Page 84 of Unleashed

Her legs wobbled. She pressed a hand against a hard abdomen — Vortok’s abdomen — to steady herself and raised her knife, ready to keep fighting despite being winded and effectively blind.

“Easy,” Aduun said, placing his hand over hers.

Swallowing, she removed her hand from Vortok, hesitating until she knew wouldn’t lose her balance, and swept her hair out of her face. Aduun stood immediately in front of her, shoulders rising and falling with ragged breaths. Balir was a slightly leaner shadow beside him.

At the next burst of lightning, her eyes flicked between Aduun and Balir. Limp, severed vines clung to them, no longer posing a threat. It was the water that caught her attention; it was made pale by the flash — save for the pool of black ichor floating on its surface. The ripples from falling raindrops and the slow dissipation of the ichor were the only things disturbing the water.

The vine monster was gone.

“Is it over?” she asked.

“For now,” Balir said, “but we cannot say if it will strike again.”

“Are you all right, Nina?” Vortok asked from behind her. “I told you—”

“I wasn’t going to leave you,” she said over her shoulder before turning back to Aduun and Balir. “Anyof you. You are my tribe, mymates, and I stand with you.”

“That was a foolish thing to do,” Aduun said, but there wasn’t much admonishment in his voice.

“Not anymore foolish than you three jumping in blindly,” she said.

Aduun stepped forward and lifted his hands, settling one on her cheek and slipping the fingers of the other into her hair. Tugging her head back, he leaned down and slanted his mouth over hers. She closed her eyes; there was no rain, no mud, no pain, only Aduun. His kiss was deep, commanding, and punishing, consuming more of her with every press of his lips and swipe of his tongue. When he raised his head, his eyes — dark but for the faint reflections in their depths — bore into hers.

“Do not ever endanger yourself like that again,” he growled.

Nina closed her hand over his wrist. “I’ll do what I must to protect what’s mine.”

They stared at each other for several seconds, Nina’s heart thumping in her chest. Finally, one corner of his mouth lifted, barely visible in the shadows, and he took a step away from her, breaking their physical contact.

Balir placed a hand on her lower back. “We should not linger this close to the water.” A thought — his thought — flitted through his mind and into hers.

—saved me, Nina, thank you—

Nina turned her face toward Balir. His hold on her shifted, his palm sliding to her waist as he curled his long fingers around her side. She sent a gentle psychic pulse toward him, silently acknowledging his gratitude and offering her own.

“Let’s get out of the rain,” Vortok grumbled.

They turned and followed Vortok’s heavy steps back to the hollow. Now that the excitement was over, and her blood was cooling, she couldn’t help but shiver; the air was cool, and she was soaked. Nina and her valos crawled under the tree and huddled in its shelter. Though they were all wet, their shared body heat went a long way in warming her.

No one slept. Nina found herself starting at every noise she heard above the storm, expecting to feel something slither around her ankle at any moment. She guessed her valos were in a similar state, their senses on high alert; their conversation was minimal and terse throughout the remainder of the night.

Despite their relative silence, Nina could feel the relief and love flowing from each of them, and she clung to it through the darkness, projecting it back in turn.

* * *

Vortok graspedone of the thick roots nearby and grunted as he pulled himself out from beneath the tree. His muscles ached. He was still sore in a few places where the vines had constricted with crushing force, and his damp fur was caked with partially-dried muck and ichor in places he wasn’t even sure he could reach. They’d eaten when the first hints of dawn had finally brightened the sky, intending to set out once there was enough light. The food had been as soggy as the ground around them and tasted like soured water. It had seemed a fitting meal, considering they’d be wading through a swamp all day in the rain.

Surprisingly, though, the rain had stopped sometime shortly after sunrise. It seemed too good to be true, but Vortok wouldn’t complain. The break in the weather was welcome, but more uplifting was that Nina was all right. There was some faint bruising around her leg and torso, but she’d suffered no serious injury.

His hooves sank in the muddy ground as he went to join the others. All his companions were disheveled and splattered with muck, looking exactly how Vortok felt.

“Um…can you turn around, Aduun?” Nina asked.

Though his brows knitted in confusion, Aduun turned for her. Nina raised a hand and plucked a chunk of severed vine from Aduun’s quills. It was covered in the dark, sticky goo the tendrils had gushed when damaged.

She tossed the vine aside. It landed in the water with a soft splash and bobbed on the surface. Other pieces of various sizes were scattered around the shoreline, each a reminder of the fierce battle that had taken place. But it was the deep grooves in the mud, now filled with water, that rekindled some of the fear and fury Vortok had experienced the night before; they were the spots where Nina had dug her hands into the ground in a desperate attempt to stop herself from being dragged into the water.

They’d almost lost her.

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