Page 84

"Va'ka-resh, zha'tahna," I whispered, the alien words tasting like poison on my tongue. You are a gutless, broken dog.

Mara’s eyes widened in a sudden, unbridled fury at the insult, but before she could raise her hand to strike me, the shadow of a massive Vakra raider loomed up from behind my shoulder. A heavy, iron-clad gauntlet swung through the dark and struck me squarely across the temple.

The force of the blow exploded behind my eyes in a flash of white light. My knees instantly gave out, the dagger slipping from my fingers as the dirt floor rushed up to meet me. The world spun, the orange glow of the fires rapidly fading into a cold, suffocating blackness.

The last thing I felt was the heavy, brutal hands of the scavengers dragging my limp body into the shadows.

Chapter 54

Kaelen-Thul

Iknew the ordinary weight of sky-metal—the dull, muffled ache when a hunt strayed too close to a wreck-field, the way it dulled the pulse to a faint throb instead of a roar. I had felt that a hundred times in my life and never once feared it.

This was not that.

This was absence. A total, silent nothing where her presence had lived in my chest for months — not muffled, not distant, gone, as though something had reached into my ribs and simply switched off the part of me that had learned to listen for her. The phantom weight of it dragged at my ribs with every desperate vault through the high terrace canopy. I didn't care that my shadow-beast was miles behind me, bleeding on a rocky ledge. I didn't care that the hide wraps around my calves and ankles were fraying from the bark’s sheer friction.

This is not sky-metal, some cold, rational part of me insisted, even as the animal beneath my skin howled otherwise. I know sky-metal. I know what it feels like to lose her for a moment in the static. This is not a moment. This is something built to do this.

And beneath even that thought, something older and steadier refused to break.

She was not dead. I would have felt that—I was certain of it, in the same unshakeable way I knew my own name, my own claws, the shape of my own hearts. A dead bond did not go quiet like a held breath. It tore. It screamed on its way out. This was neither. This was a door slammed shut with her still breathing on the other side of it—and I intended to tear it off its hinges to reach her.

I bared my claws, sank them into the ancient wood of a massive branch, and coiled my heavy, muscular tail around a thick secondary vine behind me. With a violent, synchronised snap of my torso and a powerful flex of my tail, I launched myself through the air.

Faster.

The word was a broken drumbeat in my head. The white-hot gold of my markings had completely died down, leaving behind a dead, frozen grey that smelled faintly of ozone. When my bare feet finally slammed into the dirt of the high domestic circle, the skin on my soles gripping the cold earth, the silence didn't just find me—it crushed me.

The battle at the southern gate was a distant murmur down the mountain, but up here, the air was thick with the foul, oily stench of Vakra incendiaries. Three communal huts were half-collapsed, their thatch glowing with a dull, dying orange.

"Kaelen! Kaelen!"

A sharp, frantic cry cut through the smoke. I spun, my hands dropping instinctively to the hilts of my dual bone-blades as Mara came skidding around the stone terrace wall. She was completely out of breath, her chest heaving violently, her hands covered in soot and grime. Her face was a mask of pure panic as she pointed back toward the lower pathways.

"They... they just retreated!" she gasped, clutching her side as if she had been running for her life across the entire perimeter. "We were holding the upper terrace path... I tried to block them, but the Vakras were everywhere! They suddenly broke formation and vanished back into the dark! I came as fast as I could—where is Lyra?!"

I didn't answer her. My dual-colored eyes narrowed, scanning her frantic posture, but the sheer, suffocating void in my chest left no room for suspicion. My mind was a raging storm, entirely focused on one single point.

"Stay here," I rasped, my voice shockingly quiet, lacking the resonant vibration of the alpha. It was just cold stone.

I pushed past her, my bare toes digging into the soil as I followed a trail of heavy, iron-shod boots stamped deep into the soft loam, leading straight away from my dwelling toward the lower training circles.

When I reached the secure holding area, the truth finally unravelled its hideous head.

The heavy timber gates to the fledgling pen were splintered inward. In the centre of the clearing lay the iron lock of the Vakra cage, cleaved cleanly into two pieces. Beside the fractured metal, a small pool of dark, human blood stained the grey dirt.

And there, glinting under the orange glow of the dying fires, lay the skymetal dagger.

I dropped to my knees, my bare thighs pressing into the dirt. I reached out, my large fingers wrapping around the leather-bound hilt of the weapon she had dropped. The blade was slick with her blood. I brought the metal to my face and closed my eyes as I took a deep, shuddering breath. The scent of her—the sweet, sharp warmth of her human spirit—flooded my senses, underlying the metallic sting of her copper blood.

Slowly, deliberately, I pressed the edge of my tongue against the cold blade, licking the drying crimson from the skymetal. Her taste hit my tongue like wildfire, triggering a violent, instinctual roar from the beast in my marrow. She had been terrified. Her adrenaline had been spiking. She had cut herself trying to break that lock, fighting until the very moment they overwhelmed her.

Heavy, hurried footsteps echoed behind me. I stood up slowly, slipping the blood-slicked dagger into my waistband. I turned to see Toren jogging into the clearing, his face grim. Sora leaned heavily against his side. Her head was lolling slightly, a massive, purple bruise swelling along her temple, her eyes bloodshot and unfocused.

"Master," Toren said, his voice tight as he carefully held Sora up. "We found her near the western overlook. She was completely unconscious."

Sora blinked against the smoke, a tear cutting a clean path through the soot on her cheek as she looked at the shattered cage, and then at me. Her voice was a fragile, sorrowful whimper.