Struck at the soft spot beneath her chin with claws fully extended, and came away burnt. His fingertips blistering upon impact with a beast born of magma, dealing devastating damage nevertheless. Claws singed, pocked and marked, but still intact enough.
The fire-kin staggered. Her jaw hanging loose where he’d wrenched it free of its hinge. Tongue lolling out, bile shimmering blue with intense heat dripped freely to the limestone. But instead of retreating, the fire-kin reared up. Standing on stocky back limbs, balanced on the base of a thick tail, her frill pulsed an angry red. Chest emitting a near-constant thrum of warning, she lunged and hurled. Dodged and spit. Creating a minefield of molten stone as the hunter evaded.
Constantly driving attention away from his mate, he pressed any advantage he might glean. Drew back when life or limb were at risk, and rushed at any chance to land a blow.
There was no margin for error. No chance of brushing it off, should he be struck by so noxious a projectile. He’d be dragged into a den by a brood mother doomed by mortal injuries, yet too stubborn to give up her vigor. He’d be fed to her young while she watched on. Dying, so her body might feed her offspring. A final gift of her blood and bone.
He’d never know what it was to breed his female. To lock inside her and mark her ashis.
The very thought had the hunter howling in contempt. Limbs working together, his balance a thing of deadly precision, he launched himself at the drake. Taking a swipe with his compromised claws before flying back. Offering a bluff to the left, and striking at the right, he tore at her hamstrings with a touch light enough to spare his digits from igneous gore. Pleased by the sounds of agony trumpeted from that deadly throat.
A whimper shattered his attention.
The plaintive cry of a female already etched inside his skull, more than enough to impale his brain with a deadly splinter. An unforgivable instant of weakness.
She was just there. The reason for his fight tucked around herself as if being small was any less appealing to ravenous swine. Arms wrapped around her knees, her ears flicked back, she huddled in the mouth of a tunnel. Keening. Her terror a palpable thing born of the helplessness of her kind.
Looking not at the drake, but athim.
Something collided with his ribs. A blunt force trauma landing with enough violence to send him careening into stone, his head striking with a clatter that robbed his senses. Fractured time. Distorted light and stripped precious seconds from his memory.
With fetid breath, the lava-kin was on him. Everything and more to fight for, the brood mother would give her life for her young. Already had, though she meant to deliver him to the Nine herself. Crushing weight flattened his ribs beneath a clawed forelimb. The caustic spatter of bile missing his face by sheer blind luck that wouldn’t last.
Feet drawn between them, he prepared himself for the last moments of the fight.
His trophy waiting to be claimed.
Ignoring the heat with enough intensity to cremate, he let his claws become talons and sank his grip through flesh that burned. Shoved with both feet, and tore that throat free of its moorings. Avoiding the worst of it, he rolled away only half as fast as he should have. His hip and thigh scorched in reprimand. Branded by his effort, yet rewarded with the wet spatter of gore that signaled victory.
Tongue lolling through a gaping hole, the lava-kin took three mincing steps away from her murderer, then fell. Dead. Twitching. A pool of glowing vomit spreading about her corpse.
Panting, the hunter took a moment to fill his lungs. Ears primed for the sounds of her brood, for any hint that another drake might follow in search of easy, exhausted prey damaged by a costly victory.
There was nothing.
No hint of grateful female. Not a whisper of mewling over wounds he’d earned in her defense.
Nothing.
The air was still.
Only his own ragged breathing echoing on the wind.
And when he turned to look, intending to lay this prize at the feet of his mate…
… she was gone.
7
She hadn’t managed to run all that far from the pack, what with her short Hathorian legs and addled, heat-swamped brain. Still, Balkazar had expended a huge amount of energy in the effort to track her down. Following the sounds of a fight, thinking he’d find Sinadim’s disobedient bitch being pummeled beneath the weight of a horde. Torn asunder by teeth and claws and cocks.
What he discovered instead was far,farworse than all that.
Lurking at the edge of the forest, he watched. Mouth agape. Chest and lungs heaving with exertion, sweat tracing the length of his back, his hairline soaked and prickling. The war chief had meant to wait only long enough to claim a piece of what was left of the girl so his prince might forgive him for her death.
Instead, he’d found a colossus.
A single infected male, mutated by the ravages of the virus, their little renegade cornered by a true titan. Larger than even Micha, a beast both long limbed and well-muscled.Intactin a way that made Balkazar’s heart ache with seething jealousy. Over-grown, but not in a way that that left him grotesque. Not living inside a prison of festering tumors and disfigured bones—this was a prime example of glorious, Anhur beauty.
