Page 48 of Kingdom of Darkness and Dragons (Empire of Vengeance #4)
I woke to emptiness.
The absence of her warmth against my chest was like a physical blow, yanking me from the deepest sleep I'd known in months into cold, brutal awareness. My arm closed around nothing but cooling air where her body should have been, and the fury that erupted in my chest was immediate and consuming.
She was gone.
I sat up in the darkness, my enhanced vision cutting through the dark of the forest as if it were bright noon.
It was entirely plausible that she’d gone to relieve herself, but when I stopped and listened, I heard nothing.
Not the slightest rustle beyond the leaves of the trees around me.
The woman had vanished, slipped away while I'd been lost in the first peaceful sleep I'd experienced since the whispers began.
The voices stirred in response to my rage, a chorus of approval that made my head pound.
She runs from you, they hissed, eager and hungry. She thinks herself free. Show her the truth. Show her what happens to prey that tries to escape.
I closed my eyes, drawing a shaking breath as power surged through my veins like molten metal.
The shadows in the trees responded to my emotion, writhing and coiling around my feet like living serpents eager for the hunt.
It would be so easy to let them loose, to send tendrils of darkness racing through the forest until they found her and dragged her back to me like a prize.
But that wasn't what I wanted. Not yet.
I wanted to hunt.
The realization struck me with surprising clarity, cutting through the initial rage to reveal something deeper and more primal.
She had challenged me, defied me, chosen flight over submission.
The warrior in her was showing itself, and something savage in my blood responded to that defiance with hunger rather than anger.
She thought she could escape me. She thought the darkness and the forest would hide her from a creature born to hunt in shadow. The naivety of it was almost charming.
I rose from the cave floor, my movements fluid and predatory as power flowed through every muscle.
The feathered cloak settled around my shoulders like wings, and I felt the familiar transformation begin—not the physical shifting that marked other Talfen magic users, but something deeper.
The man Taveth receding into the background, leaving behind something colder, more focused.
Something born to kill.
Hunt, the voices whispered, and for once their desires aligned perfectly with my own. Track. Find. Claim.
I stepped out of the cave and into the pre-dawn darkness, my feet silent on the rocky ground. The forest stretched before me, a maze of shadow and moonlight that would confuse and terrify any normal person. But I was not normal, and this was my domain.
Closing my eyes, I extended my senses into the darkness around me.
Every shadow became an extension of my awareness, every pool of black between the trees a window into the night.
I could feel the small creatures that scurried through the underbrush, the owls that hunted from the branches above, the larger predators that prowled these mountains in search of prey.
And there—a disruption in the natural patterns, a warmth that didn't belong. She was perhaps a quarter-mile ahead, moving through the trees with surprising stealth for someone untrained in forest craft. But stealth meant nothing to one who could see through the eyes of darkness itself.
I began to follow.
The hunt was intoxicating in ways I hadn't expected.
Each step filled me with a sense of purpose that had been absent from my life for months, a clarity of intention that cut through the fog of whispers and doubt.
She was mine by right of claiming, mine by the inexplicable pull that had drawn me to her on the battlefield, and now she was trying to flee from what she surely must feel as keenly as I did.
The mate bond. It had to be what this was—this overwhelming compulsion that had made me risk everything to carry her from the carnage, this possessive hunger that made my skin burn every time I touched her.
The problem was that I didn't want a mate.
Mates were for men who planned futures beyond the next battle, who dreamed of children and growing old in peace.
I was a weapon, a creature of shadow and vengeance whose very touch carried corruption.
The whispers that plagued my mind would only grow stronger with time, and eventually they would consume what remained of my humanity entirely.
What kind of life could I offer to anyone, let alone to a woman who deserved better than a monster wearing a man's face?
And yet...
The memory of her pressed against me rose unbidden, sending heat coursing through my veins.
The way she'd responded to my touch despite her fear, the soft sounds she'd made as I'd brought her to release, the perfect way she'd fit in my arms as if she'd been made for me.
For those precious hours, the voices had gone quiet, driven back by something stronger than their whispered poison.
Peace. When was the last time I'd known peace?
I moved through the forest like a wraith, following her trail with predatory patience.
She was clever, I had to admit—she'd chosen her route well, sticking to rocky ground where possible to minimize tracks, avoiding the obvious paths that would make her easy to follow.
If she'd been fleeing from an ordinary pursuer, she might have had a chance.
But I was not ordinary, and the shadows themselves were my allies.
A tendril of darkness slithered ahead of me, moving between the trees like a snake made of liquid night.
It tasted her scent on the air, felt the warmth of her footprints on the cold earth, reported back with information that no human sense could have gathered.
She had stumbled here, caught herself against that tree, paused by this stream to drink and splash water on her face.
The intimacy of tracking her this way was almost overwhelming.
Through my connection to the shadows, I could sense her emotional state—the fear that drove her forward, the exhaustion that made her stumble, the determination that kept her moving despite the hopelessness of her situation.
She was magnificent in her defiance, a warrior to her core even when faced with supernatural pursuit.
It made me want her more.
The physical desire was becoming painful, a constant ache that pulsed through my body with each heartbeat.
The memory of her naked skin beneath my hands, the taste of her on my tongue, the way she'd arched beneath me in desperate need—it haunted every step of the hunt.
I could have taken her that first night, could have bitten her deeply and sealed the bond that sang between us.
The urge had been overwhelming, nearly breaking my control entirely.
But something had held me back. Some fragment of the man I'd been before the magic claimed me, whispering warnings about consequences and choices and the irreversible nature of what I was contemplating.
Because once I claimed her properly, there would be no going back. Mate bonds were permanent, or so the stories claimed. If I marked her as mine, she would be tied to me for whatever remained of my life—and my descent into madness would become her burden to bear.
The responsible thing would be to let her go.
To allow her to escape into the forest and find her way back to whatever life she'd been living before the battle brought us together.
She deserved freedom, deserved the chance to choose her own fate rather than being trapped by the accident of supernatural chemistry.
But responsibility was a luxury I could no longer afford.
The voices were getting stronger with each passing day, their whispers becoming harder to distinguish from my own thoughts.
Soon I would be like Sayven, lost in the grey spaces between sanity and power, and when that happened I would need an anchor.
Something real and warm and purely mine to hold onto when the darkness tried to claim me entirely.
She could be that anchor. The peace I'd felt while holding her proved it was possible.
I just had to convince her to stay willingly... or ensure she had no choice in the matter.
The hunt continued through the night hours, a deadly game of cat and mouse played out in the deep shadows beneath ancient pines.
She was tiring—I could sense it in the way her movements became less coordinated, the increasing frequency of her stumbles.
Soon she would be forced to rest, and when she did, I would take her.
But first, I wanted to play with her a little.
A shadow detached itself from the base of a tree directly in her path, forming into the vague shape of a man before dissolving back into darkness.
She stopped abruptly, her breathing harsh in the still air, and I felt a spike of fear lance through the connection between us.
Good. Let her understand that escape was impossible, that I was everywhere the darkness touched.
Another shadow moved to her left, then another to her right. Not attacking, just... watching. Making their presence known. She spun in a circle, her Imperial uniform dark with sweat, her hand reaching instinctively for a weapon she no longer carried.
"I know you're there," she called out, her voice steady despite the terror I could sense radiating from her. "Stop playing games and face me."
The challenge in her tone sent fresh heat coursing through my veins. Even exhausted and afraid, she remained defiant. Most people would have collapsed by now, weeping and begging for mercy. But not her. Never her.
It was exactly what I'd expected from someone strong enough to carry mate marks from not one but two other males.