at me, and I nod, patting her shoulder. I never mentioned Kai’s womankind to her because Aoa’s mother, Mae, may hear of Amti and decide to take revenge. Mae and Amti don’t get along and angry goddesses in one place awaken the goddess of doom, and nobody wants Aimea to awaken or find her place in the Ka tribe. Ark can have her.
Hart keeps the portal open after Aoa walks inside. She doesn’t go to the bath but takes a turn and heads for a deep-green tent. I frown, having no idea why Hart set up a camp over there.
“It’s a private wasting space,” he explains.
Makes sense now.
Hart keeps the portal open as Aoa undresses. Since his back is turned to the portal, he doesn’t see her nude body, but I do. My dick jumps in my verto as she bends to test the water and the pussy lips peeking from between her legs call to me. My mouth waters at the memory of her taste. Aoa’s long silky black hair drifts across her back and over her shoulder. My vision sharpens. Even my hunter wants her, which is unnatural and something we don’t do. Hunters hunt. Males fuck.
“Have you marked her?” Hart asks.
“Not yet,” comes out of my mouth, and I snap my gaze to Hart, who’s watching me with the eyes of his hunter. Aggression rolls off him in waves, and the scent of his dominant hunter pounds in my head, demanding submission. I glare at him, a low, barely audible growl threatening in my chest. He left the portal open on purpose, wanting to see how I’d react to her nudity, and now he knows that marking is on my mind.
Hart growls low and matches mine in tone and fierceness. I growl louder, my hunter disliking his imposition. Hart won’t back down, so he rumbles loudly. If I as much as twitch my finger, he’ll spring at me, and I wonder if he’ll go for my throat. I’ve always submitted to my brother. He’s the Kai, respected and feared, but he’s challenging my hunter’s instincts.
I gasp at the revelation. “The marking is the hunter’s instinct.”
Hart blinks, our standoff interrupted. “What?”
“The marking comes from the hunter. It’s… It’s an instinct.”
“Don’t make excuses for the marking.”
“You marked.”
“I did, and I don’t regret it, but I’m the Kai.”
I snort. “So I have to become the Kai to mark her. Is that what you’re telling me?” To become the Kai of my tribe, I have to kill my brother or he has to die. After the natural death of a tribal leader, there are challenges, proceedings, and often games. “The strongest is always Alpha. He eats first. But when it comes to breeding, the games determine the winner.”
“Which you didn’t win, Nar. You saw an opportunity to take the female, and you took her.”
“If you’d been there, you’d have done the same.”
Hart leans in, practically spitting fire out of his eyes. “You left a male behind.”
I flinch again. “They pushed him into a portal.”
Hart sighs and scrubs his face, and when he looks up, he glares at me with pale eyes. “Tell me everything.”
I recount how the Ra pushed Mas inside the portal before the whistle, and how I called out a false start, and how the female stood up and followed me. She struck at Gur when he tried to slap her, and it all spiraled out of control from there. Hart listens attentively, eating up my words, asking no questions, and I stand to pace as I talk, trying to conjure theories of where Mas might be, but my guessing won’t help. “We need a location. He’ll ping us via the portals.”
“Veti is on the portals.”
I nod. “Good. Good. Veti is good.”
Hart stands too, my hunter making him restless. We walk around my sitting room, gazes on the floor, thinking of how this could all play out. I’m considering Aoa and what’s best for her, while I’m certain he’s thinking of our tribe and what’s best for them. Snarling, I throw up my hands. “I am a selfish prick. A hooker. A bitchhole. But there’s no stopping the marking. Tonight, I will either die or mark her. So either kill me or get out of my house so I can fuck her.”
Hart marches up to me, his chest hitting mine. He grabs the back of my neck and yanks me to him. When he growls at my ear, I feel his breath on my neck, and my hunter rises,