All of it an invasion she hadn’t meant to invite, but couldn’t refuse.
Not now, with two tiny poisoned darts lodged behind her ribs. Both making demands of her body. Of her mind and spirit. Feasting at will—giving nothing back.
Renegade’s ears flicked back, pressed flat to her skull, even as she drank him in. As she pulled first one, then a second foot beneath her. Refusing the urge to submit, she sent a low hiss spattering between blunted teeth.
Giaus grinned, and it was horrible. Deadly beauty, dipped in the blood of vanquished enemies.
He lunged without warning.
Tossing her bodily over his shoulder, he crouched at the bottom of the pit and exploded. Launching them up and out.
Up. Into the dimly lit den where she’d first claimed a pack.
Out into the sunlight overlooking the barren slope of red rock where she’d trapped them all in a sticky net.
She recoiled with a reedy croak, eyes scorched by the sunlight. Blinded by the glare in a way that washed everything out and left her blinking back wretched tears. Pain lanced straight through her eye sockets and popped out the back of her skull, leaving her with a splintering migraine and haloed auras shimmering around everything the light touched.
What little she could see through lashes all but glued together by sparkling tears, revealed a horror. A place left utterly transformed by the havoc of battle.
Bodies scattered in every direction. Corpses of the damned broken and split asunder, their pieces littered every square foot of red stone made darker where a horde had wandered through their midst, and gone no further.
Gaping at the damage, Renegade retched at the scent of putrid decay, grateful that she was almost blind in the sun. Horrified by the notion of touching one of the infected as Giaus trudged right through the slop.
Oblivious to all of it, he carried her over the hump of a broad shoulder. Her ribs slipping where his skin was wet with gore, pulling where it stuck to grime that had already begun to dry. Bare thighs trapped in an unbreakable band where his fingers were tight enough to dimple, she kicked and flailed and accomplished nothing—succeeding only in exposing the scent of her nudity to air still ripe with the chaos of war.
And then she knew. What had happened here. Who had wrought such devastation with a smile on his face and a song in his heart.
She knew, because it was the same alien tune rattling her bones from within. The same gruesome melody that had woken her from a killing fever.
Giaus.
Her mate.
“Put me down!” she snarled, clawing at his back with flimsy nails not meant for defense.
To her shock, the king obeyed. Stooping so he might set her dainty feet against slick stone, offering support until she had her balance once more. An unmovable buttress as she tried to find stable footing in ankle-deep gore, almost completely without depth perception.
Renegade whirled, blunted teeth snapping shut inches from his filthy skin, and the barbs in her heart surged with a sickening pulse of renewed interest.
But still, he did not act. Merely tracked her with the easy slide of that golden, feral glare.
Waiting.
For her to submit. To run, just so he might chase.
Blunted teeth exposed in a dainty snarl, her lower back flexed in an irate twitch of useless muscles a split second before she fell to her haunches. Clinging to the shadows thrown by the looming forest, she ducked. Blinked half a dozen times, pressing the knuckles of her right hand into a puddle of tacky red that held an unsettling depth, she mirrored the male who wore her mark and ignored the intrinsic fear that warned of touching infected blood.
Laughter rang out, merriment in a place of dread. A song that pulled one of her ribs out of place as she was made to twist and see the male whose voice held such dry amusement. “She rejects you, oh mighty king of the beyond.”
Sinadim.
The prince—Hadim’s exiled son—covered in a thick layer of grime and sweat. Watching her as he moved to stand a half pace behind Giaus, a gleam of feral gold laced through the brilliant green of his good eye.
And just there, high on his shoulder… her mark.
Her pulse skipped at the sight, a ricochet felt in the cord binding them as the fog evaporated from her memory. A bond that had all but split her asunder. One half for Giaus, the other for Sinadim.
Precious little left for her.
