Chapter 8 #2
“Put your arms around me, my queen,” the lieutenant said, slowly drawing his blade, ensuring the scrape of metal was never louder than the rushing river.
The middle creature and largest of the three, clicked at them.
A guttural growl crept up its throat and echoed through the morning air with a hot, cloud of steam.
She swallowed the bile at the back of her throat and locked her arms around Araes’s waist. With a flash of silver steel, he raised his blade.
The creatures roared, their jaws widening further.
“What are those things?” she asked, her words a mere whisper along the riverbed.
“The worst kind of nightmare,” Araes replied, shifting his stance into a fighting position.
They made their retreat to the shoreline at a silent, excruciating pace.
Tethys’s arms never relaxed from their clenched position around the lieutenant’s hips.
With each step, she felt the sway of powerful bone beneath a line of hardened muscle.
Judging from the feel of his body beneath the now-soaked tunic, he was a seasoned warrior—a perfect specimen of the human male form. If her heart wasn’t currently in her throat, she might allow herself a moment to revel in the curves and angles of his physique.
Her pulse quickened with each step of distance they put between their bodies and the creatures. How the lieutenant remained so collected in this moment of terror, she wasn’t sure, but she focused on his steady heartbeat, willing her own to match his tempo.
Only a few strides remained to the opposite shoreline.
Tethys took a step in time with Araes’s perfectly, but her heart stopped when the crack of a branch skidded like a pebble over the river’s surface.
Entirely focused on keeping their eyes fixed on the three creatures, neither of them noticed the driftwood behind them.
“Fuck…” Araes hissed.
A heartbeat later, the creatures, with clicking jaws, lunged toward the river. Their limbs collected fallen leaves and loose dirt as they dragged alongside their bodies. The largest one growled again. Tethys squeezed her eyes shut, feeling Araes’s chest rise and fall with lethal calm.
“Goddess,” he whispered, pulling her from the protection of his embrace. “Run.”
Her eyes shot open. Disturbed water splashed along the surface. The creatures leapt from the riverbed and disappeared into the cool blue rapids. “Where did they go?” she cried, her head throbbing with a raging pulse of panic.
“Run!” Araes barked again. The world pinholed around her as her legs fought against the sandy riverbed. They weren’t fast enough.
Three rapid, foaming lines serpentined over the surface.
The creatures were closing in. Frantic fight or flight took control.
She clawed against viscous water, focusing on the shoreline growing closer with each step.
Blind to anything but solid ground and the trailhead beyond, she battled the distance with panting breaths.
Strong, calloused hands gripped her thighs. Then hard bone shot into her chest, forcing out every breath of air from her lungs. Araes plucked her from the ground and threw her over his shoulder as if she weighed less than a pebble.
“They’ve located us. We have to go. Now.”
Tethys watched the three creatures resurface, the taut skin along their scalps disappearing then reappearing with each foot of distance they gained.
Araes leapt for the shoreline and powered across the small grove outlining the eastern riverbank. He kept his eyes locked with lethal focus on the three creatures. With mere seconds of space gained, he placed Tethys on the ground and nodded to the trail.
“Go, alert the others,” he commanded. Gone was the arrogant glimmer in his golden-flecked eyes. Only electric intensity sizzled in those irises—sharp, lethal intensity and something just shy of death.
“Go!” he repeated before she could protest. Her feet raced down the trailhead, flying over fallen branches and a thick blanket of rotting leaves. Guttural screams echoed through the rustling canopy overhead.
Had her magic ever manifested, she could’ve incinerated those three creatures’ very existence. They’d be mere smudges on the ground with the snap of her fingers.
Weak, pathetic body.
She never felt more like a waste of immortal space than she did right now.
They probably picked the lieutenant apart as she ran, his shredded skin catching in their razor sharp teeth.
The clearing came into view and she pushed her limits further, feeling her thighs quiver beneath her as she flew to the royal chariot.
“Proc, there’s something along the river. Quick, please. Lieutenant Araes is holding them off, but he needs your help,” she said, violently shaking her still slumbering husband. He gasped, startled by such an abrupt awakening.
“What?” he breathed, shaking sleep from his free falling brown locks.
“There’s no time. Go, now, please,” she said.
There wasn’t time to explain why not only was she drenched, droplets of water puddling on the floor from her matted wet curls, but also why she was entirely nude save for the grey cloak that clung to her skin.
He scrutinized her current state before rising from bed.
“Proc, I’ll explain later, just go. He could be dying out there,” she begged. Procyon huffed a response and with a snap of his fingers, dissipated like smoke.