Page 68 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons
Looking at Jalend, at the hard lines of tension around his mouth finally starting to soften, I saw not the heir to the Empire, but a man who had been just as trapped by his role as any of us.
Livia, I thought, would have seen this in him from the start. She had always looked past the titles and the uniforms to the person trapped beneath. Maybe, just maybe, we were finally learning to do the same.
"Sounds fucking exhausting," Tarshi said, voicing what we were all thinking. He poked the fire with a stick, sending a shower of sparks into the night. "Give me an honest fight over a dishonest truce any day."
"A sentiment I'm beginning to appreciate," Jalend admitted quietly. He looked around the fire, at our small, fractured group of misfits. "Out here... at least you know where you stand."
The fragile truce held. When Septimus's watch ended, Jalend took the next one without being asked, and this time, no one challenged him. We were still a long way from trusting him, but for the first time, he felt less like our enemy and more like just another man who had everything to lose. And as I drifted into a restless sleep, I knew that for Livia, that was enough to bind us together. For now.
25
Iwoke to emptiness.
The absence of her warmth against my chest was like a physical blow, yanking me from the deepest sleep I'd known in months into cold, brutal awareness. My arm closed around nothing but cooling air where her body should have been, and the fury that erupted in my chest was immediate and consuming.
She was gone.
I sat up in the darkness, my enhanced vision cutting through the dark of the forest as if it were bright noon. It was entirely plausible that she’d gone to relieve herself, but when I stopped and listened, I heard nothing. Not the slightest rustle beyond the leaves of the trees around me. The woman had vanished, slipped away while I'd been lost in the first peaceful sleep I'd experienced since the whispers began.
The voices stirred in response to my rage, a chorus of approval that made my head pound.
She runs from you,they hissed, eager and hungry.She thinks herself free. Show her the truth. Show her what happens to prey that tries to escape.
I closed my eyes, drawing a shaking breath as power surged through my veins like molten metal. The shadows in the trees responded to my emotion, writhing and coiling around my feet like living serpents eager for the hunt. It would be so easy to let them loose, to send tendrils of darkness racing through the forest until they found her and dragged her back to me like a prize.
But that wasn't what I wanted. Not yet.
I wanted to hunt.
The realization struck me with surprising clarity, cutting through the initial rage to reveal something deeper and more primal. She had challenged me, defied me, chosen flight over submission. The warrior in her was showing itself, and something savage in my blood responded to that defiance with hunger rather than anger.
She thought she could escape me. She thought the darkness and the forest would hide her from a creature born to hunt in shadow. The naivety of it was almost charming.
I rose from the cave floor, my movements fluid and predatory as power flowed through every muscle. The feathered cloak settled around my shoulders like wings, and I felt the familiar transformation begin—not the physical shifting that marked other Talfen magic users, but something deeper. The man Taveth receding into the background, leaving behind something colder, more focused.
Something born to kill.
Hunt,the voices whispered, and for once their desires aligned perfectly with my own.Track. Find. Claim.
I stepped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn darkness, my feet silent on the rocky ground. The forest stretched before me,a maze of shadow and moonlight that would confuse and terrify any normal person. But I was not normal, and this was my domain.
Closing my eyes, I extended my senses into the darkness around me. Every shadow became an extension of my awareness, every pool of black between the trees a window into the night. I could feel the small creatures that scurried through the underbrush, the owls that hunted from the branches above, the larger predators that prowled these mountains in search of prey.
And there—a disruption in the natural patterns, a warmth that didn't belong. She was perhaps a quarter-mile ahead, moving through the trees with surprising stealth for someone untrained in forest craft. But stealth meant nothing to one who could see through the eyes of darkness itself.
I began to follow.
The hunt was intoxicating in ways I hadn't expected. Each step filled me with a sense of purpose that had been absent from my life for months, a clarity of intention that cut through the fog of whispers and doubt. She was mine by right of claiming, mine by the inexplicable pull that had drawn me to her on the battlefield, and now she was trying to flee from what she surely must feel as keenly as I did.
The mate bond. It had to be what this was—this overwhelming compulsion that had made me risk everything to carry her from the carnage, this possessive hunger that made my skin burn every time I touched her.
The problem was that I didn't want a mate.
Mates were for men who planned futures beyond the next battle, who dreamed of children and growing old in peace. I was a weapon, a creature of shadow and vengeance whose very touch carried corruption. The whispers that plagued my mind would only grow stronger with time, and eventually they wouldconsume what remained of my humanity entirely. What kind of life could I offer to anyone, let alone to a woman who deserved better than a monster wearing a man's face?
And yet...
The memory of her pressed against me rose unbidden, sending heat coursing through my veins. The way she'd responded to my touch despite her fear, the soft sounds she'd made as I'd brought her to release, the perfect way she'd fit in my arms as if she'd been made for me. For those precious hours, the voices had gone quiet, driven back by something stronger than their whispered poison.
