Chapter 49 Double-Cross #2
“Bren, I know about you and Donavyn,” she said quietly, eyeing the road ahead and checking over her shoulder as well.
“Honestly, it was obvious to any woman who observed you two together. The obliviousness of men is astounding sometimes,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“And, I know you’re tired, but you aren’t lost my mate devastated.
No matter what you’ve said to the men. Don’t worry, I won’t unmask you.
I’m smart enough to understand that this is important.
As far as I’m concerned, all that’s happened this evening is that you arrived, completely destroyed, and needed women around you rather than men.
I will let that implication lay heavy on anyone who asks.
But that also means that if you need help…
non-male help that is aware of the… complexities of your situation, you can call on me.
Until you do, I will continue exactly as I always would. ”
I didn’t respond—anything I said would only confirm her suspicions, and I knew I couldn’t do that. “Can you help me get to Ronen?” I asked faintly. At least she’d given me clean leathers, even if they weren’t dragonhide. I’d get to Donavyn’s apartment later when no one was watching.
“Of course.”
I didn’t speak to anything she’d said—which I realized later was a confirmation in itself.
But by the time I made the connection, it was too late.
I leaned heavily on Terra, but also let myself look as if I’d strengthened from eating and her herbs, so that I could move independently.
I needed to get around tonight without someone hovering over my shoulder.
Terra walked me all the way back to the launch hollow, where Akhane remained stretched on the slope, though she’d curled her legs up now and her head rested on her foreleg.
I hurried to her, keeping my steps unsteady, then lowered myself to lay in the crook of her leg, stroking her, while Terra spoke with Tato and Nila.
“I’m worried about Akhane,” the healer said to both me and Terra. “She’s extremely weak, but she doesn’t want to be touched. It will make it difficult for us to help heal her—”
“Just give her time,” I said hurriedly. I didn’t want them doing anything that could reveal that she wasn’t as bad as she appeared. “Please, just give us both time.”
‘Akhane,’ I sent as Tato looked worriedly at Terra and they quietly discussed us. ‘Are you going to heal? I need to get to my brothers and find a way to connect with the other Shadowfang, but I’m worried about you. Tell me what you need.’
‘I will heal, Bren. But I am spent. I will lay here this evening. Tomorrow… tomorrow I’ll return to the stable. Only…’
The image of Kgosi’s stable, quiet, and with only the cold remnants of his smell after his absence, echoed through my head, along with her pain and grief. I swallowed hard. ‘They’ll be back soon. I’m sure of it. They can’t be more than a day behind us. You said yourself, Kgosi can fly faster.’
‘But if Carnage injured him or… Bren, we must go back soon. I’ll be able to locate him if I can just get closer—’
There was a shout from one of the Furyknights on the other side of the launch hollow, near the stable. I looked up. Terra and Tato both turning to look quickly as well. But all our attention was drawn overhead.
The night sky remained dark, stars twinkling, and a half-moon casting light on scattered clouds so that certain portions of the sky glowed as the clouds were lit from behind.
But when I followed the gaze of the Furyknight who’d shouted and looked up, I saw an arrowhead of dragons, high above—no more than five or six in formation. But as I was about to turn away, I saw two more.
Then five.
Then twenty.
Gaping, I scrambled to my feet. Terra jerked to look at me, a question in her eyes, then another shout went up—several shouts this time—as dozens…
no, hundreds of dragons appeared, peppering the sky—all of them flying high, silhouetted against the clouds, or rimmed in silver by the moon.
None of them circling to land. But there were so many.
Akhane’s head rose quickly and she struggled to her feet.
“Akhane, no. You need to rest—”
‘These are not our herd, Bren.’
“Oh, shit.”
Terra and Tato turned to look at me, but before I could tell them, a dragon near the stables bugled, then another, and suddenly, screams and calls rose throughout the dragon Keep, as one of the many, many dragons in the sky descended, approaching the launch hollow.
It was impossible to tell in the dark. I frowned as my fears crept up in my chest, to form a lump in my throat…
But it was Akhane, screaming and hauling herself to the top of the launch hollow slope that made my heart sink.
‘Bren! Bren—run! It’s Carnage!’
I had been scrambling after her, pulling myself up the slope to the grasses at the top, but I turned and whirled when I got there, just in time to see a massive, blue male landing heavily in the launch hollow. I felt the earth shudder under my feet as his footsteps thudded into the dirt.
And then all the dragons in the sky began to circle.
No… no! It couldn’t be! Kgosi had to have killed him!
“Akhane…” I breathed, my breath hitching. It can’t be. It couldn’t be. ‘Akhane would you know? Would you know if Kgosi… if they’d…’
‘I don’t know, Bren!’ Her voice was too high.
I clapped a hand to my chest, suddenly all that pain and struggle in the flight here raising the worst possible questions.
Was the pain we’d suffered more than pure separation? More than the ache of the distant bond?
Had our mates been killed? Just too far away from us for the bond to learn the truth and die?
I swallowed hard as Carnage came to a staggering halt at the bottom of the launch hollow, and a wave of a dozen or more Furyknights rushed out of the stable and the surrounds.
“Is that Carnage?”
“Talon? Talon, is that you?’
“Ruin! Holy shit!”
“Hyla says it’s Carnage—that means Ruin made it out!”
I found myself frozen on the edge of the launch hollow, sucked back in time to the moment when I’d first stood in these woods, watching Ruin, knowing he was so strong, and so admirable. And I was… not. My ribcage tightened and my heart pounded even faster. I was there again…
“Go!” Ruin roared. His beautiful, full lips peeled back from his teeth and his hands balled to fists at his sides as he towered over me.
My eyes widened as I looked at those fists, shaking.
I knew under those leathers his forearms popped with veins, the lines I’d so admired as a testament to his strength—and my pleasure—now heralds of my death.
Ruin could snap me in two and leave me here and no one would be the wiser. I was too weak to stop him.
“I said, GO!”
I panicked, scrambling off the forest floor and pushing myself into a stumbling run as his voice echoed in the trees behind me.
If he took hold of me here in the dark, with the noise of the crowd and the dragons below…
If he chose, he could crush my body as easily as his contempt crushed my heart.
Those hands, so much larger than mine—big enough to hold my head like a fruit.
Those arms and thighs, strengthened and trained by hours on dragonback, that had lifted and carried me against that broad chest—hot steel under warm, soft skin…
But the steel that had once been my protection now turned against me as a weapon.
I ran faster.
“Get the hell out of here, and don’t come back!” he snarled, his feet pounding on the dirt behind me. “Nobody wants you here. Get the fuck out!”
I tripped on a tree root, arms pinwheeling, sobbing as my body screamed in pain, but I caught my weight on my fingertips and ran on.
“Keep running!” he snarled from behind me, his footsteps finally slowing. “Don’t ever show your face near me again. Do you hear me, Bren?” He fell further and further behind, his voice echoing in the trees around me, haunting me.
“I don’t want you, Bren. I don’t want you. I don’t love you. And I never—”
‘Bren… no!’ Akhane snapped in my head.
I blinked and the painful memory sucked away, leaving me trembling. Akhane turned her long neck to meet eyes with me and blow heavy breath on my face. ‘No, Bren. That is not who you are—and he will not win. Do not hand him a victory that he has not earned.’
I nodded, though my chest ached, then stared past her to the men below who pulled Ruin into hugs, and claps on the shoulder, as they cheered and swore and called for more of our brothers to come.
Ruin!
Ruin is back!
He made it!
But then, these na?ve, oblivious men put that cunt on their shoulders and started carrying him towards the stable.
Something inside me snapped.
“No,” I hissed. “Absolutely not. No. Fucking. Way.”
Terra’s head snapped to me and she hesitated. She’d been about to go down, no doubt to check Ruin for injuries, and see Carnage. Our eyes met and I shook my head, praying she’d know.
She hesitated a second time, looking at Ruin on our brothers’ shoulders, then back to me. And I knew the question in her eyes was the question everyone would have until they knew.
They needed to know. Whether he’d killed Kgosi or fled. Whether Donavyn was here or dead… they had to know what they were looking at.
“Put him down!” I screamed—so hard, my vision shook.
The cheers and delighted curses stopped suddenly, everyone turning to me.
And Ruin—who obviously hadn’t noticed me earlier, looked at me from his position on his brother’s shoulders… and his weary amusement became sly delight.
I shook my head at him too, and bared my teeth. Pointing, so every fucker in this launch hollow would know exactly who I spoke about.
“Do not treat him like a hero—he’s a traitor. He and his dragon, both!” I screamed so they’d all hear me as I started down the slope into the base of the launch hollow bowl.
A couple of the men below snapped heads back, then looked at Ruin.
Others frowned. No one in the launch hollow moved, though something shifted in the corner of my eye, near the stable at the top, my squad brothers, rushing after me.
But I ignored them. Throwing a hand wide towards Ruin and walking so fast I almost ran, I shouted at anyone who would listen.
“Don’t listen to him! Don’t believe a word out of his mouth!
He’s a traitor and a murderer. He killed Donavyn!
” I felt the silence in the launch hollow, the doubt, and I wanted to scream.
I stopped walking and turned a circle to face them all—these fucking men with their fucking assumptions and camaraderie and I was sickened.
“Can’t you see the truth? This prick once brought an entire squad of Furyknights to me, before I was Chosen and—”
“No one’s going to listen to the Commander’s mistress, Bren. Just shut the fuck up,” Ruin snapped, hopping off the men’s shoulders and striding calmly towards me with that cocky saunter at the bottom of the launch hollow.
“I am not the—”
“No, you’re not anymore. You can’t be the mistress of a dead man—though if he were still alive, I’m sure he’d see through you now that he knows your true colors.
” I froze as Ruin turned on his heel and opened his arms. “Do you hear that? Our Commander is dead. Our Battle Commander and General, Donavyn Arsen, dead in a neighboring kingdom, because this little bitch fed him to the wolves in Fyrehold. And when she realized I was onto her, she fled back here to undermine me. Don’t listen to a word she says.
I’ve been chasing a mole since I left here months ago.
Turns out she was here the entire time. Well, your time’s up, Kearney!
” he snarled, whirling back to face me. “No one’s going to fall for that na?ve innocence anymore, you fucking black widow.
I know what you did. I know who you killed.
I know who you’re feeding intelligence to.
And I’m here to take down the entire fucking nest of you! ”