Page 14 of Monster's Obsessive Hunger
A shape detaches itself from the shadows between two massive boulders ahead. Kaerith. He is larger than I remember, his skeletal frame seeming to draw the very darkness around him. His heart-light is not the calm, domestic gold I saw from a distance on that day years ago. It is a blazing, furious white, the color of pure, undiluted territorial rage. He does not speak. He does not need to. His entire posture is a declaration of war. A simmering rasp, like the grinding of tectonic plates, rumbles from his chest, a clear and final warning.Leave now or die.
My forward momentum ceases. I stand before him, the falling snow a silent curtain between two ancient rivals. In another life, another time, I would meet his growl with my own. I would lower my head and charge, and we would tear each other apart until one of us was nothing more than another collection of bones to decorate these woods. But not today.
With a slowness that feels like the movement of mountains, I kneel. The act of submission is so foreign, so contrary to my nature, that my body protests every inch of the descent. I kneel in the snow before my rival, an act of utter, complete surrender. Igently, carefully, place Lyssa’s limp body on the ground between us, arranging her cloak over her as a final, pathetic gesture of care. She is an offering. A plea.
I look up at the furious, blazing creature before me, and I strip myself of the last vestiges of my pride. The word that leaves my lips is a broken, desperate thing, a sound no true Waira should ever make.
“Please.”
His growl falters, a flicker of confusion momentarily tempering his rage.
“She’s dying,” I say. “I… I hurt her. She needs a healer. She needsyourmate.”
As the words leave my mouth, a second figure emerges from the shadows behind Kaerith. Elira. Her human face is a mask of cold, unforgiving fury. Her eyes, sharp and intelligent, lock onto me, and I see the immediate, visceral recognition. She remembers the monster who once saw her as nothing more than a meal. Her lips pull back from her teeth in a silent snarl, and in that moment, her expression is more terrifying than Kaerith’s blazing rage. Hope, which had been a desperate, flickering ember, threatens to die completely under the weight of her hatred.
22
LYSSA
Idrift on a sea of pain, the world a hazy, indistinct blur. There are moments of sharp, searing agony that pull me toward the surface of consciousness, followed by long, dark stretches where I am blessedly numb. I am aware of the cold seeping through my clothes, of the soft, muffling weight of falling snow. Above me, two impossible shapes are locked in a silent, violent standoff. One is my Thorrin, his heart-light a dim, desperate green. The other is a nightmare, a larger, more powerful creature whose own heart blazes with a white-hot light of pure, undiluted rage.
A third figure emerges, stepping from behind the furious Waira. A woman. Through the fog of my pain, I can see she is human, with dark hair and a face carved from hard-won strength. She moves with a predator’s grace, her eyes fixed on Thorrin. And her expression… it is one of pure, venomous fury. This is her. The one who hates him.
“You don’t get to beg now,” she hisses, her voice a low, sharp weapon in the quiet of the snow-filled forest. The hatred in the sound is so potent it feels like another source of cold, chilling me deeper than the winter air ever could.
I try to speak, to form Thorrin’s name, to tell her that he is not the monster she thinks he is. But my lungs will not obey, my lips will not form the words. A weak, pathetic sound, less than a whimper, is all I can manage. I am a spectator to my own fate, my life hanging in the balance of this woman’s ancient grudge and the silent, violent tension between two impossible beasts. She is looking at Thorrin as if he is something vile, something to be exterminated. And he is kneeling before her, a broken king, offering my dying body as his only plea.
The woman’s furious gaze finally drops from Thorrin to me, lying helpless in the snow between them. Her expression falters. The hard lines of her hatred soften, just for a moment, replaced by the sharp, assessing look of a healer. I see her eyes take in my pallor, the unnatural angle of my body, the shallow, painful rhythm of my breathing.
The furious Waira beside her lets out a low growl, a clear warning.Do not interfere.
She ignores him completely. With a fluid grace, she drops to her knees beside me in the snow. Her movements are swift, efficient, and surprisingly gentle. “Easy now,” she murmurs, her voice stripped of its earlier venom, now holding only a cool, clinical authority. “Don’t try to move.”
Her fingers, warm and steady, begin to probe my side. They are impossibly gentle, but the moment they make contact with the source of my agony, a fresh wave of pain, white-hot and blinding, crashes over me. A choked scream escapes my lips, thin and reedy in the vast stillness. I feel my body try to arch away from her touch, a useless, reflexive motion.
“Shhh,” she says, her other hand coming to rest on my forehead, a steadying pressure. “I know it hurts. Just breathe.”
She continues her assessment, her touch now even more careful, more precise. I hear her curse under her breath, a sharp, angry sound directed not at me, but at the injury itself. Theprofessional anger of a healer faced with a wound that should not exist. She finally looks up, not at Thorrin, but at the furious, white-hot creature who watches them, his entire body a coiled spring of territorial rage.
“She needs elven healing,” she says, flat and absolute, leaving no room for argument. “And soon. Her ribs are fractured. One of them may have punctured a lung.”
The diagnosis, so calm and so certain, is the most terrifying thing I have ever heard.
I watch, through a haze of encroaching darkness, the silent battle of wills waged between the woman and the furious Waira. He is a storm of protective rage, his white-hot light pulsing with a fury that seems to make the very air around him vibrate. He is angry at the intrusion, at the presence of Thorrin, at the danger this entire situation poses to the woman at my side. She is a rock, her gaze locked on his, her expression an unyielding mask of grim determination. I cannot follow their exchange, but the outcome is clear. He is losing. Not to a superior strength, but to her unshakable will.
With a movement so sharp it is almost violent, he gives a single, jerky nod. He will not deny her this. His rage, however vast, is second to his bond with her. His gaze then shifts, his full, terrifying attention landing on Thorrin, who has remained kneeling in the snow, a silent, desperate statue. The fury that had been directed at the situation now focuses, becoming a laser-point of pure, lethal intent.
He takes a slow, deliberate step toward Thorrin, his voice a low, rumbling growl that seems to vibrate up from the frozen earth itself. The words are a clear and final promise of death, each one a perfectly crafted threat.
“Touch her wrong,” he says. “And I end you.”
The menace in the promise is absolute. It is the last thing I hear before the pain and the cold and the encroaching darknessfinally pull me under. My last conscious thought is of Thorrin, my monster, kneeling in the snow, having sacrificed his pride and risked his life, all for the hope that the mate of his greatest rival might show me a mercy she will never show him.
23
LYSSA
The world is a fever dream of swirling snow and jolting motion. I am floating, carried through a landscape of blurred, skeletal trees and a sky the color of a fresh bruise. The pain in my side is a dull, distant sun, a constant source of heat that I drift around. Time has no meaning. There is only the rhythmic crunch of snow, the whisper of the wind, and the voices.
