Chapter 8
EIGHT
KASTER
By the time the last hunter falls, I’m bleeding from six different wounds.
None of them are fatal. All of them are the result of defensive choices—absorbing damage meant for her, intercepting strikes aimed at her position, fighting to shield rather than eliminate.
I could have ended this faster. Could have let a few attacks through to her while I systematically dismantled the pack. She’s not helpless—she survived weeks alone before she found me. A glancing blow wouldn’t have killed her.
I didn’t let a single attack through.
The bodies lie where they dropped. Seven Hunters. None of them anchored.
Without the Anchor binding the kills, god-made power will reassemble these creatures within hours. We’ll face them again—or worse versions—before the day ends.
They’ll reassemble. We’ll fight them again. The war continues.
I stand in the aftermath and breathe through the pain. Dragon healing is already working—fire in my blood sealing the worst of the damage—but the process takes time. Energy. Resources better spent on movement.
Behind me, Soreia pushes away from the tree she’s been using as cover.
Her footsteps are careful. Measured. The gait of prey that has learned to move quietly around killers.
She moves toward me anyway.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll heal.”
“Six wounds.”
“Counting them now?”
She doesn’t rise to the edge in my voice. Instead, she moves closer—carefully, watching for signs I’ll retreat—until she’s standing within arm’s reach.
She’s inside my guard.
“Let me look.”
“No need.”
“Kaster.”
My name in her mouth. The sound hits my nervous system like a physical impact—pressure in my jaw, tension in my spine, dragon heat flaring through my veins unbidden.
She’s looking at me the way she looked at me in the ravine. After I killed for her. After I stood as a wall between her and death.
She’s looking at me like she sees past the excuse.
Like she knows.
“They’ll heal,” I manage.
“How long?”
“Hours.”
“We don’t have hours.”
She’s right. The next wave will be worse. The gaps between attacks grow shorter with each iteration.
“Then we move.” I straighten, ignoring the pull of wounds that haven’t closed. “East. Out of the ravine territory, into the plains. Better sight lines.”
“You’ll slow us down like this.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Managing isn’t surviving.” She throws my words back at me without inflection. Factual. “You told me that.”
The memory surfaces unwelcome—sitting across from her in the dark, forcing her to eat when she wouldn’t. Forcing her to rest when she would have pushed until collapse.
“Five minutes.” I sink against the nearest tree, positioning myself to watch approach vectors. “Then we move.”
She settles beside me without asking permission. Nearer than necessary.
Near enough that the depleted flicker of her power brushes against my awareness like a question I don’t answer.
I don’t tell her to move away.
“They were herding you.”
Her voice breaks the silence that’s stretched between us. Her eyes are still closed, but her breathing has shifted—conscious, aware, choosing to speak.
“In the ravine. Before you found me. The hunters drove me into that kill zone deliberately.”
“I know.”
Her eyes open, dark and sharp in the dim light. “They knew where you’d be and when. They positioned me to intersect.”
The strategic analysis is sound. Uncomfortably sound.
“Bait.”
“Yes.”
She says it without flinching. Acknowledging her role in the gods’ strategy without self-pity or deflection.
“They want me to kill you.” I don’t know why I say it aloud. The words serve no purpose.
“I know.”
“I could.”
Her eyes meet mine. Steady. Unafraid.
“You didn’t let them kill me. Any of those times.” She doesn’t look away. “And don’t say it’s because I’m useful.”
“You’re useful—”
“Bullshit.”
The word lands like a blow. She sits up straighter, dark eyes fixed on my face with an intensity that sends heat crawling up my spine.
“You took six wounds protecting me.” She gestures at my torso, where blood still seeps through torn fabric. “Wounds you didn’t need to take. That’s not cold calculation. That’s—”
She stops. Swallows. Looks away.
Her hands are trembling. Not fear—I know what fear smells like. This is different. Closer to anger. Closer to frustration with a truth neither of us will speak.
“That’s not cold calculation,” she repeats. Quieter. More certain.
She’s right.
My blood runs hotter than dragon fire should allow. Her hands shake with more than exhaustion. And somewhere in the distance, the gods are building better monsters because we keep surviving the ones they send.
We move at midnight.
The plains stretch east under a sky thick with stars. Open ground. Better sight lines. Terrain that favors speed over ambush—the kind of environment where I fight best and hunters struggle to coordinate.
Soreia keeps pace without slowing. The Anchor pulses faintly in my awareness—recovering in increments too small to measure—but her legs are steady. Her breathing is controlled.
Determined. Refusing to slow us down.
I adjust my stride to match hers.
We walk for hours in silence. The dead forest gives way to scrubland, then to open grass that whispers against our legs. The temperature drops as we leave the ravine’s sheltered corridor.
I should feel relief. Open ground means I can see attacks coming. Means I can intercept threats before they reach her position.
Instead, I feel the absence of cover like an itch between my shoulder blades.
No barriers between her and approaching enemies.
Nothing to hide behind if I fail.
The thoughts arrive unbidden. I crush them before they can take root.
Dawn finds us on the edge of the plains.
The grass stretches toward the horizon in every direction—golden-brown and dying, but still standing. No hunters have appeared since we left the forest. No scouts testing the perimeter. The silence feels wrong.
They’re regrouping. Analyzing. Designing the next iteration.
I stop at a natural depression in the terrain—shallow enough to see over, deep enough to provide partial concealment. Not ideal shelter, but better than standing exposed.
“Rest.” Clipped. Final. “I’ll watch.”
Soreia sinks into the grass without argument. Her eyes close almost immediately—genuine exhaustion winning over vigilance.
I settle at the depression’s edge and scan the horizon.
Nothing moves. The wind carries no scent of hunter musk or god-forged construction. The world is silent in a way that means either safety or stalking, and I’m not certain which.
I watch anyway.
She talks in her sleep.
Fragments. Disconnected words that don’t form sentences. Sounds that might be names or might be warnings.
One word surfaces clearly.
Kaster.
My name, spoken in her unconscious voice. Not fear. Not distress.
Recognition.
Dragon instinct. I don’t finish the thought.
She wakes at midday.
Slower than usual—genuine rest, not the vigilant half-sleep she’s maintained since the ravine. Her eyes find me in the same position I held through the night.
She pushes herself upright and studies my face with an attention that makes my skin prickle. Looking for damage. For exhaustion. For the cracks in my control that I won’t show.
“The wounds?”
“Healed.”
“Show me.”
The demand catches me off guard. She’s not asking. She’s telling—the way I tell her to eat, to rest, to stay behind me when hunters attack.
Giving orders now. Like she has the right.
Like she’s earned it.
I lift the edge of my torn shirt without arguing. The gashes have sealed—pink scars that will fade within days. Dragon healing working as designed.
She examines the damage with clinical attention. No visible reaction to the scarred expanse of my torso. No flinch at the evidence of centuries of violence written across my skin.
“Good.” She sits back. “Then we can move.”
I stare at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I drop the shirt and straighten. “East. Keep the pace.”
She falls into step beside me without hesitation.
I don’t tell her to maintain distance.
I don’t move away.
The attack comes at sunset.
Twelve hunters this time. Larger than any we’ve faced.
Armor plating thick enough to turn standard strikes, claws designed to punch through dragon scale.
Their eyes track my position with cold precision—lethal calculation upgraded, refined, designed specifically to counter the fighting style they’ve been studying through their fallen predecessors.
They don’t circle. They don’t probe. They come straight for her position in a coordinated rush that speaks of divine desperation.
They’re not testing anymore.
They’re finishing this.
I move faster.
Faster when she’s exposed.
More brutal when they target her specifically.
The first hunter dies with my claws in its throat. The second loses its head before it completes its lunge. The third—larger than the others, armor plating thicker than standard—catches my strike on its shoulder guard and presses forward.
I adjust mid-motion. Pivot around its guard. Find the gap in its armor where the spine meets skull.
It drops.
I tear through the formation like a force of nature—not fighting, slaughtering. Making them pay for every inch they try to close. Making them understand that the distance between them and her is the distance between them and oblivion.
She plants her feet and raises her hands and reaches for magic she can barely access.
I intercept before she has to use it.
I don’t stop at neutralization—I destroy the creature, tearing it apart until there’s nothing left to regenerate. Until the divine spark gutters and fades. Until I’m standing in a ruin of flesh and armor and ichor.
Breathing hard. Blood-soaked. Fire burning in my veins with an intensity that scares me.
She’s staring at me.
Not with fear. Not with disgust. Not with the revulsion most creatures show when they see what I’m capable of.
Her eyes are wide. Her lips slightly parted. Her magic reaching toward me unbidden, pulsing weakly in my awareness like a second heartbeat.
She’s looking at me like I’m the answer to a question she didn’t know she was asking.
The pressure builds behind my eyes, in my spine, in every nerve ending that screams at me to close the distance between us and claim the thing I’ve been guarding.
“Move.” Rough. Animal. “Now.”
She nods once.
She doesn’t look away.
I turn and walk east, filing the heat roaring through me as a battle response. Combat adrenaline. Instinct doing what instinct does.
I don’t turn around. Don’t let myself see her face in the dying light. Don’t find out what expression she’s wearing now that she’s seen what I become when her life is threatened.
The rationalizations stack up like bodies.
I almost believe some of them.