My Five Beast Wives Want Me Dead in the Apocalypse

Chapter 5 PART 1

Kyle scanned the table one more time. Bianca blocking the door with that predator's smirk. Riley radiating fury so hot it could warm the room. Vivian watching him like prey she had already killed in her mind. Scarlett sipping tea without acknowledging he existed at all.

And then there was Hailey.

She sat in the last remaining chair at the corner of the table, her brown curls tucked behind both ears, her hands folded neatly in her lap. She was the only one in the room who was not openly glaring at him, staring at him with murderous intent, or pretending he was invisible. Her expression was soft, almost polite, and in a room full of loaded weapons pointed at his face, that tiny sliver of gentleness felt like the only safe corner left.

Kyle walked over and pulled out the chair beside her.

"This seat taken?"

Hailey looked up at him with wide, brown eyes and shook her head slowly. "No. Go ahead."

He sat down. For exactly one second, he felt something close to relief.

Then Hailey scooted her chair six inches to the right, putting a clear gap between them. She did it quietly, without looking at him, the way someone shifts away from a stranger on a bus who smells wrong. Her polite smile stayed perfectly in place the entire time, and somehow that made it worse than if she had just cursed at him.

Kyle let out a slow breath through his nose. Not even the sheep wanted to sit near him.

The table was set with empty bowls and clean chopsticks, but there was no food in sight. No pot, no pan, no rice cooker steaming on the counter. Kyle looked around the room and frowned.

"Is anybody going to tell me why there's nothing to eat, or are we all just sitting here for the atmosphere?"

"Oh, there's food." Bianca pushed off the doorframe and walked toward the kitchen with the loose, rolling stride of someone who knew exactly what was coming. "You ordered something special before you went out today. Don't you remember?"

Kyle's stomach tightened. The original's memories were messy and full of gaps, but the way Bianca's voice curled around the word special made his skin crawl.

Bianca returned carrying a covered plate with both hands. She set it in the center of the table directly in front of Kyle, then stepped back and folded her arms, her dark eyes gleaming with something that was not quite amusement and not quite hate but lived somewhere between the two.

"Go on," she murmured. "Open it."

Kyle reached forward and lifted the cover.

A skinned rabbit head sat in the center of the plate, its lidless eyes staring straight up at the ceiling. Raw, pink, and still faintly bloody. Arranged in a perfect circle around it were white lilies, their petals just starting to brown at the edges, laid out with the kind of careful precision that turned the whole thing into a message rather than a meal.

Kyle stared at it for a long time.

He understood. The rabbit head was not food. It was a mirror. A small, dead animal, skinned and displayed, surrounded by funeral flowers. This was what the original had done to Vivian. Stripped her down, sold her off, and arranged the aftermath like it was nothing. Bianca had just put it on a plate and served it back to him.

"Eat up," Bianca told him, her voice smooth and cold. "Or should I feed it to the dogs? Oh wait, I forgot. We don't have dogs. We just have you."

Riley let out a short, bitter laugh from her end of the table. Even Scarlett's golden eyes flicked toward the plate for half a second before returning to her tea. Vivian did not look at the plate at all. She was looking at Kyle.

Kyle set the cover down gently beside the plate. His hands were steady, which surprised him, because everything inside his chest was shaking. He looked at the rabbit head, then at Bianca, then at the four women watching him from their seats, waiting for him to crumble, to gag, to beg, to give them one more piece of weakness they could use.

He leaned back in his chair.

"Nice presentation," he told Bianca, keeping his voice flat and even. "Really artistic. You should open a restaurant. But here's the thing."

He held up one finger.

"There are four divorce certificates sitting in that terminal upstairs. One for each of you. I already promised Vivian and Riley theirs, and I've been thinking about it, and you know what, maybe four divorces is better than two. Maybe I should just clean house entirely."