I roared with the last of my strength, enraged with that knowledge. Enraged with my own weakness, a weakness I had never known I possessed.
My father had been right. Females brought about the downfall of males. Females were the most powerful beings in this universe.
And I had walked straight into one’s clutches, turned my back on my horde, and everything I had worked so hard to build.
Gone in a moment. A single moment of madness.
As I glared into the female’s eyes, I watched her take a step back, as if she saw my hatred, my loathing within. Her lips were still reddened from my kiss and the thought made my belly roil, that she had had her claws so deep into me.
With my remaining breath, I vowed, “I will make you regret this,sarkia.”
Witch.
“I swear it on Kakkari.”
Her eyes widened.
“We don’t have time for this! Take him,” came a dark voice. “Now.”
Something heavy crashed against my temple.
Those luminous, fearful green eyes were the last thing I saw.
Chapter Five
Iwas shaking, my heart thundering in my breast, so quick and hard that I feared it would beat right out. Was that possible? Was that a thing that could happen to humans?
I was about to find out.
“Grab him on the other side,” Kyl ordered Jacques.
The men could barely lift the horde king from the ground. The Dead Mountain still lay a distance away and they were running out of time to bring him there. Before the fog wove into their own bodies and began to feed.
Kyl, Jacques, Emmi, Taylor, and Benn all crowded around the horde king. They managed to get him up, Kyl slinging one of his arms around his shoulders, Jacques taking the other side. With the others’ strength, they managed to begin moving him, though his long, heavy legs dragged across the rough terrain behind him. He was bleeding from his temple, where Taylor had brought the blunt end of his spear down to knock him unconscious.
His head was rolled back, his eyes closed, though his expression was still fearsome.
“Shit,” Emmi murmured in disbelief. “We actually have ahorde king. We actually did it.”
“And we better hurry to get him chained up before he wakes,” Kyl growled in annoyance, especially since he was bearing most of the male’s weight. “Or else we’re all dead.”
Those words sobered them all. I stood rooted in place, still clutching the cloak around my body, feeling my heart in my throat. The fog swirled around me and I watched them disappear into it.
I realized I wasn’t alone when Benn’s footsteps crunched towards me. He held a cloth over his nose and mouth but those eyes were rapt on me and I could see that he was pleased.
“Perhaps you have your uses after all, Mina,” he said. I barely concealed my flinch when he ran his fingers over my cheek. “You nearly got him all the way to the Dead Mountain.”
My lips felt swollen from the horde king’s kiss. My skin was so sensitive that I could feel the rough scrape of the old, ratty cloak against it. My senses, despite the fog, felt overstimulated.
And underneath it all, I felt a deep sense of shame. Of dread. Because in that moment, I realized that I had set something into motion that I wasn’t entirely certain was the right path.
“I wonder what it is he saw in you,” Benn continued, his voice a rumble, and I tensed when his fingers loosened my cloak. I felt the tendrils of the fog rush in, over the transparent dress I wore. A rough sound emerged from Benn’s throat as his gaze roved over me. “I think I know, however. The mind of a child and the body of a woman.”
I saw his hand move.
In a rush, before he touched me, I began to ask, “Can I-I-I go ba-ba-ba—”
With a sound of impatience, of disgust, he withdrew his hand from the edges of my cloak and I wrapped my body tight once more. Benn hated when I spoke. It was why he’d never touched me, not in the way he touched some of the other women. And mostly Tess.
