Page 167

Linh took note of the many bodies. Most were injured, many looked unharmed but frozen as if paralysed. Many men had managed to run, abandoning the camp to save themselves after realising they weren’t going to defeat him. At least ten lay envenomed, with many more either decapitated or dying from a fatal claw strike.

“Why isn’t he coming over here?” Bragg whispered, lowering his dagger. “He’s just...eatingeveryone.”

She stiffened when Nathair, who had been slithering to another body, paused. His skull twitched, distracted by Bragg’s voice, only to twist creepily in their direction. Red orbs seemed to zero in on her, and she swallowed at the menacing sight of them. Bragg didn’t dare move, and she figured he was mostly hidden behind the stake.

For a moment, it felt like it was just her and this venomous serpent.

The blood washing from his face and open maw sprayed out when he let out deep huffs in the rain. Each one was clearer and clearer of red liquid, and she imagined with her unmoving, he was deeply disorientated.

She was another body among the many. Another victim.

He took away his stare to point his snout up towards the dark clouds. He reared back on his tail until he was upright, then greeted the rain with his palms flat and pointing upwards. His lethal claws were bared, yet he appeared to be welcoming the downpour like she had been earlier.

He became a stoic statue as his orbs blackened.

The water is cleansing him.The rain came down like heaven, and Linh bit her lips in sympathy when she thought,Just look at him.

He had so many gashes on his body that it was difficult to see where one ended and another began. Sputtering fires highlighted the purple blood washing off him in rivulets. Three arrows were embedded into his torso: two in his back and one in his side. Part of his tail was cut to the point it didn’t sit right against the ground, and had a sharp, unnatural bend in it.

Nathair had fought fifty men, if not more. The camp wasn’t small, and neither was Bragg’s bandit army. She was aware that Nathair had eaten at least five men since the fighting had stopped.

His hip bones had disappeared, as well as two bottom ribs. He even looked... longer, bulkier, more frightful. Gosh, she wanted to hug him so badly.Nathair...Her tears gathered – her poor monster.He came for me.

Her precious Duskwalker looked like he was searching for salvation in the rain, and Linh opened her mouth to give it to him. To sing and lull him into tranquillity.

“Stay fucking quiet,” Bragg rasped in her ear. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, ripping a cry from her before she could utter a single lyric.

Nathair’s head fell to the side to look at them, and crimson orbs suddenly came to life.

Linh held back her squeal when he barrelled towards them in a slither of limbs. Bragg put the knife back to her throat, choosing to use her as a shield once more.

Don’t be afraid,Linh pleaded with herself as she shut her eyes. She didn’t want to go down screaming, especially if there was a potential that he may remember her doing so.

He’d come here to save her, only to be her demise. She worried Nathair would hate himself for harming her, but she just hoped he found a way to forgive himself.M-maybe we can meet in his afterlife.

What a horrible, saddening thought.

Silence met her. When nothing happened, not even a deep huff of breath, she braved peeking open her eyes. They flung wide when Nathair’s snout was less than an inch from her nose, his red orbs seeming to stare into the very pit of her soul.

He parted his maw, and his lowered fangs rested against the floor of his mouth. A quiet, unnerving hiss shook from him, and it instantly had the tiny hairs on her body standing on end.

Her nipples budded despite the situation, and she found herself not holding even an ounce of fear. He wasn’t striking her.

New tears bubbled, and her trembling lips parted.

Hey, Nathair.

Staring at the little female whose face was swollen with the evidence of constant tears, the rage that shook Nathair was brimming with quiet malice. Violence pumped into his muscles on every heartbeat, making his entire being swell with the desire to rip apart everyone who made Linh cry.

He also shuddered.Fuck. My stomach hurts.

The souls he’d eaten were burning him from the inside out and felt like they were trying to crawl up his throat. His mind told him to rid himself of them. Hunger gurgled and grumbled, rolling the hot sick in his stomach with a confusing ache.

He was a singular breath away from slipping back into a craze.

Although the blessed rain had cleansed his mouth and nose just enough to give him a break from it, it was the sprinkling cold which woke him from the worst of his murderous stupor.

This was not how he’d planned to rescue her, but it’d been a risk he’d taken all the same.