Page 8 of Reaper's Pack

Begrudgingly, I accepted the top piece of the pile, then held my breath as she drifted by to force her offerings on the others. Like I needed that sweet, subtle scent of hers to addle my brain more than it already had. I unfurled the garment to find a pair of black trousers; it had been an age since I’d been allowed to cover myself in shifted form. Some trainers permitted it. Fenix had never approved such luxuries; he preferred Hazel’s response to our nudity, wanting to throw reapers off their game, if only for a moment, with a sculpted, sometimes scarred, body.

The clothing few trainers allowed in Hell’s pits was always coarse, rough—something to toughen your skin and your mind. This was… soft. Thick. Wooly on the inside, smooth and supple on the outside. Frowning, I slipped the trousers on, then winced; the crotch area climbed right up my ass, compressing everything. Even when I tugged it down, a stretchy waistband accommodating my body no matter where it sat, the legs stopped halfway up my calves. Far too small.

Behind me, Declan had already slipped into pants and a shirt—black, like mine, and also a touch too small. I bit back a smirk. Always eager to please, that one. Eager to prove himself more than the runt his mother had immediately abandoned, who his siblings had tried to kill within the first month. Apparently, Hazel was worthy of his efforts. Unsurprising, given her scent, her voice—young ones like Declan were easily swayed by attractive females.

I exhaled sharply when she brushed by me again, scythe over her shoulder, sweet alyssum tickling my nose and stirring my cock.

Fuck. Another quick pants adjustment took care of that; no need for her to see the effect she had on me, because it wouldn’t last for long. Even if her scent snared me, we’d be long gone before it made me do something stupid.

Knox, meanwhile, stood there like a fucking mountain, holding a single black garment at his side and staring down our new reaper mistress. When she rounded on the spot, Hazel’s expression faltered when she saw him, and her throat dipped delicately with a gulp. Arms crossed, I waited, grinning and glancing between the pair, eager for a predictable outcome from their standoff.

My alpha had an effect on people. He intimidated them with his size, unnerved them with his dark, hooded, scarred stare. He challenged them with his calm patience, his willingness to wait them out. Knox seldom snapped, seldom exploded in a fit of rage we hellhounds were known for—and if he did, you were fucked.

He’d made a reaper cry once through the bars of our kennel with his stare alone, even more menacing on four legs than he was on two. As Hazel locked eyes with him, I counted down the seconds until she cracked—I estimated twenty.

Twenty-one seconds later, Knox tugged on his own pair of pants. The smallest of the bunch, they came up to his knees and hung low on his hips, the generous fabric stretched taut over his muscular thighs. Declan’s eyebrows shot up, his surprise mirroring my own. Shock skittered through the pack bond, but Knox gave no indication that he felt it. Instead, he crossed those burly arms, rose up to his full height, and waited.

Well then.

That was… interesting.

As the strain leeched out of the air between us and her, Hazel’s scent seemed to sharpen, becoming even more apparent under the temporary truce and affecting the others just as it did me. Lust trembled through the cords tethering Declan, Knox, and myself together, the invisible strands that bound us as a pack. They could be severed, strengthened, and expanded to accommodate fluctuating pack dynamics, but their purpose remained: to bind us, to wordlessly express our feelings and avoid misunderstandings and in-pack fighting.

And right now, desire slaked the pack bond, hot and heavy, our heightened sense of smell our undoing with this reaper.

I rolled my shoulders back again and faced off with our new mistress alongside my alpha, my scowl pathetic next to his—but, you know, unified front and all. Because at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what her scent did to us, or that she was undoubtedly the most striking female I’d ever laid eyes on. None of the physical mattered in the slightest.

As soon as she signed her name on our contract, Hazel had become the enemy.

And no amount of beauty, no potency of sweet alyssum, would ever make us forget that.

4

Knox

Well.

This was better than Hell, at least.

Just how much better remained to be seen.

Because while the reaper before me was attractive, dressed in fitted black trousers and a loose black shirt, her curves an irritable distraction and her dainty feet bare, even the most vicious demons in Hell were beautiful. All of them. Even if they had been about as appealing as a boil on a warlock’s testicle in life, demons were reborn exquisite, seductive, alluring. I had endured their cruelty all my life, suffered beneath their whips in the fighting arena, tortured and ripped apart before laughing, beautiful creatures.

She hadn’t snapped a collar around my neck yet or beaten my pack. She wasn’t brandishing a lash and barking orders, but she clung to a scythe, a weapon that could end our lives permanently in a second. No healing from that. No coming back. That blade would render us no more than blood and rotting flesh, shit for the insects of this world to devour until there was nothing left.

Her beauty was nothing to me. Nothing.

Fuck the lust racing through the pack bond. Fuck the ache in my chest, the tightness of my throat, the dry, starchy feel in my mouth. All she—Hazel—was to me was an obstacle, a barrier to the freedom I was determined to give my pack. I would either go around her, or through her, but one way or another, I would get what I came for.

I would free Gunnar and Declan.

And never again would we serve.

As far as I was concerned, we had been sold from one master to another. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And by first light tomorrow, she would be a thing of the past.

Something pleasant to dream about, maybe.

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