Chapter 15 #2
“They are the reason the water is finally clean.” I bare my teeth, leaning my full weight into his chest to trap him against the fractured stone. “And you will not take another step toward them. They are the Daughters of Ain.”
There is no shock in Lucek’s eyes. No sudden realization or awe.
Just a cold, utterly ruthless sneer that bleeds outward through the mindspace.
“The Daughters are a myth for weak clans to cling to as we starve in the dark,” he snarls, his face inches from mine. “If you truly believe whatever parasites you shelter are our makers, then your mind is as corrupted as your blood.”
His elbow drops suddenly, finding the raw, bleeding wound the shadowmaw left on my left shoulder. The torn muscle screams. My grip slips a fraction and he uses it.
His blade comes up fast, nicking the underside of my jaw.
We stand like that, locked. His blade at my throat. My hand still around his neck. The battle churning around us.
That’s when the sound of the cavern shifts.
From the narrow tunnel leading down from the Hall of Knowing, a single pair of feet breaks clear. A runner. One of Lucek’s men slipping past the fighting and violently sprinting for the passage that leads down into our deep chambers.
I brace to hurl Lucek aside to intercept him, but another sound stops me dead.
Small feet muffled by foot coverings. Reckless, frantic, skidding down the steep stone incline from the high tunnel.
Eh-ree-kah.
I know it is her even before Mih-kay-lah’s thought reaches the mindspace. Eh-ree-kah is throwing herself down the rock face. I feel the exact terrifying moment she hits the cavern floor and plunges into the pitch-black passage directly behind Lucek’s runner.
She is hunting him.
My dra-kir stops beating. For a single, terrifying second, my entire biological system simply ceases to function. My control completely shatters.
Lucek’s eyes cut sideways, watching the passage. His lips pull back, fangs baring. “It seems I will carry this plague out of your mountain and scour it from the dust.”
Then, a scream echoes from the deep chambers.
The mindspace link from the warrior I left guarding the descent suddenly goes dark.
I release Lucek.
My claw opens and he drops. He hits the stone and catches himself on one knee, but the sound that tears out of my throat shakes the physical mountain. I am already moving.
I don’t care what he does next. I don’t care if he picks up a blade and drives it into my back.
I throw two rival warriors aside with a brutal sweep of my arms, desperate to reach the dark tunnel leading down, but the tide of shadowmaw bodies mixed in with warriors is too thick. There are too many of them between me and the descent. I cannot reach it in time.
Behind me, I am dimly aware of Lucek, watching me go.
His clan’s assault faltering as the shadowmaws finish dying, as the remaining rival warriors find themselves outnumbered on three sides with no anchor.
He says something short and sharp in the mindspace, a command, and his men begin to peel away from the fighting. Retreating. Bleeding.
I tear into the narrow descent. The darkness does not yield, but I do not need light to track the scent of blood and terror.
I hit the floor of the deep chambers with enough force to shake the mountain.
The hide curtains have been torn down. The guard I left stationed at the entrance is on the ground. Broken. Bleeding out.
I step past him, my chest heaving, the starfield flaring against my skin, illuminating the terrified cluster of humans huddled in the deepest corner of the alcove. They are pressing against the rock wall, shaking, clutching each other.
I drag my eyes over them. Filtering the frantic, overlapping scents. Searching for one specific signature.
Mee-ra is here. Loo-see is here.
But I do not see her.
My dra-kir stutters. Absolute terror bleeds into my chest.
They took her.
The thought floods my entire system like venom.
I turn from the huddled women. The scent of Lucek’s warriors is still fresh in the passage, a trail of foreign lifeblood and dust leading deeper into the tunnels behind the chambers.
I follow it. My legs are failing. The wound across my ribs is leaking badly now and the starfield is consuming so much of my internal heat that my muscles are starting to seize.
I make it eight steps into the dark passage before my left knee hits the stone.
I drive my claws into the rock and try to push myself upright. My arms shake. The walls of the tunnel tilt sideways. I get one foot under me. Rise halfway. My left leg gives out and I hit the stone again, harder this time, both knees.
The scent trail is already going cold. Lucek’s warriors are fast, even carrying a captive. Every second I spend on this floor is another second they put between us.
I drag myself forward. One hand, then the other. The claws leave deep grooves in the rock. The starfield is flickering now, pulsing in uneven, stuttering waves across my skin, casting the narrow tunnel in a sick strobe of light and black. I can taste lifeblood in the back of my throat.
Three body lengths. Four.
My right arm gives out. I go down on my chest. The impact drives the air from my lungs. I lie there, face pressed into the cold stone, and for the first time in my entire existence, I cannot make my body obey me.
I try to get up.
I cannot get up.
The tunnel is silent. The scent trail is fading. They have her. They have my mate and I am too broken to follow.
The roar that rips through the mindspace is not controlled.
It is a shockwave. It explodes outward with a force that strips the shields of every Drakav in the mountain.
Ally and enemy alike drop to their knees. Hands fly to their heads as the shockwave strips away everything, leaving only the evidence of my failure.
The cavern walls shake. Fine stone dust rains steadily from the high ceilings, coating the bloody stone in a shroud.
The transformation within me surges, feeding on the raw grief, the heat in my veins spiking.
My vision blacks out.
I surrender to the gravity, letting the cold stone take my full weight. The starfield gutters. The tunnel goes dark.
I am lost when a small hand touches my shoulder.
Every nerve in my body fires at once. I spin, claws out, my vision a strobing mess of starfield light and black. My hand closes around a wrist so small my digits overlap.
Eh-ree-kah?
She is covered in dust and dark, shimmering lifeblood that is not hers. Her small hands are shaking, but her eyes are steady. She is unharmed. She is alive.
She is here. She is safe.
My grip on her wrist loosens. My claws retract. Every muscle in my body unlocks at once, and the shaking that follows is out of my control.
“Kol,” she says. She reaches out in the dark, her soft palm pressing flat against the hot skin of my jaw. “They took Alex.”
She swallows hard, her throat working. “She surrendered so they wouldn’t take the rest of us. I tried to stop him. He was too fast. I’m sorry.”
The air leaves my lungs.
Ah-lex is gone. My warriors are bleeding out on the stone above me. I try to push myself up to hunt the males dragging my mate’s healer into the deep dust, but my arms shake and give out. The white-hot heat in my being burns through the last of my physical strength, pinning my face to the floor.
I cannot move. I cannot protect them. I can only bleed.
Eh-ree-kah’s dark eyes spill over. She wraps her arms completely around my star-blazing head and pulls me against the soft, yielding heat of her stomach. Her fingers sink deep into my mane.
She cannot hold my weight. Her bones should snap. She should collapse beneath me.
She holds me anyway.
She holds completely still in the dark of the ruined tunnel, anchoring my devastated body against hers, holding the world up just for me.