Head tilted back, Renegade inhaled and fell into the Sight she shared with her Anhur. Tasting the wind, so she might see despite the sun still hanging low on the horizon. For without the Sight painting scents around shapes she could see… she was almost blind in the day. Everything washed out by eyes better suited for low light. Meant for the shadows where her kind were born and raised.
All it took was a moment. A single accidental instant of distraction, and her moment grew ripe enough to pluck.
It happened at dusk.
As she was pacing the shadows at the wall, admiring the broad shoulders of gleaming, sweat-damp muscles toiling in the clearing below.
One of the twins dropped a hank of meat into a pot of oil heating on the cooking fire—overfilled, it boiled over in seconds and sent rendered fat directly into the flames.
Fire leapt at the chance to feast, sending her hissing back, forearm thrown over her eyes as she hid from the searing pain assaulting her retinas.
And so it was, by chance, that Renegade found herself staring at the open gate as every available male rushed to douse the flames.
It was nothing to wander just a little… closer.
Not something she really even meant to do. It was instinct to answer that call. To find the thing she was missing. To discover why, with two mates stuffed inside her head and her cunt, she felt unbearably…lonely.
Inspecting what lay on the other side of that wall, Renegade saw the forest teeming with savage life that called to her from the shadows and her lips curled around a secret smile.
The decision was easy.
The opportunity ripe.
And without pausing to over-think, the queen seized her moment. Took advantage of Micha’s lapse in attention and slipped through the open gate. Ignoring the sparkle of pain from a severed tail that had never healed quite right, she fled. Pouring everything she had into her escape, she slipped into the Sight with a sigh. Letting glittering trails of scent pull her wherever they might, until the sun set and her vision adjusted.
For when the dark reigned, she had no need of Giaus’ eyes or his Sight.
She was Omega.
Exactly what her ancestors had suffered to produce.
Born to conquer. Made to endure.
When the triplet moons reigned, her Hathorian eyes showed her divinity.
All around her, the night lit with a thousand,thousandcolors. Unspeakable beauty singing a language she was desperate to learn. Not for the mates she’d taken, whose constant, stifling presence had all but smothered the fires from her very soul. Not for the Nine who’d never bothered to grant her favor.
For her.
Wandering, her pace leisurely when she could no longer hear the shouts for water as her males worked to douse the flames, she stopped to press her face into a night bloom. One that glittered with thrice the brilliance of the stars, flickering and dancing under the moonlight. A velvet shade of purple she just had to touch—that shifted to magenta where her fingerprints disturbed a fine coating of pollen. Reflecting the dim light in a different direction.
Delighted, Renegade shivered and slapped the flower just to send the pollen into the wind. A gentle breeze that shimmered and danced, sparkling in the low light that to her, had the look of myth. Colors so deep and rich, so beautiful in their depth, that she blinked back tears. Enthralled by the swirling fantasy she found in the night.
Her attention was snagged by a mushroom cap, and she spun off course. It was the biggest she’d ever seen, her equal in height. On its dewy cap, a shade of red she’d never known before. Striking. Unique.
Deadly.
It was a warning, she knew. One that promised consequences should she dare a nibble.
Compelled to touch without tasting, she ran greedy fingers over the doughy surface. Marveling at the way the skin gave beneath her fingers.
A grunt from behind was the only whisper that her dalliance with he dark had been interrupted. The only warning of danger, and without thinking, she crouched low. Ears tucked flat, she darted clear of something heavy that whistled before it made the glittering pollen scatter. Cleaving the sparkling wind in half where she’d been standing only an instant before.
Claws sliced through the mushroom and sent a cloud of green spores exploding into the night. Sap that sprayed across the queen’s face—blurring her vision with the tint of toxic green.
Barely a hair separated her from a gruesome death.
And when she blinked and saw what it was that hunted her, her jaws went slack.
