Page 3 of All's Fair in Lion and War
He’d been correct.
This man was from the same tribe that had taken and murdered his wife and unborn child over eight years ago—the Ka’lagh. He’d never forget those markings. He’d killed so many, but nothing would ever bring them back.
Now they were here. On earth. And they’d taken another woman against her will.
Now they weren’t just trespassers.
Now it was personal.
Now he would kill them. All of them.
He slipped his knife back into his belt and returned to his beast form.
His cat was silent with paws so large he could walk on top of the packed powder. He continued to circle the camp, getting closer and closer to the second sentry. One leap. One slice of his claws across the man’s throat and he would never be able to touch or hurt another woman ever again.
It was the least he could do.
Saul’s tribe stopped hunting the Ka’lagh after several months, but Saul had never stopped looking for the men who held his mate down, violated her, then cut her throat.
She had been carrying their first child. He’d lost everything that night. And he’d hunted those particular men for years before he’d finally found them and avenged their deaths.
Saul leapt again, this time into the center of the camp and onto one of the men sitting next to the fire tending to the spit. A shout escaped and then chaos erupted.
Snarls and growls.
Shots were fired.
Nothing hit him. At least not yet.
He used his massive back paws to shovel snow onto their fire, bringing darkness to their camp like a shroud of death. That’s what he would be for them.
Death.
He ripped the throat from the Reylean sentry, killing him before he had a chance to shift and really put up a fight.
A shot bounced off a tree near Saul’s head and too close to the body of the bound woman on the snow.
He ran to her side and used his claws to cut her ropes.
She groaned, but didn’t move right away.
He used a paw to roll her toward him, helping to bring blood flow back to her newly freed limbs.
She pushed her flimsy hood up from her face.
Her pale skin glowed in the darkness, ethereal and beautiful and…it had to be an illusion. Fate wouldn’t be so cruel. He’d known his fated match. He’d mated her. Loved her. She’d died. He’d lost his chance for his soul to ever be whole again.
And now…
Now Fate was taunting him.
His lionchuffedbaring fangs and roared.
She screamed. The sound lodged in Saul’s heart like a perfectly fired arrow.
It wasn’t real. He was imagining thesoul callglow. It was a trick of the moonlight. The northern lights. Anything.
The woman stood from the ground, backed away a few steps and then turned and ran into the night.
