This was a warrior queen from ancient times.
Dressed from nape to ankles in fitted armor. Dark scales that blended with the dappled light of the high foliage, she stepped into their presence as if from the pages of long forgotten myth. Hair wild and thick, shining with health where it fluttered about her shoulders. Untamed. The enticing swell of her belly denied them, yet she appeared undamaged. Absolutely breathtaking in all her Hathorian glory.
“Renegade,” Sin breathed, shocked stupid. His lips parting around a soundless accusation that only brought a devious smirk to her infuriating, exotic features.
She strolled between two sets of gleaming eyes, careless of the risk. “Sin. Giaus. Enjoying your outing? Nice day for a hunt, isn’t it?”
The first drops of rain spattered through the leaves.
Giaus’ mane rose up on a snarl, one dredged up from the bottom of his lungs. A savage thing meant to vent his temper and command his queen to obey.
Renegade’s smirk only grew. Bold as she approached—and at her back, two soft clicks, another of those warbling dual-toned cries, and lava-kin bled into the clearing. Five of them from all sides. Even coiled, they stood tall enough to reach Renegade’s throat.
But they didn’t so much as glance as the soft thing that would make easy prey.
And still, Sin couldn’t force a single word through his lips. Not a curse or a prayer. Nothing that wasn’t a thin hiss of shocked breath.
He could only watch.
Horrified and aroused in equal measure.
Shivering and coiled, the wryms matched her step for step. Slitted glares fixed to Giaus where he crouched in the grass.
“I told you once,” she said, painting Giaus with a slow once over, “that I would find a way to break this infernal bond.”
The king let go a careful breath, and said, “You did.”
For a moment, as she continued her torturous approach, she let the threat shimmer in the air. Flanked by dragons who did not blink, whose every careful step was silent in the way of something deadly looking for a meal.
“You told me,” she said, and her eyes flashed green in the way of a night thing, “that I should run as fast and as far as I could, because the next hunt would not be so gentle.”
Giaus’ tail flicked, just the once, and he sent a terse, “I did,” through his teeth.
She stopped just out of reach. Just far enough away that Giaus would have to close the distance and risk engaging the wryms before the matriarch revealed herself. Riskher.
Sin glanced at his queen. Seeing what she really was, beneath it all.
Cunning.
Brilliant.
Gorgeous.
And then, through a beaming smile that split her face and challenged the sun and the triplet moons, she said, “Bet you weren’t expecting dragons, huh?”
Sin couldn’t help the bark of laughter that escaped him, then. Incredulous, teetering on the edge of madness, he laughed.
“I trust I’ve made my point?” she drawled, head tilting to the side. Ears tipped forward, her words held no heat despite the show of baffling force. “Keeping secrets is deadly business. And from this moment forward, there shall be consequences. Am I understood?”
Head thrown back, barking laughter rumbled up from deep inside Giaus’ chest. “My vicious, warrior queen,” he said, amber eyes positively gleaming as he looked and drank his fill. Mane shivering, one fist planted between spread knees, he balanced on his haunches. “She commands dragons!”
“Actually,” she cooed, glowing from the inside out, “I don’t. Buthedoes.”
A ghost emerged from the gloom. Dressed in a matching set of armor, tattooed brow knit with a scowl…
… hidden in the shadow of a crimson frilled matriarch.
“May I introduce the last member of the feral court,” Renegade said, the edges of a drugging purr spattering over her lips. “A beginning inside and ending. Claimed, mated.Mine.”
