Absurdly thick fingers closed over the adolescent that squealed and thrashed, and without so much as a blink, he brought that offering to his lips…
… and crunched through flesh and bone.
For one blistering instant—as the hunter chewed then tossed the bottom half of the adolescent aside—there was little else but silence. Nothing but the sound of the breeze, for the flock of lizards had gone still. Those in flight pausing to hover above the scene of carnage playing out on the ground. Still others hung from their branches. Drowsy. Blinking.
But as one, their soft cooing began to wail of vengeance. A call for revenge on the wretched beast that would dare attack a hatchling.
Entranced, Renegade dared a smile as the entire flock took wing, forming a murderous cloud that swirled around the hunter’s filthy head.
At first, he hardly bothered to glare. His attention fixed on the unruly Hathorian he thought to claim, he wrapped both hands around the base of her tree and looked up. Ignoring the flock, teeth flashing with a bastardized smirk born of mirth and greed, he pushed. Bending the tree as far as its flexible young trunk would allow, he sent her tipping precariously toward the earth.
And then three things happened all at once.
With a unanimous cry, the flock of bejeweled lizards dove. Spitting their acidic breath in a great wet cloud of seething hatred that sizzled where it spattered. Making the hunter’s skin hiss and char and smoke.
Distracted at last, the hunter roared in outrage. In pain. A challenge issued and answered before he’d finished that breath. Answered by a legion of tiny winged beasts that swarmed into one ravenous firebrand unafraid to attack a creature a thousand times the size of the individual.
And then his grip on her tree slipped. His effort to dislodge her abandoned as acid rained down on hunched shoulders.
Green wood bucked, snapping back with force enough to compromise her stranglehold on the tree trunk. Launched from the safety of her perch, the velocity sent Renegade rocketing through the air. Shrieking at the top of her lungs, flung clear over the edge of the forest, she landedhard.Her knees buckling as she rolled. Dazed.
From her peripherals, she watched the hunter fight the deadly cloud with a fury that rendered her still, struck dumb at such a display of Anhur strength. His reflexes quick enough to see every mighty swing killing dozens of lizards with every swipe.
He wouldn’t be distracted for long.
It was a struggle to stand. Her lungs seized in a frigid fist, her muscles begged for relief. To simply lay down and accept her fate.
Teeth clenched, she staggered toward open, barren planes. Limped toward the desolate, pitted field of limestone. To where she could see geysers steaming, belching up sulfurous smoke. And there, amongst the pools of bubbling water rimmed in crusty yellow foam, she could see darkness that tunneled down, and knew it to be a cave system carved by eruptions of volcanic fury.
Renegade couldn’t help the terrified little squeal that burst from her lips as she fled from a monster. Couldn’t help the tremor in her hands or stop her thoughts from turning to Sinadim and the pack of males she’d rejected.
But it was too late to call for help.
Too late to turn back and beg forgiveness, accept her place in a new harem, and breed for another male in the Karahmet line.
There was nothing but the limestone tunnels and the delirious hope that she’d found a place where the hunter couldn’t follow.
6
Swatting the air as the flock ofVolansdove, he couldn’t help but grin. Despite the sting of acid raining down on his shoulders, that it burned and bubbled. No matter the dozens of tiny bites sawing through his skin, feasting on blackened flesh, his smirk only grew.
She was glorious.
A creature born of his deepest fantasies.
Resourceful. Fierce and strong, her spirit indomitable.
A perfect match, in contempt of her inferior species. Hers was a fire he would tame but never extinguish, for her submission at his feet was a guarantee.
The Hathorian to his Anhur.
Helpless but to take yet another enthralled glance, he turned his attention up, toward the little female defying his unspoken commands. Teasing his patience with her coy games.
She was gone.
The tree was a barren shell with dead branches. Absent any hint of one insolent Hathorian whose scent had sent him spiraling into madness. Abandoning all sense in his quest to claim the beguiling little thing for himself.
Whirling, the hunter’s eyes flicked through the gloom, his heart racing. Veins growing thick with the flush of adrenaline, his mane standing in defiance of the matted filth. The mud. Cracking free in a shivering bristle that reeked of possessive fury that she would dare—
