Chapter Eighteen #2
“Fuck.” The curse escaped me before I could stop it. Damon made a sound like he was going to be sick, his already pale face going grey.
I knew about fae hounds. Everyone in Nymeria knew about fae hounds.
They were the stuff of nightmares, literally and figuratively.
Creatures of pure predatory instinct, bred for hunting and killing.
They’d been created by Nymeria herself in some ancient age, meant to be guardians of the wild places, but somewhere along the way, they’d become something else entirely.
Something that hunted for sport. Something that killed for pleasure.
Something that had torn Damon’s squad apart.
“What do we do?” Damon’s voice was strained, barely controlled. The question was directed at Alyssa, and I could see him fighting to hold himself together.
“Fizzle is scouting,” she said calmly. “Seeing if there’s anything nearby that we can count on for help. The wildlings helped us before. If we can find them again, if they’re willing to guide us, maybe we can stay ahead of the fae hounds long enough to take shelter in the Fifth Court.”
It was a thin hope, and we all knew it. We had no idea what the court would look like when we got there.
No idea if it had anywhere we could take shelter, no idea if it even had walls or defenses of any kind.
This was Nymeria’s seat of power, her most sacred place, but Nymeria was weakened and trapped and possibly losing control of her own realm.
The Fifth Court might be exactly what we needed: a fortress, a sanctuary, a place where the fae hounds couldn’t reach us.
Or it might be nothing but ruins. It might be completely crawling with fae hounds, or any number of things so much worse.
If we got there.
The uncertainty was the worst part. Not knowing what waited ahead.
Not knowing if we were walking toward salvation or just another trap.
The forest seemed to press closer with every step, the shadows deeper, the silence more absolute.
Even the sound of our footsteps seemed muffled, swallowed by the endless trees.
I could feel the panic starting to build in my chest. It crept up from somewhere deep, tightening around my lungs, making each breath come a little harder than the last. My vision narrowed.
My heart hammered against my ribs. The familiar spiral of anxiety that I’d learned to manage over the years was threatening to pull me under, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.
My lion felt it too, and instead of calming me, the beast was making it worse.
He roared in the back of my mind, demanding to be released.
The cage I kept him in rattled with every snarl.
He wanted to hunt. To stalk through the shadows the way the fae hounds were stalking us.
To feel the rip of flesh beneath his claws, to taste the blood of the creatures that dared to threaten the people he cared about.
He wanted violence and blood and the primal satisfaction of protecting his pride.
The temptation to shift was almost overwhelming.
To let the lion take over, to stop being the worried human and become something that could fight back.
Something that could tear through the darkness and make the things lurking there regret ever targeting us.
But I knew that would be a mistake. Knew that the moment I shifted, the moment any of us shifted, the hunt would begin in earnest.
We’d be prey. And prey didn’t survive the fae hounds.
Then Alyssa moved between me and Damon, and I heard her chuckle.
The sound was so completely at odds with the situation we were in that it cut through my spiral like a blade. I blinked, turning to look at her in surprise, and found her watching both of us with an expression that was somehow fond and exasperated at the same time.
“What?” I demanded, trying to process the disconnect between her amusement and the terror that had been building in my chest.
“The two of you.” She shook her head, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “You’re so alike. I don’t think you even realise it.”
I stared at her, not understanding. Damon and I were alike?
In what way? He was the strong one, the leader, the one who’d always protected the rest of us.
I was just Maddox. The screw up little brother.
The one who felt too much. The one who worried too much.
The one who’d killed a man to save a court’s magic and would carry that weight for the rest of his life.
Then I looked at Damon.
Really looked at him.
And I saw it.
Yes, he looked like he was on the verge of panic. Yes, his face was pale and his hands were shaking and his eyes were wild with barely controlled fear. But underneath all of that, there was something else. Something I remembered from when we were kids.
That fierce determination to protect his family. The same look he used to get when someone threatened one of us, when someone tried to hurt the people he loved. The way his fear was fusing into something harder. Something sharper. Something that would make him dangerous when the time came.
And as I watched, Damon shifted slightly. Subtly. Moving closer to Alyssa without seeming to realise he was doing it. Putting himself between her and the shadows. Ready to fight, ready to die, ready to do whatever it took to protect her.
My lion settled at the sight. Not completely, but enough.
If Damon’s instinct was to protect rather than to flee, then the pack was still strong.
The pack would hold. Because it had always held before and we were so much more than the scared group of boys who had found each other all those years ago.
“The fae hounds are demons,” Damon said, his voice steadier now.
Still strained, still carrying the weight of bad memories, but steadier.
More like the brother I remembered from before all of this started.
“They hunt and kill for fun. I remember that much from my first experience with them.” His jaw tightened, and I saw the ghost of that day pass across his face.
The screams. The blood. The feeling of being completely helpless while the men he’d trained with, fought beside, called friends, were torn apart around him.
“But there’s something else you need to be ready for.
There’s an intelligence in their eyes that I’ve never seen in any animal.
They think. They plan. They anticipate.”
He looked at both of us, making sure we understood the weight of what he was saying.
“They won’t let us reach the safety of the Fifth Court.
This is nothing more than a game to them.
” His voice hardened, taking on an edge that I recognised from our childhood.
The edge that meant he was done being afraid and was ready to fight.
“And they’re not going to let us win easily.
They’ll toy with us first. Separate us. Pick us off one by one if they can.
They want the fear. They feed on it. It makes the kill sweeter for them. ”
Alyssa’s hand found his arm, a brief touch of comfort that made something in my chest ache. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. The gesture said everything.
We kept walking, but the atmosphere had changed. The revelation had settled over the group like a shroud. Everyone knew now, or at least suspected, what was stalking us through the shadows. Everyone understood the stakes.
The forest seemed to press closer around us as we moved. The shadows between the trees seemed darker, more threatening, more alive. And somewhere in the distance, so faint I might have imagined it, I heard something that sounded almost like laughter. Low and hungry and completely without mercy.
The hunt was coming.
The only question was when.
I moved closer to my brothers, to my mate, to my pack. Whatever was out there in the darkness, whatever was waiting for the perfect moment to strike, they would find us ready. They would find us together.
And they would learn that wolves and lions and bears don’t go down without a fight.
My lion rumbled in agreement, and for the first time since we’d entered this forest, the sound wasn’t desperate or panicked. It was steady. Resolved. Ready to face whatever came next, not with fear, but with the fierce determination of a predator who refused to become prey.
So we kept walking. One step at a time. Deeper into the darkness.