Page 70 of Rejected By Wolves

I see Scratch on the roof, throwing tiles at the chimera the way he skims stones across the water at the creek. They’re slowing the monster down a little, and he’s doing it well enough that he hasn’t hit me. I guess maybe I don’t annoy him that badly.

I manage to haul myself up on the monster’s big head and grab my pouch.

There’s no way I have any dexterity left to open it, so I just loosen the ties and toss it into his open mouth. He coughs and it jumps back up, almost falling out! I push it back in hard, shoving it down his throat, and just avoiding his snapping fangs.

I’m going to have to hold his giant mouth shut.

It takes the last of my strength, but I force his mouth to close while he bucks and spins under me, trying to shove me off.

Somehow, Scratch manages to land on his back a second later, and my brother moves up to the other side of his face and takes over holding the beast's mouth shut for me.

I slap my father’s face as I move back a little. “You didn’t succeed in killing us, father, but we’ve succeeding in killing you.”

He struggles so much that I almost think I didn’t pick enough nightshade to end him.

He’s big, sure, but he’s not so much bigger than we are.

Scar spent a lot of time making sure we knew to avoid the nightshade plants when we were kids.

It was one of the important things he made sure we knew, so nothing bad could happen to us.

“That’s what parents do,” I murmur, mostly speaking to myself. “They protect their kids. They don’t try to kill them.”

He convulses under us, and then starts to slowly crash to the ground as the weather eases up above us, the rain trailing off and the thunder fading away. No lightning strike this time.

Just one big, dead monster and four extremely tired brothers who could use a warm bed with a sweet mate and a whole tin full of cookies to fill their stomachs.

We jump off our father’s back as he crashes to the ground, returning in death to a pink-skinned human with a small, breakable body that’s kind of full of gaping, bloody wounds.

Snake rushes to my side and hisses at me in excitement.

He pokes at the body, moving around it as if he’s inspecting our work.

“What was that exactly?” Scar asks as he approaches, dropping the piece of fence that’s in his hand.

I smile at him. “I remembered something you taught us when we were kids, and then Scratch stopped him from spitting out the poison.”

“That was nightshade?” Scar asks, sounding vaguely amused.

“Well, it didn’t seem like we were going to get very far with a physical attack.”

“It’s a good thing that worked,” Scratch says. “I have no damn idea what kills chimeras.”

“Do we take over the town, now?” I ask Scar, not really caring either way.

I’m wet and tired enough to just want to get warm.

I wouldn’t say no to visiting Lita, but also, sleep.

Scar is frowning when I look back at him.

“We need to talk to my mother,” he tells us.

I smile. That sounds perfect. Lita lives with his mother.

“I hope there’s a fire, and cookies,” I murmur.

Scar walks on without responding. Scratch chases after him.

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