Page 51 of Blood & Claw

Ailsa looked from one Reedohran to the other.

A pair. Her chest tightened. They had come for her—and she had killed them. She remembered the crack of the branch against bone, and queasiness rose.

She’d killed two mates.

“Come on.” Dale broke the weighty silence. “We should move.”

His voice had veiled again, the apology gone. Whatever guilt he’d felt had retreated behind those walls of his. However, his carelessness had nearly gotten her killed, and she wasn’t going to forget that any time soon.

Jaw set, she limped toward the willows. Her knee throbbed from the fall. Every muscle in her legs protested. But she needed to pee. Badly.

Behind the trees, she crouched—and then froze.

Deep claw marks scored the willow trunk beside her. Fresh ones. Sap bled slowly down the pale bark.

So, she hadn’t imagined it. Something had watched her from the dark last night.

Ailsa emptied her bladder and rose to her feet, stepping out from behind the tree. A few yards away, Dale had just kicked dirt over the campfire and was moving across to Rùn. He was limping as well—heavily.

“Something was prowling around here last night,” she said, approaching him. His gaze snapped her way, and she pointed toward the trees. “Fresh claw marks in the tree bark.”

Dale turned, picking up the saddle and swinging it onto the stallion’s back. “Hardly surprising,” he muttered. “It’s Gateway tonight … the faerie world is waking up.”

She frowned. “All the more reason my bodyguard shouldn’t vanish into the night.”

His body tensed, and Ailsa waited for him to bite. For him to make excuses for himself.

But he said nothing.

Darach urged Rùn into a hard canter, jaw locked so tight his teeth ached.

The cawing of ravens split the misty morning air, the sound vaguely mocking.

Everything was coming apart.

First the attack. Then the change. And this morning’s mess with the Reedohran.

Sloppy, all of it. Maybe taking Ailsa with him was a mistake. There was a reason why he kept others at a distance these days. He was a danger to the lass, a fact she was blissfully ignorant of.

He should have known the beast would rise. Stress always dragged it closer to the surface—fear, anger, blood in the air. The attack had been enough.

The moment the first warning tremor ran through his bones, he’d known.

So, he’d done the only thing he could. Run.

He could still picture the firelight shrinking behind him as he staggered into the dark. Thorn scrub tearing at his clothes. Boots sliding on loose stone as he half-fell down the gully. By the time he reached the bottom, the burning had already started under his skin.

He’d torn his clothes off with shaking hands.

Then it had taken him.

The pain always came first. Rending, burning, as if something was pulling his muscles and bones apart. And then the night had transformed. Every scent, every sound sharpened. He was aware of it all. The loch. The reeds. Small animals moving through the grass.

And the woman by the fire.

The pull toward her had been instant. Primal.

She was easy prey. Alone and with only a small blade to defend herself.