Page 97 of Hunted By Fae

DARE

The blue and gold of Dare’s eyes gleam with the thrill of the hunt.

A bloodthirst thrives in him—for her.

The kinta who slighted him.

An animalism stirs deep in his chest as he moves for the wall, presses his pale, slender hand to it, then lifts his fine nose in the air, as though he can smell every human and beastly scent that has ever walked this corridor.

And he finds something.

A thread of the kinta lingering in the corridor.

A throaty growl catches in Dare’s throat as he shoves away from the wall.

The faint pink of his mouth twists into a snarl as he marches for the door he just came through moments ago.

Two other warriors stand, silent, by the door, watching his every move, trackinghistracking.

Daxeel walks the length of the corridor, slow, the soles of his leather boots soft on the hard floor. But Dare feels the turn of Daxeel’s gaze on him, piercing into his back as he picks through the scents weaved together in the musty air. It whispers to Dare, a tapestry of hushed secrets, of all things been and gone.

This whisper is not what Dare wants to hear.

The scent of the kinta splinters: one to the door leading up to the roof, one from the staircase he just climbed—and the third leading down the corridor.

A primal roar rips through him as he shoves from the wall.

Lashes lower over gleaming eyes. He fixes his stare on the door further down the corridor. He pushes into step, slow, predatory steps, each one slinking his muscles beneath his hard flesh, and a focused sharpness to his face.

Daxeel turns to watch him, the other two warriors mirroring him. Statues stuck up on the top floor of this concrete tower, this monstrosity, waiting, watching as Dare boots the door open—and a punch of her scent floods the corridor.

Daxeel’s chest fills with deep inhale. “That is what you are tracking?”

The scent is fresh, peppered with mud and dirt and sweat, but threaded with undercurrents of mint and lavender.

Dare doesn’t look back as the other fae approach. He stares into the dark shadows of the cold, grey stairwell. “It’s not familiar to you?”

Before Daxeel can answer, Dare is gone, disappeared, into the stairwell.

Daxeel rushes after him, Cadwyn and Iiro on his heels, a rainfall of pounding bootsteps on concrete.

Dare flings himself over the railings and lands, silent, on the steps. He doesn’t run the stairs, he leaps them, down and down and down, level after level, never breaking pace, until—

Daxeel stumbles at the sudden blast.

A familiar sound, but one that wasn’t familiar to the dark fae before coming here to this world.

Now, it’s a friend.

Gunshots mean battle.

But this fight is Dare’s.

Daxeel stands back on the landing with the others, the three of them unseen to the human on the next landing down—but that human sees Dare.

And he has the barrel of a gun aimed right at him.

A trail of dark blood trickles down Dare’s bicep from a fresh bullet buried in his shoulder.