My chest seized.
The dagger. The Veyndral blade I’d given her during training. She was using it to carve a path for us through the dark.
Brilliant. Terrified and being dragged into the woods, and she was still thinking.
A second mark on an oak, ten feet ahead. A third on a pine, deeper, more frantic. The spacing between them grew wider. She was being moved faster.
Suddenly, we heard a scream.
The sound tore through the trees and hit my chest with the force of a physical blow. It wasn’t a cry for help but a scream of rage.
We broke through the tree line into a clearing and the scene arranged itself in front of me.
Hudson had her by the wrist. His other hand clamped around her throat, fingers digging into the skin beneath her jaw. She was pressed against a tree, her feet barely touching the ground, the blue dress Solomon had given her torn at the shoulder.
The dagger was in her hand.
Blood ran down Hudson’s forearm where she’d slashed him, a deep cut from elbow to wrist that dripped onto the leaves below.
She’d fought. She’d used the blade exactly the way I’d taught her, horizontal, controlled, aimed for soft tissue, and she’d nearly opened his arm to the bone.
But he was bigger.
He’d caught her wrist before she could finish it, and now the dagger was pinned between them, useless, her arm twisted at an angle that made my vision go red.
Hudson saw us first. His eyes, wild and blood-streaked, went wide.
“Three of you.” His voice cracked. Sweat ran down his temples and mixed with the blood on his arm. “Really, Mira? You’re whoring yourself out to these guys? Three freaks?”
I didn’t speak.
There was nothing to say to a dead man.
We moved. Percival reached her first, ripping Hudson’s hand from her throat with a force that sent the man stumbling backward. Mira collapsed against his chest, gasping, her fingers still locked around the dagger.
Percival wrapped his arms around her and pulled her away from the tree, his body angled between her and Hudson, shielding her with every inch of himself.
“I’ve got you.” His voice was low, steady, the voice he used when she flinched. “I’ve got you, Mira. Breathe.”
Solomon got to Hudson second.
One hand closed around Hudson’s collar, the other found his chest. Solomon planted his boot on the man’s sternum and pressed down, the crack of ribs breaking echoed through the clearing.
Hudson screamed. The sound choked off into a gurgle as blood filled his throat.
Solomon bared his canines. Long, curved, designed for tearing. His pale eyes burned gold in the dark, and the snarl that rolled out of his chest vibrated the ground beneath my feet.
Hudson’s eyes went wide with a new kind of terror. The fear of a prey animal realizing it was in the presence of a predator that had never been human.
I walked toward him.
My claws extended, sliding from my fingertips with the familiar burn of bone reshaping beneath skin. Centuries of restraint, discipline, and leashing the violence beneath the crown, and right now I felt none of it.
The only thought in my mind was the bruises already forming on Mira’s throat and the sound she’d made when she screamed.
Hudson looked up at me through blood-glazed eyes. My claws caught the moonlight.
Then a sound split the air.
