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  As he slides his hands up her legs, bunching up the hem of her skirt, she knows her cheeks are burning. She feels weak and vulnerable, and completely at his mercy. Her chest heaves as he exposes her thighs and presses his lips against the soft, sensitive skin just above the top of her stockings.

  She whimpers softly.

  Looking around, she meets the gaze of every other teacher in the school. Her cheeks are on fire and her cunt is throbbing. She wants to put an end to the free show they’re being given.

  “Gabe, get up,” she pleads.

  “Not until you forgive me.”

  “Get up,” she whispers frantically. “The whole school is watching.” She reaches for his elbow and heaves him to his feet. “If you insist on doing this now, then let’s go to my office.”

  Without waiting for his response, she grabs him by the hand and drags him away from their audience. She pulls him down the hallway and practically shoves him into her office.

  “What the hell was that?!” She tosses the flowers into a nearby chair. “How dare you throw yourself at me like that in front of my co-workers!”

  Undeterred, he launches himself at her again.

  He takes her by the waist, pulls her into an embrace, and thrusts a kiss on her. At first, she pushes away … but her will power soon fades. She can’t pretend that his public display didn’t turn her on—it did. So she doesn’t object when he pushes her back against her desk and lifts her onto the edge of it.

  “I want you,” he asserts, tearing off her underwear. “I’ve always wanted you.”

  He’s not lying.

  The attraction between them was always undeniable. He might’ve fallen deeply in love with Lora from the first moment he laid eyes on her, but nevertheless, he’d craved Veva the way an addict needs dope.

  “Forgive me,” he urges, moving himself between her legs. “I want your forgiveness.”

  Closing her eyes, she leans back on the desk and prepares to take him.

  “You always get what you want, Gabe.”

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER Ø

  Judgment

  Second Reclamation Territory

  Amaranthe, 2319 CE

  – Five Years Later

  Jonathan Cross pulls his hunting knife out of the chest of an adult female Chimera.

  The blade squelches against dead flesh as he yanks it out of the beast’s punctured heart, and deep red blood soon pools in the wound. Covered in superficial scratches after his hand-to-talon combat with the monster, J.C. stands up and stretches the tension out of his shoulders.

  Outside, the sun is rising.

  It’s almost the end of his shift, and he’s eager to return home to his young daughter. Thinking the building clear, he holsters his knife and wipes sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, smearing blood all over his tanned skin.

  Systematically, he’d worked through this building from the ground floor up. He’d wiped out the entire nest almost completely singlehandedly, and had last seen his partner outside in the street, tussling with two adolescents from a different nest.

  That was his first mistake: thinking he could clear the whole building alone. His second mistake was not realizing there was an attic.

  He commits his third and final mistake when he steps back and inadvertently positions himself between the doorway and the window. Before he has time to react to it, an adult male Chimera leaps into the room and digs its talons into his chest, its teeth sinking into his shoulder.

  As the animal’s thick, two-hundred pound body hits him, he stumbles back. Unable to steady himself, he backs straight into the window—or the hole in the wall where a window used to be, before the glass was looted from it.

  When he feels the rush of air against his skin, he knows he’s falling: falling from the third storey of an old residential building.

  Falling.

  Falling.

  The crack of his spine echoes in his head as he hits the dirt.

  There’s no pain.

  At least, not below his waist.

  Winded, his ribs cracked with the Chimera’s weight upon him, he struggles to breathe. As the creature rips a chunk of meaty flesh out of his shoulder, he turns his head so that his own blood doesn’t drip into his eyes.

  Yes!

  A hundred yards away, his partner is kneeling over an adolescent Chimera, his hands around its neck.

  J.C. tries to call out to him.

  Nothing.

  He opens his mouth, but can’t force out the words. His lungs are empty and his voice is hoarse. Punching the Chimera in the side of its head, he tries to buy himself a few more precious moments. If he could just get his partner’s attention …

  His partner.

  Deputy General Maydevine.

  In the past few weeks, the two friends have been paired together a lot—more so than in the last five years since Maydevine’s promotion—and J.C. doesn’t think to question why. The Hunter General is old and close to retirement, and when that day finally comes, Maydevine will need a Deputy. What other reason could there be?

  Not a second too soon, Maydevine snaps the neck of the adolescent Chimera beneath him and looks up in J.C.’s direction.

  J.C. floods with relief.

  Still fending off the Chimera with what little strength he has left, he rasps Maydevine’s name and Maydevine responds. He steps off the dead Chimera, draws his gun and takes a step closer.

  Just one step.

  Then, he hesitates.

  Frozen there, he stares down at his partner; his best friend; his dead lover’s husband; Ella’s father.

  They lock eyes and Maydevine stands motionless.

  Time seems to drag.

  The Chimera severs the brachial nerve in J.C.’s right arm, rendering him virtually defenseless.

  Still, Maydevine does nothing.

  Confused, betrayed, and hurt, J.C. doesn’t take his eyes off his stationary partner. The beast on his chest huffs and snorts, and tears through his Kevlar vest with its talons.

  Turning his back, Maydevine leans up against the side of the building and closes his eyes, waiting for their common enemy to finish its work.

  And it does.

  When he turns back to look, J.C. is dead. The Chimera has slit his chest open and is about to delve its teeth into his stomach, but it never gets the chance to feed.

  Maydevine shoots it with a tranquilizer dart and it collapses into an unconscious heap on the ground. Feeling sick to his stomach, he suppresses the onset of nausea and approaches his partner’s corpse. Before he calls in the casualty, he kneels beside J.C.’s shoulder and checks for a pulse against his neck.

  None.

  Pulling back J.C.’s vest, tearing his shredded shirt apart, Maydevine roams his hands about his dead friend’s bloody chest, seeking out a pair of Hunter Division dog tags.

  Bingo.

  Caught in a gash beneath his neck, they’re covered in blood and slivers of skin. Maydevine removes them, then unclips the holster containing his custom engraved HK USP handgun.

  Ella’s inheritance.

  *************************

  The playground falls into silence at the sight of the Deputy General. He emerges from his Hunter Division truck, covered in blood—some Chimeran, some human.

  In front of the school, lines of young children, flanked by their teachers, await the arrival of their parents. Aged from four to eight, they halt their conversations to stare at Maydevine as he approaches. Hunters are gods in their eyes.

  One child in particular soaks him up.

  Five-year-old Ella Cross.

  She’s used to seeing him covered in blood, but this time, something’s different. His expression is grave and sorrowful, his eyes subdued and full of concern. Wrapped around the fingers of one hand: a pair of dog tags.

  Ella knows what that means.

  He drops to his knees and she runs into his arms. He scoops her up and holds her close to him, neither one of them giving a thought to the blo
od. Cradling her tiny head against his shoulder, he squeezes his eyes tightly shut and bites back a barrage of emotions.

  Guilt.

  Love.

  Pain.

  Fear.

  Such great fear.

  He fears her grief and suddenly doubts his ability to comfort her. Little does he know that, over his shoulder, she’s not crying—she’s smiling. She wraps her arms tighter around his neck and breathes in the scent of his cigarettes and cologne.

  She’s content.

  She’s happy.

  She’s exactly where she belongs.

  OUT NOW

  the first book in

  The Outlier Trilogy

  SILVER:

  Lex Talionis

  About The Author

  Keira Michelle Telford is an award-winning author with a love for the gruesome, the macabre, and the downright filthy. She writes dystopian science fiction, erotic lesbian romance, and other lesbian fiction.

  Website: www.keiramichelle.com

  Twitter: @mylostanddamned

  Facebook Page for KM Telford

  Goodreads Author Page

  Amazon Author Page

  Works by this author:

  The SILVER Series

  The Amaranthe Chronicles

  The Outlier Trilogy

  www.ellacross.com

  www.facebook.com/thesilverseries

  The Prisonworld Trilogy

  www.carmenwild.com

  Standalone titles:

  Cadence of My Heart – an erotic lesbian romance

  The Housemistress – an erotic lesbian romance

  Hoar & Rime (A Short Story) – lesbian fiction

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ZERO

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER Ø