He dragged the rage down deep and buried it under sheer will, but it still simmered. Inhaling lungfuls of cold, dank air thick with mildew, he pushed forward.
This place wasn’t meant for six-foot-eight shifters. A sagging beam forced him to stoop, and for a heartbeat, he was eight again, splashing through the same stream of water while his brothers’ laughter echoed off stone?—
“There! The pirate hides in the king’s aqueducts!” Drak’s voice rang out.
“He thinks he can slip away in the tunnels. After him!” Aerrax scrambled along the ledge,hissilver hair flashing. “That pirate’s hair is like a bird’s nest!”
“I’m not a pirate—I’m looking for frogs!” Race shouted, running for his life. “My hair’s not a nest. You’re the nest-heads?—”
“Lies!” Drak lunged, his wooden sword aimed. Race blocked and slipped, landing in the dank water, soaking his breeches.
“You stole the crown jewels from our ship!” Drak accused as Aerrax seized his wrist, his crimson eyes gleaming. “Caught you, sea-rat. Into the brig with you?—”
Race fought to shut out the memories, but sorrow twisted his gut. His brothers were gone—how could they betray him?
A warm hand stroked his back, pulling him back.
I am here,Ash said softly, her steady warmth hauling him from the void. He dragged in a deep breath. It was enough to keep his lungs moving, to keep the darkness from swallowing him whole.
Mouth tight, he refocused and quietly moved along the aqueduct?—
A prickling sensation brushed against his psyche. Race slowed, lifting a hand to halt the team.
Voices carried, rough with boredom. “…if it weren’t for the power he feeds us, I’d be gone. Damn cold duty.”
“Better cold than dead. Malcarion’s mad as a wyvern in heat since the forge collapsed. Leave your post, and he’ll skin you.”
“I’d rather face the wyvern.”
Silent as the predator he was, dagger in hand, Race closed the distance in a blur. Steel hissed. The first guard barely gasped before Race slit his throat. Blood sprayed. He shoved the body aside and met the second head-on—rammed his dagger between the ribs, twisted, and dropped the male to the stone without a sound.
He wiped his blade on the dead man’s cloak and looked back. His team waited behind Ash, her eyes wide, horror paling her face.
She should have learned by now, he would always bloody his hands—never hers.
Time was slipping away. Malcarion’s hounds were already sniffing.
Fuck crawling with stealth through this duct.He was more than a damn shifter.
“Pairs,” he snapped. “Skaldr, Rhaedra—first. Koal, you next. Ash, Attor—wait here for me.”
Without another word, he grasped Skaldr and Rhaedra by the arms and dematerialized.
They reformed in a dim, narrow alcove of the palace’s lower halls, cold stone against their backs, the air thick with smoke and the faint tang of soot—a place he and his brothers often ended up in after playing pirates or knights of the realm.
All that innocence, buried under betrayal and blood.
He shoved the memories down. “Wait here.”
Race flashed back to the aqueduct. Transferred Koal, then returned for Ash and Attor, and dematerialized them all once more. But the weight of the palace loomed above, vast and silent. Every sense screamed of danger.
Good. There was no turning back.
With her palm pressed to her stomach, Ash tried desperately to suppress the bile lodged in her throat, her body protesting the molecular travel while her mind reeled.
She’d seen Race kill in his dragon form, and it had been terrifying and surreal, a battle of gods and monsters. But back in the tunnel? In his human form? That was hands-on, brutal, intimate. His crimson eyes had burned in the dark, feral and merciless. For the first time, she understood how razor-thin the line was between the man she loved and the predator beneath his skin.
She loved every jagged, dangerous part of him, but centuries of torment had left him unpredictable. Vengeance thrummed through their bond like a living, breathing thing, and she feared it might devour him before the night was over.
