Brain filled with insidious whispers. Murmurings that mocked his progress for the futile attempt it had become, for there was no denying the tsunami surging at his back. The ravenous maw of the many who knew.
He’d turn back.
He’d join the horde and become a servant to the legion…
Because the beast wasso hungry…
7
Giaus’ eyes snapped open, his mane bristling in a full flare before he’d so much as taken a breath.
The dark was alive—he felt it move and shift around him where he couldn’t see. Heavy with an ominous presence violating the deep silence of their prison.
He blinked. Vision slow to adjust even as his fingers grew tight on the slender female draped across his lap. And, in a single breath, the king of the beyond shifted from rest into readiness. A deadly monstrosity that would defend what was his and take no issue with dealing death on a whim.
A curtain of dense silence hung heavy in the gloom. Silence that breathed, watching with all the ravenous stillness of a raptor on the hunt.
Lips parting, Giaus’ tongue flicked out, pulling a breath between his teeth, he painted the roof of his mouth and tasted the damp mist seething before him…
… then smiled.
This was no true threat. Nothing he wasn’t uniquely prepared to deal with, for he was king of a newborn species. He alone knew what it was to conquer the wilds, and with an arrogant flick of his tail, Giaus readied himself to pluck a mewling baby monster from the gloom.
Muscles coiled, he was still.
Appearing vulnerable to all who dared venture close enough to look.
Senses honed to a needle point, he suppressed the flare of his mane. Willed his heart rate to slow, his pheromones muted as he pulled another breath through lax lips.
Closer…
Giaus exhaled, pupils blown wide as they might go. Gobbling up every speck of available light, using his every unnatural advantage, his breath was steady in his chest even as he prepared himself for an explosion of muscle and violence.
At his elbow, the steadydrip, drip, dripof water trickled from the end of the spigot, framing the fall of tiny stones as they tumbled down from the rim of the pit.
And just there, cradled in arms meant for murder, dainty, ragged breaths puffed and whistled through the dark—Renegade. His queen. He could tell by the weight of each breath. By the movement against his palms and the wet clatter that trembled in her fragile chest.
But there was another lurking in the dark.
The slow glide of his claws—pocked and ruined from his battle with the brood mother—slid from their sheaths. Fully extended. Still deadly…
Ready.
In an instant, the gloom snarled and lunged—going in for the killing blow.
With a twitch that didn’t so much as disturb his precious mate, Giaus’ free hand shot out and found purchase around something that was soft. Fist cinching tight and unforgiving around a column of blood and bones he ached to crush into a fine paste, but didn’t.
Couldn’t.
“Sinadim,” he drawled instead. A droll greeting as he shifted Renegade from his lap to the ground and hefted the fallen prince into a shaft of gloomy light so he could see what kind of monster he’d caught. Claws toying with the other male’s airway, he dimpled skin where arteries strained for free passage. “Still with us, general?” he asked, tone light and breezy despite the way the other choked and thrashed.
For a moment, the only response was a wet, hacking cough scarcely able to eek through Giaus’ fingers. And with the gentle press of his thumb beneath the prince’s chin, Giaus looked to answer his own question—and turned Sinadim’s face so it might reflect what little light there was.
Gone was the cultured face of a male born to obscene privilege. In its place, a savage. Snarling and thrashing, a fine mist of spittle fogged Giaus’ cheeks as the other fought for breath that wasn’t given. A damp film that bore all the scent markers he’d been waiting to taste on Renegade.
Trax.
No longer the sour, toxic thing thriving in his own blood, this was a new strain. Stable. Born of horror the likes of which Sinadim couldn’t comprehend, it was a whisper of change hanging thick in the still air. A lineage Giaus had paid dearly to pass down, a pedigree harboring the potential for greatness and horror in equal measure.
