The Hunger Saga

  The

  Hunger

  Saga

  TYRANNI THOMAS

  The Hunger Saga

  Copyright 2019 Tyranni Thomas

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by The Cover Haven

  Editing by Michelle’s Edits

  No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without express written permission from the author. Any unauthorized use of this material is prohibited.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Dedicated to David Ivey.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About Tyranni Thomas

  Chapter One

  Jaysen

  The Dark Ones have their own rituals and Gods. I had no idea which one the Oracle was praying to while she held the long candlestick in front of her and taunted the flame with her tongue. Her pale skin was flawless, and curtains of crimson-red hair dangled on either side of the flame. The sizzle of her saliva sent waves of chills up my back. I was mesmerized. It didn't matter that she was channeling ancient evil or that she was about to excommunicate someone I may, or may not, know; at that moment, I envied that fucking candle.

  The crowd was a deafening buzz behind me, then the Oracle abruptly stopped chanting, and the room parted like a biblical sea. Up until that moment, no one knew which human had offended her.

  “No! Blessed Lady, please . . .,” a plump familiar called, before trying to latch her meaty arms around her boy.

  It was too late. The Oracle blew out one time, snuffing the candle and forcing the boy to take his last cursed breath. It was one he didn’t exhale.

  He hit the floor, dead at his mother’s feet, while the room around us turned dark.

  Her wails carried and echoed until I thought she’d gone mad. She wasn’t that fortunate. Moments later, she was silenced by a vicious warning growl. It was a sound that came straight from the bowels of hell. Only one of two people could have done it.

  “You knew the price. You made the bargain, and now you would cheat the Dark Ones of their due?” Torches were lit, and Talon, the King of the Dark ones emerged. His hair was so blond it glittered, and his eyes were only half as icy as his soul. He was gorgeous, but oh, how he could be merciless when he wanted to be.

  The woman was on the verge of hyperventilating. Her shuddered breath was controlled by his proximity and her wide terror filled eyes never left him. He leaped from the little stage, and she started to spider backwards across the floor. She made it all of three feet before she backed herself into Dom. Another blood-curdling scream escaped her. He reached down and snatched her to her up by the hair, sending her into a fit of pure hysterics. Both of her hands were desperately gripping his wrist, distracting her until Talon flew forward. He stopped directly before her with his fangs drawn. The veins in his neck bulged and he hovered pointedly.

  “You will deliver. I expect a replacement,” Talon said, in a nonnegotiable tone.

  “No,” she whimpered. “I . . . I can’t, Tal . . .”

  He hulked up and growled in her face like he was about to rip it off, causing even a few of us in the crowd to take a step back.

  “Please, Master! It is too much. I will give you a harvest, I will! Just please don’t make me raise it. I cannot bear to spend my days with it and then hand it over for the . . .,” her voice trickled off until it was nothing but jibberish.

  Talon cocked his head and waited. It was well known some familiars only considered the harvest a sacrifice. A slaughtering. He stared at her, openly daring her to utter such words.

  “Forgive me, my King,” she whispered into her shoulder. At least she had found enough sense to stop looking him in the eye.

  “You command my forgiveness?” Talon laughed.

  “No! No, I beg your forgiveness!” the woman hurriedly corrected.

  “Throw her in the pens until she is with child, then send her home for the harvest,” Talon told Dom in a bored tone.

  It was like someone had been ordered to throw her to the wolves. The woman started to twist and thrash. She screamed for her husband, but there was nothing he could do for her. He was a former familiar, a human.

  Her plight carried on, and her protests filled the night until the big double doors banged shut.

  “Do you understand now?” my mother whispered beside me.

  I rolled the shoulder closest to her and rubbed my ear. I didn’t want to hear her bullshit. She, too, had selfishly agreed to give her firstborn child in exchange for the privilege of love.

  My sole existence, just like the boy’s, was to be the cost of someone else’s happiness.

  Progeny they called us.

  As if reading my mind, that one word boomed through a compound that had no speakers. They weren’t needed. The Dark Ones could shatter eardrums if they chose.

  “Progeny!” Talon called again, instantly hushing the nervous chatter of the crowd. “I need this year’s harvest to come forward.”

  Several people started to sniffle. My own heart hammered and dropped to my gut. My best friend Angel stood beside me, holding his hand out. It was my last summer. His time, however, was up. I numbly clasped it and leaned in to show him some love, but all I really wanted to do was lock my arms around him and wish us both out of there.

  No one knew I had feelings for him. They would have kept us apart. Denied me my only friend just so that I wouldn’t be tainted before my sacrifice.

  Like a moment of happiness might somehow sour my blood.

  His familiar green eyes landed on me, and he smiled like I was being silly.

  “You’ll be joining me next year. Soon enough,” he promised, giving my shoulder a squeeze.

  Let him tell it.

  I’d be alone.

  Miserable.

  Ostracized.

  We followed him toward the exit, all the while I kept my head down and tried not to make eye contact with anyone. I didn’t need questions, and I sure didn’t want to hear about whatever witty shit the primaries would surely think of.

  A few feet from the door, the chills started again.

  Dom.

  I know the feeling well. It’s like he knows where I am. The only thing worse than that, is the way his eyes light up when he notices how uncomfortable he makes me. He licks his lips and stalks me with eyes that make my soul quiver.

  That’s probably because your soul is already his.

  He was the Dark One that signed my parents’ permission slip. Therefore, I am to be his. The Executioner. Tormentor of the Night and all that thrives within it. He was to be my Unholy Master.

  As if summoned, He stepped out into the moonlight. I swallowed hard. It was a fear I couldn’t explain. I hated him and yet every time I seen him, my heart dropped to my stomach and my dick came to life.

  What the fuck was wrong with me. I didn’t want him. I was terrified of him!

  He was well over six foot with hair blacker than night and the same soulful green eyes as his little brother. Well, that wasn’t exactly
true, where Angel had eyes that were daring and full of life, Dom’s were cold. I could never force myself to fully look him in the eye.

  “I thought you’d ran off on us. Lost your nerve . . .,” Dom teased.

  His smile was a bit too cruel to be seductive, if that was even what he was shooting for, when he looked my way.

  “Well, it isn’t like I was hiding. I mean you found me . . . right?” Angel bravely crowed. He was the only one in the entire Coven that would dare talk back to the executioner.

  Unmoved, Dom merely shot me another smile and snorted. Fuck, how I hated that he knew how much he intimidated me, but there wasn’t much I could do about it, and right then.

  I just wanted them all to leave, so I could have another five minutes . . . two? Fuck, I’d settle for another hug.

  Dom’s chin lifted and he looked down at his much shorter brother. The distance between the three of us closed, and I thought for sure he was going to hit him. Instead, he stopped beside me and stared down into my eyes until I took a deep breath and a quick step back.

  The air swooshed, leaving my mother and I with nothing but Dom’s throaty laughter and the startled scream Angel gave when he was snatched without warning and taken by flight to his sacrifice.

  Chapter Two

  Angel

  My brother is an asshole, but he’s nowhere near the monster that people give him credit for. Not to those he gives a fuck about, anyhow. I felt bad that my best friend was terrified of being his harvest. He was too paralyzed by fear and intimidation to see the honor and prestige of it all.

  I’d looked forward to this since I was a little boy. I wanted nothing more than to be a Dark One.

  “There you are. I knew I’d catch you before ya went in,” a voice crowed from the shadows. I’d have known that scratchy smoker’s tone anywhere. Even if I rarely saw her anymore. She was the woman who had raised me. Well, the term raised me was relative, she’d given birth to me.

  “Ma—” I started, always hoping against all hope that I’d find her sober.

  “We don’t have time for your shit, Janice,” Dom quipped.

  He grabbed me by the upper arm and started none too gently encouraging me toward the door of a harvest cabin. He never had patience for her, nor did he pretend to.

  “Wait! Wait, I wanna see my boy.” She made the most pitiful sound. It was a groan . . . a cry? It sounded like a fucking weed eater being started up. Like she just couldn’t figure out how to push the sound past the back of her throat.

  Dom reached out and swatted her throat with a crisp flesh on flesh sound and left her gagging in the parking lot.

  “I don’t even fucking know how she knew which cabin was what!” he exclaimed on a scoff. “What? What the fuck are you looking at?”

  He stopped walking and stared at me. The bastard even went so far as to swerve his head and heft his brows like he was challenging me to confront him. I couldn’t hide my disgust. She was our mother. Despite it all, she was the closest thing I’d ever known to love and compassion.

  No wonder we were fucked up.

  “Look . . .,” he said when my lips parted, but I couldn’t seem to find words, “she’s the only one. Don’t you get that? The only mother fucker to ever sign up for that shit twice. And you know what, Angel?” He grabbed my shoulders and forced me to level with him. “She didn’t do it for love, or even freedom. She did it so that she could have a means to her habit. Our mother is the only woman who has ever given not one, but two sons to the Dark Ones. Let that sink in and remember it the next time that junkie bitch tries to get into your head.”

  His hands slid up until he was gripping either side of my face, and he tipped his forehead against mine.

  The air around me whistled, I saw a blur in the direction Janice had been laying, and then they were gone, leaving me alone to face my harvest. I was glad for the privacy. It was meant to be a humbling experience when the Dark Ones introduced someone to slavery.

  The last thing I wanted was Janice’s performing her junkie antics from the sidelines. I took a deep breath and started toward the cabin, cautiously stepping across the old porch on my way to the door. It creaked and protested beneath my weight so that she was calling for me to enter before I even brought my hand up to knock.

  I licked my lips and placed my hand against the door. Fuck, I hoped she was in a good mood. After watching her excommunicate that kid, I sort of felt like I was standing before a judge that had already been entertained with ignorance and tried past the point of mercy.

  “My Oracle,” I whispered, keeping my gaze lowered.

  I didn’t know if she was covered in the ceremonial paint or not. It wasn’t really paint at all, it was blessed blood, which is why familiars and progeny alike are forbidden from looking directly at her when she is wearing it. No one is ever to look down on her, either, so once I shut the door, I took a few steps inside and sank to my knees.

  Her bare feet and slender ankles came into view first. Each of her little toenails were painted in a neutral pink color. It almost made me want to laugh. I don’t know what I expected. Talons? My attention climbed to her knee and then the hem of a royal-blue night robe. I couldn’t stand it anymore, my eyes shot for her face.

  She must have wiped the blood off, she was her normal self. Her smile was easy and her laughter almost musical. She cupped my chin and more or less gave me permission to look upon her. I felt the warmth and power radiating through her palms and instinctively closed my eyes.

  An amused sigh split her lips, and she leaned down to plant them on my forehead.

  “You may present,” she said in a tongue that was older than the surviving elders. “Pretu.”

  I swallowed hard and stood up slowly.

  I had told myself that this wouldn’t be a big deal. That taking my clothes off in front of the most sacred woman in our village would be nothing compared to her bite, but that didn’t stop a sudden cold dose of adrenaline.

  My shoulder jumped to my ear, and I nibbled on my lip while reaching behind me and working the shirt up my back. I removed it and looked around, unsure if I should just let them pile or fold and place them somewhere.

  She waved her hand toward the floor, so I dropped it and fought the urge to cross and rub my arms. It probably wasn’t even that cold, but my nerves were beyond frayed.

  She left me and gravitated back to her chair where she fetched what looked like a mixed drink. It was peach and red, with cherries kabobbed on the straw. By the time she got herself comfortable, I was naked and once again kneeling.

  My posture was much more formal. My weight was settled on my heels and my wrists were behind my back, giving full access to more than enough arteries. I hadn’t expected to, but I started to tremble. Even worse, I started to get hard, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it with my legs spread open.

  “I . . .” I wasn’t sure if that was something people apologized for or not. She was the most revered of our religious figures, and all I could do was wallow in nasty thoughts and curse my cock for betraying every last one to her.

  She tapped her nails on my upper arm and trailed them like a gentle breeze across my shoulders. When she reached the other arm, she carefully swung around and dropped down to straddle my thighs. She sniffed my chest and up the side of my neck.

  My heart hammered and shockwaves were rolling to the pit of my stomach. I knew I had to be still, but it was hard. I didn’t know what it would feel like. Razors? Needles? Like she was ripping out the side of my throat?

  “Shh,” she whispered, running those nails over my ribs until a hand lay over my heart. She licked the side of my neck, and I gasped.

  Fully prepared for the worst, my body even swayed a bit. She held me tight, like grown men swooned against her everyday and kissed the area where I could feel my pulse. I tipped my head back and took a relieved breath just as she sank her fangs into my jugular.

  I heard a snap, like someone had bitten into an apple and then felt an intense burn. The
collapse of pressure at such a vital point left me instantly lightheaded and unable to object.

  I’m pretty sure, that was what she wanted.

  While she sucked Hell’s freight train through my virgin veins, she ran her hands down my side and caressed me seductively. Before I knew it, she’d laid me back and was fisting my cock. I was high on something that didn’t even have a name. My mind was foggy, but it didn’t stop the pleasure. It felt like I was floating on the ocean. Serenely riding out my own bloodbath. She abandoned my neck and forced wet, metallic tasting kisses on me. Even when she stopped, I could feel the damn, quickly drying blood she had smeared on my face.

  My blood, I realized rather dumbly.

  I reached to my neck, but she grabbed my wrists and pinned them near my waist before I could check my wound. My cock twitched from the abandonment, until that wet mouth of hers started painting everything down there, too. I glanced down and her eyes met mine just as she pressed the crown of my cock past her blood-stained lips and greeted it with her tongue.

  “Fuck.” I gasped. Instinct made me try to reach for her hair, but her hands gripped me tighter at the wrist. “Sorry. . . .”

  She shushed me and nuzzled my shaft with the side of her cheeks. I bent my knees and planted the soles of my feet on the floor. Just that fast, she abandoned my wrists and slapped at my knee, forcing me to spread my legs.

  The moment I did, she sank her teeth into my thigh.

  I groaned and reached for something, anything to help me survive the warring of blood. My cock was throbbing and demanding more supply while she locked her seal and sucked expertly from my femoral artery. I started to cry out and buried my hands in my hair, when I did, she buried my cock in a mouthful of hot blood.

  I’d never come so hard in my life. She swallowed it all and raked her nails down my chest and stomach, while staring at me like the feast was just beginning.

  Chapter Three

  Jules

  I ran my hands over him, coaxing the warmth and color to return to Angel’s ashen body. He was the perfect start of a nest. I’d taken progeny before, but just like the one I excommunicated, they rarely made it to harvest, let alone far enough to earn familiar status.