Page 26 of Ruled By The Alpha

The beserketh had already torn him apart.

She stifled a sob, doing her best to shut out the image of the kind, older male. She should be used to all the loss by now.

She wasn’t.

The elders had counseled faith and acceptance. She couldn’t dredge up anything besides rage and hate.

She was so tired of being powerless.

Stomp.

The ground near her shook as heavy boot falls echoed near her hiding place.

Run and she’d be spotted in an instant. Stay too long and either the migrating gerlex or, worse, the beserketh would find her. Her only chance—

A massive hand wrapped around her ankle and yanked.

Shrieking, she sailed out from her hiding place, the leaf that had hidden her snapping in two as she was jerked high into the air.

Held upside down, her ankle screamed in protest as her arms flailed and her body spun, allowing her flashes of a hulking, brutish creature as tall as some of the nearby trees. With vicious fangs, curling horns as thick as her arm, and a murderous glint in its black, bottomless stare, it was death personified. The sickening scent of rotting meat, blood, and rank, wild animal filled her lungs.

The beast was going to rip her apart. Just like it had done to Pether.

She held tight to her knife, determined at least to give it some pain in return.

It flung her upward—and then straight down toward the tips of its blackened fangs.

She braced for agony.

Only to go flying, her knife soaring from her grasp, as a massive blur of red knocked her out of her captor’s hold.

Bones cracked. Guttural growls and the sound of flesh smacking against flesh rang through the jungle.

She hit the ground and scrambled to her hands and knees, eyes wide.

Another beserketh, this one even more massive than the first, was locked in combat with her captor. The two killers grappled in the dirt, flattening trees and stirring up dust clouds as they clashed, their massive bodies moving too fast for her to catch more than flashes of claws, horns, fangs, and streaks of crimson.

This was her chance.

Though the beserkeths had all arrived in their flying devices around the same time, they did not band together. Instead, the feral beasts were solitary, as likely to hunt and kill one another as anything else that crossed their path. Destruction, their only instinct.

She shoved to her feet, only to stumble.Her ankle.The first beserketh hadn’t broken it, but it was badly bruised.

She took a next step anyway, and then another, as the battle cries behind her turned into one long roar of pain and fury.

With any luck, the two beasts would kill each other.

Hope surging through her, she limped faster—only to shriek as a net of vines closed over her

No!

The vines went tight, sweeping her off her feet.

Caught.

She twisted, landing on her back.

Her breath left her in a rush, terror a tight fist in her gut.

---