A Fraudulent Death, Draft 02, CH 43 (Patreon)

“I know you want to impress me,” his wolf said as they maneuvered the elk’s body through the door of Trembor’s house, “but a preparation store would really be best for this, don’t you think? The one I go to would have given us baked pies in exchange for a few chunks of meat.”

Trembor paused as he turned the head to get the antlers through the doorway. “You would take bake goods over meat off the bone?” He narrowed his eyes. “Who are you and where is my wolf?”

Marlot rolled his eyes. “I eat baked good, and you know it. I just don’t see a point in doing it myself.”

Trembor smiled and enjoyed his wolf’s amused irritation. “This will be worth it, I promise.” He’d told Marlot he’d been looking forward to this for a long time, but Trembor hadn’t realized the significance of preparing the result of their first hunt together until this moment. This act, more than the contract, signified they were mated.

“Do you even have a table?”

The antlers gouged the ceiling before Trembor lowered the body. In the heat of the hunt, he hadn’t realized how tall the elk had been.

“Of course I have a table.” They maneuvered the body through the hallway.

“Your kitchen is kind of small,” Marlot commented, steadying the frame with Trembor’s nephews and nieces the elk’s arm had knocked aside.

“So it isn’t the massive thing my dad has. I don’t have a family to feed, just me, and you,” he added and basked in the loving way his wolf looked at him.

Passing into the kitchen, he looked over his shoulder and realized he had a problem. He leaned the body against the wall. “Hold it here as I make space and unfold the prep table.”

“Oh sure,” Marlot said derisively, “leave me holding the body so that when the enforcers show up, you’ll be all safe and—” He stopped and worry replaced the humor. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking, I—”

“It’s fine,” Trembor said, chuckling as he moved the kitchen table to the side and opened the pantry. “Being arrested didn’t traumatize me.” He fought his darkening mood as he pulled the folded table out. “At this point, it’s more Barany showing up unannounced that would concern me.” Or Maoma dropping all her goons on the house. What was she waiting for? He shook himself and unfolded the table.

As with the previous time, the table wobbled, and he adjusted the legs. It was the downside of being able to put it away once he was done. His plan had always been to buy a permanent one once he found the right male.

“Trem?” Marlot asked, sounding worried.

“Sorry. Went down the trail of everything going wrong for some reason.”

“I hope you can get over that because I need help here.”

Trembor laughed at the sight of his wolf being brought down by the body of the elk.

“You know that laughing at your mate is ground for terminating a contract, right?” Marlot warned.

“Don’t try quoting law to a lawyer’s son, Marl.” Trembor lifted the elk, and together they placed the body on the table. “Okay, this might not have been the best body for this.” Every limb hung off the table. With Marlot’s help, he adjusted it as best as he could, focusing on the neck being over the collection groove before cutting the neck open with a claw. The table’s angle would get most of it out that way, and the rest would come as he cut the meat off.

He took the prep knife out of the box he kept it in, along with the edging stone, and slowly ran one over the other, looking at the body. He worked out how he would skin it, then cut the meat off, and again, he marveled that his ancestors had done this with nothing but their claws.

He turned to place the stone back in the box and froze. Marlot sat on the counter, cross-legged, looking at him expectantly.

“What?” his wolf asked, then looked at where he sat. “Shit, sorry I—”

“No, it’s okay.” Trembor hurried to say before Marlot dropped off. “It’s more than okay.” He searched for the words. “It’s right.” He smiled and leaned in. “It just took me by surprise how good seeing you like that felt.”

Marlot smirked and lowered his voice. “You’re saying I should always sit on the counter?”

Trembor’s ears heated up. “When you watch me prep our food, most definitely.” Marlot canted his head in curiosity and Trembor’s smile broadened. His wolf was so cute like that. “It’s not because of what was done to me,” he said, to comfort the start of worry he could smell. “It’s a lion thing.” He gave the wolf a peck and stepped away, motioning to the body. “This is where I belong, in the kitchen, preparing the kill my mate brings me.”

“We brought it in together,” Marlot corrected, grinning.

“Don’t interrupt.” He ran a finger along the body’s side, feeling for the best place to start. “You, my mate, show me your prowesses by the quality of the kill you takedown.” He made the first cut, shallow, only enough to get the hide off. “I, your mate, show you my prowesses by how well I prepare it. To have you watch, judge, and appreciate what I do just makes this perfect.” He smiled at his wolf.

“You take this that seriously?” the surprise was genuine, but still stung, and Trembor reminded himself that among the many differences they shared, was that wolves didn’t see preparing a kill the same way lions did.

He focused on removing the hide, taking his time, settling his emotion, readying himself to open up about a painful part of his past. “There’s more to it than just being a lion thing. After Gorrek, it was years before I could be intimate with another male and fully enjoy it, but I could never make the cross over to thinking of myself as their mates. Certainly not with any of the lions I was with.” He paused, steadied his hand. “I’d resigned myself to being alone by the time you came around.”

He looked at the reservoir under the table. The body was large enough he didn’t want to risk overfilling it. He drained half in bottles that he placed in the cooler, then rolled the skin off the body before turning it over.

“It’s how vulnerable you looked,” Trembor said as Marlot helped him. “You were so out of your element among all these RIs. You were good at hiding it when you were focused on finding Ruxul, but the moment you had nothing to do, I could see it. I don’t think the thought was conscious, but there was this certainty you’d never hurt me.”

“If only,” Marlot grumbled before sitting back on the counter.

“Some of the blame for that falls on me, Marl.”

“You aren’t the one who locked you out of your pad, who demanded you do what I say. Who took your options away.”

“But I’m the one who never told you about Gorrek. I was planning on spending my life with you even then, I should have shared that part of me, but I…” he cut the last of the skin off and smiled as there was hardly any blood. “I was afraid you wouldn’t care for me if you saw I was damaged, I guess. If I’d told you, you would have better understood my reaction. I could also have been more attentive to your behavior,” He continued as Marlot opened his muzzle. Trembor wasn’t letting his wolf protest. Take all the blame. “Putting your foot down over my desires wasn’t the unexpected thing I convinced myself it was after the fact, Marl. I saw how you were. Clawing your way through problems is kind of how you get any times things get tough. And ignoring my advice when you asked for it? I didn’t want to see the clues to how you were broken. I just told myself it was an amusing quirk of your personality.”

“You’re putting a lot of the blame on yourself,” Marlot said, as Trembor tried to figure out how to minimize the loss of blood from the overhanging body parts. Once he started on the meat, blood would drip. He checked the reservoir. Most of the blood had to have drained at this point.

He looked at Marlot and reminded himself he wasn’t doing this alone this time. “Cupboard above you has the paper. If you wrap the meat as I cut it, we should minimize the loss of blood.”

Marlot dropped from the counter, took out the roll, and unrolled it. He looked at his claws, then looked through the drawers until he had a knife. When he nodded he was ready, Trembor got to work.

“I’m taking my fair share of the blame, Marl. As I said, we both played a part in our breakup. We can’t forget that, but we can’t obsess about it.” Not with the little we have left together. He handed Marlot the first chunk of meat and watched him wrap it. He wished he was strong enough to cut all ties with one claw strike. Hurt him once and get it over with. But without his wolf, Trembor wasn’t sure he wouldn’t climb a tall building and walk off it. He couldn’t tell him what he was planning, but he also couldn’t be alone.

Nikal had shown him how desperate for Marlot Trembor was. One thing he could thank the hunter for, he thought bitterly.

Marlot turned and chuckled. “I thought the idea of me helping was to keep the blood loss to a minimum. If you are just going to leave the arm hanging like that, it isn’t going to help, unless you think you can keep cutting while gazing at me?”

Trembor would give up the body for the chance to gaze at his wolf even one second more than he expected he had left. He went back to cutting off the meat, throwing the bones into the sink until it overflowed. He wrapped himself in the smell and senses of the act of being with his mate. Watching him move as he put the wrapped meat in the freezer, the sensation of their body touching as his wolf moved around him. He memorized it, locked it into his memory. Whatever happened next, he would take this moment with him.

* * * * *

“What do you do with the leftovers?” Marlot asked, indicating the hide, wrapped fat and bones.

“My parents have friends in the leather industry, they’ll get the hide. There’s a collection place near here for the fat. It’s charity run; they sell what they make from it and use the money to try to pull cubs out of the packs. The bones go to a local restaurant.” He washed his hands and took two glasses out of the cupboard and half-filled them with blood.

“Going fresh, I see,” Marlot said, watching him.

“Not one drop of preserver,” Trembor replied, taking out the bottle of alcohol.

Marlot caught his hand as he opened it. “Don’t. Please.” The second word sounded like an afterthought.

“It’s just a bit of alcohol, Marl,” Trembor replied, chuckling to mask the unexpected annoyance.

Marlot looked at him, worry in his eyes. “It’s a bit of alcohol you’ve put in your blood anytime I’ve been here.” He hesitated, and the smell of worry spiked. “Do you really need to dull your emotions to stand being with me?”

“What? No, of course not. Marl, this isn’t about you, it’s these last weeks. The alcohol helped me relax.” And he didn’t put that much alcohol in his blood. Marlot was overreacting. Right?

Marlot pushed the bottle away. “Then let me be what helps you relax tonight, okay?”

Trembor hesitated, and in that recognized the forming habit. He’d been trained to recognize the signs of addiction. The justifications those under its influence gave. Like gambling was just to relax. Like the alcohol would do a much better job at relaxing him than his wolf ever could.

Trembor swallowed and put the bottle back in the cupboard. “I didn’t mean to make you feel like you weren’t enough.”

Marlot leaned against the lion. “I know. I’m making sure I communicate more. Dohrma says it’s better than waiting until the stress does the talking for me.”

Trembor moaned as Marlot nibbled on his neck through the fur. “Marl, are you planning on getting me to relax before, or after we eat?”

The wolf chuckled and moved away. “After. I’m going to need a full belly for what I plan on doing to you.”

“Oh?” Trembor tilted an ear. “Then let’s hurry to clean the kitchen, so you can impress me with your prowesses.”

Marlot grinned. “I thought my hunting had already done that.”

Trembor groped his wolf. “I expect my mate to give me a thorough demonstration of his mating abilities.” He gasped as Marlot returned the favor.

“Just be certain you can do the same, Trem. I intend to be thoroughly mated tonight.”

“After eating,” Trembor said breathlessly, stroking the hardening member in the wolf’s pants.

“Definitely after,” Marlot answered, unbuttoning Trembor’s pants.

* * * * *

Naked and leaning against the cabinets, Trembor sighed, feeding a piece of meat to his wolf who had his head on his lap. When they moved on to cleaning the kitchen, they’d have to include the floor. There had been more blood left in the reservoir, they had discovered when they tipped the prep table over.

“And I just can’t believe someone would do that,” Marlot said, then suckled on the bloody finger, gazing into Trembor’s eyes. In the afterglow, his wolf had talked about his investigation, the body of someone who’d let himself be killed just to draw attention to people being taken advantage of within the system. “What do you think would make someone do that?”

Trembor shrugged. Love could be a reason. Duty. A desire to ensure no one suffered as he did. Those were some reasons he’d given himself for how he was planning on dying. Or was his justification simply anger? Anger that they’d dared put their claws in his brother, his family. That they were pulling the cubs into it.

“Trem?”

“Sorry.” He forced a smile. “Basking in the moment.”

Marlot tilted an ear dubiously. “Basking in telling me about my case?”

“In you being here, on the floor with me, covered in spilled blood.” He offered the wolf another piece of meat. “Feeding you. Of taking each other hard enough, we tipped over a table that was able to support an elk.”

“To be fair to the elk, he wasn’t bucking on the table,” Marlot said, chuckling. “And we also made a mess of each other.”

Trembor smiled. “That just means I get to lick you all over, again.”

“Oh? So I’m dessert?”

“You, Marlot Blackclaw, are an entire meal. One I will never get enough of.”

Marlot smiled. “Good thing you can have me as often as you want, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Keeping the smile was tough, but at least Trembor didn’t have to worry about the smells. Nothing would get through their nostrils filled with the scent of sex and blood.

Marlot turned. “But I’m having dessert first.” He licked the lion’s groin.

Trembor moaned and ran a hand through the wolf’s head fur, encouraging him, before needing his own sweets. “Move over, there’s enough room for me to stretch and enjoy my dessert at the same time you do.”

Marlot did as told, and the two proceeded to discover a variety of ways they could enjoy their dessert.

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