Page 32 of Siren's Kiss & Feral Beasts
And to my great pleasure, it silences the annoyingthwack. What tries to climb aboard now is human skin: legs, arms, and not a single scale can be seen. Not even the shadow of one.
“Not one more filthy fucking merman on this ship. Understood?” Their alpha’s command is met with a low,Yes, sir.
Those who try to leap past my men are beaten back by iron bars or wooden planks. The salty port air is filled with cries, howls, and the satisfying crack of bones as their army is met with force.
Ire. Hostility.
My attention turns back to the men standing a few feet from me: a nobody guard and then their general.
Orion is a figure of over-bloated elegance and a rotten core. We’ve met before, the few from the siren kingdom that show their pompous faces, and the narcissistic self-importance comes from his flesh in waves.
It’s a pungent stench. Like an old, sick fish, and I catalog that fact for later.
He smells as though he’s rotting from within.
“Stupid move, General.”
“I see it as brilliant,” he counters, hand gripping his sword tight. And in that grip, a flash of metal catches my eye.
My chain.
“Your blood will stain my claws, Orion,” I growl, low and vicious. “Your ripped throat will lie at my feet before the sun has reached its highest peak.”
Gamma Torren steps up beside me. In his hand, there’s a fisherman’s spear, and its deadly point is already bloody. “He was caught by Ewan and Oren sneaking out of your private quarters. They were ambushed from behind, but their growls alerted the crew who’d been eating below deck. I was checking supplies.”
The two he mentions are injured. Breathing, but knocked unconscious near the gunwale while the rest of my pack fights like the proud beasts they are. Some have shifted, jaws snapping and grabbing the intruders in their maw and ripping chunks out before tossing them overboard.
Every strike from my wolves sends a thrash of mermaids tumbling back into the water, but more keep climbing. Their claws dig into the wood, hissing with rage.
I don’t pause.
I lunge at Orion, shifting my attack at the very last second, going for his shoulder instead of his hand. It would be too predictable, and I want his hand holding the sword to be rendered useless. His scream rends the air a seconds before his blood drips from my fur.
The chunk I ripped falls from my mouth and lands with a splat, pulling a wolfish grin from me.
“You’ll never keep her, mutt,” Orion hisses from between clenched teeth, blue eyes glowing brighter. His head also tilts, as if hearing something in the distance, and his grimace quicklyturns into amusement. An expression of sick satisfaction creeps onto his face.
Before I can ask what he means, I hear my gamma grunt in pain, his feet staggering back, and there’s a new cut, this time on his chest. A straight line from one pectoral to the other, but it’s not deep.
It’ll burn, but there won’t be a scar after he heals. Not even a faint trace within an hour.
It does serve to piss him off, though, and he grabs the soldier holding the small blade by the neck, slamming him headfirst into the wall nearby. Blood streaks down the old wood, the semi-conscious merman slumping until my gamma holds his entire weight off the ground.
A weight he disposes of with a quick toss to his left. He goes overboard, his limp form taking two other mermen with him.
Yet for every fallen, three more appear, and my men are bloodthirsty and ruthless. Teeth and claws—those in human form swing their weapons, striking anything that isn’t pack and family.
Orion’s sword flashes in my periphery, its sharp blade missing my shoulder. It grazes, but no damage is done, and I lunge, raking my claws across his face.
Then his neck, but he’s smart enough to move back before I slice deep enough to hit any arteries. Dark blood oozes, his frantic eyes swinging right to left while I stalk forward.
My lips are curled back, and my blood-tipped claws are dragging across the deck.
“She’s mine, Daire. She’ll never accept you.” The who he’s talking about, I give no fucks about. At the moment, all my beast and I understand is eliminating this threat.
Taking back what’s mine.
An answering snarl rips from my throat, lips curled back over my blood-stained teeth. I advance, and for every step I take, heretreats. There’s a nervous energy all around him. I can taste his fear in the air, but then it all stills.
