“We can’t just leave her like that,” the Hathorian whispered, tears shimmering in his eyes. Beseeching, pain shining through the hard gleam. “To be torn a-apart. Eaten by a h-hoard. Still alive—” Choking on anguish, Sickle’s voice failed him. But the memory of the horde turning on one of their own, of seeing a lesser male ravaged by a mob of hideous infected? “It’ll be days before she succumbs to the virus,” Sickle rasped, tears running free down his inked and decorated cheeks. “Days of wondering if anyone will come to save her. Knowing no one ever would. And why would they?” he asked, the glimmer of pure loathing disfiguring that pleasing Hathorian face. “Who would bother to rescue her? A lowly Omega. Good for nothing, save the holes between her legs.”
With an abrupt snarl, Sickle turned on his heel. Heading into the forest’s gloom with a short spear slung over his shoulder and hatred fueling his soft heart.
The prince caught his arm. “Sickle—”
“No,” the boy hissed, whirling. “I’m going to save her, even if that means I have to kill her myself,” he added, voice cracking on a tattered sob. “She deserves that much. An easy death from someone who cares.”
Wrenching his arm free, Sickle bolted. And faster than any might have expected, his slender frame disappeared into the shadows with little more than a rustle of disturbed leaves to mark his passing.
“What will you have us do?” Micha asked, his shoulders squared, glaring into the gloom.
The prince frowned. Hesitant, for he’d been trained to make difficult, unpopular decisions. Born to shoulder such burdens as deciding when a dear friend had outlived their value. Schooled in the art of seeing other living things as commodities and assets—females most of all.
Renegade shouldn’t have been worth another thought, not after what she’d done. Used them. Abandoning them all without a hint of concern for the consequences. And she’d gotten just what she’d wanted, hadn’t she? The freedom to make her own choices. To live beyond the rules of the Silver City, in defiance of the safety in numbers.
Was it his fault that she’d found her end so soon? That it would be gruesome and bloody, her last moments filled with unimaginable pain?
And then, in the not so far off distance, the wail of a female voice lifted in anguish—answered by the roar of a beast. One that echoed with all the way to the back of his skull, where forgotten things had been left to rot.
A wail of agony drew his eyes open. Lids dragging over eyeballs gone dry and crusty with horrified tears, his face spattered in gore, though his body was without injury. Whole.
“Sina!” High and frail, a desperate plea. “Sina, pl-please! Help—help me…”
Jolting, Sinadim staggered back from the far off sound that dared echo through decades. Eyes squeezed shut, his brow damp with cold sweat. Ears ringing with the cries of a female he couldn’t help, blending with the soft, broken begging that had haunted him since adolescence. That day in the beyond, when Hadim had taken his eldest children over the wall. To see the reality of the wilds with their own eyes.
To breed a female who wasn’t his wife… laughing while the world burned around him…
Mane bristling, Sinadim snarled, glaring at the wood where Sickle had gone. Where Renegade might be found. Old hatred blending with new.
Was she being bred, even now? His efforts to master her obliterated by the stink of an infected male, whose distant cries were not pleas for rescue… but formore…
A mewling coo drew his gaze up, to a scrap of trembling female flesh he loved so dearly. And the prince watched, helpless to fight the weight of a hoard, pain twisting in his guts as this thief of hopes and dreams pressed a blunt tip to her lips. Making her taste the thing that was to be her doom. To sip a bead of clotted cream leaking from a purple helm…
“No,” Sinadim spat, hackles bristling, claws pressing into the meat of his palms.
Micha frowned. “Alpha?”
“I’ve no intention of losing two Hathorians in one day,” Sinadim elaborated. “Besides,” he said, and despite the itching scars and the long forgotten phantoms, his smile became a wicked thing. Inspired by Sickle’s unwavering grit, by the seething pit of loathing burning in his gut. “Besides… Can’t let Sickle have all the fun.”
Cracking his neck, the prince turned from the direction in which Sickle had gone. Moving instead to face the cries of a desperate little bitch who didn’t know the meaning of loyalty.
Not yet.
But she would learn…
The hybrids fell in step at his back. Micha covering his blindside, the twins on his flank. Wordless obedience, though they too wore matching grins at the prospect of bloodshed.
“Stay downwind,” the prince ordered, clipped and cold. “And let’s see if the Nine favor us after all, hmm?”
9
On hands and knees, Renegade crawled. Bared to the waist, her nipples peaked despite the uncomfortable warmth of tunnels heated by thermal vents. Blind, skittering through the dark, she hiccupped, trying to put as much distance between herself and the monsters slavering for a taste of her.
For a moment, after he’d stood for her against the giant lizard, she’d thought there might be more to the feral Anhur who could crush her with one hand. Thought him more than just a savage starving for her womb, that there might have been something glimmering behind the unnatural sheen of amber eyes.
Intelligence in the rotten brain of an infected feral.
And then she’d seen. The impossible, irrefutable proof that this was no lost prince waiting for rescue.
