Rattled: A Monster Romance (Monster Mate Hunt Book 1) by Sakura Black

Author:Sakura Black [Black, Sakura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Nightbloom Publishing
Published: 2023-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter eleven

Kelsea

A few cautious grouses dotted the scrubland, pecking away at their morning feast. Despite my rumbling stomach, I kept a healthy distance from the tantalising game. If I sent a whole flock squawking and fluttering off, my bronzed pursuer was bound to find me just that much faster.

After yesterday’s little showdown, I was still trying to orient myself.

Somehow, seeing the hunter undone with pleasure had shifted something in my brain, and I couldn’t get my thoughts back into an orderly line.

Instead, for the past day, I’d been thinking about something sensible, like the best stream to refill my water supplies or whether to forage more chanterelle mushrooms, then bam—a mental image of the hunter stroking himself would crash into my mind like a wrecking ball, scattering my thoughts.

Are those scales smooth or rough? Do lamias always come from both cocks at once?

A blush warmed my cheeks. Why was I obsessing over the fae assigned to kidnap me? Could you get pre-kidnap Stockholm Syndrome?

“Get a grip, lass,” I hissed at myself, trying to keep focussed on evading capture as I hiked through the grass, keeping to the shadows cast by a small mountain.

With the initial shock of being Selected having passed in the few days since I’d found the life-altering invite, I needed to turn my attention to the future. Primarily, how best to drop off the grid so thoroughly that even a magical tracker couldn’t find me.

A grim determination settled in my gut. Living on the run would be a tough existence, but eventually, they’d forget about little old me, right?

At least I wasn’t leaving anyone behind in Inverness. No family. No friends.

I tried to look at it in a positive light, but even I couldn’t summon the effort to lie to myself.

It was just plain sad.

And what was worse was that it hadn’t always been that way.

I took a deep breath, controlling my heart rate with steady exhales as I jogged at a slow yomp, heading up towards the next shallow valley.

At one time, I’d had a family of squaddies around me. We did everything together—lived, trained, worked, played. For years, I’d been in a tight-knit group, supported and exasperated in equal measure.

But that had all changed during one dickbag of a night.

We’d come off a particularly brutal deployment in the Nordics. The expedition had battered my body and mind, reminding me of why I hated training to fight the chillier fae castes. We’d barely survived an ambush from a multi-caste insurgent group. Returning home had been a relief, one we’d celebrated with too much booze and a healthy dose of cheer.

But Zachariah, our idiot Staff Sergeant, had been persuaded to take a hit of Barbie. The highly illegal drug was strong enough to give even the fae who’d created it a wild high. On a pure human, it fucked them right up. Like paralytic-drunk yet still able to function enough to carry out the idiot signals sent by their scrambled brain.

I’d known for years that Zachariah had a crush on me.

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