by Rhea Watson
“And it’s very unlikely we could hire outside assistance.”
“Agreed.”
“The trees are so big,” Declan murmured, perhaps not intentionally aloud. His face flushed when Gunnar and I fell silent, and he finally joined us, taking a seat at the end of my bed. “She seems nice—”
“That doesn’t matter,” I told him. “She could be the nicest reaper in all the realms, but we were not born to serve, Declan. We have a right to be free.”
“We can’t kill her.” Gunnar stood, fingers steepled as he paced back and forth in those too-short trousers. “At least, I have no knowledge of how to kill a reaper…” His deep blues slid to me, and I shook my head. We were made for reapers, and yet most of us knew almost nothing about them. My beta’s lips thinned, brows furrowing in thought. “I figured as much. Whether she has the scythe or not, we can’t… I mean, we could possibly overpower her physically if we separated her from the scythe, maybe force her to lift the ward—”
“I’m not torturing her,” Declan insisted, his expression more serious than I had seen in quite some time. Her safety mattered to him—but if I ordered it, he would do as he was told.
Still, I had no interest in torturing her either, no desire to hear her screams echo through the empty halls of this house. We might have been born and bred in Hell, but we were better than demons. This pack of miscreants was better than all of them.
“We’ll track her movements,” I said before Gunnar could argue for brute force. “Research the modern world so we don’t go into it blind. Wait for a moment of weakness, then exploit it. She’ll leave at some point, and that will require her to pass through the ward. Everything has a soft spot, even magic.”
“So, for now, we, what, humor her?” Gunnar stammered out. “I’m not playing fetch for some fucking reaper—”
“I’m not saying we have to make it easy on her,” I told him, holding his glare until he calmed down. “Or pleasant. But we can use what hospitality she offers in the meantime. When was the last time any of us slept in a bed? Had running water? Clean clothes? Hmm?” I looked between Gunnar and Declan, who said nothing—not when the answer was so fucking obvious. “This is less than ideal. We didn’t expect a ward, and we should have, but we’ll adapt. It’s what we do best.”
“Agreed,” Gunnar remarked stiffly, his arms crossed, that mind no doubt racing for a solution. Just as he drew a breath, his eyes sparkling with something important, Declan stood and held up a hand.
“Wait, wait,” he started, padding toward the doorway, “do you smell that?”
My mouth watered—because I sure as fuck did, and it was the one thing right now that smelled even better than Hazel.
Raw, bloody meat.
5
Hazel
Today could have gone better.
But, in all honesty, it could have been a whole lot worse. Fenix clearly treated his hellhounds like crap; maybe aggression was the best way to bend them to your will, but that just wasn’t me. My mum had always said the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, while Dad had told me a well-fed dog was the most loyal. As the sun worked its way across the sky, white fluffy clouds stretched along the horizon, I intended to take both pearls of wisdom and put them to good use.
Good food, and lots of it, may just be the key in getting them to trust me.
Because I hadn’t done enough to stop Fenix from abusing them, and the pack had years of demon rule at the back of their minds, skewing their perception of me.
So. An uphill battle, for sure.
But I was up for the challenge.
I planted my hands on my hips, surveying the mountain of raw venison piled up on the kitchen island. Cooking—yet another challenge to conquer today. In the last ten years, I had watched humans cook. Hidden on the celestial plane, I had explored all-you-can-eat sushi bars, steak houses, gastro pubs, and cupcake bakeries. Food now played a bigger role in the human social fabric than ever before. I’d sampled here and there, but stepping out of the celestial plane, inserting myself in a world that had gone on without me, always made my heart heavy.
With the pack, I couldn’t avoid it anymore. Yesterday, an electrician had been out to the house with the wards disabled. He worked for ten hours, all by himself, electrifying the house, replacing wires, getting the building up to code. It wasn’t perfect. He’d told me he needed to apply for more permits with the city, but I had gently erased his memory of the whole day after accompanying him out to his truck, parked miles away on the last bit of useable road on the property.
Accidents happened in this line of work, and the memory alteration spell had been one of the handiest in my arsenal. While I felt a bit guilty each time I toyed with the inner workings of a human mind, sometimes it was necessary; no one needed to know we were out here, inhabiting this overgrown manor. The wards hid us from the world; I couldn’t allow for any witnesses in the meantime. We had electricity, and that was what mattered.
Now I just needed to learn how to use all the fancy kitchen appliances I’d swiped from department stores a few days ago, which had involved popping out of the celestial plane inside the store, grabbing the item in question—i.e. every piece of furniture in the house—and dragging it out of the mortal realm and into the ether. From there, it was just a matter of teleporting it all back into the house. Still, even for a reaper it was no small feat, especially the larger, more cumbersome kitchen pieces. Refrigerators had come a long way since the thirties, and the touchscreen dials on the stove certainly necessitated an adjustment period.
The espresso machine might as well have been a spaceship, honestly, but at least it came with an instruction manual.
I nibbled my lower lip, still surveying the bloody clump of meat. Best to stick with the basics, probably. Meat, vegetables, bread. Totally manageable. The cooking show I’d streamed this morning said I should season and sear the meat first.
Oh. Wait.
I needed to trim the fat off, right? Eyebrows furrowed, I leaned in, trying not to inhale the scent of raw deer flesh as best I could, and tracked the streaks of white through the red. Okay. First that. Then season. Then sear. Then…
“Damn it.” I straightened and flicked my braid over my shoulder, toes tapping on the old checkered kitchen tile. The recipe had called for an outdoor grill—and lots of butter. The latter sat in the fridge, amongst the other basic necessities the internet had told me to acquire, all of which I’d swiped from a grocery at three this morning. But I didn’t have a grill.
Rounding on the spot, I padded over to the high-tech stove, hands clasped behind my back, and scrutinized the dozens of little touch options. Could I… grill on this thing? Did a grill pop up from somewhere?
I pressed a button and something slowly climbed out of the back of the stove.
Nope. That was a backsplash. I pursed my lips. Was frying in a pan the same as grilling? Would I ruin the deer carcass if I did that?
Why was this so stupidly complicated?
Out of the corner of my eye, green and orange beckoned me home. There sat the head of celery and the cluster of earthy carrots with their green tops, the perfect sides. Maybe I should start with them. I sifted through the carrots, separating them, fiddling with their leafy heads. Boiling vegetables certainly hadn’t changed since I was alive; at least I could still do that without consulting the internet. Easy.
I’d barely gotten the stainless steel pot filled halfway when footsteps echoed out in the hallway, and seconds later in stormed the pack. I shut off the rushing water and set the pot aside, lips parted, ready to ask them how they wanted their meat cooked—rare, probably—when all three beelined straight for the kitchen island. Behind me, warm, hazy late-afternoon sunshine spilled in through the huge windows that ran the full length of the wall, each pane topped with stained glass florals. Oak cabinets lined the room, uppers and lowers, storage plentiful but seating limited. I’d planned to set up dinner in the formal dining hall through the swinging door—but the boys
had other ideas.
A chorus of growls, snarls, and snorts erupted as all three snatched up whole cuts of venison and ripped into the bloody meat. My nose wrinkled.
“Uh. Oh. Okay.” I held up my hands to settle them—them, three of the most gorgeous men I’d ever seen in this life and the last, chowing down on raw meat. The savagery excited me, the noises throbbing low in my belly, but the blood smeared around their mouths, dripping down their chests, sort of ruined the hot guy allure. “Gentlemen, if you could just…”
Wait. Two seconds.
Ugh.
“Do you want me to cook that for you?” Obviously not, but it felt worth asking. “I had a… recipe…” More snarls and heavy breathing answered, with Knox gnawing on the biggest piece. “It’s a garlic, parsley, and butter recipe… for steaks.”
Yeesh. Gunnar and Knox continued wolfing down their meal, not slowing even a little at my offer, but Declan stopped, lowering about a quarter of the chunk he’d initially snatched to the counter, his mouth bloody.
“Sorry, Hazel.” Butterflies rustled to life in my belly at the way he said my name, as though his lightly accented voice was the dawn, rousing them from sleep. I swallowed hard, trying to both focus on him, on his velvety tenor, his bee-stung lips—that faint lilt might have been Arabic, but I couldn’t be sure—and the actual words coming out of them. “We usually eat it raw.”
“Right.” Gross. “Sure.” I nodded, struggling to find something nice to say about a raw meat diet—because he was clearly trying to connect with me while the others seemed content to pretend I didn’t exist. So, despite the smell, I flashed a smile and nodded to the venison in his hand. “Probably makes things a lot easier, I guess.”
A memory cut across my mind’s eye, so visceral and real that it knocked the wind out of me. My first home-cooked meal, the one Mum had given me complete control over from start to finish: shepherd’s pie. Cooked for my parents and for Royce. The smell of raw pie crust and salted mash and slow-roasted beef tickled my nose, made my mouth water. Royce’s eyes, green and beautiful, kind, staring at me from across the table as he shoveled forkful after forkful into a mouth that was always laughing. His lips later that night, illuminated by moonlight as we said goodbye at the rickety gate.
“I want that pie every Sunday for the rest of our lives.”
He’d kissed me while Dad poked his head through the curtains at the front window, his insistent knuckle-rapping shooing my fiancé into the night.
An air strike had taken me out in forty-three.
Royce survived to storm Berlin after the Russians.
Even though he had returned to Surrey, lived the rest of his life there and married a sweet girl and had twelve grandchildren, they had allowed me to reap him when he died.
Lung cancer three years ago.
Those eyes.
That red hair.
The shepherd’s pie.
I licked my lips, shirking the memory with a shake of my head and a clearing of my throat. They came and went, snippets of my human past. Not often these days. I had done a good enough job detaching from Royce’s world in the last ten years, constantly reminding myself that I wasn’t human anymore—that I had no right to walk among them, to feel as they felt.
But tonight, with the scent memories painfully fresh, I felt. Deeply.
Disappointment. For the first time all day, it tickled my belly, tightened my throat—disappointment that I couldn’t cook for my hellhounds, that I had lost that connection already.
“Yes, but raw never changes, you know,” Declan insisted, his honey-smooth words shooing away the last remnants of my past. “It always tastes the same.” He wiped his mouth on his shoulder, smearing blood on the too-big T-shirt. “I would be interested in trying what you had in mind… the, uh, parsley butter. Sounds delicious, Hazel.”
He liked to say my name. I suddenly felt that instead of the disappointment, his satisfaction warming my cheeks, even when Gunnar snorted noisily. A quick glance in his direction showed the beta hellhound picking fatty white streaks out of his venison cut, still shirtless, his bare, sculpted chest splattered with blood. Knox, meanwhile, chewed and ate and ripped flesh without breaking his focus on Declan and me, his gaze dark and hooded—unflinching, unreadable.
Unnerving.
I fidgeted with my nails, knees threatening to buckle under the weight of it all.
“Well, all right then.” I rolled my shoulders back and zeroed in on Declan again. If only one of them bothered to give me the time of day, then I would take it and run. “I haven’t done much cooking in a while… I might be a bit rusty.”
“And I’ve never cooked at all,” the hellhound admitted as he rounded the island and headed straight for me, the meat in his extended hand like he was offering me the most bizarre present I’d ever received. “But I would like to try, if you’ll let me… If you need the help, that is.”
“Of course. That would be great.” Relief washed over me as I took the gnawed venison cut, needing both hands to his one to hold it. His cautious little smile made my butterflies take flight, flitting around my belly, the beat of each wing drawing something both unfamiliar and welcome out of me. The offer of help threatened to make me cry; already I could see why Declan had been my first connection in Hell. Not only was he outrageously attractive, but he was sweet too.
Of course, it could all be manipulation—catching more flies with honey than vinegar and whatnot.
Abruptly, a few of those butterflies nose-dived into oblivion.
In life I’d tried to see the good in people, but after ten years of reaping every sort of human, I knew better. For now, best keep my guard up. Declan could be as sweet as he made himself out to be, or he could be a pawn for the alpha who hadn’t stopped glaring at me since he’d charged out of his crate.
Holding Declan’s venison out in front of me, I looked between the other two hellhounds in the kitchen. “Do you want me to cook yours, or—”
Gunnar snarled and shook his head, then tore into the last of his meat as if I might steal it right out from under him. Knox, on the other hand, carried on eating without acknowledging me whatsoever, which was great.
Just great.
“What are these?” Meanwhile, Declan had gotten away from me, loitering in front of the stove now with a stalk of celery in one hand and a carrot in the other. “Do you eat these?” His nostrils flared, chest stuttering through a curious sniff. “Are they the parsley and butter?”
Manipulation or not, his inquisitiveness plucked at my heartstrings. “No, they’re sides for the meat. Just something complementary.”
I kept an ear out for the other two once I turned my back and joined Declan at the counter. He trailed his nose along the length of the unpeeled carrot, dirt hidden in its grooves, then snorted when the fuzzy green tops tickled his nostrils. I held back my smile, not wanting to make him self-conscious. Genuine curiosity was just such a beautiful thing, and if this wasn’t an act, I’d hate to see him lose it.
Because Declan was my in with this pack—that much was clear.
Gunnar was a wild card, someone who I could probably force into a conversation with the right prompting.
Knox… I looked back as Declan tossed the carrot aside and focused on the celery stalk. His alpha remained at the head of the island, hands bloody, eyes hard and almost pure black, that enormous frame filling the room like the biggest kitchen I’d ever seen was still too small for him.
I sighed softly. Knox would be a problem.
A crisp crunch tore me away from the brooding alpha, and a giggle slipped out before I could stop it. Declan had chomped off half the celery stalk, bottom first, and had the same horrified look on his face that I’d had when I first saw the trio dive into the raw venison. When our eyes met, his features morphed from disgust to, well, a sad attempt at a smile.
“It’s great,” he mumbled through a mouthful of half-chewed celery. His mouth said one thing, but his eyes screamed the opposite. “Really just… exce
ptional. Delicious stuff.”
“Okay, so no to the celery.” I plucked the remaining half stalk from his hand and pushed the rest across the counter with my elbow, grinning. I then dumped his leftover venison hunk in the cold pan on the stove, my hands bloody. “Noted. Let me just find the recipe for the venison, and we’ll try to make something that’s actually good.”
“M’okay,” the hellhound forced out, clearly battling to keep that enthusiastic expression in place. The second I left the kitchen, he was spitting out that celery—hopefully not on the floor.
“Garbage is under the sink,” I whispered with a wink, willing my hands clean with a flicker of magic. “Be right back.”
I felt his eyes on me as I hurried toward the kitchen door, that bright, curious gaze soon joined by two others, all three palpable and somehow distinct. The hairs on the nape of my neck stood on end, and when I slipped into the hall and went for the first-floor sitting room to grab my tablet, I realized that whole encounter had happened without my scythe.
We could be civil, apparently.
The thought of which—finally—put a bit of pep in my step.
And a smile in my heart.
Through our combined efforts, Declan and I had proven to be, at best, mediocre cooks. The venison had been a little overdone. The seasoning could have been more aggressive. The carrots had turned to mush. But my sweetest, most interactive hellhound ate every last bit of it—even licked his plate clean—all under Knox’s watchful eye.
As soon as we’d started following the recipe on my tablet, Gunnar had bailed, having finished all his raw meat, but the pack’s alpha stayed through everything, not saying a word but watching my interactions with Declan like a hawk.
Not a demonic hawk, mind you. Knox’s looks were darker than a demon, more primal, perhaps even ominously ethereal. As we cooked, I’d swallowed my discomfort, suffering through his relentless black gaze on me for the sake of seeing the task to the end. And now, hours later, I was glad that I did, because it had taught me a few very important things about at least one of my hellhounds.
