Page 12 of Reaper's Pack

Ugh.

“Do you want me to cook that for you?” Obviously not, but it felt worth asking. “I had a… recipe…” More snarls and heavy breathing answered, with Knox gnawing on the biggest piece. “It’s a garlic, parsley, and butter recipe… for steaks.”

Yeesh. Gunnar and Knox continued wolfing down their meal, not slowing even a little at my offer, but Declan stopped, lowering about a quarter of the chunk he’d initially snatched to the counter, his mouth bloody.

“Sorry, Hazel.” Butterflies rustled to life in my belly at the way he said my name, as though his lightly accented voice was the dawn, rousing them from sleep. I swallowed hard, trying to both focus on him, on his velvety tenor, his bee-stung lips—that faint lilt might have been Arabic, but I couldn’t be sure—and the actual words coming out of them. “We usually eat it raw.”

“Right.” Gross. “Sure.” I nodded, struggling to find something nice to say about a raw meat diet—because he was clearly trying to connect with me while the others seemed content to pretend I didn’t exist. So, despite the smell, I flashed a smile and nodded to the venison in his hand. “Probably makes things a lot easier, I guess.”

A memory cut across my mind’s eye, so visceral and real that it knocked the wind out of me. My first home-cooked meal, the one Mum had given me complete control over from start to finish: shepherd’s pie. Cooked for my parents and for Royce. The smell of raw pie crust and salted mash and slow-roasted beef tickled my nose, made my mouth water. Royce’s eyes, green and beautiful, kind, staring at me from across the table as he shoveled forkful after forkful into a mouth that was always laughing. His lips later that night, illuminated by moonlight as we said goodbye at the rickety gate.

“I want that pie every Sunday for the rest of our lives.”

He’d kissed me while Dad poked his head through the curtains at the front window, his insistent knuckle-rapping shooing my fiancé into the night.

An air strike had taken me out in forty-three.

Royce survived to storm Berlin after the Russians.

Even though he had returned to Surrey, lived the rest of his life there and married a sweet girl and had twelve grandchildren, they had allowed me to reap him when he died.

Lung cancer three years ago.

Those eyes.

That red hair.

The shepherd’s pie.

I licked my lips, shirking the memory with a shake of my head and a clearing of my throat. They came and went, snippets of my human past. Not often these days. I had done a good enough job detaching from Royce’s world in the last ten years, constantly reminding myself that I wasn’t human anymore—that I had no right to walk among them, to feel as they felt.

But tonight, with the scent memories painfully fresh, I felt. Deeply.

Disappointment. For the first time all day, it tickled my belly, tightened my throat—disappointment that I couldn’t cook for my hellhounds, that I had lost that connection already.

“Yes, but raw never changes, you know,” Declan insisted, his honey-smooth words shooing away the last remnants of my past. “It always tastes the same.” He wiped his mouth on his shoulder, smearing blood on the too-big T-shirt. “I would be interested in trying what you had in mind… the, uh, parsley butter. Sounds delicious, Hazel.”

He liked to say my name. I suddenly felt that instead of the disappointment, his satisfaction warming my cheeks, even when Gunnar snorted noisily. A quick glance in his direction showed the beta hellhound picking fatty white streaks out of his venison cut, still shirtless, his bare, sculpted chest splattered with blood. Knox, meanwhile, chewed and ate and ripped flesh without breaking his focus on Declan and me, his gaze dark and hooded—unflinching, unreadable.

Unnerving.

I fidgeted with my nails, knees threatening to buckle under the weight of it all.

“Well, all right then.” I rolled my shoulders back and zeroed in on Declan again. If only one of them bothered to give me the time of day, then I would take it and run. “I haven’t done much cooking in a while… I might be a bit rusty.”

“And I’ve never cooked at all,” the hellhound admitted as he rounded the island and headed straight for me, the meat in his extended hand like he was offering me the most bizarre present I’d ever received. “But I would like to try, if you’ll let me… If you need the help, that is.”

“Of course. That would be great.” Relief washed over me as I took the gnawed venison cut, needing both hands to his one to hold it. His cautious little smile made my butterflies take flight, flitting around my belly, the beat of each wing drawing something both unfamiliar and welcome out of me. The offer of help threatened to make me cry; already I could see why Declan had been my first connection in Hell. Not only was he outrageously attractive, but he was sweet too.

Of course, it could all be manipulation—catching more flies with honey than vinegar and whatnot.

Abruptly, a few of those butterflies nose-dived into oblivion.

In life I’d tried to see the good in people, but after ten years of reaping every sort of human, I knew better. For now, best keep my guard up. Declan could be as sweet as he made himself out to be, or he could be a pawn for the alpha who hadn’t stopped glaring at me since he’d charged out of his crate.

Holding Declan’s venison out in front of me, I looked between the other two hellhounds in the kitchen. “Do you want me to cook yours, or—”

Gunnar snarled and shook his head, then tore into the last of his meat as if I might steal it right out from under him. Knox, on the other hand, carried on eating without acknowledging me whatsoever, which was great.

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