Sin’s head tipped to one side. “I don’t—”
But Giausdid. He knew exactly what the war chief had come to say. Understood what the Unworthy lech had managed to turn away from in his bid to die for the Karahmet bloodline, for only the king knew what commanded the Legion.
But he could only force two words through frozen vocal chords.
And they trembled with the effort.
“He’s coming.”
20
Ashade moved through the gloom. Followed by one, then five more. Stalked by a veil of silence, for in their wake lurked the scavengers fattened by scraps. Those who knew that when the shadows took to the night, a bounty of excess was sure to follow.
At the flick of one pointed ear, the shadows spilled forth. Circling around a dense clearing dappled with the gentle white light of the triplet moons.
Highlighting the herd, the moonlight glanced off the curved edge of great, sweeping horns that shielded muscular necks. Built-in protection for deep, cavernous torsos. The grazers were tucked in tight as they slept. Razor edge of their horns making a deadly circle watched over by the young bucks.
It was a perfect defense, their instincts for survival without flaw, they’d evolved to be invulnerable to any but the very best of the apex predators ruling these woods.
A soft click of the tongue no louder than the wind breaking a twig.
The shadows tightened their noose, waiting for the signal to strike.
Bearing only backward facing teeth lining angular muzzles, claws, and dexterous tails, they were commanded by the juggernaut queen perched on an armored shoulder. A titan who wielded the deadliest weapon the wilds had ever known…
… and the Shade who’d tamed her vicious heart.
Opportunity came on a cloud.
Hanging ripe in the night sky, dark with impending thunder, it blotted out the dappled silver light.
Sultana’s crimson frill bloomed open. Silent, the color muted in the half light, her claws dug into the gaps in the scales her mother had once worn. Alien pupils a vertical slash of spite and unflinching hunger, she made her choice. Selected her target, and opened her jaws.
Blond ears flicked back and tucked tight to his skull, her master tilted his chin in the opposite direction. Allowing her to vent the warbling tri-toned cry that incapacitated the yearling grazer marked for death.
It went to its knees with a grunt, a seizure shuddering through limbs now rigid and flailing. Convulsions rippling through tender flesh not yet toughened by seasons of hardship.
From every direction, shadows bled into the clearing. Snarling and snapping, they sent chaos through the herd.
Sending up an alarm too late, the herd bolted into the wood. Lowing and groaning as they moved to protect their young and weak.
Abandoning the young buck who couldn’t muster the will to fight—not with his brain jiggling inside its case and blood pouring from flared nostrils. As one, the reptiles fell on their meal.
And by the time Sultana took her next breath, the buck was dead.
And what a horrible death it had been. Bloody. Painful. At the mercy of dragons who didn’t care if their meal was wriggling or rotting.
They merely gulped and swallowed and gulped again.
“I have to teach you some manners,” their master murmured through the point of his canines. Pushing a tattooed hand through his hair as he strolled into the clearing and sent Sultana onto her kill. “Ladies first,” he cooed, watching the queen fall into the spilled belly of ropey intestines, for the lava-kin preferred the ease of nutrient-dense organ meats to flesh.
At least at first.
But the wryms were growing.
Faster than he’d thought possible, when he thought of how helpless and tiny they’d been mere months prior. When he’d meant to make a meal of Sultana and her siblings… before even thethoughtof her broken and mutilated caused him grief.
Already, they weighed more than he did, despite being half his size.
