Predator Code (Tales from Wildhearth #1)

Chapter 29 - I Think it's Built for Two

To her immense surprise, Jett awoke to discover that she was still alive.

Her head swam as she tried to sit up, bleary lights ebbing in her vision. Rubbing her eyes clumsily with one paw, she blinked several times, trying to clear her sight and focus. It took a few seconds for things to coalesce—dark, wood-panelled walls, spherical bulbs shining through patchy light shades.

Well, it wasn't the enforcer headquarters, and it certainly didn't look much like a prison cell. With a groan of effort, she attempted to swing herself into a sitting position, belatedly discovering she'd been lying in a bed. She swung her footpaws off the side and then waited for the room to stop spinning. Waves of nausea swelled in her throat, and she swallowed them back down, trying to regain some sense of what had transpired in those last fateful minutes in the enforcer compound.

She remembered the wolfkin grabbing her; she remembered fighting. Then things went fuzzy. With a groan of annoyance, she dug her claws through her headfur, leaning forward and screwing her eyes shut away from the swaying of the room.

Karno. She remembered him—remembered throwing the pack at him. Then the smoke and the heaviness. Then darkness.

"Jett?"

The voice almost sent her tumbling off the bed as she jerked her head up. Immediately, her vision swam, and she swayed drunkenly for a second before managing to clamp her paws down against the bed to hold herself steady. Carefully, she turned to look.

The dark, bleary outline of a figure stepped through the door of the room, a bowl of something that smelled amazing clutched in its paws. She examined the outline, almost as though things were happening in slow motion. The sharp ears and long limbs...grey-white fur. With a sharp intake of breath, she shuffled back onto the bed when she realised it was a wolfkin.

Then her mind caught up with what she was seeing.

"K-Karno?" she said unsteadily, head lolling sideways as she looked at him.

"Hellfangs, those nerve cloggers must've been mixed stronger than I thought," he replied, a hint of relief clear in his voice. "How're you feeling?"

"I feel drugged through the snout." Jett rubbed her eyes again as if the action might speed up the process of flushing the chemicals from her system. "What...happened? Last thing I remember, I was telling you to run away, and I had wolfkin clawing me to bits."

"I'll explain," he told her, sitting down on the bed and reaching out with the bowl. "But you need to eat something. You've been out cold for the last twelve hours."

Jett let out a short, sharp laugh. "Longest I've slept in days." She accepted the bowl, and the scent of sizzling meat and spices flooded over her as she took a deep breath. Her stomach let out a rumbling growl, and suddenly her senses came rushing back. Everything felt a little sharper, the mental fug of the nerve clogger briefly overwhelmed.

She looked at Karno for a second, then tore into the meat ravenously. Some kind of fowl, but she didn't stop long enough to try and figure out the breed. The meat melted on her tongue as she shovelled it down, barely stopping to chew in her hunger. In a matter of minutes, the bowl was licked clean, and she slumped back on the bed with a contented sigh. Then she realised the rather savage display she'd just exhibited in front of her companion and a rush of self-consciousness twisted through her.

Jett sat up again, stifling a burp and looking sheepishly at Karno. "I...eh, thanks. That was good."

"Yeah, they do a pretty decent spread in this little joint, don't they?" he agreed, his eyes wandering around the room as though examining it for the first time.