“Ay, you going to take a bite of it, next?” Ella Cutter jeered.
“Don’t think I won’t!” Stela said.
“Hear that, Wardskins?” Ella cried. “Stela’s going to take a bite of the demon’s heart!”
“Do it!” someone shouted from the crowd.
“She ent got the stones!” a girl cried.
“You’ll slosh for sure!” a gangly young man added, laughing.
“Gatherers say ichor’s poison!” someone said.
Stela looked at Franq, but the Brother did not try to stay her. Indeed, he eyed Stela and the heart intensely. Hungrily.
“Eat it!” the crowd boomed. “Eat it! Eat it! Eat it!”
Stela gave a wild smile, chomping down and tearing free a chunk of demon flesh. Her mouth ran black as she chewed, a mad look in her eyes. She retched once, but managed to swallow the mouthful.
“Tastes like a coreling shat in my mouth!” Stela cried, and the crowd laughed. She turned to Briar, offering him the heart. When he balked, she grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him in, kissing him wetly on the mouth.
The ichor was foul on his lips, clinging and noxious, but he felt its power, even so. He felt his bile rise and swallowed hard, feeling the ichor burn its way down into him.
Franq strode at them as she pulled away. Briar half expected him to condemn them as corespawned. Instead the man stepped up and kissed Stela, tasting the ichor from her lips as Briar had.
Briar expected her to push him away, but Stela seemed to welcome the kiss, ecstatic in the rush of magic.
Briar lost sight of her as the other Wardskins swarmed forward to take their own bites from the heart. Soon the heart was consumed, everyone retching and laughing, faces black with demon blood. Unsatisfied, some went to the demon’s body, tearing into its chest and pulling out gobs of meat.
More of the Wardskins began kissing, rubbing ichor over one another’s faces and bodies. Briar saw Ella and the gangly young man move away from the demon, smeared with ichor. Ella laughed at Briar, wiggling her littlest finger at him as the man laid her back in the dirt.
Briar felt his face heat, turning away, but it was becoming a common scene atop the bluff, the few scraps of cloth the Wardskins wore being pulled away, wards glowing brightly in the night.
Stela had vanished. Briar wandered through the cavorting Pack looking for her. The chaos was surreal amid the magic flooding his senses. Stela was nowhere to be found atop the bluff. He moved down the pathway into the woods.
He heard her grunting and picked up his pace, not knowing what he would find. He burst through the trees to see Stela naked on all fours, growling. Brother Franq knelt behind her, bido pulled aside to reveal a cock thrice the size of Briar’s. His hands were on her hips, pulling her onto it.
Briar clenched his fist, every instinct screaming at him to strike the man. To kill him. To tear open his chest as he had the demon’s and feast on his heart.
But then Stela looked up. “Briar! Don’t be shy! I’ve openings for two.”
She beckoned, and Briar froze, terrified. The thought of joining them was horrifying. A perversion of the beauty they shared. He was repulsed, but his cock betrayed him, hard in his breeches.
He shook his head sharply, turning and running into the trees.
“Briar, wait!” Stela cried. He heard Franq’s bellow as she threw him off. He picked up speed at the sound of her feet, pounding across the forest bed after him.
Briar zigzagged through the trees, but while Franq’s angry shouts receded into the night, Stela kept pace. “Corespawn it, Briar! Will you please stop and talk to me?!”
He kept running, but he had no plan. The territory was unfamiliar, his thoughts still reeling. Stela gained ground until she could reach out and catch his arm. “What in the dark of night’s gotten into you?!”
Briar whirled to face her. “You were…You…!”
Stela crossed her arms. “Ay, I was what? Don’t belong to you, Briar Damaj, just because you stuck me.”
Briar shook her arm off. “Din’t say you did! Know you want more than the little stinker with the small cock.”
Stela’s expression softened. “Heard me and Ella, din’t you? Night, I’m sorry, Briar. Din’t mean it cruel.”
Briar barked a laugh. “Else could it be?”
“Just girl talk,” Stela said, giving him that wicked smile. “Don’t mean you won’t still get your turn.”
“What?” Briar stumbled back as Stela stalked in.
“Like you, Briar,” Stela said. “Din’t lie about that. Felt safe with you at my back last night.”
Briar backed into a tree and she was against him, still wearing nothing but tattoos and ichor. His heart thudded in his chest.
She put a hand between his legs, squeezing. “Did good work on my front, too, when the scrap was over. Small cock or no, I ent letting go a man who can kick a demon’s arse and curl my toes when it’s done.”
She kissed Briar again, breath still hot with magic and hinting at the noxious ichor of the corie.
Stela took his chin in her free hand as their lips parted, turning him to meet her eyes. “We don’t own each other in the Pack. I’ll stick who I want, when I want, and you should, too. Ella may joke, but don’t think she ent curious after what I told her.”
She undid the laces of his breeches, freeing him. Everything seemed to be spinning, but in that one place he felt rigid—ready to explode. “But not tonight.” She took him in her hand, skin on skin. Briar shut his eyes and grit his teeth to keep from crying out. “Tonight is your night, Wardskin. Let’s get the first one out of the way, and then you can have me as you please.”
She pushed him back against the tree, mounting him standing. She ground her full weight down on his crotch, reaching back between their legs to fondle his seedpods. Briar howled, and Stela gave a whoop of delight, picking up the pace as they gripped and scratched at each other.
Stela slipped off him when it was done, taking a few unsteady steps before turning around and kneeling on all fours. She turned to look him in the eye, smiling. “This is what Franq wanted. Now he’s pulling himself and it’s yours.”
The words teased a primal hunger—the exquisite pleasure of thrusting aside a rival and taking what was his. And why not? Dominance was the natural order of the world. Wolves did it. Cories did it.
Gonna be like them now?
He looked at Stela, covered in ichor, beckoning, and something churned in him. Was this the life he wanted?
He shook his head, reaching down to pull up his pants. “No.”
Stela threw him an angry look. “No? What in the Core do you mean, no?”
Briar finished lacing himself up. “Last night in the Briarpatch, I thought…”
“What, Mudboy?” Stela snapped, springing to her feet. “That we were one spirit the Creator tore in half?”
“That you understood,” Briar said.
“We killed two demons and stuck each other,” Stela said. “What’s there to understand?”
“World’s bigger than this,” Briar said. “Folk struggling for their lives outside Gatherers’ Wood, and all the Pack are doing is…”
“Hunting and killing the demons that prey on them,” Stela growled.
Briar shook his head. “Prey on them yourself. Stealing ale and supplies, even from your own family. Ent looking to protect them when night falls. You just want…” He swept a hand at her.
Stela put her hands on her hips. “Just want what, Mudboy?”
There was danger in her eyes, but now that he had started talking, Briar was past caring.
“To bathe in ichor and rut,” he said. “And corespawn any that ent Pack.”
Stela lashed out at him. The magic made her fast, but Briar had tasted it, too. He took a quick step back, avoiding the slap.
“So what, you’re just gonna walk away?!” Stela demanded. “No one walks away from Stela Cutter, you quickshooting little stinker, least of all you.”
She snatched at him, and Briar batted her arm aside with his right hand. There was a flare of power as the impact ward struck, throwing her off her feet.