My Five Beast Wives Want Me Dead in the Apocalypse

Chapter 3 PART 2

Another crash. Riley cried out, a short, bitten off sound full of pain.

"I swear on my life," Kyle whispered, and his voice was shaking so badly the words barely held together. "I swear I will sign it. Just don't let her die. Please."

"Divorce!" Riley's voice tore across the basement from somewhere beneath the bear's shadow, raw and ragged and furious. "I want one too! Sign mine first, you hear me? Mine first!"

Vivian's eyes moved from Kyle to Riley and back again. Something shifted behind that amber gaze, something calculating and cold, measuring the weight of his words against every lie the original had ever told her.

Then she let go of his ankle.

"The restraints on this cage," Vivian murmured, rising to her feet inside the cell with a slow, fluid grace that made Kyle's skin crawl. "They were designed to suppress beast Abilities. Serpent class, specifically."

She placed one hand flat against the iron door.

"They never worked on me. Not once. Not for a single second."

Black fog poured from her body like ink bleeding into water. It rolled out between the bars, across the floor, and hit the bear mid stride. The massive creature froze. Its milky eyes went wide. It opened its jaws to roar, but no sound came out.

The fog swallowed it whole.

Three seconds of silence. Then the black cloud pulled back like a tide retreating from shore, and where the four star mutated brown bear had stood, there was nothing left but a clean, white pile of bone. Not a scrap of flesh. Not a drop of blood. Just bone, polished smooth, stacked in a neat little heap on the concrete floor.

Kyle stared at the pile with his mouth hanging open and every hair on his body standing straight up.

Vivian stepped out of the broken cage, barefoot, blood soaked, her torn clothes hanging off a frame that was far stronger than it looked. She walked straight to Kyle, crouched down, and took his chin between her thumb and forefinger. Her grip was gentle. Her eyes were not.

"If you go back on your word," she whispered, turning his face side to side like she was inspecting something she had found in a gutter, "what I did to that bear will look merciful compared to what I do to you."

"Understood," Kyle managed, his voice three octaves higher than it should have been. "Completely understood. Crystal clear. No notes."

Vivian hauled him up and slung him over her shoulder like a rolled carpet. Riley limped to her feet, pressing one glowing hand against the gash above her eye, and fell into step beside them as they climbed the stairs.

"The papers, Kyle." Riley's voice was hoarse but relentless. "The moment we walk through that door. Not tomorrow. Not after dinner. The moment we step inside."

"You'll get your papers," Kyle groaned from his upside down position over Vivian's shoulder, watching the basement ceiling pass above him. "Both of you. I promise."

"Your promises are worth less than mud on a dead man's boot," Riley fired back without missing a step.

"I know," Kyle whispered, and he meant it.

The walk back took twenty minutes through side streets and narrow alleys, avoiding zombie clusters, ducking behind wrecked vehicles, moving in a tense, hostile silence broken only by Riley reminding Kyle about the divorce papers roughly every ninety seconds. Vivian said nothing the entire way. She did not need to. Her grip on Kyle's legs said everything.

Their house sat at the end of a row of identical small white structures inside the settlement's inner perimeter. It was modest, cracked at the edges, with a low fence that would not stop a determined cat, let alone a zombie. But it was inside the safe zone, and right now that was all that mattered.

Vivian dropped Kyle on the front path like a bag of laundry. Riley stepped over him without looking down. Kyle lay on his back in the dirt for the third time that day, staring at the gray sky, wondering if this was just how his life worked now.

He sat up, dusted himself off, and turned toward the front door.

A man stood on the path next to their fence, just stepping out from the house next door. Tall, broad shouldered, with clean dark hair and a jaw that looked like it had been designed by a committee. His clothes were spotless. His posture was relaxed. Five stunning women trailed behind him in a loose, adoring formation, each one radiating the kind of power that made the air feel heavier just by standing near them.

Blake Sterling, the male protagonist, smiled warmly and raised one hand in a neighborly wave.