He didn’t raise his sword.
He laughed instead and said something over his shoulder to the male beside him—something I didn’t catch anddidn’t need to. I’d seen that laugh before. I knew exactly what it meant.
Too many males had dismissed my threat over the years.
I let him come. Let him close the distance between us, let him reach for me like I was something to be grabbed rather than fought. And then I stepped into him—inside his reach, where his size stopped mattering—and drove my dagger up under his arm, into the gap where his armor didn’t meet.
I didn’t watch him fall. I was already moving.
This one had seen what happened to his companion. He came at me properly, sword up, and I felt the difference immediately—the weight of his intention, the steadiness of his guard.
He wasn’t going to laugh at me.
Good.
What he was going to do was overpower me if I let him. I could feel it in the first parry, the shock of it rattling up both my arms. Trading blows with him would be a short conversation with a predictable ending. So, I stopped trying to block him and started trying tousehim instead.
A haze settled around my vision, the world narrowing to just the pair of us, the only sounds the harsh pants of our breaths. I had heard warriors speak of this, this battle haze, when their blood pumped fiercely, but had never experienced it before.
I would make use of it.
When my enemy drove down hard—putting his whole body behind his strike the way large males always did, asthough force alone was a strategy—I stepped left and let the blade scrape past my shoulder. I felt it catch the fabric of my sleeve, and I didn’t care—the gown would be soaked with blood soon enough, and the move had worked.
My elbow connected with the back of his sword arm as it passed, and his momentum did the rest, carrying him stumbling past me.
I put my blade through the back of his knee before he could recover.
He went down howling.
I left him there, hoping he’d stay down.
The sounds of the battle were strongest near the burning bridge, so I headed in that direction, knowing Vrogul and his men would make a stand there, protecting the vulnerable of the clan. I wasn’t thinking, just knew that I had to reach him.
Had to ensure he still breathed.
So, aye, I was moving too fast. This I knew, even as I rounded the corner of the smithy and ran directly into the chest of a warrior who hadn’t been expecting me any more than I’d been expecting him.
We collided hard enough to knock the breath from me and my sword skittered across the dirt somewhere to my left before I’d even registered falling. For one horrible moment ‘twas just me and my dagger and a male twice my size, and I made a rapid and unflattering assessment of my odds.
But Da had taught me well, and I’d learned much from sparring with the Battleborn warriors these last weeks.
Since fighting honorably wouldn’t work, I went dirty.
I stomped down hard on the male’s instep. When he grabbed for me, I raked the dagger across his forearm—not deep, but enough to make him flinch—and when his grip tightened anyway and he bent down toward me with a snarl, I drove my forehead into his face with every bit of strength I had.
He staggered back.
I scooped my sword from the dirt and carried both blades from that point forward.
Somewhere in the stumbling and the cursing and the blood on my hands, something shifted in my chest. I was not running. I was not hiding. I was not waiting for someone else to protect what mattered.
This was my home.
I could hear Vrogul now—that distinctive bellow, the sound I’d come to know—somewhere ahead and to my left. I was close.
Years ago, my father’s lieutenant had lectured me on not losing focus during the battle. I should have remembered that today, because in my race to reach my Mate, I missed the enemy stepping from the side, his hand out…
I didn’t see him until that hand closed around my braid.
