Yet Rakk is dying from wounds that should have killed me instead.
17
RAKK
The pain hits me like a collapsing mountain.
One moment I'm racing—leading the pack with my equu stretching into a powerful gallop beneath me—and the next, something inside my chest explodes with force that steals every breath from my lungs.
I fall. Don't remember dismounting. Don't remember the ground rushing up to meet me. Just the sudden, horrifying impact of stone against my back and then the wet, tearing sensation of ribs caving inward.
Internal organs rupturing. Bone fragments piercing lung tissue. The metallic taste of blood flooding my throat.
Except I wasn't trampled. Nothing touched me.
Through the haze of agony, I watch the stampede thunder past farther down the route. Watch riders continue racing, oblivious to anything wrong. My equu prances nearby, uninjured and confused by my sudden absence from the saddle.
But the pain—gods, the pain?—
It's exactly what crushing weight beneath an equu would feel like. Exactly the damage Serah's body would sustain if she were trampled in a racing accident.
The soul-binding flares white-hot beneath my skin. Ancient symbols burn across my chest and arms as magic channels catastrophic injury away from Serah's fragile human body and directly into mine instead.
She fell.The knowledge slams through me with more force than the physical pain.Someone drove her off the cliff edge. She's being crushed right now beneath hooves and weight and?—
Terror detonates through my control like wildfire consuming dried timber.
I’ve been holding myself back. Swallowing every instinct to claim her properly, protect her completely, make the entire clan understand that touching Serah means death.
Pretending I'm civilized when every fiber of my being has been screaming to burn the world down for her.
The restraints I've kept wrapped so carefully around my magic don't just crack.
They shatter.
Power erupts from my body in a violent shockwave that flattens warriors standing nearby. The canyon trembles. Stones crack beneath me as raw magical force pours outward in waves that taste like fury and ancient bloodshed and something far older than the Bone Warrior Clan's recorded history.
Zurkar's voice cuts through the chaos—sharp and commanding but edged with barely concealed panic. "Everyone back! Get away from him!"
Warriors scramble to obey. The ones who don't move fast enough get thrown backward by another pulse of power that radiates from my broken body.
I can't stop it. Can barely control it. The magic has been building for weeks—growing stronger every time I touched Serah, every time the soul-binding channeled pain into my flesh, every time I forced myself to be gentle when my entire beingwanted to claim and conquer and make herminein ways that would terrify her.
Now it pours out unchecked. Unstoppable.
Through the red haze of agony and power, I feel every person in the immediate vicinity. Their emotions slam into me—fear, shock, curiosity, and beneath it all, the familiar undercurrent of those who harbor darker intentions.
Drogath. Korr. Three others whose names I don't know but whose guilt burns like acid against my magical awareness.
They did this. They coordinated the attack. Drove Serah toward the cliff edge with deliberate precision while making it look like a racing accident.
They tried to kill my mate.
The realization ignites something primal and utterly merciless inside my chest.
I reach for them with magic I've kept hidden my entire life. Magic that Zurkar warned would consume me if I ever unleashed it without control. Magic that my father deemed too dangerous to acknowledge publicly because strength comes from warrior prowess, not mystical abilities that mark you as different.
Rakk the Warrior. Rakk the Heir. Rakk who leads through physical dominance and strategic brilliance.
