Page 21 of Great Falls Cadet
“Shade!” I call after him, my voice cracking from my too-dry mouth.
A few paces off, Coal grunts with satisfaction as his sword finds its mark and a sclice tumbles to the ground, its body and dull dead eyes suddenly visible. “What the bloody hell is this?” Coal rolls the corpse over with his foot.
“Something damned by the fae,” says River.
I cringe—and not just from River’s words. Sclices are ugly enough, but deformed ones are worse still. Now that I can see it clearly, the beast’s corrupt mouth takes up half its face, the saliva rolling free from the hideous maw. From beneath the short fur hide, the sclice’s skin protrudes in a mosaic of moles, one so large, it looks like a warped snowflake.
I turn away from the corpse, my chest tight as I take in the settled silence. With the dead body at Coal’s feet, I hear no more movement. The males, their swords at the ready, disperse toward the edges of the clearing to check for additional intruders, their beautiful faces tight with concentration. Feeling. Listening. Scenting—for whatever good that will do with the whole place reeking of sewage.
I shake myself, a tingle along my spine screaming that the males are wrong. I saw three of the beasts, which means one is stillhere.Staying still. Lying in ambush. Forcing my breath and heart to slow, I survey the battleground, my mind on nothing but the truth of the sclice’s existence.I am Lera of Lunos. I am not human.The amulet burns against my skin, the headache returning.I am Lera of Lunos. I—I gasp as red-slitted eyes crouched low beneath a bush not a pace away meet mine.
Thick-as-tree-trunk limbs, a melon-sized snout, teeth made to shred meat.Bloody stars.
The discovered sclice roars, rushing me just as I raise my sword. Dark blood sprays the air.
“Not bad for a wee lass,” Tye mutters at the edge of my hearing.
“Not bad for a damn soldier,” Coal echoes, with equal quiet. “But could be better.”
My arms tremble from the strain. Even with my blade solidly striking flesh, the sheer size and force of the beast brings me to my knees. My breath catches, my lungs too tight to draw air.
The wounded sclice rears to its full height looming over me, clawed limbs ready to tear.
Everything inside me screams to roll away, to sprint, to run run run. I force my hands to stay on the sword. With my heart and breath speeding, it won’t be long until I can’t focus enough to see the sclice anymore—and the males are blind to it utterly. I have to stay, to drive the sword firmly into the beast’s flesh. Not a killing blow—I’ve struck the thing’s thigh—but a way to mark the sclice’s location for the others. Give my males a chance.
The raised claws lower. My ribs scream in anticipated pain of another sclice attack, my body readying itself for the blow. With all the muscle I’ve ever gained, I force the blade in in in.
Something rips me away just before the sclice’s nails rake the space where my head was. Iron-hard arms, pounding heart, a scent of fury and woods. The male gripping me twists in the air, taking the brunt of our fall against a wedge of stump and stones.
“Have you no sense?” River shouts into my face, his eyes surveying me desperately. Pushing off the ground, he hauls me upright, the hands he had around my waist now gripping my shoulders. “You could have died just now, Leralynn.” He shakes me, his eyes flashing. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I breathe. In my side vision, I see Coal and Tye’s twin assaults converging on the sword I’ve left in the sclice—the blade now appearing to fly about in the darkness. A heartbeat later, the outline of a too-large sclice drops to the ground, becoming more and more visible as dark liquid drains from its severed neck. Coal spares me a brief nod of approval before cleaning off his blade.
Safe. We are all safe. Relief slams into me so powerfully that I stumble, only River’s grip on my shoulders holding me up. River. Right. I look back into his ice-gray eyes, recalling the question. “Yes, sir.”
He lets me go too quickly, hollering for Shade as he surveys the new kill.
“I’m here.” Shade—once again in his fae form—steps out of the woods where his wolf disappeared minutes earlier, breathing hard. I wonder what would have happened if the males saw Shade shift before their very eyes—and whether it is better or worse that they didn’t. Of the four, Shade and Tye are the only shifters, though Tye’s relationship with his tiger is very tenuous still. Ifthatshift happened in the mortal world, all hell would break lose.
My attention focuses on Shade, my heart squeezing at the beautiful sight of him, his swinging black hair, damp with sweat, his arms rippling with corded muscle. Shade exchanges curt nods with Coal—who is now clearing the perimeter—before jogging to River. “I took one down, whatever it was. How did you make out?”
I step forward despite myself, my soul calling toward the shifter. “The wolf—”
Tye gives me an odd look.
“Wolf?” Shade glances my way, his yellow eyes slightly unfocused, as if struggling to orient. “No. Whatever it was, it was no wolf.”
My breath stops. Shade thinks I’m asking about the sclice he killed. Shade doesn’t know he shifted. Doesn’t realize his wolf was involved in the tussle. Neither doesanyone, it seems. Surely they’d remember… Unless the veil covered up the too-close shift by distracting the males’ attention from the wolf altogether. Given that the animal was among us for mere heartbeats, it’s possible. I swallow. Given what’s already happened with the amulet’s powerful magic, anything is bloody possible.
“No, that is certainly not a wolf,” Coal says, jerking his head toward the sclice corpses. “I’ve no notion what it is, but ‘deranged hog’ seems descriptive enough.”
“Are you all right, lass?” Tye’s voice brushes the top of my head, and I realize the male has come up behind me, his feet as silent as a tiger’s. Warm callused hands brush along my shoulders and arms, the touch so familiar, I want to burrow in Tye’s chest.
“It appears we found your mystery beasts, River,” Shade mutters nearby, his face pulled back in a grimace. “So the night wasn’t wasted, at least.”
I close my eyes. NotRiver’smystery beast—the Academy’s. This perverted trio of sclices had been killing for a week before we stepped foot on Great Falls grounds, and would have gone on doing so if not for us.Us—the quint. Whether the males know it or not, we are where we are supposed to be.
Tye’s cheek presses against my hair. “Did you know you smell of lilac?” he drawls softly.
