Page 106 of A Hunt Bound in Blood

All around me the mutts surged forward, ready to carry out their master’s command, and in heartbeats, they’d pulled me off him and I lost my brother in the tide. Once more, the masses were on me, grabbing me, clawing, ripping, shredding. I fought them off, determined to get back to Donal and finish what we’d started, but he’d disappeared in the mob.

It didn’t matter. I would find him. I would keep fighting until I couldn’t anymore, until my ravaged body had no choice but to collapse. My siblings sought to end me. They would succeed—there was no way I could survive this—but I would take Donal with me and show them what Karhasan’s best could do. What a true leader looked like in his final moments. With my dying breath, I would mock them and make them see what they could never hope to be.

Glory

XLIX

I did my best to clear my mind of everything except the amulet and getting home. As I approached the docks, I stared at the ship and thought only of reaching the deck. Once I was there, I could breathe. Once I was there, I was finished. I could collapse and cry until I had nothing left to give.

But my mind rebelled, as it had done that first week of this journey when I’d been furious with myself for seeing Cammon as anything but a cocky, emotion-eating demon that I had to protect myself from. Those defences around my heart had become even more important after discovering the full effect he had on me. But as though his absence had destroyed every barrier, I found myself consumed with memories of him. Flashes of his beautiful crimson eyes turning inky black whenever his emotions—so often desire—grew too turbulent to be contained. The warmth of his mouth when he kissed me. The gentleness of his rough hands when they caressed my skin. His horns. His wings. His passion. The fire in his eyes when he talked about travelling the world and all the treasures he’d found.

The taste of his blood.

The sharp, intense craving for him nearly brought me to my knees, and I stumbled to a halt halfway up the wooden gangway.

I’d never tasted anything as divine as him, and I doubted I ever would again. He tasted as though he had been created especially for me. My demon prince. My salvation.

The ship was right in front of me. Ten more steps, and I would be where I’d been headed these past three weeks. The crew had spotted me, and already they were making moves to leave. I needed to close those last ten steps.

A shift in the wind brought the scent of blood to my nose and carried screams of agony and fury from the battle being waged beyond that fucking rock wall. So far from where I stood. Farther than I would ever manage to reach.

Cammon was in the middle of that chaos, fighting for his life against creatures who’d been sent here to kill him by the people who’d ruined his life ten years ago. They thought they could get the better of him. They thought they could tear him down and splatter his blood across the earth for the sake of a fucking crown they didn’t deserve to wear.

My breathing picked up and familiar energy surged through me, infusing my muscles, my blood. My magic had woken, and it filled me to the point of bursting. My senses sharpened, and I became aware of the ocean churning beneath my feet, of the wind catching my hair and blowing it askew. Of the sand behind me. The rocks in the wall. The trees beyond.

A tiny voice in my head told me to calm down, to breathe, to stay in control, but I silenced that voice with a curse. I was finished with being calm and in control. I’d held myself back with the shifters, the mutts, the drake, but I was done playing it safe. Cammon was fighting for his beautiful life because people were too jealous of everything he brought to the world. I wouldn’t stand for it. It wasn’t right. Not after everything he had sacrificed for me—after he’d given up his future so I could have mine. It wasn’t fair that, of the two of us, he should be the one to fall. He had so much of a life ahead of him, with so much more to offer than I, who was going home to hide in a fucking closet.

Rage consumed me, and as it flowed unchecked through my veins, my magic followed, building, spreading. The wind picked up and the water churned, tossing the ship in its moorings.

The crew’s yells caught my ear as they shifted their priorities from taking leave to preparing for the sudden storm. I tuned them out and sank into my power, unleashed for the first time since I was twelve years old.

Cammon’s family wanted a battle? They would get one.

With no thought for anything else, I whirled around and ran back the way I’d come.

Cammon

L

Blood dripped from multiple points on my body where the sharpest, strongest teeth and claws had pierced my thickened skin. One of my wings was torn, the other so weighed down with gore I could barely lift it. But I didn’t retract them, using them to shield my back from the dozens of mutts still tearing into me. My claws were caked in blood and viscera, as were my horns. Exhaustion tugged on every limb. I didn’t let any of it stop me.

Corpses covered the ground, making it as hard for my enemies to manoeuvre as it was for me, and I shifted my stance to position myself in the middle of them, again opening space. Just for a moment—a mere breath before they swarmed the fallen and renewed their attack.

Finally, I spotted Donal in the horde. He kept moving, putting the mutts between us, but Leto and Sabina had obviously made him promise to witness my death with his own eyes—and that vow would guarantee his end.

I leapt into the air and coasted over the heads of the reaching mutts, the agony in my broken wing making my eyes water. When I landed in front of my brother, he stumbled backwards. The mutts were still coming, pulling at my arms, tugging on my tail. I shook them off and reached for Donal’s throat. He grinned and launched himself into the sky.

I snarled after him before being dragged back into the battle. I cut the beasts down, wrapped my tail around the waist of one to throw them into the path of another, dipped my head to ram my horns into the chest of a half-made tiger. Corpse by corpse, mutt by mutt, I was making my mark, but I was flagging. Failing. My last surge of energy was already waning, and I didn’t have it in me to draw any more strength.

By now, Glory would be on the ship. The vessel would be on its way to Golth. She would be safe.

A small consolation that made every agony bearable.

I stumbled and fell to one knee. Three wolves stalked towards me, human eyes on canine faces, their bodies a twisted mix of person and beast. They promised death, and I was ready to accept it.

A whoosh of air behind me made me spin around, and I found myself staring once more at Donal. The wounds I’d given him had already begun to heal, and he looked rejuvenated after his flight. He stood over me, his hands on his hips, his grin arrogant. I couldn’t rise from the muck, too exhausted to stand. He had me, and he knew it. I wouldn’t give up, but there was no way I could overpower him in my current bloody and ragged state.

Yet as I stared him down, determined to keep my eyes open to face my end, a burst of thunder shook the ground beneath me. The midday sky darkened to midnight black as heavy clouds rolled in out of nowhere. Lightning flashed, brightening the hundreds of creatures surrounding me.