Page 20 of A Warrior's Fate

She stopped and threw up a hand. “Wait!” The Trainee spun back around, and she waved him over. “Come on, we’ll work together and get out of this hell faster.”

“I don’t need help.” His tone took on a sourness, assuming she was offering her aid due to his supposed “incapacities”.

How could she explain she was just sick of wandering without company, their conversation had put her even more on edge, and part of her needed to make sure he made it out alive?

“I don’t doubt it, but nothing says that the Hunt must be done alone as long as we each draw our kill. We’re wolves. We work best as a pack.”

The Trainee narrowed his eyes, though in good spirit, and moved closer. “I’m going to hold fast in my belief that you aren’t patronizing me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Isla smiled, her eyes glowing as she began to shift.

But then everything was agony.

She cried out as daggers swiped at her side, breaking the skin and drawing blood as something sent her soaring across the clearing. Her body thrashed into a tree, head slamming, bones screaming, teeth rattling, and the drying bark splintering beneath her on impact. For a moment, her mind went dark.

“Isla!”

She came to in a heap on the dirt, ears ringing as she slowly peeled open her eyes. Through the slits, her vision cleared enough to find the Trainee across from the most horrifying being she’d ever seen.

The creature seemed as though it was molded from the ground it stood on, murky and dark with what seemed like a shadow-like vapor emanating from its pores. Its sparse hair sprouted from skin taut over thick muscle, so dry that it looked like it could crack open with any movement. Two powerful haunches mirrored solid arms in their size, the beast’s two bulky halves hunched at its narrower middle. Its black claws were so long that they dragged in the dirt. So sharp, they could’ve cut her insides out if it had taken a better shot at her.

But the most unsettling thing about the beast wasn’t its ginormous build, its dark aura, or the weapons at its fingertips. It was how, in her gradual return to sense, with its features so akin to one of their own, she’d thought it was just a large wolf. It appeared as if it were someone demonized halfway through a shift.

She couldn’t gather how she hadn’t even felt it approaching.

The Trainee glanced over at her awakening with a heaved sigh of relief. He swung his sword at the bak as it tried to lunge for him. “Are you o—behind you!”

Isla barely had time to roll out of the way from another massive scythe-like paw heading straight for her neck, the very tip leaving a thin slash on her collarbone.

Her eyes flashed as she got to her knees and met the bright-red glower of a second beast.

CHAPTER 7

It didn't make any sense.

The bak are solitary.

The bak dwell alone.

Isla’s heart pounded so hard, she thought it would break straight through her rib cage. So loud that she could barely hear herself think.

Bak are solitary.

Bak dwell alone.

The beast’s roar was so powerful that it had her falling back, dirt embedding underneath her fingernails as she braced herself upright.

They are solitary.

They dwell alone.

It flashed its jagged razors for teeth. Not of a wolf, but something more menacing entirely. Crafted expertly to rip to shreds. To devour.

Solitary.

Alone.

It was primed to kill.

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