The All Encompassing: Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 1) (26 page)

“You’re not such a scary creature, are you?” the woman says in a near purr. She stretches a leg out until her foot is inches from my face.
 

She’s close. So close.

I try and worm my way toward her. I won’t stand. Not until she demands it. I’ll stay on the ground at her feet, pleading, begging—

The woman laughs and draws her foot away.

An immense feeling of loss washes over me, and I wriggle forward again, desperate to be close—

“That’s enough, Anik,” the woman says. “Stay where you are.”

I freeze.
 

Something’s nagging at the back of my mind. A tiny, irritating pin burrowing into my skull. A memory from the time before I met this woman. A time that no longer matters.
 

A little girl. Alone on the ice.
 

But I can’t see her face. Can’t remember her name. Only that she was important once.

“Such a terrible burden,” the woman sighs. “And so tremendously unfair. To lay that responsibility on you. You didn’t ask for it, did you, Anik? You don’t want it, do you?”

“No,” I whisper, transfixed by her silken voice.

“You never asked for any of this. That little girl. The wild animal tearing you apart. All you wanted was to be left alone.”

I nod. My cock presses painfully against my pants.
 

“Soon,” she says. “Soon I’ll permit you touch me. I promise.”

Oh please. Soon, please.
 

“Is the wild animal in you now? Can you feel him?”

I search inside. The beast has fled. It’s only me. I’ve never felt so grateful to anyone. “You’ve saved me,” I say, using all my will not to try and worm toward her feet. “The beast’s gone.”

“Yes. He can’t hurt you here. We’re alone now. Just you and I. Do you…want to see me? All of me?”

“More than anything,” I say in a breathless whisper.

“Good. Then rise. I’d like to see you as well.”

I struggle to my knees. My eyes trace up the woman’s perfectly sculpted thighs to the swell of her hips. She’s naked. Her skin is radiant. A soft mound of dark pubic hair nestles between her legs. Her stomach is smooth and trim. Her breasts are large, the nipples small and pink. The thought of having her nipples in my mouth makes me moan.
 

I look to her face.
 

It takes me a moment to realize he’s wearing a veil. The fabric rustles softly as she nods.

“Yes. Look on me. Tell me what you see.”

Through the thin fabric of the veil I see a woman’s face stripped of skin. The muscles in her face stretch as she smiles, revealing row after row of tiny black teeth.

“Am I beautiful?” the woman asks.

“You’re perfect,” I say. “You’re lovely.”

The woman waves a hand in a coy gesture. Her fingers are nearly twice as long as her hand, delicate and thin. Two wings that look like leather stretched between black bones flutter in the air behind her head. On each wing a curving hooked claw grows from where the bones intersect.
 

“You’ve left me alone for so long,” the woman says. “I’ve waited and waited. I nearly lost hope. You’ve broken my heart, Anik.”

“I’m sorry. I was only—”

The woman waves her finger again, silencing me, looks me up and down, then frowns.

“The brutes have been unkind to you,” she says sadly. “Do your wounds pain you?”

“No,” I say. “Not anymore.”

The veiled woman smiles. My knees nearly buckle.
 

“Remove your clothing,” the woman says. “Clothes are for outside. But here, at home, we needn’t hide from one another.”

I strip off my torn and stained shirt, then tug my jeans down. My swollen cock springs into the sweet, warm air.

“Stroke yourself,” the woman says, settling into her throne.
 

I do. I grip the root of my cock and squeeze, then begin rubbing my hand along my hard cock, slowly at first, then faster.
 

“You have a gorgeous cock,” she purrs. “Come to me now. I’ve been dreaming of you for so long. Come to me, Anik. I need you.”

I take a step forward. The woman’s wings unfurl over me. I feel a soft, teasing scratch against my spine.
 

“I might hurt you a little bit,” she says as the claws on her wings dig into my back. “Do you mind? If I hurt you?”

“No,” I breath, still stroking my cock, desperate to feel her skin pressed to mine.

“That makes me very happy, Anik. That I mean so much to you. We’re alone now. Come to me. Come inside me.”

And I do.
 

I
T
FEELS
GOOD
to run.
 

Not to flee, no, that feels shit. But to
run
, the physical act. My feet stomping into the dirt. My breathing hard and fast in my ears. The rain whipping my face. My Pureblood crew races through the equipment yard, dropping the last few remaining human members of the MC.
 

Machine gun fire blazes behind us. The cartel’s caught up to the human bikers. More dead Skins. The pigs are gunna pop wood when they discover the fucking war zone out here.
 

I claw through a chain-link fence at the far end of the property with a single swipe and then we’re in a scrap metal yard, heading for the canal. It’s only a couple miles off. We continue through several more derelict properties. A few Skins see us race through their yards but we’re gone too fast for anyone to stop us.
 

Finally we climb over a concrete embankment and drop into the dirt beside the drainage canal. The water is grey-green, slick with oil and effluent. We push through tangles of blackberry along the slippery dirt beside the canal, startling a few rats and ducks out of hiding. I glance between the filthy water and the ground in front of me.
 

Mia is out here somewhere. I scent her.
 

We meet up with the first group of human MC I posted to look out for my escaped snake. They look startled when their MC’s inner council emerges from the brush, all torn up and bloody, but they keep their mouths shut. There’s a moment when I consider killing them. Their crew is finished. They mean nothing. But I don’t want to risk more gunfire alerting either the pigs or the cartel, so I just tell them we’re taking over the search and they can fuck off. They hop on their bikes, oblivious to how close they came to feeling my fangs in their necks.
 

We continue tromping up the canal. Occasionally Nash barks or cackles quietly, but Sorry and Lonny are dead silent. Mia’s scent is strong in my nose. And something else. Blood.
 

We climb a knoll over a flow dam and I see her.
 

I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time, but you never get used to seeing a Pureblood in full animal. Especially because it’s been so rare after the motherfucking Stricken put iron collars around our necks.

The snake is massive and deadly and beautiful. She’s coiled around what’s left of a Skin, facing away from us. Only the Skin’s head and arms are visible. The rest of him is buried in the snake’s glistening coils. The guy’s eyes are bleeding and his hands are twitching. The bodies of his two buddies are strewn in the grass beside Mia, probably not dead but paralyzed by her venom and waiting, conscious but powerless, to be swallowed alive.
 

I approach the snake slowly, conscious the rest of the guys falling in behind me. Can’t say I blame them. It used to be possible for an alpha to turn an animal back to human form. But that was ages ago.
 

A trickle of sweat breaks out along my hairline, runs down my neck.

Even if I was certain I could still turn Mia, I’m not sure I have the strength after spitting those bullets from my skin last night. There’s still a low-grade pounding in my ears and a heaviness in my step from that shit. I’m drained, and even the beating hearts of those fucking Stricken bitches didn’t make me entirely whole.

Mia raises her head above the dying human and waves it back and forth. Slowly. Hypnotically. Suddenly it feels like I’m pushing against something solid, as if the air around me turned to water. I blink, realizing I’ve stopped moving. The snake’s head is larger than a football, and her flicking black tongue is a foot long.

She’s scenting.
 

The snake jerks her head up and whirls toward us, her slitted yellow-green eyes glowing, and I swear she smiles after she looses a long, welcoming hiss.
 

Bitch.

The wolf in me growls and I clench my jaw, fighting the effects of the snake’s hypnotic movement and anticipating one hell of a fight.

Mia opens her jaws so wide it looks like her head’s gunna split open, then slips her dry, leathery lips over the Skin’s head. The guy’s body begins jerking and thrashing. The snake’s coils slip tighter around his midsection. Half the Skin’s head is buried in her jaws, and then it’s gone. I can see the round shape of her meal bulging in her throat.
 

She’s swallowing the poor fucker whole.

And I’ve interrupted her feed.

I hear a slight slither in the bushes beside me.
 

My body moves without thought: I throw myself away from the sound just as a razor-sharp stinger whistles through the space my chest was moments ago. I land on the ground and roll, feel something warm and slippery underneath me. Its
her
, and suddenly the thing underneath me tenses, loops in a coil, drops around my leg and squeezes down, pinning me to the ground.
 

The snake’s stinger-tail flashes out at me again.
 

I manage to squirm away enough so it grazes my arm instead of impaling me alive. The venom’s pain is immediate and so intense I can’t even scream.

I claw into the snake’s blue-green scales, digging into black flesh. The coil around my leg loosens enough for me to tear free. I scramble through the bush, the burning pain in my arm quickly spreading into my chest.
 

Mia has half the human in her gullet.

“Let her go, Prez,” Sorry yells, circling around the snake. “She’s too far gone. Let her free.”

Yeah, but I fucking need her
, I think while trying to keep an eye out for that fucking stinger-tail. Although if the situation were reversed I’d want to be free. Free to roam in the woods, where there’s only eat or be eaten, far from the madness and cruelty the Skins call life.

Part of the snake slithers through the brush beside me. I can’t spot the stinger, and that’s a problem, but I pounce on her body anyway, drop my canines and bite into her as hard as I can. The snake’s cold, bitter blood fills my mouth and suddenly I’m airborne, thrown into a blackberry.
 

The burning in my chest makes it tough to draw a full breath. My heart slows. Not long now and I won’t feel anything. I’ll be like those other two bastards, frozen in the muck, waiting for a nightmare serpent to swallow me whole.
 

There’s a horrible sound, halfway between a hiss and a choke, and Mia spits up the human she’s swallowing. He emerges covered in a milky black-grey substance. She spins to me, her head waving in that awful slow rhythm, and then she’s racing at me, jaws wide, fangs dripping yellow venom.
 

I spring into a crouch and let her get close enough to believe she’s got me, then I leap up and slam a fist down hard on the top of her head. The snake draws back, stunned, and I jump onto her, right behind her head, and wrap my legs and arms around her.
 

It’s like wrapping myself around a raging bull.
 

The snake lifts me into the air, hissing and spitting, and them slams me into the dirt, nearly knocking me off.
 

I manage to hold on, her scales slimy and cold and slick, and as she rears up again I’m ready. I wrap my arm over her nostrils and around her mouth, clamping her jaws closed, then tighten my other around her neck, squeezing with every ounce of strength I got.
 

She’s thrashing wildly, suffocating.
 

“Get on her fucking tail!” I scream at my crew.
 

The snake’s stinger races through the air behind me, and then Sorry has her hind end in his hands, the stinger whistling inches from his face. There’s a rattling-hissing sound from deep within the snake’s throat as she squirms and bucks, trying to throw me and Sorry off.
 

Nash piles on, then Lonny decides to take a break from being a chickenshit and piles on her as well.
 

I feel the snake weakening as I strangle her, but I also feel my heart slowing from her venom. I blink the sweat out of my eyes, trying to stay focused, drawing from my animal’s strength. I’m gasping, panting for air. Every muscle in my body is straining and burning like it’s on fire. But my grip still loosens.
 

The bitch is gunna wait me out.
 

I dig my claws into the snake’s throat like I’m gunna rip her in half. She twists and coils and flips wildly. Then she begins shaking.
 

I’m killing her.
 

There’s nothing I can say that she’ll understand, no soothing words I can whisper to bring my packmate back. The bitch understands one thing: brute force. She needs to be shown who’s alpha. Needs to feel it in every ounce of her nasty serpent blood.

The snake’s head collapses into the muddy ground.
 

I kneel over her, still suffocating her, and drive my knee into the back of her head while tearing at her neck.
 

The snake twists and bucks again, but less violently.
 

She’s weakening. But so am I.
 

I blink through the dark blur in my vision.
 

Not much time now.
 

Not much time until I’m on the ground beside the bitch, drawing my last breaths.