Page 82 of Sold to the Nalgar
Cecilia took a step back.
Her heart didn’t race. Not like it used to. But something primal still twisted in her gut.
Run.
No. Stand your ground.
She crouched, breath steady. Fists clenched. Her body pulsed with strange readiness. A corner of her brain—some buried, savage part—welcomed the challenge.
They lunged.
The first hit her shoulder. She twisted with it, slammed her elbow into its ribs. The crack of bone. It yelped, fell.
Another went for her legs. She kicked, felt something give beneath her heel.
She screamed—more from effort than fear—and grabbed a heavy branch from the forest floor, swinging it into the side of another one’s skull.
Blood sprayed. Alien, black.
She waswinning.
Until she wasn’t.
A set of jaws clamped down on her forearm. She cried out, stumbling. Another beast rammed her side. She fell hard, back to the earth, the air knocked from her lungs.
A third creature loomed over her, growling, drool dripping from its fangs.
Fuck.
She was going to die out here. Alone. In the dirt. Torn apart by monsters on a planet that wasn’t hers.
The beast’s weight shifted.
Then—
A flash of motion. A blur of black.
And a sound.
Like thunder meeting steel.
The wolf-beastexplodedbackward.
Zarokh.
He moved like death incarnate.
No hesitation. No wasted motion.
He caught the nearest beast mid-lunge, snapped its spine with one brutal twist, and flung it into a tree. Another charged—he grabbed it by the muzzle andrippedits jaws apart. Bone cracked. Blood poured. The body collapsed in twitching ruin.
The rest tried to flee.
He didn’t let them.
In less than a minute, it was over.
Six bodies on the ground. Twitching. Silent.
