Page 31 of Savage Fate

“Didn’t think I saw you, did you?” I smirked at his shocked expression. “You picked the wrong shifter to?—”

Sharp pain blazoned on my shoulder, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

Another sub-demon had snuck up behind me, and now my blood dripped from his claws. He stuck his long, skeletal fingers in his mouth, his eyelids fluttering as he tasted my blood.

My stomach heaved at the euphoric moan.

“You better enjoy it while you can because you won’t get another drop.”

While he was still distracted, I jabbed my talons into his neck and sawed through the flesh before finally tearing his head off. His body hit the ground moments before I dropped the grotesque head.

The skalae who’d attacked me first stormed in my direction. My muscles took action, and I dropped, rolled across the ground, and grabbed my sword. Just as he lunged to attack, I lifted the blade and decapitated him.

“And another one bites the dust.”

The other sub-demon stopped his approach when his tiny brain registered what I’d done to his two friends, their bodies and severed heads lying around. He backed away as fear replaced the bloodlust and hunger in his eyes.

I flung blood and guts off my sword as he took off. “We got a runner!”

When the skalae, last one remaining, darted by Fane, he grabbed him and shoved him back toward me. The scent of terror pulsating from the sub-demon almost made me sympathetic to the creature.

Almost.

I couldn’t let him slither around Mohan Wilds. The adult shifters could take one skalae, but Dylan and the kids couldn’t.

As the sub-demon stumbled toward me, I used my sword to easily decapitate him. His head fell into a pile of leaves first, and then his sickly-pale frame crumpled to the ground with a thud, joining the others scattered around.

“Do you think there are more?” I asked Fane, flicking off more blood from my blade before deactivating it.

Fane wiped his hands on his jeans. “They usually stick together, but another group could be roaming the outskirts of Mohan territory. We need to alert Camus and the other patrols ASAP.”

While he took his phone out and texted Camus, I gazed at the spot the masked and cloaked creature chased the woman before they vanished into thin air.

Obviously, the scene had only been in my head.

“What happened?” Fane asked, pulling my attention back to him as he shoved his phone into his pocket. “You were staring off into space when a skalae approached you. Did you have one of those visions or something?”

“Or something.” I tugged a leaf out of my hair and then elaborated. “It was like a waking vision. They were from somewhere else and some other time.”

Fane’s brow furrowed, concern pulsating from him. “We need to be careful. You can’t get distracted during fights.”

“Yeah, I know. I’ll work on it.”

As if the cravings for the Infernal Sol and its taunting voice in my head weren’t enough of a distraction. Now I had to contend with seeing shit.

“I’m serious, Tate.” He reached out and plucked at the fabric of my shirt, revealing three large gashes on my shoulder. “You could suffer a worse injury than this.”

A frustrated sigh spilled from my mouth, and I dropped the tough act because I felt how worried he was. “I’ll be more careful. I promise.”

“Maybe we should have a healer look at these.” Fane closed the distance between us until his form brushed mine. “Scalae demons aren’t poisonous, but they aren’t exactly clean.”

This close, his intoxicating fragrance filled my nostrils, and all thoughts of anything that didn’t involve the sinful demon shifter vanished from my mind. “Or you could just be the doctor and examine me.”

Fane’s tongue flicked his lip piercing, and just that one motion had flames igniting in my core. “Maybe you could use a full-body examination. Youdidtake quite a fall in those leaves.” He gripped my hips and lifted me, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist.

“Exactly.” My arms encircled his neck as he pressed my back into a tree, electrical sparks crackling between us.

His soft lips brushed over mine and stole the air from my lungs. How did I ever survive without knowing the sheer pleasure this man’s touch could bring me? He could be wild and feral, like a beast, but he also knew how to slow everything down until I was a quivering puddle of liquid beneath him.

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