Page 121 of A Warrior's Fate

The rest of the guard amidst the crowd was split again, some guiding guests to safety while others tried to deal with the rogues. Isla, better skilled in the offensive rather than the defensive, decided she’d help the latter first.

But taking on too much would overwhelm her and lead to more getting hurt, more death. No matter how many rogues she’d taken heed of around her, she needed to deal with one at a time.

Focus.

Calm.

Move swiftly and calculate strikes.

Don’t waste energy.

They’re wild and untamed—like the bak, but much smaller.

Yet somehow, more unpredictable.

She went first for the shifted male encroaching on a woman—one who she’d heard doting on Kai earlier in the evening. Her red dress had been torn, surely by the rogue’s claws that had also scraped the flesh of her pale legs. The injury had her stumbling, falling back to the floor. Isla moved quickly as he postured himself to lunge at her with his open maw, canines ready to embed in flesh. She met him with her body, solid and sending him back into a cocktail table. The abandoned glasses on it crashed to the ground and the fragments glittered on the marble amidst the blood that had dribbled from the woman’s wound.

As soon as there was space, Isla barked at her to run. She was slow to get up, and Isla would’ve carried her away if the rogue hadn’t risen too. She snarled as he returned to his paws, taking note of his eyes. Dim. Same with the lumerosi crossing over his chest. The glow of the moon, the Goddess, amiss. As if the deity no longer held his hand. No longer guided him. His morals, his principles.

“Warrior bitch,” he growled, catching the mark on her back, and then lunged again. Fast. Ready to rip her apart.

But Isla was quicker—much quicker—undercutting and clamping her jaws around his throat.

She didn’t think.

Her instincts—her wolf—took over.

Isla pulled and blood sprayed, coating her tawny fur in a dark crimson.

The rogue could only let out a whimper before he was a lifeless heap on the floor.

Isla padded backwards, blinking, trying to will away the taste in her mouth—metallic and bitter—as she took in the corpse.

She’d just killed a man. Not a bak, not simply a rogue, but another person.

Murderer.

The rasped word slithered into her mind.

Murderer, murderer—

Another rogue caught her attention.

This one couldn’t shift, not fully. He had his claws and some sort of wooden plank laden with spikes—short, but enough to cause damage, especially for the many here without wolves. The rogue didn’t seem to have any target in mind, swinging the weapon as he pleased, connecting with a few guests, and sending them down screaming.

Isla’s mind pivoted from the body on the floor, from the word repeating in her mind, as she bounded towards her new target. The rogue had noticed her at the last moment and swung, missing wide as she ducked and then weaved away from the next barrage of attempts.

Easy prey rose beside the rogue in one of his initially hit, injured victims. But before he could deliver a killing blow to the man who couldn’t have been any older than Isla, she threw herself in the path. A yelp slipped her maw as the spike pierced her skin through her fur, drawing warm blood.

There was a sharp tug at the bond.

“Isla!”

Kai’s voice made her pause and glance around in a way that nearly got her hit again.

“I’m fine,” she told Kai, and with a new surge of adrenaline, unleashed hell on the rogue, delivering the final blow in seconds. She felt the slightest ease at the other end of the tether, yet at the same time, felt it coil, felt it mold.

Kai had gone silent, but she couldn’t think about it, couldn’t question it.

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