to play-wrestle with it.
I take a seat at the table, where I can watch his macabre sport while finishing my beer.
The dead rat is tossed, bitten, growled over, and savaged with his small teeth. “It’s already dead,” I point out. He doesn’t appear to care. Finally, he tires of these antics and sets about chowing it down. Starting with the head… Why does he begin with the head? Why not the belly? Surely the belly is soft and gives easy access to nutrient-rich innards?
No, the cat eats the head. I am on the other side of the room, but I can still hear the crunching noises. I don’t consider myself a squeamish man, but I am nevertheless disturbed by my furred monster tucking into his feast.
The cat is small, the rat is massive, but he still manages to eat half of it before he’s done. Sated, he sits over his kill, using paws to clean the blood from around his mouth.
As I finish off my beer, he flops onto his side, belly proudly swollen.
Sighing, I go and pick up the half-rat by the tail and toss it out the door. Head lifting, the cat watches me with haughty disgust.
“Your belly is fit to burst,” I say. “You do not need more, you little heathen.”
Tired, I head for bed. I am barely settled when the fanged monster jumps onto the bed and makes a nest for himself by my side. “I guess you don’t need to go out hunting tonight.”
I don’t know what to do tomorrow, whether to go to the festival or not. It is the right thing to mend bridges. It is the worst thing to mend bridges if I go into a fucking rampage, beat the shit out of Brandon, and steal his mate away.
I sigh.
I can do this. I can see Jessa happy with Brandon and then let my anger go. I am not my fucking father. I have a clan and responsibilities to think of.
But as I close my eyes, a familiar dream plays out.
Jessa underneath me, face flushed, mouth parted on groans of pleasure as I rut her roughly.
The following day when I rise, the remainder of the dead rat is being tossed around the floor. “You are a black-hearted heathen,” I say.
Pete raises a brow as he enters the hall and sees a cat with the rat. “What happened to the top half?” he asks, indicating my tiny killer and his prey.
“Aye,” I say. “He ate the other half last night. Now, he’s slaying the corpse again. You did not warn me they were such macabre beasts.”
Pete chuckles. “Told you he would make a good mouser. One less rat in the stores.”
Then he nudges his head at me. “Are you heading for the Ralston clan today?”
“Aye,” I agree.
“You are worried,” he surmises. My interest in Jessa is of no surprise to anyone close to me. I’m sure it is the talk of the fucking clan after I killed my father because he’d threatened to search for Jessa that fateful night.
“Aye,” I say.
“Some lasses need more than one mate,” he says. “Have you considered the civilized approach? I was there that night, remember. I saw the way she looked at you.”
I huff out a breath. At times, I convince myself her feelings toward me are a figment of my imagination. “We have barely started negotiations,” I say. “There is yet more bridging needed… Years of fucking bridging. And even so, the two mates would need to tolerate each other with a mind to becoming brothers through bonding. Can you see me and the mutt forming a bond?”
His lips tug up. “No, but if you want the lass, that is the only way. I share a mate. In this clan and with so few womenfolk, it is more common than most clans. There are some that have gone on to take a third mate. It is rarely easy unless the men are firm friends. It is more natural for an Alpha to take two Beta mates. But you learn to accept, and given enough time, you even come to enjoy it. A Beta will respond to Alpha pheromones. It makes them lustier than they might have been wedded to a Beta male. Or so I have heard from Beta males who have gone on to share their partner with an Alpha. It might even be a preferred coupling, Alpha and Beta male with a Beta lass. Never thought I would say this, but I enjoy watching