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Once more, she saw twin red glows and thought a person standing suddenly disappeared. She couldn’t see properly asshe searched for someone, anyone, to save her. She was given nothing but cruel gawks as a few chuckled.

Linh whimpered when she felt the cold steel pressing against her. “I won’t run,” she blurted. A complete and utter lie.

He snorted a humourless laugh. “Didn’t really believe you the first time, and definitely don’t believe you now.” Then he shouted, “Someone get me a bandage.”

When her Achilles tendon was sliced cleanly through, her foot became unresponsive, and Linh pelted out a scream.

A loud, deafening, ear-splitting roar answered her.

A monster with a long, continuous limb barrelled into the crowd of men with swiping claws. A white serpent skull dipped down like a wave as he dived, only for Nathair to rise when he’d killed two bandits in one go. He tackled another before the man had even gotten his bearings, and the Duskwalker’s fangs lanced his chest as they crashed to the ground.

Linh didn’t get the chance to be relieved to see him. She gasped and lifted her head back when a knife was pressed to her throat.

“How thefuckdid it get here so fast?” Bragg whispered to himself. “What are the lads doing in the village? They were supposed to keep everyone distracted until we were gone.”

Oh my god, he’s here.Linh didn’t care how he arrived so fast, and a relieved sob broke from her.Nathair.

The leather straps of Bragg’s dagger hilt creaked in his white-knuckled grip as he bit out, “Shit! He’s killing everyone.”

“D-do you really think threatening me is going to help you?” she asked, her eyes never leaving Nathair as he shot through the camp like a cyclone of black scales.

Anything that moved became his target, unless a weapon hit him. Pain made him roar and bare his venomous fangs, and he lunged at his attacker with his claws at the ready. He didn’t seem to care that he was forcing steel into his own body as a result,purely focused on destroying and eating the person wielding it. His snarls and hisses mingled with the roars and yells of men as some attacked and others fled momentarily to regroup.

Linh knew Bragg could see what she did: a slaughter.

They’d underestimated Nathair. They were stupid to think that a Duskwalker was anything like a Demon. Then again, Linh had thought them to be no different until she met one.

With how Nathair had briefly and sporadically described the rest of his kin... she knew that even compared to his own, he was different. He had to be the biggest, the longest, and perhaps even the deadliest.

“J-just let me go,” Linh pleaded.

“You’re my answer to getting out of this alive if he doesn’t want to watch me slit your throat,” Bragg bit through gritted teeth.

Why take me in the first place if I matter that little?!Then again, Linh would never understand the warped mind of an idiotic brute.

Linh’s brows only furrowed when she knew the truth as she watched Nathair decimate the campsite. A tent was on fire from a knocked-over torch, and the thick smoke of it was black and disgusting. The wind suddenly picked up speed and had an icy chill to it, billowing leaves and forest debris around the carnage.

“We’re both going to die,” she whispered.

He’s enraged.She watched as someone shoved their sword into his thick torso, while another cut their axe halfway through the last few feet of his tapered tail.The lights I saw earlier, they were him trying to kill everyone without losing his senses.

Her scream must have set him off, and now her protector didn’t see her. She was just another body, another enemy – prey, food.

A droplet splattered against her cheek, and Linh lifted her face to the gathering rain. It’d been threatening them all day, and finally washed over them.

It’s cold.She shivered and closed her eyes to it in welcome.It’s fine. I’d rather Nathair kill me than be the wife of a cruel man.

She couldn’t accept Bragg, but she could accept this.

Even if Nathair never learned of it, he saved her this night and was her salvation, despite the real possibility of it ending in tragedy.

At first, the rain was light, but it quickly grew in power. A roaringshaalanded over them like a blanket, somehow muting everything other than the constant fighting. Minutes passed, and she didn’t have the heart to feel sorry for those who screamed. It was all deserved. They brought this upon themselves.

Everything went quiet.

With her hair wet and clinging to her face and neck, Linh finally looked down from the falling drops. Off to the side, in a collapsed tent, she watched Nathair tearing into a man. He tore a limb off, only to swallow it whole, before working on the next one. The moment he was done with the man, his tail curled under himself, and he crawled on his hands to a man bleeding out on the ground.

He made quick work of him, and only turned to those who made noise.