He’s undoubtedly found the blood. “Fuck!” With a shaky, but gentle hand, he cups my cheek, guiding my face to his.

  I don’t want to look at him. I can’t. And I’m grateful for the tears that blur his face.

  “I’m going to get the midwife. I’ll be right back.”

  I only catch his backside, before he wraps a blanket around his lower half and plows through the woven door, calling out for Haseya, an older woman who’s delivered a few babies for the women in our hive. She’s known to be very skilled in these matters, but if this follows the last time I was pregnant, I’m afraid not even she can help me.