Page 108 of Dark & Dreadful Brutes

“Four.” She rattled off their names, but I didn’t recognize any of them.

“Did you lose any?”

“Nope. All dead.” Orvay’s grin was vicious.

Three others had attacked the city and been killed for it in the past weeks without any other casualties, too, while we were off searching.

“Veil, we might actually be done with this mess,” Ravv ran a hand through his already-wild curls. “You’ll have to lead me there.”

I fought a grimace.

My entire body was sore from the constant riding, but I couldn’t say that. Not when they’d finally caught the people who had been plaguing them for so long.

“Of course,” Orvay agreed.

“How far?” Ravv checked, glancing at me with a bit of concern.

We couldn’t be apart without pain, and it had been a long day already.

“I can handle it,” I told him.

“It’s about a four-hour ride,” Elwynne said.

Veil. It would be morning by the time we got back.

Ravv shook his head. “We’ll leave with the first sunrise.”

I blinked.

Elwynne and Orvay blinked too.

Coarse let out an amused huff and plopped down on the ground beside me, his mind brushing against mine. “And you thought this male would walk away from you after the eclipse.”

“You need to see it. I’ll sleep in the morning.” I closed the box of food I hadn’t yet started.

“Lae,” Ravv warned, his chest rumbling unhappily. He sat down beside me and reopened the box. “Your health matters more.”

“More than the security of our city?” Elwynne checked.

He flashed her a glare. “The city isn’t at risk. You took care of that already.”

“A few more of them could’ve been out foraging,” Orvay pointed out. “We cleaned up and buried the bodies just in case.”

“We can’t risk waiting.” I started to close the box once again.

Ravv ripped it open yet another time, leveling me with that glare he’d turned on Elwynne. “If you want to convince me of that, you’ll need to fill your stomach.”

“I’m not starving anymore. Look at all of this.” I gathered the squish on my belly in my hand, through my simple, soft black dress.

“I’m not watching all of this fade.” He grabbed my belly the same way I had. Somehow, it was much sexier when he did it. “You eat, or we don’t go.”

I heaved a sigh, but knew that fighting with Ravv about food was pointless. We had stopped hiding that we had feelings for each other, but we’d been gone searching all day every day, so none of his people really knew what we were to each other.

Elwynne’s eyebrow lift, and Orvay’s snort, told me they had figured it out.

“We knew you were together romantically,” Elwynne said, plopping down in a chair opposite of mine and grabbing Ravv’s fork. Orvay sat next to her, and after she took a bite of Ravv’s food, she gave Orvay one.

“We knew you were together romantically too,” I pointed out, as Ravv took my fork long enough to load it and fill my mouth again.

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