Page 12 of Ivy and the Deathstalkers

Jax meets his eyes with a wicked smirk. “A 2023 Indian Dark Horse.”

“Oh damn! Your mate rides a beast. That's fucking hot as hell.” Neo dodges Jax’s swing with a laugh as DJ gets between them.

Jax and Neo may like that she rides, but if she were mine, I’d prefer to have her riding with me than on her own. If I had a mate, I’d want her arms wrapped around me as I sped down the road on my hog.

Jax glares at our jackass brother before continuing his story. “As soon as she bumped into me, I knew she was mine. Her ginger and cinnamon scent hit my nose and I was a goner. I had to force myself to let her go when she apologized and walked away.”

“You let her walk away?” Cree snarls, clinching his teeth so hard his jaw twitches and I worry he’s going to crack a molar. Both his hands curl into fists and the muscles in his arms bulge as if he’s ready to throw down right here if he doesn’t like Jax’s answer. Cree’s the only one of us who ever wanted a mate. His parents were mates. He always said he wouldn’t settle for anything less than his soulmate. He doesn’t even fuck with the sweetbutts, though it doesn’t stop them from trying. I swear, he’s gotten bitchier and bitchier when it comes to unwanted female attention over the years.

“I wasworking,” Jax growls. “And I kept my eye on her. I wasn’t letting her get away. I held my ground, watching her even as she approached Stanley and flirted with one of his fucking guards. But I snapped when he touched her. The fucker put his disgusting lips on her before I could stop him.”

She’s not even Cree’s mate and his eyes glow at the thought of some stranger touching her. “Is he dead?” he demands with a curl of his lip.

“I pulled her away from him and slammed my fist into his face harder than I’d ever hit anyone in my life. He crumbled to the ground with one hit, but I didn’t have a chance to rain more blows on him before two more of Stanley’s goons tried to jump in. That’s when I lost her. In all the commotion, Stanley snuck away. I heard my mate grumble about him getting away before she took off after him. Once I laid out the rest of the guards, I rushed after her. Stanley was gone by the time I got there, and as soon as she saw me she bolted. Naturally, I gave chase.”

“Naturally,” Neo agrees.

“Well,” Jax chuckles. “She can seriously ride. Like, Neo level.” A round of whistles and a few damns echo around the room before he continues, “I almost lost her a couple times. We wound up in the old packing district where she drifted her fucking bike through a barely opened door. It was seriously hot as fuck.”

“Don't kill me, dude, but if you don't want her, can I have her? The thought of a chick that good makes my dick hard.” I beat the others to Neo this time and punch him right in his pie hole.

“Thanks, King,” Jax murmurs, and I nod. “She was waiting inside to ambush me. She wouldn’t tell me her name, just called herself Death.” He shakes his head with a chuckle. “I told her if she was gonna kill me, the least she could do was kiss me first. Then I didn’t give her a chance to say no. Let me tell ya, it was the best fucking kiss of my life. Until we finally separated and she started apologizing like she thought I was going to keel over anysecond. First I thought she had poison on her lips. She clarified it was venom and there was no antidote.”

DJ steps closer. “Your mate tried to kill you? What kind of venom was it? All venoms I know of have antidotes. Yeah, some you have like five minutes to take, but we’re tolerant of those. The worst that can happen is a headache or flu symptoms. But you seem fine.”

“Um…” Seriously, Jax is blushing. “I never tasted venom or poison like this, and certainly never got a raging hard-on that put Viagra to shame, before.”

We all just stare at him. “I'll do some research and see what I can find. But I know every toxin, or I thought I did,” DJ mutters with his brows furrowed. He had us all taking doses of any poison or venom that could hurt us by the time we were sixteen. Now we’re immune to them all.

“What happened after you grew wood?” Beck arches his brow with a hint of a smile. I glare at him and he shrugs. Juveniles, I'm dealing with fucking children, I swear.

“She sorta noticed my hard dick and…” He rubs himself and we all cringe. “She dropped me fast. It triggered my scorpion. Not just because of the pain. It wanted to get to its mate. So yeah, she sort of saw me.”

“Is she human?” I ask him. “Because if so, we need to find her now. If she talks… hell, even if she's a supe, we could be fucked.” This could be bad. Very, very bad.

Chapter 10

DJ

Damn, out of all the guys to find their mate first, I never would have thought it would be him. Don't get me wrong. Jax is one of my best friends, a brother. He's just extremely abrasive.

Then to hear she ran from him, and he revealed his scorpion to her after all the lectures King gave us about hiding our beasts over the years. All I can say is thank fuck that it was in an abandoned warehouse. I can tell that KC is internally freaking out, so I take the initiative. “Cree, Beck, do what you guys do best. Make sure he wasn't seen and for the love of the goddess find out who this minx is so we can know what we're getting into.”

They both nod and head out of the office. You put these two on an information trail, they’re like a dog with a bone. They won't give up until it's gone. They’ll pull up every security camera within a mile radius of this abandoned warehouse, some known, some we put up, and verify that no one else saw a scorpion the size of a horse.

Also, whoever this girl is, they'll be able to find out every little detail about her from her cup size to how often she masturbates. OK, maybe not quite that detailed, but we’ll know how to find her before the end of the night.

“Have any of you heard of a venom with no antidote that doesn't affect the host? Like seriously I knew when I kissed her there was some sort of toxin on her lips. But…” Jax makes a face of confusion. “It gave me a massive hard-on. Like I just ate some serious aphrodisiac or took some potent fucking coke.”

KC furrows his brows as he mentally flips through his memories. As the oldest, he spent the most time with his folks before the genocide. His dad taught him so much about the world at such a young age. Things I wish my parents would have taught me before they died. But at least we had him to teach us. From the time he learned we were all deathstalkers, he drilled into us the importance of keeping our species a secret. All the years between our parents’ deaths and when we met in juvie, we had no clue what really happened. Hell, we didn’t even know what wewere. We were so young when it happened, especially Neo, most of us barely remember a life before we were thrown into the system.

Meeting King in juvie saved our lives. We formed a bond stronger than blood. A true brotherhood. King took us all under his wing, teaching us everything he knew about the world we came from. When he told us what really happened to all of our parents, we vowed to never let it happen to another kid.

We formed the shortly after getting out and have spent the past two decades doing our part to rid the world of sick fucks who think they can ruin people’s lives like assholes who tried to eliminate our kind.

When we named our club, we all agreed on The Deathstalkers. Not only as a homage to our beasts and our parents who died simply forbeingdeathstalkers, but so evil fucks like the oneswho started the genocide would know to fear us. Even if we never claimed to be actual deathstalkers, just the name, and our hard-earned reputation have secured our position at the top of the food chain. Deathstalkers are the most deadly shifters, which is why someone tried to eradicate our species. Obviously, they missed a few, but from all of our digging, they think they succeeded.

That was their fatal mistake. Not ensuring, without a doubt, that every deathstalker was dead.

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