Page 26 of Beast of Blood and Ash (Drakarn Mates #6)

OMVAR

The city was a screaming wound, and I was the blade defending it.

Drums hammered the air, sounding off slick, black stone. The rhythm was relentless, a battlefield heartbeat, a fever running beneath my scales. My own pulse fought to break free, kicked and battered at my ribs, so loud I could barely hear the world.

Down there, beneath all those tons of volcanic rock, shadows and sickly yellow light flickered and brawled against the walls, making the tunnels churn and shift in the corners of my eye.

Scalvaris was chaos.

Stone corridors flashed past, the world reduced to blurred motion, Nyx a silent streak of storm-dark scales on my right, Khorlar on my left, his jaw clenched, eyes narrowed into slits. The stench of air was thick: Ignarath filth, scorched metal, the sharp tang of spilled Drakarn blood.

How many? Where? How?

The questions spun, merciless as windblown grit. My mind latched onto them, a predator refusing to let go. This city was supposed to be guarded, its veins patrolled by blades, its entrances a promise that violence couldn’t slip inside. So how had they gotten in? Who opened the wound?

Rage was a cleansing fire. It blazed through my veins, devouring caution, scouring away the endless calculations and regrets simmering in the back of my mind.

I let it burn down the politics, the careful dance around status and suspicion, the ancient weight of blood debts and shame. There was only the hunt.

We moved as one, locked in step by shared purpose and the pure, ugly music of fury. We were a beast with three heads, tearing through the city’s heart. Our claws dug channels in the stone, tails lashing, each stride fueled by memory and dread.

“We found two dead guards by the eastern sky shafts,” Khorlar roared over the din. “That will take them near the human quarters.”

I didn’t need him to tell me. The scent was thick on the air, an acrid trail of blood, terror, and weaker prey.

Human sweat was different—sweet, alien, coppery, rising above the tangle of Drakarn fear and the greasy stench of Ignarath.

The path burned in my nose; I could almost see it, a red thread winding through the labyrinth.

We sprinted, every footstep a promise I could not afford to break.

The tunnel bent, and the world exploded into violence.

The human quarters were chaos incarnate. The stone floor was slick, a crust of half-dried blood, footprints glimmering beneath scattered globs of heat crystal wax. Two Drakarn guards lay crumpled near the threshold, their scales shredded, throats vented to the bone.

The walls were battered, flecked with handprints and the desperate arcs of fingers dragged during the last moments of a struggle. I tasted iron on the air, thick and choking.

Screams slashed the silence. Human, Drakarn—there was no difference when the pain was deep enough. The noise rebounded, multiplied by the low ceiling, the roundness of the alcoves.

The Ignarath infiltrators came in tight formation, a hand-picked squad wielding their discipline like a chain.

Not a pack of wild brutes, not a roving mob.

Each movement was calculated, lines of attack closing with the cold, surgical precision only years of blood games could breed.

They pressed forward, step by step, no wasted motion, no unnecessary sound.

I let the Beast of Ignarath off its leash.

My claws were for tearing.

My fangs were for rending.

There was no room for gentleness there. The old, black part of me, the one carved by Skorai’s hand, reveled in the violence.

This was what I was made for. To be the monster that hunted other monsters.

I moved through the enemy ranks like a scythe, every blow a killing strike. Bone snapped under my fists. My claws found throats, the hot gush of arterial blood painting the stones. The Ignarath fought hard but not like me.

No one fought like me.

I slammed one to the ground, felt the ridge of his spine yield, crushed it beneath my knee. Another, smaller, tried to flank me; I twisted, caught his blade, snapped his wrist, finished him with a single, silent bite to the throat.

There was beauty in it, the rhythm of destruction, a dance I’d been bred for, a language older than words. I heard Nyx’s battle cry and saw Khorlar sweep his tail to knock two enemies from their feet. We moved with the storm, unafraid of the blood, unafraid of ourselves.

This wasn’t random. This wasn’t chaos. It was a slaughter. Assassins. Their faces were stripped of joy or fear. Only focus, and the drive to kill or die.

A scream cut the air. I spun?—

Kinsley, one of the humans with courage enough to start a riot in her sleep, was being dragged away, kicking, spitting curses.

Her captor was massive, scales scored by the scars of a hundred pit fights.

I bellowed a challenge, a sound that would have broken a lesser Drakarn, but another Ignarath intercepted, blade flashing at my throat.

Khorlar and Nyx broke off, their priorities shifting as humans scattered, vulnerable. Nyx pulled Kira, stunned, pale, blood splashed across her face, from the clutches of a dying Ignarath.

Khorlar scooped up Eden, her arm limp and hanging, blood streaking her sleeve. The squad’s formation threatened to collapse, but they redoubled, fighting not for glory, but for their deadly mission.

A shadow flickered in the corner of the melee.

“Where did these bastards come from?” Vega seemed to materialize out of nowhere, a wickedly sharp knife clutched in her hand, blood streaked up to her wrist. Her eyes were wild, hair plastered to her temples. “Three attacked us. And now this?”

I was a breath away from responding, some growled reassurance rising in my throat, when I saw him.

Draskeer.

The same guard I’d done my best to keep away from Reika in Ignarath. Skorai’s pet bruiser, a specialist in pain. The bruise-scaled bastard.

My vision tunneled. Draskeer’s arm was a band of iron around Reika’s waist, his claws digging into her as he dragged her, writhing, into the shadows at the far end of the corridor. The panic in her eyes was a knife under my ribs.

My world snapped, crushed by the mate-bond. The fury that tore out of my chest had nothing to do with honor or Scalvaris or even vengeance.

A sound of pure, world-ending fury rose in me—no longer a warrior, but a mate being robbed.

“Omvar! Secure the others!” Khorlar’s voice was a distant irrelevance, his order drifting like wind-blown ash.

The bond screamed. A singular, burning command that superseded rank, strategy, and reason.

Find her.

Save her.

It drowned out everything else. I saw only the space where she had been, the bruises on Draskeer’s arms, the glint of his fangs too close to her skin. I couldn’t hear the battle behind me. I couldn’t hear Nyx’s shout or Khorlar’s curses.

There was only the bond. Only the hunt.

I disengaged from the warrior in front of me with a brutal, final blow that sent him staggering back, his chest caved in.

The wet crack of bone was an afterthought.

I didn’t wait for him to fall, ignoring the sprays of blood clinging to my arms. I left the others to the chaos; all that mattered was the fading scent of her fear, sharp as raw copper, and the foul stench of Draskeer’s trail, like rotten eggs and poison musk.

My mind was a maelstrom: guilt, terror, longing, the twin engines of shame and desperation twisting every nerve raw.

I had promised her safety. I had promised myself I would stand between her and all the monsters of this world.

And now she was gone, snatched into the dark by the worst Ignarath had ever bred.

I launched myself into the darkness after them.

The stone passage narrowed, rough-hewn walls scraping my wings, the air cooler, thick with the echo of my footfalls and the distant, rhythmic thump of the city’s alarms. Every sense stretched to breaking.

I could smell them, the acidic reek of Draskeer, carrying the old ghosts of the arena, and beneath it, the fragile sweetness of Reika’s skin, her terror a trail I could track even blind.

My side burned.

I realized, distantly, that I was hurt, a deep gash in my ribs, blood seeping hot and sticky down my flank. I didn’t feel it. I didn’t care.

There was only the trail, slick and cold and metallic, winding through unmapped stone, through secret ways I hadn’t known existed. These were the old tunnels, forgotten even by the city’s lifeblood. They spiraled and twisted, black as the world before creation.

I stumbled, righted myself, shoved forward, reckless as the beast I was raised to be.

In these tunnels, every shadow was an enemy. My feet slipped on blood, stone slick beneath my claws. My heartbeat thundered, a savage drum drowning out even the alarms. I barely saw the walls, the smears of old battle, the broken doors kicked in by desperate hands.

I drove myself forward, chasing the ghosts and the scent and the memory of what I would never forgive myself for—too slow, too weak, too late. Guilt and terror blurred together until I was nothing but a predator chasing the last warmth of hope.

The tunnel opened up into the searing glare of the volcanic wastes.

The wind howled, ripping at the lingering traces of scent—Draskeer, Reika, blood and panic—almost lost, but not quite.

The world outside was a red desert, shimmering with toxic heat, stone whipped into knives by the gale.

The ground was a mosaic of cracked obsidian and glass, the sky a boiling cauldron of twin suns leering down.

The trail was faint there, the wind tearing at the scent, but it was enough.

I didn’t hesitate.

Bloodied, battered, and alone, I vanished into the shimmering red desert.

I was the blade. The city was a wound. If I failed, if I hesitated, everything would bleed out.

But I was not what Ignarath made me. I was something else. I was the monster they should have feared all along.

And I would burn the world to bring her home.