4
Teeth.
The prickle of needle-sharp razors that sliced through Sickle’s skin as a desperate wrym took a bite. Gnawing and chewing, the fledgling squealed. Frantic, clearly frustrated. A storm of desperate need that spoke of starvation… of neglect, for their mother was dead. Her corpse a hollow shell that had given all there was to give.
Sickle hissed and spun, trying to throw his unwelcome leech before she found bone.
She only worked harder.
Trying to tear a mouthful free, evading his grasp, Sultana issued the frustrated snarl of a creature not quite strong enough to claim that chunk of flesh, despite the ominous squelch of ripping skin. The trickle of warmth as it ran down Sickle’s back.
Grinding his teeth, Sickle’s spine twisted as he reached over his shoulder, caught the tiny wriggling body, and hurled the female at the cave wall with a shout of victory.
It was a pale thing that didn’t last.
Long and sinuous, she twisted before she fell, landing on her forefeet. Already coiled and ready for another strike when her back legs touched down. Claws skittered across stone, and with a dainty coo, her frill snapped open in a crimson flare. The female issuing a low warble in that alien voice that promised the sort of pain only the Nine might match.
As if commanded, another set of teeth latched at his nape. Another wail of panicked starvation punctuated by the thrashing of a juvenile trying to tear at living flesh.
And again at his hip.
His forearm.
Thigh.
The males jumped to do her bidding, all five attacking with teeth and claws and no small amount of vicious intention.
Arms thrown over his face, Sickle staggered to his feet. Eyes searching the gloom for something—anything—except for dust and stone and piles of stinking lizard shit.
At the far end of the tunnel, the light of an exit caught his attention, glimmering with the promise of tomorrow. And yet… the Omega male hesitated.
Balkazar would call it cowardice to flee from a worthy opponent.
Even now, Sickle could hear the vicious mockery he’d take for choosing survival over honor.
Even in death.
His ears flicked back, jaws clicking shut to reveal the savage point of interlocking canines.
The war chief wasn’t there, and only the living were afforded the luxury of shame.
Favoring his right ankle, he limped as he stumbled, swatting at the neonates hard enough to send them spinning into the dark with nothing but a taste of their meal.
All it took was another thrumming bark from their tiny queen, and they surged forward once more. Relentless. Obeying her every command, they attacked him where he was blind. Targeting where he couldn’t reach, his calves and hamstrings.
“Get off!” Sickle bellowed, whirling to face the swarming lava-kin even as he continued to retreat. Flashing the points of his teeth in a warning that went unheeded. Skin flushed and wet with sweat and gore, he spun and twisted, battling the lava-kin with ever increasing panic. To think that after everything—after exile, the virus, threats of rape, and the death of everything he’d ever known—he’d fall to a horde of baby monsters still wet with yolk and hardly out of their shells.
It was absurd.
Enough that he laughed when the panic boiled over and left his sanity a tattered wreckage. “Come on, then!” he hollered, shouting to be heard over the lingering echo of Sultana’s brutal song. His ears caked with drying blood. “Work for your meal!”
Lips peeled back, Sickle planted his feet. Lower back flexing where his tail had once been, his ears pressed flat to his skull in a slick, blond arc. Ready for the coming violence.
He thought of Sinadim, then. Radiating defiance, his fingers grew damp with longing—for a blade, a club, for anything he might use as a weapon to defend himself against a wave of one of the deadliest predators lurking in the great beyond.
There was nothing but his wit. The reckless unpredictability of a creature cornered by the promise of a brutal death.
If he fell here, now, Sickle knew he’d be eaten alive. Knew no one was coming to the rescue. There was no pack of misfit brothers. No fallen prince or hated war chief.
