Page 11 of Reaper's Pack

“Agreed,” Gunnar remarked stiffly, his arms crossed, that mind no doubt racing for a solution. Just as he drew a breath, his eyes sparkling with something important, Declan stood and held up a hand.

“Wait, wait,” he started, padding toward the doorway, “do you smell that?”

My mouth watered—because I sure as fuck did, and it was the one thing right now that smelled even better than Hazel.

Raw, bloody meat.

5

Hazel

Today could have gone better.

But, in all honesty, it could have been a whole lot worse. Fenix clearly treated his hellhounds like crap; maybe aggression was the best way to bend them to your will, but that just wasn’t me. My mum had always said the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, while Dad had told me a well-fed dog was the most loyal. As the sun worked its way across the sky, white fluffy clouds stretched along the horizon, I intended to take both pearls of wisdom and put them to good use.

Good food, and lots of it, may just be the key in getting them to trust me.

Because I hadn’t done enough to stop Fenix from abusing them, and the pack had years of demon rule at the back of their minds, skewing their perception of me.

So. An uphill battle, for sure.

But I was up for the challenge.

I planted my hands on my hips, surveying the mountain of raw venison piled up on the kitchen island. Cooking—yet another challenge to conquer today. In the last ten years, I had watched humans cook. Hidden on the celestial plane, I had explored all-you-can-eat sushi bars, steak houses, gastro pubs, and cupcake bakeries. Food now played a bigger role in the human social fabric than ever before. I’d sampled here and there, but stepping out of the celestial plane, inserting myself in a world that had gone on without me, always made my heart heavy.

With the pack, I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Yesterday, an electrician had been out to the house with the wards disabled. He worked for ten hours, all by himself, electrifying the house, replacing wires, getting the building up to code. It wasn’t perfect. He’d told me he needed to apply for more permits with the city, but I had gently erased his memory of the whole day after accompanying him out to his truck, parked miles away on the last bit of useable road on the property.

Accidents happened in this line of work, and the memory alteration spell had been one of the handiest in my arsenal. While I felt a bit guilty each time I toyed with the inner workings of a human mind, sometimes it was necessary; no one needed to know we were out here, inhabiting this overgrown manor. The wards hid us from the world; I couldn’t allow for any witnesses in the meantime. We had electricity, and that was what mattered.

Now I just needed to learn how to use all the fancy kitchen appliances I’d swiped from department stores a few days ago, which had involved popping out of the celestial plane inside the store, grabbing the item in question—i.e. every piece of furniture in the house—and dragging it out of the mortal realm and into the ether. From there, it was just a matter of teleporting it all back into the house. Still, even for a reaper it was no small feat, especially the larger, more cumbersome kitchen pieces. Refrigerators had come a long way since the thirties, and the touchscreen dials on the stove certainly necessitated an adjustment period.

The espresso machine might as well have been a spaceship, honestly, but at least it came with an instruction manual.

I nibbled my lower lip, still surveying the bloody clump of meat. Best to stick with the basics, probably. Meat, vegetables, bread. Totally manageable. The cooking show I’d streamed this morning said I should season and sear the meat first.

Oh. Wait.

I needed to trim the fat off, right? Eyebrows furrowed, I leaned in, trying not to inhale the scent of raw deer flesh as best I could, and tracked the streaks of white through the red. Okay. First that. Then season. Then sear. Then…

“Damn it.” I straightened and flicked my braid over my shoulder, toes tapping on the old checkered kitchen tile. The recipe had called for an outdoor grill—and lots of butter. The latter sat in the fridge, amongst the other basic necessities the internet had told me to acquire, all of which I’d swiped from a grocery at three this morning. But I didn’t have a grill.

Rounding on the spot, I padded over to the high-tech stove, hands clasped behind my back, and scrutinized the dozens of little touch options. Could I… grill on this thing? Did a grill pop up from somewhere?

I pressed a button and something slowly climbed out of the back of the stove.

Nope. That was a backsplash. I pursed my lips. Was frying in a pan the same as grilling? Would I ruin the deer carcass if I did that?

Why was this so stupidly complicated?

Out of the corner of my eye, green and orange beckoned me home. There sat the head of celery and the cluster of earthy carrots with their green tops, the perfect sides. Maybe I should start with them. I sifted through the carrots, separating them, fiddling with their leafy heads. Boiling vegetables certainly hadn’t changed since I was alive; at least I could still do that without consulting the internet. Easy.

I’d barely gotten the stainless steel pot filled halfway when footsteps echoed out in the hallway, and seconds later in stormed the pack. I shut off the rushing water and set the pot aside, lips parted, ready to ask them how they wanted their meat cooked—rare, probably—when all three beelined straight for the kitchen island. Behind me, warm, hazy late-afternoon sunshine spilled in through the huge windows that ran the full length of the wall, each pane topped with stained glass florals. Oak cabinets lined the room, uppers and lowers, storage plentiful but seating limited. I’d planned to set up dinner in the formal dining hall through the swinging door—but the boys had other ideas.

A chorus of growls, snarls, and snorts erupted as all three snatched up whole cuts of venison and ripped into the bloody meat. My nose wrinkled.

“Uh. Oh. Okay.” I held up my hands to settle them—them, three of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen in this life and the last, chowing down on raw meat. The savagery excited me, the noises throbbing low in my belly, but the blood smeared around their mouths, dripping down their chests, sort of ruined the hot guy allure. “Gentlemen, if you could just…”

Wait. Two seconds.

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