Page 24 of Bound By the Beast Man

DIANA

I wake to a profound and unfamiliar quiet.

The storm that raged outside the small hunter’s hut has passed, leaving a deep, muffled silence in its wake.

Through the single, grimy windowpane, I can see a world made new, covered in a thick, pristine blanket of fresh snow.

The early morning light is soft and grey, filtering through the trees and into our small shelter.

I am wrapped in Corvak’s arms, his heavy, sleeping form a warm, solid wall at my back.

His breath is a steady, even rhythm against my hair, and his heartbeat, which I can feel through his chest, is a slow, powerful drumbeat that feels like the very rhythm of life itself.

A feeling of peace, so complete and so foreign it almost makes me weep, settles over me.

The ever-present knot of fear and tension that has lived in my stomach for years has finally, miraculously, loosened its grip.

In the safety of his embrace, something inside me that I thought had been burned to ashes with my village.

I no longer am alone. I study his face, the fierce, leonine lines of it softened in sleep. I marvel at the contrast between the raw power he possesses and the incredible gentleness with which he holds me.

A new fear, sharp and piercing, cuts through the peace.

It is not the fear of being captured, but the fear of losing this.

Of losing him. He has a mission, a duty to his people that is far more important than one lost, half-breed human girl.

Sooner or later, he will have to leave me to complete it.

The thought is an icy shard in my heart, and I press myself closer to him, trying to absorb enough of his warmth and strength to last a lifetime.

For now, in this quiet moment, he is mine, and I am his.

It is a fragile, impossible gift, and I am terrified of it being taken away.

The warmth of his body and the deep, hypnotic rhythm of his breathing lull me back toward the edge of sleep.

I do not fight it. As I drift, my mind does not descend into the familiar, blessedly empty void.

A dream takes hold, but it is not the fiery, traumatic memory of my village.

This is something new. I am standing on the deck of a ship I have never seen before, its sails emblazoned with the emblem of a horned beast. The deck pitches violently beneath my feet, and the air is filled with the roar of a furious, unnatural sea.

I am an invisible observer, a ghost floating above the chaos.

I see Corvak, his face grim, his body braced against the assault of the waves.

He is not alone. There are five other manticores with him, all of them fighting with a desperate courage against the storm’s fury.

The sky above is a boiling cauldron of black and green clouds, and the lightning that rips through them.

I am witnessing the storm that shipwrecked him, the event that brought him to me.

My dream-gaze is pulled upward, toward the engulfing storm.

And I see it. It is the same entity from my village nightmare, a colossal form made of living shadow and roiling storm clouds, its eyes twin voids of cold, ancient starlight.

I feel its ancient, malevolent intelligence, its specific, focused intent on the ship.

I watch in silent horror as it commands the waves, raising an impossible wall of water to smash the vessel, an act of deliberate, calculated execution.

I wake with a sharp, strangled gasp, the terrifying images from the dream vivid and burning in my mind.

The ship splintering apart, the manticores thrown into the churning sea, the cold, triumphant presence of the shadow watching it all.

Corvak is awake instantly, his body tensing, his arms tightening around me in a protective reflex.

“What is it?” he asked. “Are you hurt?”

I pull away from him, sitting up and pushing the tangled hair from my face. My heart is pounding, but it is not with the helpless terror of my previous nightmares. This is different. This is a crucial piece of the puzzle. I turn to face him in the dim morning light.

“I had a dream,” I said, my voice trembling but clear. “I was on your ship. I saw the storm. And I saw the shadow in the clouds. It was the same one, Corvak. It was the same shadow I saw in my village the day the Purna attacked.”

He listens intently, his expression growing grim, the muscles in his jaw tightening.

“The old legends on Osiris called it the Devourer of Skies,” he said.

“The Purna had a name for it too,” I whispered, a cold memory surfacing. “I heard them speak of it in my stasis. They called it their Patron of Shadows.”

We look at each other, the chilling truth settling between us. Our enemies are not separate. They are all connected, all serving this one, ancient entity.

“It is not just a storm, and not just a shadow,” I said.

“No,” he agrees, his gaze as hard as flint. “It is the Storm Shadow.”

Our enemy has a name. And it is a force far greater than a coven of witches. Our personal fight for survival has just become part of a much older, and much darker, war.