It was Renegade.
She turned to face him, then. An eerie smooth action that did not falter or hitch, she found where he lurked without any whisper of effort.
Gold.
Ringing pupils blown so wide, he could see the reflection of the moons shimmering in those pools of inky black.
Infected.
Lost. Beyond all hope of rescue.
There was no denying it now. No chance that she’d miraculously managed to escape unscathed, she belonged to Giaus.
Utterly.
“Sickle,” she purred, and the sound made his breath stutter in his chest.
“Not another step,” he hissed, slipping through the shadows until he stood at Sultana’s side. Half a pace behind her deadly muzzle. Exposed, yes. But there was no safer place in all the wilds, than behind that shimmering crimson frill. “Stay exactly where you are, or I’ll loose Sultana.”
Ears pricked forward, Renegade chuckled and flashed her palms. “Incredible,” she whispered, and did not blink. Not even once. Entirely too still as she licked her lips and stared. “You’ve trained them?”
It wasn’t that simple, not by a long shot. But to explain that the neonates had imprinted on him—in part due to his armor made of their mother’s impenetrable hide, her stink glands, and teeth—and he’d spent these last months learning to utilize the unique talents of the most deadly predator ever known was far more complicated than the simple, “Yes,” that spilled over his lips.
“Incredible,” she said again, head tilting to the side. “I thought you were dead. Weallthought you were dead. Sickle—”
“That’s not my name,” he spat. Lips peeling back to expose his canines.
She paused. Blinked. “We thought you were dead. When I caught your scent”—she shook her head—“I thought I’d find something much different than…Look at you.” She took a half-step before she remembered the warning. “You look… incredible. Is that armor made of dragon scales?”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and choked back the salty burn of tears. “It was all my fault. What happened to you. That I was too fucking weak to save you from”—he pulled a breath through his teeth and scrubbed at inked cheeks—“him. He ruined you, and I’m sorry, but I can give you peace. It won’t hurt, I promise.”
A dainty trill left her lips, and she laughed. The sound sending a thousand little barbs into his wretched heart. “Ah, yes,” she cooed, eyes flashing an eerie green in the silver light. “Fuck the Anhur. Greedy selfish cunts. Killing me would certainly learn them a lesson, but…” She flicked a smile at him, meeting his teary gaze with something fierce and wild. “If you can be tempted to wait… I have so much to tell you…”
Swallowing, the Omega male couldn’t help the easy slide of his eyes. Watching as she stole another step closer. “Renegade,” he hissed, and put a restraining hand on Sultana’s frill.
“We’re nocturnal,” she murmured, and tore her eyes away from him to gaze into the night. “Did you know that?”
“Why are you here, Renegade?”
Instead of answering, her smile grew sad. “I didn’t. Didn’t even know the word ‘nocturnal’ until I heard them use it. They keep us ignorant by design. Isolated in the dark. Servants to suit their every need. Bred from the back,” she hissed, and her ears flicked back. Flattened. “Ignorant,” she said again. “Because knowledge is power, and they want us dependent.”
Moving with careful stolen millimeters, he pulled one of the long blades from its sheath where it was hidden at his lower back.
“I don’t blame him for it, not really,” she drawled, and her head ticked off to the right. Attention caught by the fluttering wings of a moth. “Sin was doing as he was trained. Keeping secrets like treasures is their nature—please don’t do that.”
He froze.
A drop of sweat rolled down his back, beneath the armor he’d fashioned for himself and never took off.
She flashed her palms. “Please. I don’t have a lot of time, and there’s so much you don’t know.” She smiled again, and it was… horrible and beautiful, all at once. Gleaming gold and feral. “About our culture. What we’re capable of, in the dark. The threat we pose to a predatory species who could easily tear us in half, but won’t.Can’t.”
He couldn’t help the intrigue—but he wasn’t foolish enough to relinquish his blades. “I’m listening.”
“We can choose,” she whispered. “Our females. It’s our choice, to breed or not. To reject what they pump inside.”
“That…” He shook his head. “I had no idea,” he returned, mindlessly stroking Sultana’s brow ridge as the others fell back into their meal.
“Neither did I,” she murmured, and her eyes flashed green as she glanced at him through the gloom.
