This was the price of such daring.
He knew that now.
Didn’t regret anything, except failing to save her from a fate so much worse than death.
That he could have been the one to give her a merciful end, but wasn’t.
Sickle scrubbed at his tears, took a breath, and forced himself to stand. To move, because hecouldn’tsave her. Not from Giaus, not from slavery to a predatory species, and not from the Trax.
It was too late.
Renegade was lost.
Mated to a beast.
And now, in honor of the one female he would have served joyously, Sickle would never kneel again.
Teeth clenched, ears pressed flat, he abandoned all he’d ever known and charged into the river. His satchel held aloft, water swirling around his chest, he was cleansed of the stink of fear. Washed clean of everything but the inky swirls of his past. A clean slate he could fill with his own etchings.
Panting, Sickle paused to listen on the far bank. Alert for the sounds of pursuit.
He was not disappointed.
“SICKLE!”
It was a roar of primal fury, his absence noticed already. Anhur wrath trumpeted through the trees, thick with outrage that saw a half-mad grin stretching over Sickle’s lips.
That Sickle would dare to save himself?
A dire insult to the racial hatred that defined so much of Balkazar’s existence.
Sickle’s advantage, for he’d spent his time in the wilds learning from the Anhur, but they had not done the same. They’d taught him to fight like an Anhur, to hunt and kill and fuck like an Anhur, but notoncehad they looked to the Hathorian in their midst and seen anything but a helpless burden.
A weakness.
Something lesser than.
Grinning, Sickle’s ears flicked back as he heard the far off sounds of the war chief crashing through the woods.
He spared nothing for panic.
Merely adjusted his satchel and steadied his breathing.
And then he ran.
The pain of his injuries forgotten.
Flitting from one shadow to the next, he flew through the woods. A phantom unnoticed by predators both large and small. Following a trail he didn’t know, he went where his instinct demanded. Not moving as quickly as an Anhur might, he clung to efficiency.
Muscles hot with effort, he bolted for the light in the dark. Where he might be seen by the triplet sisters and bathe in the pure, white light shining from those lunar monocles.
Strides long and sure, chin tucked and ears flat, Sickle gave everything he had—and found the well deeper than he’d ever believed possible. The world blooming all around him, rife with possibility. Bright, despite the late hour and the moons.
He whooped, flashing the point of his teeth. Grinning as he darted between the trees. Over rocks and through the brush. Wild.
Free.
A dull, animal lowing caught his attention. The humming drone of too many feet to count. An army on the march, thundering in the same direction.
