My Five Beast Wives Want Me Dead in the Apocalypse

Chapter 4 Part 1

Blake Sterling stood on the path between the two houses with his hands in his pockets and a smile so warm it could have melted snow. His five wives fanned out behind him in a perfect formation, each one tall, polished, and radiating the kind of effortless power that made Kyle's entire household look like a collection of stray animals dragged in from the rain.

Blake's eyes moved slowly over the three of them. Kyle, dirt caked and trembling. Riley, bleeding from a gash above her eye. Vivian, barefoot, blood soaked from head to toe, with gaps in the dark scales along her neck where she had ripped them out herself.

"Kyle, what happened out there?" Blake's voice dripped with concern so perfectly performed it could have won an award. "You three look like you barely made it back. Is everyone alright?"

"We're fine," Kyle muttered, stepping in front of Vivian without thinking about it. "Just had a rough supply run."

Blake tilted his head, his gaze drifting past Kyle's shoulder and settling on Vivian with the gentle, pitying expression of a man looking at a wounded dog on the side of the road.

"Vivian, those scales on your neck." Blake clicked his tongue softly, shaking his head. "You've lost quite a few. That's going to set your recovery back months, maybe longer. You know, my Mei is a golden flood dragon, and her regeneration is practically instant. I always wondered if serpent class beasts could even regrow scales at that level." He paused, letting the silence stretch just long enough to twist the knife. "I suppose not every beast form is built the same."

Vivian's face did not change. Not a flicker. But Kyle felt something shift in the air behind him, a cold, dense pressure that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand straight up. He did not need to look at her to know what was happening behind those amber eyes.

"You know what's funny about serpents, Blake?" Kyle heard himself talking before his brain gave permission, his voice coming out sharper than he expected. "A flood dragon sits in the river where everyone can see it. Big, shiny, impressive. Real pretty to look at. But a serpent crawls in the dark where nobody watches, and by the time you notice it's there, it's already around your throat."

Blake's smile held, but something behind his eyes cooled by a fraction of a degree.

"I'd rather have my wife be the thing people don't see coming than the thing they take pictures of." Kyle grabbed Vivian's wrist and pulled her toward the front door. "Riley, inside. Now."

He did not look back at Blake. He did not need to. The silence behind him was loud enough.

The front door barely closed before Riley was on him.

"The papers, Kyle." She stood in the narrow hallway with her arms crossed, blood still drying on her forehead, her pale blue eyes locked on him with the focus of a woman who had been waiting for this moment since the basement. "You promised. Both of us heard it. Vivian heard it. I heard it. You said the moment we walked through the door."

Vivian leaned against the wall behind Riley, saying nothing. She did not need to. Her presence alone was a statement, a reminder of what happened to things that broke their word in front of her.

Kyle looked at the two of them. His brain was running calculations at a speed his old college self would have been proud of, flipping through every scrap of memory the original had left behind, searching for anything, any loophole, any clause, any reason to stall.

He pressed one hand to the side of his head and winced.

"What are you doing?" Riley's voice went flat.

"My head." Kyle squeezed his eyes shut and stumbled sideways into the wall, selling it with everything he had. "Ever since I hit the ground earlier, everything's been foggy. I think I might have... I can't remember the last few hours clearly. What papers are you talking about?"

Silence.

Riley stared at him with an expression that could have stripped paint off a car.

"You lying, spineless little worm." Her voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, and that made it ten times worse than screaming. "You looked me in the eyes in that basement and swore on your life."

"I'm not lying, I genuinely can't..." Kyle clutched his head harder and backed toward the stairs. "I need to lie down. My memory gets like this sometimes. Give me an hour. Maybe two."

"Kyle Cole, if you walk up those stairs, I will drag you back down by your ankles!"

But Kyle was already moving, taking the steps two at a time with a speed that his supposedly injured head should not have allowed. He reached the bedroom, threw himself inside, slammed the door, and locked it. Then he grabbed the chair from the small desk by the window and jammed it under the handle for good measure.

Riley's fists hit the door so hard the frame shook.

"You disgusting, worthless cockroach! You begged on your knees like a dog and now you're hiding behind a locked door? Open this door right now or I swear I will scratch it down to splinters!"