Lyrena.
Veyka.
My beast howled again, calling out for her through the bond. But she did not answer.
Terrestrial soldiers littered the ground around me. But we had not lost ground, either. The horde of succubus had not reached the mainland. Why—when they’d overwhelmed Baylaur so easily?
Because these were humans, I realized as my teeth sank into another skull. Humans turned by the succubus were easier to kill than fae who’d turned. Their bodies were smaller, weaker. Even with the insatiable nature of the succubus, the human bodies they occupied were easier for the larger, magic-wielding fae to hack apart.
We were only holding our own because we were not facing our own.
The beast shook his mighty head, blood and gore raining down around me.
Veyka?
The plea turned to a snarl.Where are you?
I could feel her, but I couldn’t reach her. Ancestors, what was happening? My beast usually had a stronger connection to Veyka than even my fae form. She washismate,histo protect.
I shook my head again, trying to clear it. The fog of killing had overtaken me. There was no room for feelings or emotions when all that mattered was death—raining it down upon our enemies and evading it myself.
Back to my fae form—maybe that was the answer. The beast was too far gone to reach her, too deep in that place of killing and death. The connection between us had always defied logic—how else could a connection driven by a mating bond exist even before we were truly mated? It was forged by emotion, by my beast’s recognition from the beginning that what existed between us was beyond the constraints of reality. It was why I’d been able to defy the ancient magic of the Pit.
I shifted so I could search the battlefield with different eyes—
No.
My hands were still paws, massive and tipped in shredding black claws.
I sank my teeth into my lower lip, using the pain to anchor myself. But those were not my elongated canines, but fangs.
Shifting was natural. Even the first time the beast had emerged, when I was a child locked in a torture chamber, it had happened without thought. It had taken me three hundred years to accept that my beast was me, that the two were not inseparable.
I shifted.
Except I did not.
I was trapped in my beast form.
I threw back my head and howled again, rage consuming me.
Gaps in my power.That was how Isolde had described it. Was this what she’d meant?
I plunged into a knot of succubus feeding on the remains of a bear shifter. My beast tore them apart, ignoring heads or dismembered limbs.
Trapped—I’d never been trapped. Not since those torturous months in my youth, when I’d been stolen away for the power that thrummed in my veins. I’d fought on hundreds of battlefields, but I’d never been captured. Now I was a prisoner within my own body, within my beast.
Veyka, where are you?My beast snarled. I could fucking feel her. The glowing golden bond between us was practically vibrating with energy. Why couldn’t I hear her?
My mind raced, but my fangs and claws tore and maimed. The black bile, the souls of the taken, filled my jaws, coated my tongue and slipped down into my stomach. It matted my pale fur until I could not tell from looking down that it had ever been white.
Veyka—
Claws sank into my back, digging past the thick fur and raking down a vicious line an inch from my spine. I threw my head back, the bellow of pain mingling with the howl, a cry for help. I twisted violently, trying to dislodge the succubus. But its worn-down nubs of fingers were speared deep into the flesh of my back. It was only half a human, the entire bottom half of its body missing—where I’d ripped it apart moments before. I’d done this to myself. I’d lost control and now Veyka might lose me.
No, that could not happen. Without me to hold her back, she would sacrifice herself even more willingly. She woulddie.
I twisted again, throwing myself back onto the mass of bodies beneath me, trying to break the succubus’s aching grip. Pain seared up my spine, but the monster felt none of it. It clung tome, lowering its jaws to add its teeth to the torture. I snapped my jaws, determined to rip its head off once and—
