Page 27 of Ruled By The Alpha

Even through the net, her new captor was easy to see. The second beserketh, the victor of the battle, was even more terrifying than the other killer.

This one had to be at least four times her size, with onyx-colored horns curling near its ears, fangs stabbing from its upperlips, and shoulders almost as wide as her length. Its skin was a deep, rich red, as if the blood of its victims stained it inside and out. A wild tangle of dark braids flowed down its back while its broad chest blocked out the glowing suns.

It threw back its head and roared.

Ice trickled down her spine. Covered in scars and blood, every inch of the beserketh was on display as it stomped closer. With no hide at its hips, its deep red skin stretched over slab after slab of rippling muscle that tapered to a carved V and made it impossible to miss the huge, ridged rod that hung between its thick thighs and the heavy balls that swung beneath.

Not anit. A definitehe.

She thrashed harder inside the net, looking for a way out.

The battering ram between his legs was not even erect and was still nearly as thick and long as a small sapling. He could tear her apart as easily with that as anything else in his arsenal of fangs and horns.

Panicked, she ripped her gaze up and away—only to clash with empty, red eyes that terrified her most of all.

His mouth split into a grin and his fangs flashed. “Prize.”

She was still screaming as he dragged her toward a small cave-like opening covered in twisting vines that looked disturbingly like a lair.

*

Kill.

Cheim stomped toward his den, his prize trailing in his net, unquenchable hunger driving him on. Not for liquid, but for blood. For violence and pain. For the chance to sink fangs and horns into soft flesh and stave off, for even a single breath, the unrelenting rage that colored everything red. That made thought impossible.

There was no past. No future. Only the agonizing emptiness that was never sated. No matter how far he traveled. Or how many he tore apart.

Kill. Kill. Kill.

The taste of gore on his fangs from his recent victory only aggravated the urge. The puny prey in his net would sate the craving even less, but it was still something.

Kill.

He would have crushed its spindly bones already, but he wasn’t the fool the other berserker had been, so easily distracted by the hunger that he’d failed to guard against attack.

Cheim would never be taken unawares. He was the ultimate predator. No one could best him.

Batting aside the vines that hid his lair, he deposited the thrashing game in his den.

The space inside was bigger than the small opening suggested, the cave’s ceiling as high as some of the tallest trees in this planet’s terrain and as wide as at least one hundred massive trunks put together.

It had been the sleeping den of his last formidable opponent, a mammoth animal with huge curling tusks that had been ten times his height and weight. Its bones now lay off to the side, gleaming white and picked clean.

The powerful waterfall gushing from one rocky wall was the reason he’d decided to remain even after his opponent was vanquished. A torrent of water that started near the ceiling, it obscured what lay behind it and nourished the edible, hardy pink and purple plants that grew just outside its jet stream, turning the cave wall a dark purply-red. The color of crusted blood. Another reason he liked it here.

Wiley as always, he stacked the three massive boulders in front of the den opening. It wasn’t a perfect blockade—therewere still small gaps where the light crept through—but it was effective enough to prevent anything from sneaking up on him.

Den secured, it was finally safe to give into his hunger.

Finally time to let his urges run wild.

More whimpers issued from the pitiful prey—a prey that stunk of fetid mud.

His rage climbed higher. He wasn’t picky. He would sink his fangs into anything. But the crunchy, hard mud that covered this quarry would impede the slide of his fangs into soft skin and dilute the taste of blood, sinew and flesh.

Grabbing a hollowed-out skull, he filled it with water and then tossed the liquid on the lump beneath the net.

It gasped.

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