Mated to the Beast of the Wasteland novel Chapter 73

Chapter 73 The Living Scale

Chapter 73 The Living Scale

Aiden bit back the worst of it, but sweat rolled down his forehead in fat beads, one after another,

“Sending for anesthesia now would take too long.”

“Hiss… Ms. Sterling, keep going. I can take it.”

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The sudden cutoff of Aiden’s scream made Tristan’s brow furrow. Was this female some kind of enemy plant, working the lieutenant over this brutally?

“Captain Sterling, are you just yanking the black scale straight off?”

Aiden was already regretting turning down the anesthetic, but he didn’t dare let his guard down. One wrong move on his arm and he would never fly again.

“Not at all. Stop talking and hang on.”

Gillian murmured the reassurance and pushed her psionic power faster, hunting for the thing she sensed at the seam between scale and skin.

That was the secret. The black scale was actually a living parasite.

It grew through symbiosis with its host. Trigger it early enough, and you could force it out into the open and kill it.

Ehas had been the one to figure that out.

He had been carrying Asher on his back when he heard Asher whimpering that the black scale was drinking his blood, eating his flesh, and it hurt so much.

Eight years on in Wasteland City, with the taint thick in the air everywhere you looked, the scaling parasites were long past mature.

Day after day, they fed on Asher in secret.

Asher was the quiet kid by nature. Even when his hands and feet were rubbed raw, he never made a sound.

The parasite must have grown ravenous enough that the greedy thing seemed ready to swallow him whole.

Elias couldn’t stand watching Asher suffer, so he tried using psionic power to peel the scales loose, hoping to buy Asher a few good days.

And by accident, he discovered the parasite’s mouth.

The thing was alive.

He drove it off Asher’s body, and the three of them fought tooth and nail to finish it off.

But without a shield to protect Asher, the taint took root on him again and again.

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10:57 Wed, Jun 3 M.

Chapter 73 The Living Scale

When Asher died, an immature layer of scaling was still spread across his body.

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Gillian had once thought about telling the boys to leave her behind. The wasteland stretched on forever. and even by military shuttle, it took two days before you’d see another settlement.

On foot, they would never have made it out alive.

Then Gillian’s searching psionic power snagged on something.

There it was.

Gillian had found the mouth at last.

It was a tiny slit of flesh, easy to overlook, and it was greedily devouring her psionic power.

The reason Gillian was so confident she could find the mouth came down to one thing. It loved feeding on Elias’ psionic power.

And Elias’ power and hers came from the same source.

Gillian had a theory she’d been turning over for a while. Psionic power and the taint might just be two faces of the same force.

That was why parasitic scaling loved feeding on both, leveling itself up in the process.

Gillian split her golden power into threads as fine as a strand of hair and fed them to the little mouth, one bite at a time. Eat up. Keep eating. Every mouthful tightened the noose.

She slipped a piece of blackstone from her pocket and curled her fingers around it, ready to use it the moment she needed to.

A patrol guard arrived at the door right then and gave a polite knock. “Captain Sterling, your delivery is here.”

Gillian couldn’t free up a hand, so she glanced toward the corner. The fox’s eyes were clear now, narrowed at the door.

“Tris, go open the door and grab the package.”

Tristan stared back at her.

His fox tail gave a reluctant flick, his eyes already protesting.

“A little movement does the body good. Helps the bruising clear up faster. Better for getting your memory back. Be a good boy.”

Gillian was using her babying-a-kid voice. Tristan had amnesia, after all, so there was no point arguing with a sad little dog whose brain wasn’t quite right.

Hmph. She just wanted free labor.

D

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Chapter 73 The Living Scale

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