“Come on, Slayer. I like it when you're scared. The more I scare you, the better you smell…“

She struggles, but sees his fist drive forwards and hears the tile crack under her head. Everything goes blurry and she can see his smile and hear the sound of ripping cloth. She isn’t sure why that sound is important…

*****************************

It has been three cycles of the moon, and Xander lies with his ash-streaked mate as she lies naked beside him. His hand wanders her smooth skin, instinctively cleaning her as she sleeps and he remembers the past while the sun burns overhead. There was the first one, the one who seemed like pack, but not pack, the one that Xander knew only must die, because seeing her caused him such pain, such confusion. The others did not understand, but Xander required her to die first, for the pain she caused him, the doubts. She was weak and cried, tasting of tears and regrets. He knows she could never be pack, she could only ever be prey. He is glad that she is now many meals past and that the pain of her is no more. He remembers how the old one in the room of books fought like a lion, while they circled and nipped, taunting him with ‘oh dears’ and ‘good lords’ and ‘you can fight this, Xander’ before pulling him down. He fought with every ounce of strength, the hardest fight they ever had from a breathing one, but when she turned on him and bore him to the ground, he stopped struggling, as if his heart had given out. It tasted fine, ‘though.

It was only weeks before the prey became wise, and the school was no longer safe to hunt, nor the center of town. The men in blue, the police-men, knew their scent, and hunted them with the guns and the screaming sirens. The male-who-would be alpha, Kyle, died from their guns and by the time they had tracked him to the place of the sick to bring him home, he had died. His mate, who was once Rhonda, howled and chose a new mate, who was an athlete among the prey, living by the strength of his body. His name was Percy, and they stalked him to his home and ate his parents before him, before Rhonda claimed him as her own. He awoke hours later, and we smiled at his scent. By the green of his eyes even his prey sister knew he was now pack. She was his first meal.

Not wanting to face the guns again, his mate has led them to stronger prey yet, the breathless ones that hunt at night. She can smell them farther than any, and tracks them to their caves and tunnels and tombs, where they tear them apart. They found that if they killed them, they turned to foul-tasting ash, but if they simply ate from them while they struggled, their meat could be had.

The one tonight screamed and struggled, and they drained her blood until she was too weak even to lift her arms. Well, *arm,* since she only had the one by that point.

By then the sun was high in the morning sky, and his mate dragged her out into the light and they held her still while she thrashed and burned in the morning warmth. They laughed and laughed as the prey wailed and smoldered, and when she fell to dust, his mate bore him to the ground in a cloud of dust, tearing at his clothes playfully. She mounted him and they sated other hungers in the warm wet grass, rolling in the ashes of their prey. Afterwards, she growled and seized his throat in her teeth, and then sniffed her way down his length as he lay still for her inspection. She gripped his sex in her teeth and growled again, reminding him that this too was hers, and he made a short happy bark of longing and belonging. They rose and retreated to the preys crypt to sleep away the day, naked bodies glistening with sweat and blood and dew, and streaked with ash. They piled their clothes in a heap and she crawled atop to sleep while his hands ran along her for a time, wiping away the dust from her smooth pale skin and untangling her golden hair.

He holds his hand over her stomach and can feel the movement within. He can smell the changes, and knows that they are his pups. His smile is not like pack, more like one that the prey would recognize from long ago, and he knows that soon new hunters will join the pack.