Page 79

Xerxes

T he hours passed, and I’d only been capable of staring at her .

I’d thought her alluring, beautiful even, when I’d first laid eyes on her at the palace. She’d been protected by her mates, but I’d only had eyes for her even then. My Primal had liked her presence, but I hadn’t understood why.

Now, though, I did. Her scent was overwhelming, but calming at the same time.

Intoxicating in the way it wrapped around me.

I felt a tug in my chest as I watched her from behind.

She walked ahead with the towering male—the others referred to him as the demon king , and he had referred to her as wife .

But he was not a mate. They did not share a scent, though I noticed the matching marks on their hands.

Jealousy sparked within me as I watched them. His scent sweetened with her proximity. And he rarely addressed any of the others. Only her.

The small female with the red hair had been right all after all.

The blond one walked on my mate’s other side. She walked hand in hand with the male, and she treated him like he was fragile. I’d seen the way they talked. He looked different to the first time I saw him, too. Now, he appeared weak.

It actually made me fearful of what might happen to her if either male failed to protect her.

We mated as Primals, but it was a choice. The Prima would take several males, like the Queen did, but for breeding purposes. Our mates, though, were not blessed by the Goddess Nyx.

Now, I understood why there was a pull in my chest leading me right to her .

I had been introduced to the ones I would call my team .

The other female with the red in her eyes.

She was a vampire. There were none of those roaming these lands, and those that were in their slumber were left like that.

She eyed me like I was an enemy. I thought that was why I had been placed with them.

But the other male and her were the fastest. They would be able to outrun the thrax if necessary, since we did not have the demon who could move through shadows with us.

The wolf was overly protective of the Queen, I could tell. The male could also change forms, but he took the shape of an actual animal. There were none of them left to walk these lands. But the Primals came from his kind, reshaped by the magic left behind by the others .

We walked in groups of three towards the open road and village. The night still hung over the sky, casting the world in a thick darkness, only broken up by the small fires lit around the village.

The enemy army was lucky they had not attracted the thrax . They liked fire and warmth, intrigued by what they could no longer feel.

Far in the distance, I could smell death on the wind. A light breeze drifted over the land, carrying with it the familiar stench that came with the thrax . But even though I could smell them, I was still overwhelmed by her .

Before, when she claimed we had a mate bond , I’d wanted to ignore it.

To ignore the way my Primal reacted to her.

To the sound of her voice, to each silent look she spared me.

Her laugh, when she allowed herself to do so.

She was much softer when she wasn’t in immediate danger.

When facing off with Phaedra, she had been hard, a Queen.

But amongst her mates, she was something else.

I thought back to before, when we’d gathered around the stones of light.

I hadn’t stayed man for long. It was clear the others were uncomfortable with my body, though seeing her blush when the dark haired, pointed-eared male explained a knot to her…

it’d taken all my strength not to let her reaction go to my cock.

And then her eyes when I explained that as Primals, we mated in our Primal form…She hadn’t expected that. But hearing how the others claimed their fated mates was interesting. Most of that knowledge was lost when the land had been purged, and we’d been created in the ashes.

We paused far enough away from the village to not be seen by any who patrolled.

The weak male and the red-headed one inched closer to the forest boundary, the silver-haired male close behind.

I was curious about her other mates. They were all powerful, even the one she had not claimed, though he was the least powerful of them all.

He also kept his distance from her. The others, their scents marked her, and hers them.

But him…there was no sign of his mark upon her, and because he stayed away, there was no scent claim, either.

I’d decided not to question it before, and I knew not to ask. These sorts of dynamics were uncommon for our people. Sometimes, one female mated with many males. Sometimes, one male took many females. It depended on survival, on breeding.

The three males moved to different sides of the roads. A tingle ran down my spine as I watched her move to stand with them. Together, they worked their magic, weaving it together to create a barrier between the trees that would halt any of the enemy army from stepping foot on the road.

Violet light danced across her body. She said it was her magic, but what was happening on her skin was alive.

I couldn’t understand why my heart reacted to her the way it did. Again, I felt a tug in my chest, an urge to go to her.

But holding myself back was the only thing I could do.

It took only moments, but the light around her settled before disappearing.

Her eyes flickered up to meet mine. A ring of gold surrounded the dark brown of her irises, turning them the colour of freshly harvested honey. My heart leapt into my throat. There was a pink tinge to her cheeks as she stepped into line with the weak male and the demon king.

Another tug in my chest almost had me falling out of line. The desire to take her into the mating ritual rushed through me. I barely even knew her name, and yet, a part of me was ready to bind my life to hers in the way she’d explained.

The male shifter looked at me. His eyes were glowing, not the same green from earlier. He made a quick movement with his hand, which he’d earlier explained would mean ‘ follow ’.

I bowed my head and dropped onto all fours.

A moment later, he shifted into his wolf.

He was large, though smaller than me and a lot of the beasts the enemy had.

There was, however, an air about him that was odd.

Powerful. He emitted a strength that most others would submit to. Though not her other mates.

The female bowed her head once and spared her—our—mate a look before turning to me and making the same movement with her hand.

With one last look at her , at the one who claimed me as her fated, we left the safety of the barrier and escaped into the disappearing darkness.

The further we ran, the more the stench grew. The nests of thrax were close to the village, so it was a wonder the decaying creatures hadn’t been alerted to the presence of the army.

Thrax nests were hidden sometimes in ruins, other times in forests. Here, though, they were in old burrows that once housed the dead mortals who lived on the old shifter lands. As a child, I’d seen the nests here up close.

The burrows were small, circular buildings made of stone. Long ago, ceramic and stone urns filled the walls, holding the ashes of the dead, harbouring the memories of old bloodlines lost to mortality. The thrax had dug their way into them and now bred their young within .

We didn’t have to get close to smell their rotting flesh. Even when they were specks in the distance with only the slow-rising sun to cast any light over the mounds, we could smell it.

The female brought something up over her nose, a covering of sorts, but her eyes turned from blue to red as she scanned the hillside. The mounds scattered the hill, long grass obscuring most of them. But I knew we were far enough away that once we drew them out, we would not be caught.

The wolf stalked forward, and looked over his shoulder—not at us, but towards the forest, where the other teams were on the move.

She would be waiting with the weak one and the demon for our distraction. We needed to draw the army as far away from the village as we could.

We held our breaths as we waited for the first fire to be lit.

Sparks lit the sky, embers leaping from what we could only assume was the first large fire that needed to be set. Smoke danced towards the darkness, and at the first sounds of pops , the wolf turned his head to the burrows and let out a howl.

I added to it, and together we called upon the thrax . The stench of death thickened the air, the sweet rotting of their flesh washing her scent from my fur.

It didn’t take long for them to rise from the burrows. The sound of popping continued from the village, but soon enough, the whines of the cursed beasts could be heard over our howls.

“Let’s go!” The female started for the village, her speed faster than anything I’d ever witnessed.

But it didn’t take long for the wolf and I to follow, our footsteps hard.

My paws crashed against the hard earth, the sounds of the thrax claws and their flesh falling from their bones sounding behind us.

They were not nearly as fast as us, but we didn’t need them to be.

As we neared the village, we veered towards the forest. There was enough sound, enough light, that we did not have to worry about the thrax following us.

They would do our work for us.