Page 91 of Hunted By Fae

It’s a skill of Dare’s, a talent, to blend in with the darkness, belong with the shadows, become a statue that merges with its surroundings—then strike at the perfect moment.

But Dare just watches as the human runs past… and right into the length of a black and gold sword.

A warrior towers over the stunned, skewered human.

Daxeel’s gloved grip firms on the hilt of the sword, then he yanks it out.

Before the human can even die or fall at his boots, Daxeel has forgotten him, and he moves for Dare, a question on his furrowed brow.

Dare’s stillness has attracted attention.

Two more dark males come up the lane behind him, their quiet curiosity found in their soft, slow steps.

Dare watches Daxeel approach, and he reads the frown on his bronzed face too easily, he hears the question in his silence:

‘What is it?’

‘What do you sense?’

‘What does Fate tell you?’

Dare doesn’t answer the unspoken questions.

Instead, he lifts his fine nose to the rush of frosty air pushing through the street, laced with smoke, and he studies the scents layered in it.

Still, two dark fae are nearing.

Dare senses their advance behind him, hears it, smells it, feels it. Where his brothers are elegantly lethal beasts prowling through woods, Dare is a spectre, a ghost between worlds.

He sinks into a silence, and listens.

Again, that heartbeat invades his senses.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

The fear in that beat is frantic. It’s a panic thick enough to spread through the body, but wrestled with steady, deep breaths, a futile attempt to self-soothe.

But where is it coming from?

His lashes lower until his sight is darkened completely, and he stills, feeling through the dense smoke, the blood, the fear of surviving humans imprisoned within the unit, the rush that thrills his brothers…

And he finds it.

Thump, thump, thump, thump.

That heartbeat…

It isn’t coming from the streets.

It’s coming from up there.

Dare’s eyes gleam with a sudden thrill that rattles his insides. His hand tightens around the hilt of the dagger. And his stare fixes on the fogginess above, the roof of a grey-toned tower of dwellings. A monstrosity, a sculpture of ugliness like no other he can imagine.

Butthatis not ugly.

The face peering over the edge of the roof. The green eyes so pale and stark that they strike as more of a stone grey.

Dare knows those eyes.