It was a cancer not of his own doing, this blanket of disgust he held for Hathorians. Something vile that plagued the Silver City, a corruption that had ultimately led to his fall.
And as they stared at each other—a relic and the dawning of something new—she felt nothing for the male who’d earned every tumor. Every weeping, hideous pustule.
But he didn’t strike.
Frozen, that icy blue eye had widened with shock as he stared. Painting her scent along the roof of his mouth.
Again.
And again. And again and over again.
And then he dropped to his knees with a strangled horrendous sob. Trembling. Trying to lift hooked and disfigured claws toward her, to touch with careful knuckles, a sound scratching over distorted vocal chords.
“Mmmpinnnce,” he moaned, and thumped his clubbed fist over three distinct ridges of scar tissue marking his chest. “Mmmmpince.”
It was a truth she’d been trying to ignore. A hidden peek of soft swells revealed beneath her heavy cloak when she stood before him without fear. Nightdress clinging to her skin as if kissed by the gentle breeze.
The whisper of change on the wind, growing in her blood. An ember that would start an inferno and burn away all the relics that couldn’t adapt.
It was a serene image, but a perfect metaphor for everything that defined what she’d become. No longer Hathorian, she was something… new.
It was then, as the old-world knelt and offered tribute, that she found she didn’t need an apology for the horrors of the past.
For with Giaus’ Sight, she caught a faint glimmer of her future. A taste that shimmered in her mind and sang of completion and desperate, aching glorious need. Ambrosia that was ripe for the taking, if only she’d reach out and pluck it from the vine.
The trail of something slight that had once flown through this wood, as she had. To claim independence from the Anhur and find the secrets meant for those who’d inherit the night.
Taking flight, the queen was gone before what was left of Balkazar could open his eye or attempt to speak another cursed word.
The only sign of her passing was a heap of black fur, forgotten in the detritus.
Her cloak.
The beast fell, feasting without bothering to kill…
19
Swiping soot from his brow, Giaus blinked back a scowl that gleamed amber in the dying light of flickering flames. Not trusting even the torches that lit their compound after spending half the night fighting flames.
“By the Nine, that was close,” Sin murmured, shaking out a charred fur they’d used to extinguish the inferno. One he’d taken straight from their nest. “Make a note for future reference, eh? Donotoverfill the oil pot, and only water an oil fire if you want to burn to death in flames that won’t die and spread faster than venereal disease through a war camp. Shit.”
Giaus chuckled. “Duly noted.” And then, “Let Renegade know she can come out now. Fire’s out. Oh,” he added, sneering. Not bothering to smother the flare of his mane. “And douse the fucking torches in the nest.”
Spitting into the embers, Sin nodded, glaring at a blister on his knuckles. “Think she’ll ever admit the light hurts her eyes, or do we just go on pretending not to notice for the rest of time?”
“Let her keep her secrets,” Giaus returned, knowing what it meant to the fierce little thing. To have something that was totally her own, untainted by… them. “They’re harmless enough.”
But he couldn’t help it.
That he’d been made for her.
That he needed to provide before she ever thought to ask.
Hackles rising at the thought of tasting her delectable skin, his cock a steel band of reckless want that refused to relent—even after all these months—he shivered. After losing himself between those honeyed thighs too many times to count, abstaining from drinking her down and resisting the rut, he still couldn’t go an hour without wanting more.
He was desperate to sate her primal needs, to ease her appetite for rebellion with his knot, going to great lengths to ensure her belly never rumbled. That her thirst for what the general could pump down her throat was at her disposal, always.
Unbidden, a growl rumbled up through Giaus’ diaphragm. His tongue flicking back to front, he swiped his sensory pits clear of the stink of charred smoke, and spat into the embers.
