Watched as the points of entry—or escape—were whittled down to two. Both under constant, careful observation by a litany of males with senses unrivaled by even the very best Anhur hunter the Silver City hadeverboasted.
Escape from males who could see her every wayward step outlined in shimmering lines of painted gold? It couldn’t be done.
Affecting an air of blissful contentment, that of a well-bred Omega whose every sordid need had been met, Renegade let them see a female who slept in the same den night after night. She became a queen who greeted her males when they returned from a hunt and let them feed her choice cuts from beasts she didn’t have to kill herself. Males who never let her stomach growl. To whom spears were tools, not a means of desperate survival. Free to come and go at will, as long as they obeyed the laws of their new king.
By the time the triplet moons had waned for the third time, Renegade’s hard edges had softened once more. Her rangy muscle not needed for the life of a pampered queen reigning in the heart of a fledgling civilization, serene behind those walls where her primary duty was to catch Anhur seed and let it grow.
Kept safe from what lurked in the untamed wilds, no matter how seductive the call.
All of it an illusion.
Exactly what they wanted to see, it was a mask she wore with practiced ease. One disguising a crackling inferno that might only be tempered by vengeance for what they’d done. To her. Her people. To this fledgling society in the beyond for which they’d sat her on a pedestal namedHope, without bothering to mention it was rotten all the way through.
Her ears flicked back, but only for an instant before she caught herself. Before she concealed the irate twitch beneath a show of distracted grooming. Mussing the silky tresses Giaus had perfected only minutes before.
Gaze wandering to the wall and beyond, she pulled a black fur cloak tighter about her shoulders and sat at the threshold of her den. Feet dangling in the swirling pools of her private baths, she watched the sun give way to her beloved moons. And there, at the corner of her lips, a tiny secret smile. Her eyes liquid and glassy as she squinted through the dying light so she might catch just a glimpse of the woods beyond the wall.
In her fingers, a snarl of forest dander Sin had brought from their last hunt. Bits of detritus and pretty things for her nest. A burrow she’d learned to tend from an Anhur prince who knew more of Hathorian culture than she’d ever dreamed could possibly exist. Who watched her most carefully of all, one green eye tracking her every twitch, he waited for her act to fail, for the tempest to crack through. Waited for his turn to mount her in the nest he’d helped her build, so he might piss off the king and find his every taboo, lewd desire satiated.
Giaus had taught her to use her new senses. Their one-sided bond thrumming with joy as he showed her what it was to see through his eyes. With his Sight. Delighting in every new scent she experienced as if for the first time. Each new taste that touched the dimples now lining the roof of her mouth. Murmuring devotions against the velvet cone of her ear as he fucked her placid. His stamina a thing of legend, rivaled only by Sin’s tolerance for denial and punishment.
But not once in all that time did the king think to so much as ask her if his sight was theonlything she saw.
Anhur arrogance her advantage.
She was changed.
Feral.
A creature born of artful lies biding her time until her moment materialized.
One who hid in plain sight. Coiled and ready, a predator they thought leashed and tamed.
It had taken them weeks to let her wander the compound. Months to do so unattended, despite the height of the wall and the guards at the exits.
She glanced up, to the top of the wall separating the Queen’s Landing from the wilds of the great beyond. Knowing she couldn’t scale it without being caught. That to risk her thin veneer of civility for an imperfect moment was to botch everything she’d worked so hard to attain.
She’d needed their trust so she could have their complacency. So they might see her daily perimeter walks as nothing suspicious, and desensitize the hypersensitive.
What was disguised beneath the illusion of a well-bred queen, merely waited to lash out before it was too late. Before her fire smothered beneath the devotion heaped on her from her mates.
Before all that she was… was lost. Swallowed up and divided between males who knew better than she how she liked her meals. When to drink. When to fuck and fight and breathe and andandand—
Their bond was sick. Too much for them, too little for her. All that remained syphoned off to feed something new.
Renegade was withering as she screamed and begged and wept for them to see her. To give something back, feed her spirit before it was nothing but embers.
And she’d done it to herself. All of it, by her own orders.
Before long, this compound, and all that went with it, would make her… happy.
She couldn’t help the sneer any more than she could help the way her eyes tracked the moons that frolicked across that expanse of welcoming black.
Anhur thrived in the blinding heat, happiest in the cruel glare of the midday sun, while she watched through slitted eyes from the shadows. Squinting against the day. Unbearably drowsy until the night was upon them.
And then…
She smiled, for she and the night were old friends. Lovers who shared explosive secrets no one else could see.
