by Rhea Watson
“It smells like an orchid,” Hazel said, her eyes on me when I shook myself free of the orb’s hold. “Humans associate the flower with death. It’s sometimes used at funerals, the symbology… They don’t understand why they associate it with us, but they do. Most souls smell like this, the sweeter fragrance of the flower, but there are some that smell like sour meat, just like some orchids smell absolutely foul. Those ones usually have a one-way ticket down, if you know what I mean.”
Knox and Gunnar exchanged another silent look, and in that moment, Hazel deflated just a little. She really was trying to connect, and there was nothing worse than trying your fucking hardest only to be met with outright rejection. Been there. Done that. And it felt like shit.
“This one smells wonderful,” I offered, leaving my packmates behind and closing half the distance between us. The orb cast an unearthly white glow across her already deathly pale skin, and it made her look like an angel—like the queen of angels, especially when she smiled.
“Doesn’t it?” Hazel slowly brought her hands up, sniffing the orb as one does a wildflower, her eyes closed, expression peaceful. “I’ll never tire of that smell.”
Would I ever tire of making her look like that? Making her feel whatever she did right this second, lifting her spirits?
The connection between us should have frightened me—my desire to please her even more so. But I had bonded with Gunnar and Knox in an instant, the feeling mutual, so why couldn’t I do the same with Hazel?
“Today we’re going to work on a simple find and retrieve exercise,” Hazel informed us, slowly rolling the orb between her hands, suddenly more like a ball than a floating celestial lookalike. “You’ll practice tracking and herding, two really important skills for hellhounds. Find the orb. Bring it back. Easy.” She wet her lips, her hair rustling in the muted breeze. “Losing souls isn’t an option, okay? We’re going to save everyone we can, because they all deserve judgment.”
Gunnar chuckled coldly, watching her as if Hazel were just like all the other fuckwits we’d had to deal with day in and day out in Hell. His expression made me bristle, my irritation streaking through our pack bond like a jolt of lightning. My packmates’ stares burned into the back of my head, both of them catching my slip, and I squared my shoulders, almost daring them to say something. Gunnar was being an asshole for no reason; he deserved to feel it.
Hazel’s hand had wrapped around her scythe in the few tense beats of silence that stretched between us, no doubt sensing the friction, maybe even preparing to intervene. Scratching at the back of my neck, I forced an impish grin and nodded.
“Got it. No lost souls. We can manage that.”
Knox’s stare intensified; I was talking too much today, acting like I ruled the pack, like I had the right to speak for them. But no one else was saying anything, and it was getting awkward.
Besides, I loved herding. Of all the tasks I’d been trained in, this was my favorite.
Without a word, Hazel launched the orb into the forest, and all three of us tensed. Senses on high alert, every muscle in my body stilled as I tracked the target. It arced over the pointed treetops—cedars, Hazel had called them—and then vanished beneath the canopy. That lovely sweet scent trailed after it; if we were in the mortal realm, the elements would have swept it away like the tide, but the celestial plane seemed to offer a buffer, which made the smell of a human soul linger. It called to me, to us, interest and focus and energy pulsing through our bond, crashing together, threatening to whip us into a frenzy. Heat rose between me and the others, the shift calling us home. My tensed body shook at the effort to remain on two legs.
No one moved.
All this energy flowing under the surface, a riptide ready to drown us, and no one did a damn thing. Painful as it was, I turned my back on the forest, on my goal, and met Knox’s dark gaze. Head lowered, I asked permission without uttering a word, and nothing about his stiff, looming figure suggested he had denied me.
If he didn’t tell me no in the next ten seconds, I was doing this.
I mean, he had ordered us to humor the reaper, so neither of them could fault me.
And if Gunnar had something to say, let him. All this silent judgmental staring was so unlike him it was starting to freak me out.
I’d learned that today—freak me out. Thank you, human television program, for expanding my vocabulary already.
A slight, painfully subtle thrust of Knox’s chin toward the forest was the permission I needed. Giddiness exploded in my chest, and I stripped down hurriedly, not wanting to ruin the clothes I’d found this morning in a neatly folded pile at the end of my bed—my own, personal, just for me bed. The garments were new and clean and soft, and smelled faintly like Hazel, and I just…
How could they not see this was paradise?
Seriously.
I dropped from two feet to four paws in a flash, my senses even more heightened in my hound form. A soft gasp escaped from Hazel, and I briefly zeroed in on her flushed cheeks, the graceful bob of her throat when she swallowed. Her scent threatened to take me, as powerful as the current that we three felt before a shift, but I forced myself away, refocused on the task at hand.
Somewhere in that forest was my prize. Today, it was just an orb, a snippet of magic conjured by Hazel—there were no stakes. But as I charged toward the trees, I imagined it was a wayward soul, a human spirit lost and frightened, confused to find themselves dead and alone in a world that looked just like their own, but also somehow completely different. That was the proper mindset, right?
Fear and I were old friends. It had been an unwelcome bedfellow, a constant in my life from the day I opened my eyes. Deceased humans likely felt fear when they woke up in the celestial plane, and that would drive me.
It should drive the others too, but time would give them their motivation. Nothing I said or did now would make a difference.
The grass underfoot, so lush and full and green, grew sparse as I crossed the tree line. Unfettered sunshine vanished, cutting through the canopy in scattered golden beams. The forest was thick but maneuverable, the earth beneath my paws unlike anything I had experienced before. Rocks and mud and roots touched me, welcomed me, threatened to trip me up. Birds scattered before I reached them, on a whole different plane from me yet sensing my presence anyway. We four were invisible to the mortal realm now, but the creatures of these woods seemed somehow aware that they were not alone.
I paused briefly, heart beating slow and steady, and nosed at the air. That smell couldn’t evade me, even as it zigzagged around trees and punched through branches. It called to me somewhere to the left, and left I went, tuning in to the sharp buzz moments later. The landscape would take some getting used to, but that was part of the challenge, surely. A challenge I faced head-on, and within minutes, after only a few twists and turns and one backtrack, I found it.
The wayward soul.
Hovering between two saplings, shimmering, trembling.
Mine.
Once I had it in my sights, there was no shaking me. I chased that damn orb through the forest, completely in tune with it—eventually outsmarting it, cutting it off at the pass, flying between a cluster of non-cedars and tackling it to the ground.
Much to my surprise, it was hard. Not just a glowing ball of light, but a physical being too. I had never touched a soul before; this was a surprise. But I swallowed my shock, up on all fours, nudging the orb in the direction I wanted.
Which was…
Damn it. Everything looked the same in here.
Until I found her, smelled those ripe dates, sensed her warmth, and then finding my way back home was a breeze. The orb tried to lose me a few times along the way, but I guided it with a snap of my teeth. While it had no ankles for me to nip at, I improvised, and soon enough we burst out of the trees and into the open field again, where I was met by a beaming Hazel. She whooped and clapped her hands together, radiating delight in a way that made my chest rather tight, my heart unnervingly
full.
“Declan, that was amazing!” she praised as the orb drifted back to her palms. “You did so good!”
No one had ever told me that—except for Knox and Gunnar. Outside of my ragtag pack, no trainer or breeder or hound had ever complimented me. I shifted back, my furless flesh coated in sweat, the heat of the shift rolling off me, and then speared a hand through my hair with a bashful smile.
“It was easy,” I told her, unsure of what else to say, how to respond to such blatant praise. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had a response in me for that sort of thing, so I took a note from Gunnar and deflected instead. “Let’s do it again.”
Hazel and I looked to Gunnar and Knox in tandem, hers a cautious inquiry, mine a pleading stare that resonated through our bond. I wanted this for them—to experience the hunt, to relish a victory, to hear her praise.
To feel it in their bones as I did.
Much to my surprise, Knox broke first. He peeled off his shirt, then jerked down his still much too small trousers, and Gunnar followed suit. They shifted without acknowledging Hazel, but each greeted me with a friendly mouthing, their teeth brushing over my hands, their tails slowly flicking side to side.
I sat at the bottom of our trio; I could expect no more than teeth and growls and a dismissive greeting, but they always gave me so much more than that. Shifted back into my hound form, their affection thrummed openly between us, and I nipped at Gunnar’s legs with an eager yip, then nuzzled beneath Knox’s strong jaw with my ears down and my tail whipping back and forth. My alpha responded with a forceful push toward the forest, his head held high, his cropped ears up and alert.
Hazel hurled the orb underhanded this time, and it looped up, then zipped out like an arrow, straight and true, blitzing across the forest before disappearing within it.
We were off in an instant, Knox leading the way, Gunnar and I fanned out behind him, paws thundering, dirt flying, birds scattering.
And, honestly, I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the day.
7
Gunnar
“Why do the male humans fight over the one female?” Declan asked from the other end of the couch upon which we both sat. It was one of many new pieces of furniture that had slowly but steadily filled the crumbling estate over the previous fortnight. The pack and I would retire to Knox’s room shortly after sunset, snoozing the night away knowing that we wouldn’t be attacked, startled awake, or beaten in our sleep, and come first light, our reaper had procured something else for us to mark up with our scent.
Most of the pieces were for us, filling our bedrooms, the study, the kitchen. Not that it mattered. In time, I would break her wards, and no amount of furniture or regular meals or fresh, temperature-regulated running water could change that.
I did enjoy learning about modern humans, however, and there was no better study of them than through the television. While I favored the morning talk shows and the evening news, reality television shows, usually featuring competitions for love or money, were rather telling.
And damning, honestly.
Because between the disastrous doldrums forever bleating on the news and the idiots prancing about on these competition shows, obviously the human realm was a fucking mess.
“No idea, Dec,” I muttered, stretching my arm out along the back of the couch and then crossing my ankles on the little wood table before us. On the screen, two would-be alpha males, shirtless and rippling with muscle, struggled against their restraints—a group of other males attempting to prevent the fight, apparently—while a lone scantily clad female drunkenly scream-slurred their names. I chuckled when she hurled her drink at the skirmish, the glass missing by a mile and shattering somewhere off camera. Really. A fucking mess. Demons had to be pulling the strings behind these shows. Lust. Wrath. Pride. All that we watched during our morning study sessions suggested the seven deadlies were alive and well. Add a bit of booze and it was a damn parade.
“I mean”—Declan shuffled upright, on the edge of his seat, unable to pry his gaze from the ridiculous scene unfolding—“they are fighting for her, are they not?”
I grunted. “Seemingly, yes.”
“Why don’t they just share her? We’ve seen she enjoys both of them—”
“Because humans don’t share mates.”
The hairs on the back of my neck shot up when Hazel’s melodious voice drifted into the room, her scent hitting shortly after. While Declan looked back, swift and eager for her attention, ever a pup smitten, I continued to stare at the large flat-screen. The fight had been broken up without an ounce of bloodshed.
Boring, but predictable. From what I’d witnessed on these shows over the last fourteen days, it was all peacocking—males jockeying for position and production staff charging in to stop it before anything really happened.
“So, why don’t humans share?” Declan asked. Our reaper seldom wore shoes around the property, but the telltale click of those tiny heels across the hardwood set every inch of me aflame. I stiffened, withdrawing my feet from the coffee table and crossing one leg over the other instead, then pointedly ignored her when she materialized in my peripheral view.
Shoes meant she was going out, as she did every morning. She’d cross the ward, temporarily opening it to pass, and seal us in behind her. Unlocking my clenched jaw, I focused on breathing through my mouth and glaring at the television screen, as if either would make her scent any less potent. White waves tumbled over her shoulders when she rested her elbows on the back of the couch, her ease in the pack’s presence grating.
Her mere presence grated honestly, the effect she had on me, on the others, worsening with time. Physical desire throbbed through the pack bond whenever she popped into our sphere, though Declan was the only one to really act on it. In these moments, I preferred to ruffle her feathers if at all possible. Knox, meanwhile, sat across the large room on the lone high-backed armchair, enormous black headphones over his ears, eyes intent on the tablet in his lap like the rest of us didn’t exist.
A part of me had started to suspect there was something more between her and us. Possibly a fated bond, given our intense, almost immediate attraction.
But that also didn’t matter. Soon we’d be gone; I could never be a slave to my mate. Never.
“Humans just… don’t share,” she said after a long beat, the show on a commercial break, one of far too many. “These days, it’s all about monogamy. Two people, one relationship. That’s been the norm for a long time.”
“Huh.” Declan faced the screen again, fiddling with the fabric ties of his trousers. “Strange.”
Hazel brushed her hair behind her ears, unleashing another wave of sweet alyssum in my direction. That hair… I ought to just shave it off, if only she ever slept deep enough to risk it.
“And why is that strange?” she asked. Sensing an opportunity, I twisted in place and caught her gaze, those eyes brown like maple syrup and flecked with gold.
“Because,” I crooned back at her, fingers itching to toy with the ends of that white mane, “hellhounds almost always share their mate. There’s usually only one, maybe two, females per pack, and she belongs to us, not just me.”
Color flared in her pale cheeks, bright and satisfying. Declan could glower all he wanted from the far corner of the couch, but getting under her skin meant I had an iota of control in this tedious situation we found ourselves in, and I wasn’t about to stop anytime soon.
“Tell me, reaper,” I said, inching toward her and cocking my head to the side, “have you ever been shared?”
“Gunnar—”
“That’s a very rude question,” Hazel said coolly, cutting off Declan’s outrage as she straightened and backed away from the couch. “And, frankly, it’s none of your business.”
“No, no, of course not,” I purred at her retreating figure, grinning as she stalked over to Knox with her little hands in fists. Power reclaimed—albeit only temporarily, for the sway of her hips was just a little too pleasing to my se
nsibilities.
Declan’s irritable huff had me rolling my eyes, big and overexaggerated, just for him, so he knew what an absolute child he was being about all this. Just as he opened his mouth, courage swelling along the invisible tether between us, Hazel gasped in horror.
“Knox!”
I scrambled for the remote and muted the television, the air crackling as it always did before a bout kicked off between our reaper and our alpha. Hazel ripped the tablet from Knox’s hands, yanking out the headphone cord in the process. Moans and groans and skin slapping suddenly echoed throughout the room, and Hazel stabbed at the screen, silencing it just as swiftly.
Unfazed by her outrage, Knox tugged the earpieces down so that the large leather headphones coiled around his neck, his sea of wild black hair clamped beneath.
“Perhaps you can explain the nuances to me,” he said dryly, “but are humans required to urinate on their mates?”
“Oh my God.” Hazel tapped around the tablet with a trembling finger, shaking her head. “The internet is so vast, one of the greatest resources humankind has ever seen, but trust a man to go straight for the porn.”
“You told us to study humanity,” Knox drawled, his smirk immune to her withering look. Declan rearranged himself on the couch to peer back with me, both of us watching the scene unfold from across the room next to the cracked windows, the half-full bookcases.
“What’s porn?” my packmate asked, his innocence almost endearing. Hazel’s blush sharpened, and she cleared her throat.
“It’s nothing—”
Knox snorted. “That wasn’t nothing, I can assure you.”
“Actually,” I said, fingers flying across my own tablet—for the internet was a vast and invaluable resource, after all. “Porn, short for pornography, is a print or visual material containing explicit—”
