Micha placed a gentle, dark hand on the prince’s shoulder, then helped him to stand. Saying nothing, the hybrid held his silence and guarded his prince’s blindside.
“I would have given her first position,” Sinadim hissed, inspecting the clearing with a thunderous scowl. “My chosen fucking consort. The highest any Hathorian breeder might hope to climb.” He clapped the dirt from his fingers, jaw clenched around his petulant fury. The threat of enduring withdrawal yet again, topped with the ache of having something so precious only to lose it.
“She was indeed fit for a prince,” Micha said, voice a dull, soothing hum.
“Alpha,” one of the twins called, but Sinadim didn’t bother to acknowledge which, merely focused on keeping his temper contained as a torn shirt was presented.Hershirt, split down the middle. The scent of this other male all over it.
Sinadim’s claws dented his palms, but he said nothing. Merely set his nose to the ruined fabric and inhaled the truth. Helpless to act as another male took from his pack. Claimed his female—their future—for with that single breath, any measure of hope was left wasted. Ashes on the wind.
Sinadim could smell it.
She’d been tainted. Touched by the stink of infection. Even through the powerful scent of a dominant male, the prince caught the odor of corruption. And he knew, when he opened his eyes, he’d see horror…
Trax.
“She’s ruined,” Konjo murmured, making him jerk back from the haze of memory.
“Exposed,” Keever added, the twins wearing matching glares aimed at the shirt. Irrefutable evidence of justwhathad taken Renegade from them.
A gentle breeze lifted her scent, tormenting them all with the whisper of what had almost been. The air ripe with the enticing bouquet of a female who still reeked of health, despite the looming threat of sickness. And though blackness thrashed behind his ribs, Sinadim’s sack drew up, swollen with helpless want. His cock thick. Aching with the fresh memory of a fine rut that might as well have been his last.
Mane bristling, Sinadim’s nape grew tight and hot.
Balkazar had been right.
“She’s been exposed,” he said at length. The words heavy with grit where they were forced over his lips. “Done more than simply touch an infected, and that can never be forgiven or forgotten.” He let her shirt fall, watched as it caught on the tips of his claws for a moment. Lingering. “Never overlooked.”
It was their one rule.
The infected were to be slaughtered if possible, but never touched. The risk of contagion too great to abide, they’d each and every one sworn a blood oath to their brothers. To the pack above all else.
To tempt contamination was to invite a swift, yet painless death.
Grant no mercy to the infected unworthy.
“Look!” The shout came from the smallest of them. Sickle, who’d wandered the perimeter of this modest clearing. Who hadn’t heard the murmured conversation, hadn’t given up the search for clues. Instead, he tugged at a pole jutting from the trunk of a tree.
It was a spear. Shortened to fit dainty Hathorian hands, the steel point completely swallowed by wood.
Micha whistled. “That took some doing,” the hybrid said, then stepped around Sickle, nudged the Hathorian out of the way, and wrapped one overlarge fist around the butt of the spear. Wrenching it free with a grunt, he passed it to his Alpha without a moment’s hesitation.
“She’s unarmed,” Sickle said, his ears flicked forward. Jaw tight. “We’ve got to hurry, before—”
“Sickle,” Micha hummed, gentle. “You know what this means, brother. What happened here today.” He swung meaty hands around the clearing, encompassing all they’d found. “We’ve no hope against the sort of beast who’s done all this. To risk everything for a promising breeder.”
Sickle paled, his tattoos standing out in stark relief against blanched cheeks. “A promising breeder?” he hissed, fists clenched. “Is that all she is to you? A warm hole capable of whelping an army of hybrid sons and sturdy daughters that will never belong to you?”
Thumb passing over the blade of the spear, Sinadim held his silence, watching the heated exchange. Lost in thought. Renegade’s weapon bearing all the menace of a child’s toy in his hands.
Micha growled, but didn’t rise to the bait. “We should return to the den and wait for the war chief,” he said, half-turned to go. “There’s nothing for us here.”
“That’s it?” Sickle spat. Slender, tattooed face going tight around a scowl. His cheeks pinkening, ears flat and ready for battle. “We find a torn shirt and abandon that girl to her fate, without any proof? She’sperfect,” he snapped, pointed teeth flashing at the hybrid. Standing firm. “Or have your mother’s people no value unless she’s being forced to milk your weak knot in payment for your loyalty to a prince whoisn’tyour daddy?”
Before Micha could react, Sinadim stepped forward and pressed the short spear into Sickle’s hands. “We all feel it, Sickle,” he said, not unkind no matter how much the words burned. “But Renegade is lost to us.”
“You don’t know that,” Sickle returned, knuckles white around his new weapon.
Swallowing a hard lump, Sinadim met the Hathorian’s fierce glare. His scars tugging enough that his eye began to weep and itch anew as indecision warred with good sense.
