“Put before an elvish tribunal, I would be expected to break every limb before I sliced open your chest, cracked your sternum, andripped out your beating heart.”Camille felt him jerk, like her words sent an electric current through his entire body. Leaning in close enough for him to feel the scrape of her fangs against the shell of his ear, she finished, “You are lucky I don’t have time for that. My consort needs me, so I have to make this quick. Not painless, though. You haven’t earned that.”
He thrashed, his fear perfuming the air with an acrid, sour smell. “Wait, wait! I—”
Growling, Camille wrestled with him until she had both of his sturdy wrists pinned behind his back. Shifters were strong, but they couldn’t match the sheer power of an elf — even one as deceptively willowy as herself.
Keeping his twitching hands pinned with only one of her own, Camille dug her bloodied claws into his hair and wrenched upward, pulling his head back into an uncomfortably sharp angle.
Instinct was clear and sharp in her mind. Millennia old, it passed from one generation to another unbroken, unchanged.
Go for the fucking throat.
Rearing her head back, she bared her fangs and swooped down toward his pounding jugular just as Kaz’s familiar baritone boomed, “Cammie,stop!”
ChapterTwenty-Three
It tookKaz and three seasoned Sovereign’s Guard to pry her off of the shifter. Even so, it was not their brute strength that finally uncurled her claws from torn flesh, but the relentless call of reason.
Stroking her hair back from her sweaty face, Kaz rumbled, “Hey, sweet. I know you’re itching to make a pelt outta this cat, but you need to listen to me, okay?”
Camille could barely hear him over the rush of blood in her ears, over the pounding din of bloodlust. The need for retribution was a great, heaving wave inside her, rolling forward and back, crashing against the walls of her mind again and again and again.
Instinct recognized that neither he, nor the three hulking soldiers currently crouched, hovering over her prey, were threats. It was the only reason that bloodlust didn’t extend to them. If it had been anyone else, she would have lashed out, fighting to keep her right to the kill she’d claimed.
But Kaz’s touch was soft. His voice was familiar. The smell of buttery soft leather and woodsmoke filtered in through the haze of copper and ocean salt.
Kin.
Kaz was kin. She trusted him.
“That’s a good girl,” he crooned, using that famous, orcish baritone to praise her as she slowly, slowly unclenched her claws. Her face still hovered barely an inch from the shifter’s pounding jugular, but as her cousin’s words began to slip through the thicket of her rage, so too did a tiny amount of reason. “That’s it, sweet. It’s okay. We have him now. You don’t want to let him die, do you? We won’t be able to figure out who wants your consort dead if he doesn’t have a head.”
She blinked.Someone wants Viktor to die.
The thought was muddied, distorted. It rang with truth, but she had trouble coming to grips with what exactly it meant. The beast in her recognized only the immediate threat. It wanted her to finish what she’d started, to the Underworld with Kaz and his murmuring.
But the woman was stronger than the beast. It had to be, to survive as long as she had, denying what that miserable creature demanded was their due.
“Ah, good girl. Good, sweet girl. That’s it. Everything will be okay, I promise.” She didn’t even realize she’d begun to lean backward until Kaz motioned for the soldiers to take over her position, pinning the writhing, babbling shifter to the sandy ground. As soon as they had a pair of m-enhanced stun cuffs snapped around his wrists, Kaz looped an arm around her middle and hauled her off of him completely.
Immediately, warmth enveloped her, chasing out a cold so deep, it left her trembling. Kaz crushed her to his chest, one big green hand sliding over her cheek and down, searching for wounds. It was only then that she noticed the pain in her side.
“Oh,” she breathed, beginning to shake in earnest. “I didn’t realize he got me.”
She felt Kaz’s breath hitch when his fingertips grazed the jagged slice in her coat. Now that the adrenaline was beginning to wear off, she could feel a strange coolness there — the cold night air stealing the warmth from the blood soaked into the thick wool.
Agony bloomed in her side, as well as up and down her arms, where the shifter had clawed to be free. During the fight she didn’t notice even a hint of pain, but it rushed to the forefront of her mind now, alongside the crushing weight of worry.
“I’m going to pick you up,” he warned, crouching to slide one muscled arm behind her knees. The sudden change in position cruelly jostled the wound in her side. Black spots floated in front of her eyes and she let out a strangled cry.
Somewhere down on the beach, a haunting roar of rage went up.Viktor.
Camille curled her claws into Kaz’s leather covered shoulder. Cold sweat broke out across her chest and behind her knees. “Kaz— Viktor, is he—”
Her cousin was already walking, his long legs eating up the distance to what she knew was a narrow trail leading down the cliff with ease. “He’s okay. We’ve got a squad down there, and we called his second. Teddy’s there, too, and so is Margot.”
She might have felt relief, except she couldn’t quite believe it until she saw Viktor with her own two eyes.My consort was almost stolen from me.
Bile raced up the back of her throat with a violence that made her head swim. Camille pressed hard against Kaz’s shoulder. “Put me down! Put me down!”
