Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 44

Chapter 44 The Black Griffin

Chapter 44 The Black Griffin

Merrick leaned in until his mouth hovered at her ear.

His scorching breath sent a wave of tingles rippling down her neck.

“Merrick, let go of me. This is ridiculous!”

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Merrick had stopped playing nice. His teeth grazed lightly across her neck, and Gillian froze, too startled to move.

He could feel her resisting him, and his voice came out hoarse, threaded with stifled frustration.

“Gillian, you’re cold. You’re really going to ditch me just like that?”

The arm around her tightened in warning, his hand giving her waist a light squeeze.

Gillian’s mind blew apart into static.

Great. She’d gone and slept with the most difficult man on the planet.

“Gillian, marriage is sacred. You can’t just toss the word ‘divorce’ around like that. The 9th Legion isn’t going to approve a frivolous filing like yours, so put it out of your head.”

Merrick worked to steady himself. What had he done to deserve this? He’d nearly lost his wife in the span of one conversation.

“Merrick, you’re actually Black Rick?”

Gillian was convinced this had to be some kind of joke. There was no way he was Black Rick.

“Wasn’t Black Rick supposed to be over eight feet tall, with horns coming out of his head, scales all over his body, and somewhere in his fifties?”

The Merrick standing in front of her looked more like Black Rick’s son than Black Rick himself.

“Gillian, I really am the leader of the 9th Legion. Black Rick is me.”

Merrick repeated his identity with full weight, as if reading the doubt in her head.

“Merrick Cole is my real name. It’s classified. Almost no one in the legion knows it.”

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Chapter 44 The Black Griffin

“So Lucian isn’t your captain. He’s your subordinate?”

Gillian’s eyes drifted to the window without thinking.

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A medical vehicle had pulled up alongside them at some point, and Lucian was already climbing in with the metal case in his arms.

“Yeah. Whatever the chain of command between us, you’re your own person. Save him if you want. Don’t save him if you don’t. No one gets to push you. But I won’t hear the word ‘divorce’ from you again.”

Merrick understood perfectly well that if Gillian refused to save Tristan, this might drive a wedge between him and Lucian down the line.

But Tristan was the person Lucian had sworn to protect.

And Gillian was the person he had sworn to protect. What kind of man let his own mate take the hit?

Gillian turned her head back toward Merrick, slowly.

“If Tristan dies tonight, is it going to land you in real trouble?”

“Maybe, Gillian. Who knows. I’ll do everything I can to get him to Firefox City for treatment.”

Merrick gave her a small, easy smile. None of this was beyond his ability to handle.

Since when had the master strategist of Wasteland City become this reasonable?

Gillian suddenly couldn’t read what Merrick was actually thinking, and a panic she couldn’t name welled up in her chest.

“Gillian.”

Merrick let out a sigh, as if he’d read the question in her eyes, and he pulled her tenderly against his chest. His rough thumb traced the soft line of her cheek.

“You’re my wife. We’ve bonded body and soul, and we’re tied together for life. I can’t live for myself anymore. But I want you to be able to.”

The unhesitating devotion in his voice sent her heart into a single hard thud.

“Merrick, did we meet in another life?”

Out of nowhere, Gillian found herself thinking of her past life, of the wall of beast corpses at

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Chapter 44 The Black Griffin

the edge of the taint.

The thing that had pulled at her eye the most was a single black-boned griffin.

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She’d been abandoned out at the edge of the taint, and when she’d woken, countless shifted corpses had stretched out around her.

Beastmen only ever shifted when they were channeling beast crystal power.

For a long time she couldn’t understand why the 9th Legion’s dead had stayed locked in beast form instead of reverting.

Eventually she’d learned that some genius in the 9th Legion had developed the regression

serum.

Used on a male, the serum burned through his beast crystal power and kept him shifted for three months at a stretch.

The massive black griffin had been the highest-ranking beastman in that wall of corpses, and he’d been the one to plant himself dead center against the taint core.

His body, hardened by the serum, hadn’t died right away. It had held on for a long, long time.

The serum was only supposed to last three months, but the taint corruption ate at him day by day past that point.

He’d held until he could no longer block the taint’s vortex, and that ordeal had taken him eight whole years.

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