I turn away only when the group reaches the lower rise beyond the camp and the grass hides their legs.
The day gives me no peace.
I spend the next stretch with warriors reviewing trail reports and damage from an older supply break, but my attention keeps splitting. The wind changes twice. Birds rise once from the western grass in a quick dark flurry that means something moved beneath them. Not always danger. Sometimes nothing more than a grazing beast pushing through. Still, my eyes keep cutting to the horizon.
One of my seconds notices eventually.
“You scent wrong,” the male says.
I do not bother denying it.
He looks toward the gathering grounds and grunts once in understanding. “The human wife.”
My gaze cuts hard enough that he lowers his head immediately. Not because the observation is false. Because he spoke of her too loosely.
Before I can answer, a horn sounds from the lower rise. Short. Sharp. Alarm.
Everything in me goes cold and hot at once.
I am moving before thought forms properly. One step, then another, then full stride as I break into a run toward the rise. Warriors behind me react instantly. Weapons. Shouts. Movement snapping into order around the alarm. I barely hear any of it over the blood in my own ears.
The second horn blast comes while I am still crossing the first stretch of ground.
I crest the rise and see the women below.
The gathering patch is a low green basin near a stream cut between stone and thicker grass. Good for roots and edible growth. Good also for concealment if predators circle downwind. The women have pulled inward toward one another, baskets dropped, blades out. Two younger guards are trying to hold the outer edge while a pack of lean dark bodies darts through the grass and stone.
Predators.
Not the larger solitary kind. Worse in some ways. Pack hunters. Fast, low, hungry, bold enough to test a guarded group in daylight if desperation outweighs fear. Their hides are mottled in dust-brown and shadow-gray. Their shoulders ride too high. Their jaws are long and narrow, full of teeth made for tearing. One leaps, misses, twists back through the grass. Another feints at the far flank, where a younger woman nearly slips.
My eyes do not look for the pack first. They look for Keandra.
I find her at the edge of the women’s ring, too far out, basket gone, one of the short gathering blades in both hands. Wrong weapon. Wrong stance. Wrong place. Fear from her is strong enough that I can scent it from the rise.
And she is still standing.
The savage pride that hits me is brief and useless. The fear beneath it is bigger.
One of the predators turns toward her.
I do not remember drawing my weapon. One breath, I am on the rise. The next, I am down it, blade in hand, the world narrowed to speed, distance, blood, and the female the beast has chosen.
I hit the first predator before it reaches her. My claws snap free as I move, and the first strike tears across the beast’s neck and shoulder with blade and claws together, opening it wide enough to throw blood hot across the grass. The animal screams and drops. I am already moving before the body lands. Another comes from my right. I turn, catch the leap half in the air with one clawed hand sinking deep into its hide, and drive the blade up under the jaw and into the skull. Bone jars my arm. I rip the knife free, claws tearing loose a second later, and roar for the women to hold their line.
The warriors reach the basin behind me.
Good. Now I can kill.
The pack reacts the second it realizes more fighters have arrived. These are not mindless beasts. They spread out fast, circling and searching for the weakest place in the line. One lunges at a guard. Another snaps toward the older woman beside Oshara. A third darts left, then cuts hard toward the smallest target in sight.
Keandra.
I do not think. I move.
The world becomes pure body and violence. Grass cutting at my legs. Blood scent filling the air. My own breath. The beast’s motion. The exact line of its shoulders before it springs.
I reach it one heartbeat before impact and catch it with enough force that both of us crash into the ground. The beast twists under me, teeth flashing for my arm. I slam the knife through its throat, take the ripping snap of its body beneath me, and rise covered in blood and dust.
