Page 1 of Blood Bearon
1
The first warning was a sudden lifting of the hairs on his neck.
Khove stiffened slightly, careful to keep his reaction to a minimum. If it was just a random fluctuation of his body, the last thing he wanted to do was interrupt his Queen. She was deep in an important meeting. Even as his ears listened to her and her Council talk, his eyes scanned the depths of the Throne Room for threats.
“Do we have anything confirmed?” Kaelyn, his Queen, was asking.
“Not as of this moment.” That was the Captain, commander of the House Guard, the soldiers that protected the rest of the House.
Khove caught the eye of his direct subordinate, giving him the wink pattern that allowed them to communicate silently, indicating he felt something was off. In moments, the entire six-man team of the Queen’s Own—her personal bodyguard detail—was brought to full alert without alarming the others. There was no proof yet. Still, the tingle on the back of his neck didn’t go away, and Khove had long since learned to listen to it.
“How is it we can’t get any information from inside House Canis?” the Queen asked. Khove noted she sounded irritated. Did a potential situation inside the house of their biggest rivals really bother her?
“Even our low-level contacts are refusing to talk to us right now,” the Captain replied again. “They’ve gone full radio silence. Nothing in, nothing out.”
“That in itself is an indicator something’s up,” the Queen said, hitting a fist into her palm with a smack. “We knew things weren’t great over there. Could it really be here?”
There were muttered rumblings around the rest of her advisors. Khove paid them no mind, his eyes penetrating deep into the shadows high up in the Throne Room. He scanned the multi-level balconies that ringed three sides of the large chamber at the heart of Ursidae Manor, the home of High House Ursa and its bear shifters.
Sparing a quick glance at Knox, he confirmed his second-in-command wasn’t picking up anything either. The feeling was growing stronger. Khove knew he couldn’t wait much longer. His job was to protect the Queen, and if that meant potentially embarrassing himself for a situation that didn’t exist, it was his responsibility to endure that. Because what if somethingwereabout to happen?
He must have shuffled slightly, some slight amount of movement to give away his unsettled nature, because Kaelyn’s head came around to face him. “Something the matter, Khove?”
“Not sure,” he rumbled, eyes still searching the rest of the room. “Feels like it.”
The others immediately came to alert as well. The Captain pulled out a phone and began speaking into it in low terms, communicating with his guards on the rest of the property. The Assassin and Champion both took steps out from the circle and faced the main doors that led to the Grand Hallway, setting themselves, just in case.
Khove barely noticed the display of respect as the Title Holders of House Ursa immediately sprang into action at nothing more than a feeling of his. Few men could command such an immediate response, but he didn’t care. His priority was his Queen. He, Knox and the other four guards stepped forward, tugging at swords to loosen them in their sheaths, checking the pistols at their sides were also loaded.
“My Queen, I’d like to get you out of here,” he said quietly, motioning toward the hidden door behind the set of raised stone thrones along the back wall. The Council were having a private meeting, and so the members were simply standing in the middle of the room. Vulnerable.
Before she could react, everyone’s ears pricked up as a handful of dull thumps echoed through the air.
“Those are explosions,” he said. “We’re under attack. My Queen!” He motioned again toward the door.
His instincts screamed to grab his liege and haul her away, but Khove knew better than that. Kaelyn would just as likely hurl him across the floor as go along if he tried to herd her like cattle.
“Khove, you and two others. Go see what it is.”
Groaning, Khove tried not to betray his pain at her orders to do the exact opposite of his job. He glanced quickly at the other members of the Council, then at his Queen, as if to saywhy can’t they do it?
“Now,” Kaelyn said.
At least she wasn’t insisting on doing it herself. That was a small consolation. Khove snapped his fingers and took off for the huge copper-covered doors that led to the Grand Hallway and a straight shot out of the Manor. Two of his men followed. A moment later, he heard a fourth set of footsteps.
Glancing over, he saw Kirell, the Captain, had joined them. “My men are out there.”
Khove nodded. That was all the explanation they needed. The Manor and its property were Kirell’s responsibility to defend.
Together, the quartet raced down the hallway in a blur, only slowing to cautiously exit the doors onto the grounds, where they were greeted by a sight new to Khove.
“That’s not good,” he muttered.
The sky to the west was illuminated. With the sun long having sunk behind the horizon, it should have been dark out. Instead, a barrage of light was striking against a massive golden barrier that only shimmered into existence when it was stuck.
“It’s the wards,” Kirell said, speaking what they all knew.
The House had defenses against both physical and magical attacks. Wards were spells created over a long period of time, one laid atop the other in a protective layer surrounding the entire property. They were the result of years of hard work by many different Magi, nearly impossible to defeat.
