This chapter contains graphic threats of sexual violence, coercion, gore, and abuse.
…
The baboon envoy kept smiling because he could smell fear, and fear always made weak settlements easier to bite.
His long baboon shaft twitched under his rough hide skirt as the thick scent of terrified females leaked from the broken walls.
Behind him the other baboon males shifted and grunted, heavy sacks swinging low, eyes hungry as they dragged their stares over the females hiding behind roots.
One openly rubbed his thickening meat, nostrils wide, already leaking at the thought of fresh holes to claim.
They had not come because one male had died.
They had come because they wanted to see if Thorn Hollow could still bare its teeth after the attack.
The mandrill elder knew that too.
That was why he did not immediately surrender Odette, even though Odette saw the thought moving behind his eyes.
If Thorn Hollow handed over a female the moment a troop demanded payment, every hungry beast near the river, the caves, and the dark trees would know this hollow could be pressed until it broke.
The elders did not care about Odette enough to risk many males for her, but they cared about appearing strong.
The mandrill elder lifted his chin and growled, “Thorn Hollow does not give females to outsiders.”
The baboon envoy’s nostrils flared wider and his smile stretched into a fang-baring grin, teeth still dark with old blood.
“Then give her to a male inside your hollow before night falls.
If she has a guardian we will speak to him.
If she has none she is loose prey carrying baboon blood… and we will drag her out and rut her bloody until every male here smells our seed on her.”
Odette’s fingers curled.
She understood the trap.
The baboons were forcing the hollow to prove they owned her like any other breeding female, a warm hole that needed a strong male’s scent and knot to keep other beasts from taking her.
The elders turned toward one another, and their growls became low and ugly as they spoke in their throats.
Odette stood with blood on her mouth and mud dried over her skin, but she did not lower her eyes.
She looked at every elder as if she wanted to remember which face chose her cage for her.
For a moment, something changed in the air.
The males nearest to her stiffened.
Odette did not move.
She did not snarl.
She did not bare her teeth.
She only stared, but her amber eyes sharpened until the faint red ring around them seemed darker than before.
It was not the wild panic of a trapped female.
It was not even normal anger.
It was something colder, something that made the hair along several males’ arms rise even though she was smaller, wounded, and barely standing.
The snake beastman beside the elders tasted the air and pulled his tongue back too quickly.
The mandrill elder’s eyes narrowed.
He felt it too, but he did not understand it, and what males could not understand, they usually tried to crush.
“Bring Gorran,” he ordered.
A thick boar beastman stepped forward from the wounded guards.
He was broad, heavy, and dark-haired, with a flat nose, small cruel eyes, and two short tusks rising from his lower mouth.
His chest was bare and covered in old scars, and his hide skirt was tied low around his thick waist.
He looked strong enough to split roots with his shoulder, but everything about his gaze made Odette’s stomach turn.
The elder pointed at him.
“Gorran will become your guardian.”
Gorran smiled as if he had already been given meat.
“A female like this needs a male who knows how to hold her down.
Do not worry, elders.
I will protect her… by mounting her every night until her legs stay open and her belly swells with my pups.
I will rut the pride out of her until she only knows the taste of my seed and the weight of my body pinning her.”
Odette’s stomach twisted violently, a wave of raw disgust surging up her throat like spoiled meat.
The words coated her tongue with bile, the thought of his heavy boar body crushing down on her, his rank sweat and musk smothering her feathers, his thick meat forcing its way inside night after night while he grunted and drooled like a feeding animal.
Her lips curled back in pure revulsion.
Her amber eyes burned with cold hatred as she stared at his flat snout and small cruel eyes.
Everything about him made her skin crawl, the way his tusks gleamed with spit, the heavy musk rolling off his scarred hide, the eager hunger in his voice that treated her like a fresh kill to be mounted and emptied into.
She wanted to claw his eyes out.
She wanted to kick his throat until he choked on his own blood.
The disgust sat so deep in her chest it felt like maggots crawling under her ribs.
A sour flood rose in her mouth.
She swallowed hard, forcing the vomit back down, but the taste of it lingered, bitter and sharp, the same way the baboon’s blood had tasted earlier.
Gorran walked closer and looked down at her.
“I will break the wild out of you.”
Odette’s face stayed still, but her fingers twitched once at her side.
“Touch me and I will make you regret it.”
Several males snarled at her words, while the females nearby went pale because refusing a guardian in front of the elders was already dangerous, and refusing one while a baboon envoy watched from the gate was almost asking to be punished.
Gorran’s smile disappeared.
“You think killing one wounded baboon makes you hard to tame?”
He grabbed her wrist.
Odette moved before fear could stop her.
Her body was weak, but the movement did not come from strength.
It came from something deeper, something sharp and exact that had always lived inside her legs.
Secretary birds killed with their feet, not their hands, and although Odette had never been trained to fight, her blood seemed to know where to strike.
She twisted her wrist inward, stepped into his space instead of pulling away, and kicked the side of his knee with the hard, narrow force of her long leg.
The sound was small.
Gorran’s scream was not.
His leg bent wrong, and the huge boar male dropped to the mud as if the ground had swallowed his strength.
He hit one hand down to catch himself, breathing hard through his teeth, while his other hand clutched his knee.
The whole hollow went silent.
Odette stood above him, swaying from pain, her chest rising too quickly, her face almost white beneath the mud.
She looked half dead.
Her mouth was bloody.
Her ribs were bruised.
Her knee was torn open.
She was only a bird female, smaller than every male around her, and yet Gorran was on the ground because she had struck him once.
The baboon envoy stopped smiling.
Even his males stared.
The elders looked at Odette again, and this time the fear in their eyes was harder to hide.
It was not the fear of losing a female.
It was the fear of realizing this female was not the kind of creature their rules had been made to hold.
Before the mandrill elder could roar an order, another sound tore through the trees.
A tiger’s roar shook the thorn wall.
Every beast in Thorn Hollow froze.
The baboon envoy turned first, and his face changed so fast that Odette understood the new danger before she saw it.
The baboons were cruel, but even cruel beasts knew when a stronger hunter had entered the air.
Outside the broken border stood a massive tiger male in human form, tall, bare-chested, and marked with dark stripes along his arms, shoulders, and throat.
His hide skirt was blackened with dried blood at the edge, and his golden eyes watched the hollow with the calm hunger of a beast that did not need to hurry.
Around him stood other tiger beastmen and several powerful males from different kinds, all carrying the scent of fresh hunting and old violence.
Odette’s gaze fell on him before she could stop herself.
He was beautiful in a dangerous way, the kind of beautiful that belonged to teeth, claws, and things that did not ask permission before taking space.
The tiger male’s eyes moved over the baboons first, then the broken walls, then the blood on the ground.
Finally, his gaze landed on Odette.