Page 42 of Beast of Blood and Ash
“Has there been any more news about those assholes from Ignarath?” Her voice was a ghost of the fire she’d shown moments before.
The frustration was a bitter taste in my mouth. “Nothing. The ones we captured remain stubbornly silent. The Council debates their next move, but they will not act.” And every day they waited, the humans back in Ignarath suffered more.
Maybe they remained so impotent because they hadn’t seen it.
Maybe they just didn’t care.
Anger threatened to surge until my mate put her hand on top of my own and squeezed. It settled something wild deep within me.
“Come on, let’s clean up our mess.”
I began gathering the weapons. I hated the waiting. Hated the not knowing. It felt too much like my time in Ignarath, watching and helpless.
A cold prickle skittered across the back of my neck. Old instincts flaring.
We weren’t alone.
I straightened, weapon gripped hard enough to crack the haft. My eyes scoured the far wall, found nothing but pools of shadow where the light didn’t reach. But I knew that feel, the way prey felt in the moments before a fight. The way I’d learned, from too many years of being the last beast standing, that you are never truly safe.
I stared into the dark until the silence hurt. Someone watched. Someone hunted.
But there was nothing there.
I stared for several long moments, but nothing moved except dust motes in the air. I gave the darkness a final glare.
If the shadows wanted a monster, they’d find one waiting.
This fight wasn’t over.
Not by a long stretch.
18
REIKA
I forgotpain could feel good.
My muscles screamed victory after the training session with Omvar. Every step was a triumphant agony. And the triumph lasted until we got to a small staircase and a whimper escaped me.
Yeah, this pain only felt good in theory. In practice, it still sucked.
For a moment, I tried to power through, but the burn in my thighs turned molten, and when my foot hit the first upward step, I lost the battle. The sound that escaped was a half-whined gasp, barely human, and nowhere near the kind of badass I’d hoped to be after taking on a Drakarn champion for an hour without dying.
Omvar stilled at my groan. He’d been off ever since we left the caverns, looking over his shoulder like he expected a ghost to jump out of the shadows.
“Is everything all right?”
He jerked his head toward me, eyes tracking every breath I took, movements just a little too watchful. The question might as well have been chiseled out of stone. There was a brittle edge toit, tension vibrating through his bulk, as if he were walking into an ambush he half expected.
He answered himself before I could open my mouth. “It’s fine.”
Funny how “it’s fine” in that tone of voice meant exactly the same thing as it did back on Earth, even though we were hundreds, if not thousands, of light-years away.
I forced a smirk, jaw clenched because any bigger movement made my neck spasm.
“You’re in pain,” he said.
“Letting a gigantic Drakarn throw me around for an hour will do that.” There was a spark in the words, a flicker of humor and just a bit of pride even though my body had become a graveyard of aches, each bruise a souvenir.
