That disobedient, infuriating,belovedHathorian pet.
Tattooed brow twisted in fury, teeth bared all the way back to his gums. Ears slicked back and held tight to his skull, Sickle ducked beneath a deadly swing, and caught the butt of the spear where it was buried between feral ribs. Throwing every ounce of his weight, Sickle roared, leveraging the threat of death to drive the spear deeper. Into vital organs.
With a grunt, Giaus’ legs went out from under him. His skin blanching a waxy shade of green. Sickly beneath a sheen of dew, a son of the Nine knelt for anOmega… the smallest of them. All but insignificant.
And then, through his clenched and pointed teeth, Sickle hissed, “Yield.”
17
Falling.
The sense of shifting through the air, both weightless and free.
Her limbs lurching all at once, Renegade’s lips parted, a breath sucked through her teeth as she flailed against nothing. A scream poised to burst from chapped lips, she came awake with a hiss of pain that exploded through her elbow. An explosion of dark stars glittering behind her lids when she struck the earth.
Brain spinning, she strained to open eyes swollen shut. A crust of sweat and tears left to dry on her lashes. Her muscles tight with the ache of such vigorous activities, with dehydration.
The trauma.
She groaned, breath rattling through ravaged throat. Parched and dry, her tongue swollen and tacked to the roof of her mouth, she squirmed until her lids began to part. First the left, and then—slower—the right. Her vision a blur of shapes and shadows, figures doubled where they danced in a distant gloom.
She was trapped. Wrapped tight in a fur, allowed little in the way of movement.
Naked.
Her thighs still wet with the evidence of her breeding, she was on her back in the comforting dark of a den. One already thick with her own scent. Familiar. And all around her the rhythmic thump of construction. Tools striking stone, grunts of effort and the clatter of shifting rocks, the air was warm with the exertion of hard work done in a short time.
“You’re awake.”
It was a familiar voice, though it took a moment too long to pair with a tattooed face.
Sickle.
“Hush,” the Hathorian male cooed as his fingers skated through her hair. Whispering. Blunt nails scraping against her scalp, he tried to tame her wild locks, twisting and weaving. Pulling as he worked through the tats and snarls she’d earned.
She blinked, safe on solid ground. Encased in fur, pressed to Sickle’s chest, she swallowed a hard lump that stuck on its way down. Confused. Disoriented, for shehadn’tfallen. It wasn’t her head that ached from a blow. Not her elbow throbbing and raw.
“What…” She shook her head, teeth clicking shut, then reached for the memory herself. For clarity that wasn’t given through the lens of male perspective.
There’d been a fight.
She remembered it in hazy flashes. Scents blending with feelings, with sounds and colors.
A shock of breathtaking agony that had splintered between ribs that weren’t her own. The point of her own spear tickling organs belonging to another, despite that she’dfeltit lancing through her guts. That she’d clutched at a wound that wasn’t there, hands going to the spot where she’d expected to find spilled ropes of slippery intestines, but instead? Her throat was raw with the explosion of vented fury…Anhurfury.
It lingered even now, Renegade still riding the violent storm pumping through her veins when something in her chest lurched.
Her heart.
Skipping once only to freeze in place, muscles locked as a cold wash of realization flooded her mind.
A memory.
It oozed down her nape, spilled over the length of her spine and crawled into the cradle between her hips.
Pulse throbbing behind her eyes, she was frozen in Sickle’s arms. Taking rapid, shallow breaths through flared nostrils.
And then, through the fog of pain and delirium, she knew.
