Chapter 8
KAI
The moon lingered above the trees, low and sharp, a hooked blade refusing to dull even as morning approached. Sharp enough, Kai lamented, to carve him open if the power under his skin didn’t do it first.
Dawn crept across the sky in strokes of oranges, reds, purples, and blues, the air kissed with a dewy mist that filled his lungs as he sprinted through the forest. He’d awoken just before daybreak, that twistedly intoxicating essence digging at his insides—a shout caught in his throat, his heart hammering, and the phantom warmth of blood on his hands.
But unlike most nights, it wasn’t the gore of Brax coating him like a second skin, but that of the bounty hunter from the rogue lands. Kai may not have killed him by his own hand, but if the hunter hadn’t ingested the poison…
The power pulsed through his veins in time with his heartbeat—too strong, too awake, as if the nightmare had torn something loose. It was a living thing pacing along his bones as it had that night.
If the hunter hadn’t ended his life, Kai would have done it for him.
As horrible as it was, he was thankful for his and Isla’s weakened bond, so she wouldn’t be roused by the chaos he felt inside. She was still sleeping when he’d slipped from their bed. Still sleeping when the palace had stirred with the morning minutiae and he’d taken off running.
The forest had accepted him without ceremony, swallowing him as sunlight struggled through the branches.
Pines rose on either side, their needles dark and wet, their trunks gleaming where early light struck them.
The ground was slick beneath his bare feet, earth chilled, snapping twigs and needles sharp beneath each step.
He ran harder.
He needed this burn. The strain. Needed, then, to release the leash on his sense, just enough, to find some type of relief.
Everything he’d already observed erupted in stunning new clarity.
The scent of the tacky sap over the bark, the morning calls of the birds rousing the branches, the pinpricking heat of the sun.
His vision wavered at the edges, shadows stretching where they shouldn’t.
For a heartbeat, the fog along his ankles seemed to breathe.
The world pushed in.
This void within him embraced it.
Kai felt like nothing but a pawn in its game.
Stop.
He sucked in a sharp breath as something inside him went taut, the sensation hooking beneath his sternum and twisting through his spine. His power, his sense snagged on something… wrong.
Kai slowed to a stop, his bare chest heaving. The morning sounds, scents, and smells thinned.
Kai turned, the forest seeming to open around him, branches bowing aside as though wary. Of what, he wasn’t sure, but something innate told him it had to do with the way darkness seemed to gather between the distant trunks, where the ground sloped downward into a deeper part of the woods.
Where he felt as if something… watched.
It pulled at him, at his wolf, at the void.
Kai knew he should’ve resisted it.
Go see, Alpha of Deimos.
And yet, he followed.