A Hathorian queen capable of things only the Nine might possibly know.
Filling his lungs with the dregs of her scent, Giaus shucked the mantle of leadership and became the beast.
An explosion ripped free of his chest. Echoed by his counterpart scarcely a heartbeat later, it was a challenge and a summoning in one. A notice to anything with ears or cock or half a functioning brain that she was claimed. That to touch the queen—in any way—was to evoke the primal, territorial rage that was her King and her Eye.
Completely.
Before he and Sin made a gift of their screams. Painted a beautiful mosaic of their devotion to the queen worth kneeling for.
As one, the Anhur bolted through the open gate.
Forgot to order their brethren to hunt, and vanished into the hostile night.
Ignoring the scavengers watching from the tallest branches, their pace was frantic. Their senses primed for any whisper of her passing. Any sound or muffled squeak, for after all… the dead couldn’t be bothered to make such haunting music.
There was nothing but ominous silence. Shadows that would have obscured her path, were it not for the Sight that kept them on track.
“I don’t understand,” Sin said, lips peeled back from his teeth as he panted. Sending every desperate breath over his sensory pits. “Her trail… it… wanders. Lazy. And… confused.” He shook himself hard enough to crack his neck. “You know what happens if she”— he snarled, musk billowing off his skin in heated waves, the rut flooding in to obliterate all else—“if something else gets her.”
Giaus’ heart lurched at the thought. Of her fine, elegant bones broken. Poking through cherished, pale skin.
And then the wind turned and showed them the stench of a nightmare trapped in mouldering flesh.
A mountain moved.
Bending saplings, it lumbered through the woods, coughing up a painful sound. It’s skin twisting in a nauseating fashion with every mismatched step it managed to claim.
Months of filth caked on monstrous deformities, it had been waiting long enough to blend in with their surroundings. To go unnoticed, even to them. Those who could see with uncommon eyes.
“Fuck,” Sin whispered, hands falling lax at his sides as he watched the beast approach. Jaw falling open around a breathless,“Balkazar.”
A peculiar buzzing rattled through Giaus’ skull, making his mane stand on end. His shoulders tight, newly grown claws dimpling his palms as best they could. And the sound that bubbled forth, it was an inferno. Annihilation and endless torment, a sound that made a monster cringe and moan. Piss dribbling between bowed hind legs.
Balkazar who’d dared.
Who’d touched the queen and made her cry.
Who was absolutely drenched in Renegade’s scent.
And there, hanging from his lower jaws… the edge of a silky black fur cloak he’d gifted her from the finest pelt.
“I owe you a debt,” Giaus snarled, and let the tempest consume his every deranged inch. “And I promise you will suffer before you die.”
It was Sin who stepped between them. Who signaled for patience and snarled, “Where is she?”
For a moment, it seemed the words could not penetrate so thick and deformed a skull. That the animal’s brain was little more than a hank of salt and fat, jiggling with the occasional electric frizzle.
And then, with the ominous crack of bone bending under grotesque weight, Balkazar lifted the smaller of his arms to point. Shuffling three staggering steps to the left so they could see behind his bulk.
Her trail bolted into the bush. A golden, erratic line of a female now set on evasion. Fleeing as she ought.
Relief brought an instant of clarity to the king’s mind. And it took everything he had to force, “What are you doing here?” through the edge of clenched teeth.
Incomprehensible sounds burbled over the beast’s hideous lips, but there was only one worth deciphering. One that sent bile splashing up to burn the back of Giaus’ throat. Blood to rush and roar in his ears.
It came again. A hissing rattle in a voice mangled with a phlegmy growl.
“Priiigussss…”
