Madness of the Horde King

Horde Kings of Dakkar Book 3

Zoey Draven

Copyright © 2020 by Zoey Draven

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover by Aria at Resplendent Media

For more information visit www.ZoeyDraven.com

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Epilogue

More From Zoey

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About the Author

Prologue

The windows of the towering turrets looked like golden jewels, shining and glittering and beckoning me in the dark. I had never seen anything quite so beautiful. And the city had many, many turrets, some taller than the others, some wider, and some so narrow they seemed to disappear in the night.

I shivered, however, thinking that for all the city’s beauty, it resembled a weapon from a distance, with its spiked towers and glowing, welcoming light. A trap. Meant to lure in prey to devour it.

I was trembling again. I was gasping, wanting to vomit from what I was about to do. My aching feet felt like boulders encased in thin slippers, which were crafted from molted Ghertun skin. They had lasted me on my journey from the Dead Mountain, but now made crackling sounds that made my belly churn with revulsion as I stepped towards the walled, glittering city.

Tears were already pooling in my vision. My chest and throat felt tight, suffocating. The pleasant, cool night air did nothing to soothe my fear but I forced myself to remember something good. I reminded myself that at least the frost had passed, or else I would’ve died from exposure by now.

If I had emerged from the Dead Mountain a few weeks earlier, I would’ve been dead already, frozen and blue and alone. Now, I was only one of those things…but I wasn’t certain if I would’ve rather been the other two.

The entrance gate was a short distance away. It was made of gold, Kakkari’s gold. From the safety of the forest’s edge, which bracketed the wide road leading to the gate, I counted four guards, dressed in Dakkari armor of plated gold. I eyed the steel of their blades glinting in the moonlight, swallowed hard, and then retreated deeper into the shadow of the forest.

Coward, my mind whispered. There is much at stake.

My breath hitched and the tears began to slither down my cheeks. I was terrified but I would do anything for my family. Even if it meant walking to my death.

Following the small, trickling stream, I scanned the perimeter of the stone wall through the thick, black trees. It took me a while to find it, but eventually I spotted where the stream entered underneath the city’s walls. There was a small gate letting it pass inside, the bars barely big enough for a child to squeeze through.

Taking a deep breath, I stepped from the forest’s edge and darted quickly to the gate, crouching against the wall in the darkness, my heart booming so loud I was certain the guards at the entrance would hear it.

Then I squeezed through the bars, shimmying and wiggling my bones through, suddenly grateful I didn’t have the full curves of my sister, whereas before I had always been envious.

Taking mud and sludge from the bottom of the stream—though the stench was rotten—I coated my hair, darkening the color, scrubbing it into the roots, an old habit and an old fear from my mother’s warnings. Only when I was certain no white showed through did I pull up the hood of my heavy cloak.

I stared at the end of the tunnel as the water caressed my ankles. The glow from the city made the water up ahead flow gold.

“Into the belly of the beast,” I whispered, daring to speak for the first time in what felt like years, remembering a story Maman used to tell us as children.

I wanted to curl up right there in the narrow, dark tunnel and never move again. I imagined myself as bones floating between the bars of the gate and down the stream again.

Instead, I walked forward.

As I did, I realized it was quite possible I was the first human to ever step foot inside the Dakkari’s capital city of Dothik.

Chapter One

That darkened alleyway of Dothik felt like a reprieve.

Though the city was quiet that time of the night, there were still males and females alike stumbling around on brew, their drunken, boisterous laughter booming in the still air.

I gritted my teeth, leaning back against the wall of the alley, peering down the narrow entrance. The building of a brothel was to the left. To the right, a tavern.

Dothik was the last place I wanted to be but the Dothikkar had summoned us all now that the frost had passed. Frustration built in my gut. I had just led my horde east into ungira territory, where we would remain for a few moon cycles. Ungira were dangerous beasts, the most violent and territorial of all game on Dakkar. It did not sit well with me that my darukkars, my horde warriors, would make the first hunt of the season in my absence. Anything could happen.

When a small door slid open to my left, I growled, my hand darting to the sword at my hip. A small, breathy gasp made my ears twitch and my tail flick restlessly behind me. But I realized it was only a brothel whore, as surprised by my being there as I was by her unexpected interruption.

My hand fell away from the hilt of my blade as I regarded her with narrowed eyes. Her full lips were painted black. Her red eyes raked down my body, no doubt wondering if I had gold to pay her should she approach me.

But I made her wary, hesitant. Her instincts were warning her away from me.

She mistook the dark grin that spread over my features for interest. Despite her better judgment, she walked down the short steps to where I was hidden in the dark. When she was in front of me, she parted her robe, her body nude underneath, her breasts full, her nipples painted gold, though the shimmering color was smudged, as if another male had already been suckling there.

“We do not have to go inside,” she murmured, her voice husky and warm, though I detected the thread of fear underneath. Still, she cupped one of her breasts, pinching her nipple until it was tight. “You can fuck me out here if you wish. If you like that.”

And despite my anger, despite the sudden desire thickening my cock, both emotions tangling so deep within me, a knotted mess that had been there since I was young, I was tempted to ask her price. Something quick, something distracting, something rough…perhaps it was what I needed.

Then she made the mistake of touching me. She reached down to cup my cock through my trews, pressing. Her eyes went wide, her lips parting, but I snatched her hand away and snarled.

The brothel whore’s startled gasp met my ears. She backed away, eyeing my face when I stepped forward into a thread of golden light from the tavern’s windows next door.

She saw my scar, recognized my features, and stunned realization went through her. Immediately, her head dropped, shielding her gaze, and she greeted, “Vorakkar. Forgive me. I did not—”

I was already pushing past her, more frustrated now than I’d been before. Being in Dothik, I was never alone. I could never be. It was why I’d sought out the darkened alley to begin with. For quiet.

Though, I feared the shadows most of all. I feared what hid there, what lingered.

At the last moment, I dropped her a golden coin and heard it clatter on the stone at her feet. “For your trouble,” I rumbled and then stalked away, my footsteps thudding hard on the cobbled path.

There was a sour stench in the air that made my belly churn. I was tempted to turn towards where my pyroki was stabled, take her from the mrikro, and steal away from the city in the night. Ride until I met my horde in the east. Only then would I breathe easier. Only then would the air be cleaner. Only then would the dark memories of this city fade.

Instead, I paced Dothik restlessly—as I used to when I was younger—keeping my face shielded in my cloak, though most I encountered steered clear of me. Buzzing under my skin made me walk faster, longer, eating up the city under my boots. A part of me was tempted to return to the brothel and bury myself in a female or two until the restlessness passed. Perhaps then I would sleep. But I knew sex would make it worse.

I stayed away from the western part of the city, where I used to live with my family, and where she used to live. To the south, I had just turned down a set of slanted stairs, stepping over a slumbering male’s outstretched legs, when I spotted a cloaked figure hunched against the side of darkened home. The small figure was trembling, despite the warmth in the air. I frowned. A child?

But the cloak wasn’t Dakkari-made. That alone made my spine straighten, made me regard the child closer.

The figure’s head came up slightly and seemed to freeze at the sight of me. Slowly, the child pushed up from the wall.

Nik, not quite a child, I thought. They were too tall. The long cloak brushed the ground, making a swishing, rustling sound as the figure hurried away, limping.

Stilling, I watched them retreat, down the narrow, curving street. That deep into the city, there was no one around, save for the slumbering, drunk male on the stairs. It was quiet. I could still hear the figure’s steps on the stone echoing back to me.

Leave it, I told myself. Return to the brothel and spend the rest of your energy into a female. Or better yet, return to the Dothikkar’s keep and take one of his freely offered concubines for the night.

But my feet carried me after the mysterious cloaked figure, my curiosity piqued. Even still, my hand strayed to my sword once more, my gut telling me that something was amiss and that I should be prepared.

Keeping to the shadows, I followed, softening my quick footsteps as I wound down the cobbled path. The figure hadn’t made it far. I could hear their exhaled, panicked breaths even from a distance. When they turned their hooded head in my direction, I pressed to the wall, closing my eyes so the reddened glow wouldn’t give me away in the darkness.

A moment later, the cloaked figure slipped down a dark alley, one that wouldn’t lead anywhere. But not before I saw the flash of their foot under their cloak and I froze, my mind racing, not thinking what I saw was possible.

Emerging from the shadows, I followed, not bothering to shield the sound of my hurried gait. When I reached the entrance, they were just backing out of it, seeming to realize their mistake. The figure didn’t see me coming.

My heart quickened when I snagged them around the waist, pushing them back into the wall of the alley, restraining their arms, which felt like twigs in my palms.

A soft, surprised cry made my ears twitch, made my eyes widen.

With an impatient growl, I pushed back their hood and stared into the face of a vekkiri kalles. A human female.

Here, in Dothik.

In the walled capital city of Dakkar with the Dothikkar’s guards on regular patrols.

A human.

I was not surprised often. But right then, I could only stare down into her strange face, my jaw tight, squeezing her arms perhaps a bit too tightly in my astonishment.

Primal fear marked her face. She was trembling in my grip, her eyes bright and wet. She was not a child, after all. She was a female, grown. Her breasts pressed against the wall of my chest and I found her extremely pleasing to look at, despite her fear.

“P-please—” her voice broke. “Ple-ease don’t hurt me.”

The stuttered words filtered through my brain and I processed them with a narrowed gaze. She spoke in the universal tongue. The language had sat, unused, in my mind for so long that I had almost forgotten it.

“Hann…hanniva,” she whispered.

Now, she spoke in Dakkari.

Please, she begged.

It didn’t put me at ease. Where had a human female learned the Dakkari tongue?

I didn’t release my grip on her. Instead, I studied her intently, my gaze rapt on her face while she trembled in my hold, her breaths coming out in quick gasps.

Her shimmering eyes were wide and light-colored. I had never seen a parallel to their color in a Dakkari. Or perhaps their lack of color, since hers were a clear, luminous grey. Her hair was dark but the stench of it, unwashed and dirty, drifted up to meet my nostrils. Dirt smudged her flesh, and her cloak, upon closer inspection, was tattered.

The female froze when I parted her cloak, stiffening under my touch. I’d meant to search for a weapon. I hadn’t expected for her to be dressed in nothing but a sheer shift underneath, one that exposed her naked body to me. A growl rose in my throat. Her limbs were long and willowy. Her nipples were pebbled tight, pink in color. A tuft of light curls shielded her sex from my view. All smooth, unblemished, unscarred flesh.

“Vok,” I cursed.

My body reacted of its own accord, the unexpected sight of her body surprisingly erotic. Shaking my head sharply, my nostrils flaring, I grappled for control. There was no weapon in sight, but when my hand gripped her hip, tugging her forward, she made a strangled sound in the back of her throat.

“No.”

Then her hand shot forward, quicker than I could blink, and she struck me across the face.

Chapter Two

What have I done?

Stunned, I looked at my hand, frozen in the space between us. My strike had barely made the hulking Dakkari male flinch, however, and when his glowing red eyes cut to me, they were shards of ice. Crisp and cold.

I couldn’t help what I did next. I didn’t mean to. But my fear made me panic. My gift was not something I could explain and sometimes, it was not something I could control.

Between us, I sensed the tendrils of energy gathering. I pushed forward with my mind, pushing, pushing, breaking that hidden barrier into him. And I almost gasped at what I found.

Turmoil. Hatred. Darkness.

So potent it slithered up my arms, crawling into me, consuming me.

Run, my instincts told me. His grip on my hip had loosened when I’d struck him. Before I could think better of it, I broke the connection from his mind, ducked, and darted away, favoring my left leg. The crumbling slipper on my foot tore and slipped off.

The streets were quiet. I could not seek help, not that I would find any. Not here. I was weak, hungry, aching from my journey. A throbbing headache was beginning to bloom after I delved into his emotions. A mistake. But the fear inside me overrode everything else.

A strangled cry tore from my throat when the male caught me. Easily. He hauled me back within the alley, pressed me against the wall, his thigh slipping between my legs to keep me still. His palms pinned both my wrists down.

Then he snarled in my face, in my language, “Who are you?”

Words stuck in my throat as I stared up at him. I could feel the hot tears leaking down my cheeks. My brothers had always teased me for crying too easily. Though I knew they’d said it in affection and in jest, I’d always been shamed by the unwelcome reaction. I couldn’t help it. I cried more than anyone I knew.

The Dakkari male was terrifying. I hadn’t seen a Dakkari since my father’s death and now one had me in a dangerous position…in his possession. Alone.

There were wide, glinting gold cuffs around his thick wrists. They felt hot against my flesh. Behind him, his long, powerful tail was curiously still. Thick straps of black hide made a criss-cross pattern across his bare chest, partially shielding the golden tattoos and numerous scars that decorated his flesh. A fur cloak was draped around his shoulders. It trailed past his hips, where there was long, sheathed sword attached to his tight hide trews.

His red eyes were unblinking and narrowed. Long, ink-black hair hung loosely over his shoulders, some tendrils in knots or wrapped in gold beads.

My eyes alighted on the deep, curving scar that tracked down his left cheek, starting just below his eye, slashing over his high cheekbone, and ending underneath his angled jaw. His bronzed, dark flesh was puckered around it. I began trembling in his hold all over again.

The Dakkari male saw me staring at it. I sucked in a breath when his clawed hand came underneath my chin, tilting my gaze up and away from the ugly, deep scar. I didn’t know if I was more surprised that his touch was gentle or that his voice was quiet when he asked again, “Who are you?”

There was no mistaking the authority in his tone. He was a male who expected to be answered.

“No one,” I whispered.

The way he was looking at me was a reminder that just moments before, he’d looked at me in a way I’d never experienced or expected. It was the way males in our village had looked at my sister, at my widowed mother, but never at me.

“N-no one,” I repeated, hating that my voice shook. My throat was as dry as the Dead Lands. “Hanniva. Please let me go.”

Footsteps reached my ears and I stifled a gasp. The male’s gaze cut to the left, shifting us further into the darkness of the alley, and then pressed more fully against me, until there was no space between us.

The footsteps paused. Two male voices followed, echoing towards us. My heart was pounding so hard in my chest that I knew the Dakkari male could feel it. I heard a chuffing laugh from the end of the alley.

One of the males that had come across us called out in Dakkari but I didn’t recognize the words. Well, no, I recognized vok, which I knew meant fuck.

The male pinning me to the wall stiffened and then snarled out words back, his grip tightening around me. Whatever the males heard in his voice, they wisely backed away from the alley and their footsteps faded, their voices retreating.

He…shielded me from them? I wondered, my wild gaze tracking up to his face. Those red, darkened orbs were on me. My gulp was audible, cutting the quiet between us like a blade, the space that had once been charged with pinpricks of energy. I was tempted to press into his mind again, if only to try to persuade him to let me go.

“Why are you here?” he rasped, his voice slithering down to me. I was on edge. The darkness, the madness, the unraveled and strangled emotions I felt burning from him were carefully concealed under the even, stoic mask of his face.

What else is he hiding then?

“I—” I paused. Could he help me? “I have come to speak with the king.”

His head tilted. His dark grin was disarming, his sharp teeth flashing in the low light.

“The Dothikkar cares not for the problems of the vekkiri. Try your luck elsewhere, kalles. Perhaps one of the hordes or the horde outposts.”

The horde outposts?

His words seemed to amuse him.

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him this was not about humans. This was about the Ghertun.

“Will you let me go now?” I asked, swallowing.

“Nik,” he murmured. “You feel good right here.”

Goosebumps broke out over my flesh. His voice had dropped low, making my ears twitch.

Holding my breath, I chanced a peek up at him. Maxen, my eldest brother, had always told me to never break a male’s gaze if they threatened me. My sister had needed to use that advice more often than I, but I remembered it now. He’d also taught me how to wield a weapon but I’d always been clumsy and unsure with it. Not that I had a weapon.

Well, except one, but it is unpredictable at best, I thought.

If he forced himself on me, I would have to use my gift, after all. The pain afterwards wouldn’t matter.

His claws trailed down the column of my neck. He judged my reaction, his face remaining impassive, those red eyes flickering back and forth between mine.

I gathered up the energy, imagining it filling the space between our breaths. It tickled my flesh and gently, so gently, I pressed forward. A warning. A necessary preparation.

His expression shifted as if he could feel the strange sensation, though I knew it was impossible.

“You struck me.”

His tone was soft but his accent morphed the words into a warning all his own.

“You frightened me,” I accused. With my power at the ready, my tongue loosened. My power made me feel confident but it came at a price.

“I was searching for weapons,” he told me. With a soft growl, low in his throat, he finished, “I found a gift instead.”

My shoulders tightened. Underneath my cloak, I wore the nearly transparent shift that all the Ghertun’s female servants wore. It had shamed me deeply in the beginning but I’d grown so used to it now that I’d almost forgotten it entirely.

“I am human,” I said, grasping for the words. Surely the Dakkari didn’t lay with vekkiri.

Or were the rumors true? I wondered. There were whisperings that there were human queens among the hordes, whisperings that had even reached under the Dead Mountain.

My heart was throbbing, thrashing around like a wounded animal in my chest. When the Dakkari male leaned forward, he pressed his nose just underneath my jaw, inhaling deeply.

My spine tingled as his breath whistled in my ears. My eyelids fluttered and I frowned, confused, shamed by my reaction.

He grunted. “You smell like rotting flesh.” My eyes snapped open. His fingers snagged a strand of my hair, rubbing it between his fingers. They came away dark and his eyes narrowed. “What is this?”

Filth from the stream.

Our eyes locked. Through the rushing of blood in my ears, I heard the quietness of the alleyway. I heard the steady rise and fall of his breaths. I heard a gust of wind whistle down the empty street I’d stumbled upon. I heard something small scurry along the wall opposite us.

We continued to stare. I had the strangest feeling of calmness, the longer I looked up at the frightening, intimidating sight he made.

“Will you hurt me?” I asked quietly.

A slow blink. “Nik.”

“Will…” I swallowed. “Will you rape me?”

The reaction that rippled through his body was shocking. A flash of anger, of rage, came, so potent that I didn’t even need to reach forward into his mind to feel it. It filled the space around him, darkening his features, pouring from his flesh.

His hands dropped from me. They delved into his hair as a short bellow tore from his throat.

I whimpered when he hit the wall behind me with such force I felt it vibrate across my back.

His teeth were bared, his red eyes glowing more brightly in the darkness. A demon’s gaze.

I’d been right to fear him, came my frantic thoughts. He’s unpredictable. Like a wild beast, an animal.

He hissed, “Never ask me that or I will give you something to fear.”

His words were filled with such hate, with such malice, that I reacted on instinct. I pressed the small gathered energy into his mind, swallowing back the bile that rose in my throat when I felt the depth of the darkness boiling inside him. Never had I felt anything like it, even within the Ghertun.

With a sharp slice of pain that threatened to split my skull in two, I pushed back that rage and, in its place, I planted peace. Or, at least, I tried to. The rage was so pure that I could only momentarily soften it, sculpt it into something less fearsome, if only for a little while.

His body slackened, his head dropping a fraction above me so that I felt his dark hair trail across my exposed neck.

Nausea roiled within my belly and I pressed my trembling hands to the wall behind me to steady myself. The stabbing pain behind my eyes was blooming, spreading like spilled ink across parchment.

The Dakkari male’s heat reached me. His bared chest radiated it in rolling waves. He smelled rich and earthy, like the fragrant, dark soil I’d delved my palms into back at our village before the Ghertun had come.

“Who are you?” he rasped again, his voice quiet. When I managed to lift my head to look at him, I saw he looked…drained. Exhausted. I almost felt pity take root inside me, but I extinguished it. He was dangerous. He didn’t need my pity.

What he really meant was: what are you?

Though I knew the Dakkari were strange about names, humans were not, and I hoped it would distract him.

“Vienne,” I told him, clenching my jaw through the pain. I wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep it off. I would be useless for the night. I would find the Dothikkar in the morning. Already, my vision looked fissured, cracked and wavy. “I am Vienne.”

His jaw clenched. His firm, full lips pressed together.

The heavy thud of footsteps were coming down the stone stairs just outside the alleyway. Only this time, I heard the tinkling of metal, of the plated armor that the Dothikkar’s guards wore. There were two of them, making rounds on their patrols. I’d already managed to slip away from them before, twisting my leg in the process. Would I be so lucky again? Especially when the pain made it hard to think, to breathe?

The male heard them too. His gaze flickered and then he commanded, roughly, “Leave. Go back to where you came from. Before the guards find you and throw you in the Dothikkar’s dungeons. I promise you will not like it there. You will not find mercy in the Dothikkar.”

My gaze dragged up to his, pausing for a moment. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him for help, but I knew better. I would not be able to influence his emotions again until the pain passed, perhaps even for days, and I would not risk it.

“Go,” he growled, “before I decide to keep you for myself.” Shock rippled through me. “I will distract the guards.”

Before I could say anything more, he pushed away from me, leaving a rush of cool air to take his place.

I didn’t hesitate. As he intercepted the guards, speaking to them in Dakkari, blocking them from sight with his wide shoulders and broad back, I slipped from the alley, sticking close to the shadows, scurrying away like a rodent in the night though my feet felt sluggish and my mind felt like it was cracking wide open.

When I was far enough away, I slipped between two tall buildings, clenching my jaw as a wave of dizziness pulsed through me. I hunkered down among a stack of dirty barrels that smelled like piss, pulling my cloak around me tightly, squeezing my eyes shut.

When my vision faded, when my body went slack, it was a welcome mercy.

* * *

Rough hands woke me and I cried out immediately, thrashing and hissing like a spooked, feral animal.

My hand struck armor. Gold armor. When my eyes adjusted to the filtered grey dawn light, I saw there were two guards and one of them had me tight in his grip while the other looked on with a peculiar, disturbed expression.

Desperately, I tried to gather my energy but it was depleted. I only felt the whispered rasp of pinpricks across the back of my neck, followed by a sharp pain, before it was smothered and the energy faded entirely.

No!

I was caught. My power was depleted.

“The Dothikkar,” I bleated desperately, my voice hoarse. “Hanniva.”

Their expressions never changed. They didn’t speak, only exchanged glances. The one who had me in his grip pulled my hood up roughly, almost tearing the material, but it shielded my face from view.

He pushed me forward. I almost fell to my knees with the force.

“You wish to see the Dothikkar?” the guard growled, his eyes hard like steel. “Then it is the Dothikkar you will see, vekkiri.”

Chapter Three

He was right, I thought, huddled in the corner of the dark cell, pressing my forehead against the cool stone.

The Dakkari male had been correct in saying I wouldn’t like the Dothikkar’s dungeons. Then again, I assumed that not many would. I had very limited experience with dungeons.

It was cold. And quiet. And dark. However, all these things worked in my favor as I recovered from pushing into that Dakkari’s mind. The things that didn’t work in my favor were the occasional moans from the other prisoners—whom I didn’t see, only heard, but made me jolt with fright every time one of them cried out—the overpowering stench, the lack of food, and the gritty, rough shackles biting into my wrists, bloodying them. I grew queasy from wondering just how many different creatures’ blood had accumulated under the black cuffs.

I closed my eyes, the cold stone soothing my overheated flesh, and thought of Maman. I thought of Viola, my beautiful older sister. I thought of my brothers, Maxen and Eli. They would tell me to be strong, to be brave. But only Maman understood how hard that was for me. They’d always been brave—like my father had been—whereas I didn’t have a brave bone in my entire body.

Sometimes, though I was over a quarter-century old, I still felt like the small child hiding behind my mother’s legs.

But I am here and they are there, I told myself. And if I don’t deliver the Ghertun’s message, if I come back empty-handed…

I couldn’t think of what the Ghertun would do to my family. I didn’t want to think about the consequences when I was not there to intervene.

I only prayed to all the deities in the universe that my gift would be restored in time. I might need it again soon. I’d been foolish to waste it on that Dakkari male.

And I was running out of time. The Ghertun had given me one month to bring back a token of the Dothikkar’s submission. There was only one thing the Ghertun would accept.

The creaking of hinges echoed through the cavernous space. Keeping huddled against the wall, I craned my neck to see a bloom of light and a long, shadowed figure stretching across the wall in front of the cells. Heavy footsteps approached, followed by the murmurs from the guards that stood on duty, muttered, guttural words in Dakkari I didn’t understand. A deeper, slower voice sounded. Then came the approach of his footsteps.

He stopped in front of my cell, peering at me between the thick bars of the gate. I couldn’t make out his features in the darkness but I had the impression he was older. My breathing went a little shallow in my throat, wondering if this was my chance.

“Dothikkar?” I rasped softly, my voice husky and hoarse. When did I last have water? I’d emptied the skin the Ghertun had given me before they’d dropped me off a day’s walk from Dothik.

The figure made a huffing sound, turned, and bit out an order to the guards. They sprang into motion, opening my cell after fumbling with the keys. Once opened, one of the guards strode forward and unchained my shackles from the wall, though he kept my hands bounds.

He pulled me up, surprisingly gently, and I was thankful for it. My bones ached, my limbs felt heavy. I’d twisted my left leg shortly after I’d snuck into Dothik and it twinged sharply when I walked forward.

As I approached the darkened figure, I saw that I’d been correct in thinking he was older. Though his hair was dark—I didn’t think the Dakkari’s hair turned grey like humans’ did as we aged—the lines in his face, deep and weathered, gave him away. His back was hunched slightly and when he reached forward to grab my face, turning it this way and that way, I saw that his hands shook.

His nose wrinkled. The night before, the Dakkari male had said I stunk like rotting flesh, no doubt because of the stream filth I’d used to coat my hair dark. I’d grown immune to it and right then, my hygiene seemed like the last thing I should be worried about.

“Why do you request to see the Dothikkar?” he asked. His voice was strong, hardened. The Ghertun had wrongly assumed that not many in Dothik would speak the universal tongue. Every Dakkari being I’d encountered thus far had.

“I—” I began, but my voice croaked. “I have a message for him.”

I was all too aware that once I delivered the message, the Dakkari might decide to kill me and send me back to the Ghertun as a warning.

“A message?” the male scoffed, peering at me in the darkness. His red eyes glowed, reminding me of the Dakkari male’s eyes last night, twin orbs in the darkness. “What message could a vekkiri bring that the Dothikkar would listen to?”

I swallowed.

“How did you get into the capital?” he demanded, stepping forward. The guard behind me shifted.

“I have a message for the Dothikkar,” I said, proud when my voice didn’t shake, though my limbs trembled. It didn’t matter how I’d breached the city. “A message from Lozza, the Ghertun king.”

The male froze.

“Neffar?” he growled. The guard behind me moved. The guard behind the older male did as well, his hand coming to the hilt of his sword.

“Hanniva,” I said quietly, meeting his eyes. “I must speak with him.”

I hoped that he saw the desperation in my gaze. I hoped that he saw my fear. Perhaps he would pity me. Or perhaps he would have the guards kill me where I stood.

At that thought, a strange sense of quietness draped over my shoulders, as if I’d used my gift on myself, taking away my fear and in its place pushing stillness. Or perhaps it was despair coupled with acceptance.

Because it was in that moment that I realized my destiny wasn’t my own. The guards could decide to kill me and I could do nothing. I could not fight back. Whatever would happen…would happen.

Instead of killing me, the older male said something in Dakkari and the guard grabbed my arm, leading me forward through the gate of my cell and to the door of the dungeon.

Once we stepped from it, we walked down a darkened hallway, passing various Dakkari dressed in black—the Dothikkar’s guards, I guessed. They wore no armor, not like the patrol guards, but they all had swords at their sides. The Dakkari male last night had had a sword too. Had he been one of the Dothikkar’s guards?

We attracted many stares and it was only when I happened to look down at my feet that I realized why. My cloak was gone. Somehow I’d managed to forget that. When they’d brought me to the dungeon, they’d stripped it off, searching for weapons.

I was only wearing my sheer shift dress, the one made of pressed and treated Ghertun moltings. I was walking almost naked through the halls of the Dothikkar’s keep. The eyes of the dozens of guards we passed made my belly clench with dread.

You should be used to it, I thought, clenching my teeth together until my jaw ached. It was what I’d been expected to wear under the Dead Mountain. Then again, I’d been assigned to a single household as a slave and I left only occasionally. Even when I’d been summoned to meet with Lozza, only a handful of Ghertun had been in attendance in his private rooms.

I’d never been looked at so freely as the guard led me through the keep and it made my skin feel tight and wrong.

The older male walking a few paces ahead of me never looked back. He was wearing a long cloak made of brown hide, the tip of his tail flicking out from beneath it. There was an elaborate golden pattern stitched into the material and it shimmered whenever we passed by the lanterns hanging on the walls.

From the darkened hallway, we climbed up a set of spiral stone steps until I was winded and limping. The dungeon had been deep underground, I realized when we emerged from the stairwell into a grand foyer, sparkling and gleaming in gold. It was so bright that I momentarily had to shield my eyes with my shackled hands.

“Hurry,” the older male snapped back at me and the guard pushed me forward. My bare footsteps rasped across the hard, cold floor. We came to a stop in front of two large doors, one with a depiction of Kakkari and the other with a depiction of who I assumed was Drukkar.

The Dakkari’s deities.

I didn’t study them for long before the doors were pushed open and we stepped into the throne room. A grand, cavernous hall that seemed endless. It took everything in me not to gape. I didn’t think I’d ever been in a room so large. White columns and archways soared overhead and I craned my neck to see where they ended.

The grand hall was sparsely furnished, except for a high dais with a single, golden throne atop it. Lozza had one similar. Before the dais was a wide space. Perhaps for dancing and the celebrations I’d heard the Dakkari were so fond of, or for public hearings.

Or private sentencings, I thought, my gaze zeroing in on the group of males that sat around a magnificent long table. It was set off to the left of the hall, nestled before large archways that opened to the outside, that allowed a cool breeze to whistle around the wide columns. And beyond that, there was a perfect view of Dothik, in all its glittering glory. With its tall turrets and high, safe walls.

The older male scurried forward, stooping down next to the male at the head of the table and speaking into his ear.

The Dothikkar.

He was everything I’d envisioned the Dothikkar would be. Advancing in his years, intimidating with his cool glare, and downright terrifying. Though his waist was larger than I thought it’d be—his belly was spilling over the waist of his trews—he still made an imposing figure, lounging back in his chair as if it were a throne.

He met my gaze, his expression darkening at whatever the older male whispered into his ear. When his eyes tracked down my body, I remembered again that I was practically nude and shifted my shackled wrists until they were shielding my breasts from his view.

It was then that I looked at the others seated around the table and all the breath in my lungs whistled out in what sounded like a terrified whimper. Instinctively, I stepped back, gathering energy, imagining it shielding me, but I still had not recovered it.

If I thought the Dothikkar was intimidating, it was nothing compared to the sheer terror of being in the presence of the seven other males seated around the table.

Especially one in particular.

Blood started rushing in my ears when I met the thunderous expression of the Dakkari male from last night. His hair was pulled back from his face, emphasizing his strong cheekbones, the granite line of his jaw, his lips, but it did nothing to diminish the ferocity and rage in his gaze. He scowled, his scar pulling down, his eyes locked on me like I was prey.

Why is he here? I thought wildly. Is he a guard, after all? But if he is, why didn’t he turn me in? Why let me go?

“If you stare at my Vorakkars like that, vekkiri,” came a low voice, “they may take offence.”

Vorakkars.

The hall swayed, black spots pricking my vision. I would’ve stumbled had the guard from the dungeon not been gripping my forearm.

Echoing footsteps brought my attention back to the Dothikkar, the king of Dakkar, and the male I’d been tasked to speak with.

Only my tongue felt swollen in my mouth and my gaze kept flickering back to male whose red eyes burned into me, leaning forward at the Dothikkar’s table.

He was a Vorakkar.

They all were.

I’d heard stories of them all my life. Frightening tales my mother had whispered to us into the night, making them seem more monster than male. Terrible feats of strength and cruelty that they waged in their endless wars, ancient kings in their own right, lording over the lands of Dakkar where even the Dothikkar’s influence and power could not reach.

My father had been killed under a Vorakkar’s orders.

And last night, one had had me in his possession. I remembered the darkness in his mind and I knew, right then, that my mother’s stories had been true. That they were more monster than male.

The shackles at my wrists shook as the Dothikkar approached me. He was almost twice my size and the way he looked at me made my flesh crawl. When he stepped closer, I saw the way his nostrils flared and he immediately reared back.

The stench had probably reached him and instead of being ashamed, I was relieved.

“This will not do,” he rasped, frowning, his arm covering his nostrils. “If I am to have entertainment, how can I even enjoy it with you smelling like death?”

Entertainment?

His gaze slid past me. To the guard, he said, “Have a bathing tub brought in.” His smirk reminded me of how the Ghertun moved sometimes, slithering and unnatural and fluid. “I think I will enjoy this. As will my Vorakkars. Lysi?”

My stomach sank.

Chapter Four

The sight of the kalles stepping into the Dothikkar’s throne room was like a punch in the gut.

Last night, after I’d returned to my quarters in the keep, I’d thought of her. Long into the night. Of her frightened eyes, of her haunting questions. I thought of the sense of calmness that had descended into my mind and I knew, without a doubt, that she’d been the cause.

But why?

Now, the Dothikkar was eyeing her with the same kind of amused malice that had been the cause of my family’s destruction.

That rage boiled inside me. I choked on it as I watched a golden bathing tub being brought in almost immediately, as I watched a line of the Dothikkar’s servants begin to fill it with water before it even touched the ground. All the while, the small human stood, frozen, in the sheer dress I’d discovered underneath her cloak last night.

She had been caught. Had she spent the night in the dungeons? Or the morning? It was nearing sunset now. The last meal had already been served. Had she been underground the entirety of the day?

I didn’t know why but the thought set my teeth on edge. Next to me, at the Dothikkar’s grand table, the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala sat rigid. His Morakkari was human, after all. As was Rath Tuviri’s, who sat across from me, his jaw tense, claws curling into the surface of the table. He loathed the Dothikkar most of all. For good reason.

The human girl—Vienne, I remembered—looked so still I wondered if she even breathed. But then I saw her hands trembling, just as they’d done last night.

I stood, my seat scraping back from the table. I saw the kalles jerk her gaze towards me, those solemn, light-colored eyes almost my undoing. There had been a moment last night, in the quietness of the alley, where something resembling understanding had passed between us. Or, even more dangerous, recognition.

The eyes of the Vorakkars were upon me as I turned my attention to the king of Dakkar, though thinking of him as such left a bitter taste upon my tongue.

“I am eager to return to my horde, Dothikkar,” I said. “Our meetings have dragged on and I do not think your entertainments help matters.”

Two nights ago, he’d had a few of his concubines brought in to dance for him as we attempted to revisit the matter of the Ghertun testing their borders of the Dead Lands.

Rath Tuviri’s mother had been among them, a golden-haired beauty, rumored to be the Dothikkar’s favorite whore. I’d quite enjoyed studying the way Rath Tuviri’s jaw tensed so tight I thought it would crack and I’d smirked when he left the table, storming from the grand hall as the Dothikkar’s laugh echoed around it. His mother’s eyes had tracked after him and I’d caught the brief downturning of her lips before they curled for the king when he leaned forward to suckle on her neck.

I’d been amused then because I didn’t quite like Rath Tuviri. I didn’t quite like any being outside my horde and I liked my fellow Vorakkars least of all—because I knew just how cold and cruel they could be. I was one, after all.

But now, instead of amusement, I was annoyed and my temper was throbbing. All week, we’d been here. I was beginning to think the Dothikkar didn’t have a plan regarding the Ghertun, that he would rely on the hordes to take care of the matter without the assistance of his army.

The Vorakkars regarded me, perhaps surprised that I’d said anything at all. Even the Dothikkar paused in his perusal of his newest toy to send me a bewildered look.

Then his expression darkened, his eyes flickering briefly to the Vorakkars still seated, before he turned to one of the female servants filling the tub. To her, he ordered, “Wash the vekkiri. Now.”

The female servant bowed her head, keeping her gaze averted from his eyes, as was expected. She crossed to Vienne, still standing motionless in her sheer dress, and the human female didn’t even flinch when the servant peeled it away from her body. The strange material crumbled like parchment around her on the floor, leaving her nude and shaking.

Clenching my fists, I looked away from her and straight into the eyes of the Dothikkar. Old memories—my sister’s screams among them—arose, my pupils dilating with them. They had humiliated my sister in much the same way.

I wondered about how harsh of a punishment I would receive if I assassinated the Dothikkar. Right then. Right there. I imagined unsheathing my sword and plunging it into his widening gut, spilling his innards all over his clean floors in his grand hall. Perhaps the bloodlust was a little too bright in my eyes, which had perhaps begun to glow a brighter red, because the Dothikkar recoiled at whatever he saw and broke my gaze.

He hated that I was Vorakkar, no doubt, but he certainly liked the protection of my sword and the wares that passed from my horde.

He was wary of me because I was unpredictable. If only he knew the thoughts that went through my sick mind…he’d never let me into his prized city again.

The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala stood then, no doubt sensing the waves of rage rolling from my still form. He rounded the table and smiled easily at the Dothikkar, cutting through the thickened tension that had suddenly rippled through the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rath Rowin’s hand twitch towards his sword.

Rath Kitala stopped in front of the bathing tub, shielding the small vekkiri female who had just entered its waters. The Dothikkar frowned.

“Vekkiri like their privacy in matters like these, Dothikkar,” Rath Kitala said smoothly.

The Dothikkar pressed his lips together, his eyes flashing. “No doubt you have learned this from your vekkiri Morakkari.”

His human queen, the one he had taken from a human settlement and settled in his furs instead.

“Among many things, lysi,” Rath Kitala replied. Though his tone sounded like a purr, there was a hardened edge to it, a subtle warning. The Dothikkar might have power here, in his glittering city, but the Vorakkar was stronger, quicker. We all were.

A splash of water came from behind him and I heard, rather than saw, the female servant scrubbing down the girl relentlessly.

A gasp came next. From the servant. The sound of sloshing water suddenly came to a halt. A breath of a moment passed before it started back again, the scrubbing quicker, rougher.

All the while, the Dothikkar stared across at the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala, simmering anger seeming to heat the air around him.

Then came the small voice of the servant with, “She is bathed, Dothikkar.”

“Rothi kiv,” came his prompt snap and the servant immediately departed the grand hall, the others who’d brought in the bath water after her. Only the guard from the dungeons and the Dothikkar’s lead advisor, the Prikri, remained.

Rath Kitala removed the furs around his shoulders, leaving his own chest bare, and wordlessly handed it back to the girl, though he kept his eyes on the king.

There was shuffling, water plunking in fat droplets onto the floor. Vienne’s shackles chimed together.

Then came her voice from behind the Vorakkar, soft and shuddering.

“Dothikkar, I have come to bring you a message from Lozza, the Ghertun king of the Dead Mountain.”

Even Rath Kitala drew an intake of breath and he stepped away, rounding to peer down at the human girl with disbelief.

It left her in full view and not only did my fists clench, my cock thickened, tightening the front of my trews. Even the Dothikkar seemed to be at a loss for words as he stared, frozen in place.

And she was a sight to behold. Even the Vorakkar of Rath Loppar drew forward in his chair, as if pulled by an unseen force.

Gone was the dark filth that had covered her from head to toe. She’d coated her hair in something blackened before—my fingers had come away dark when I’d rubbed the strands between my fingers last night—but the bath revealed shining white hair, swaying to the middle of her back, wet tendrils clinging to her cheeks. Her skin was pale, almost translucent against the dark fur cloak Rath Kitala had given her, which she held close to her flesh, her lips pink from the warmth of the bath.

And her eyes. They seemed brightened, luminous.

I had never seen a being like her before. I’d seen plenty of humans in my time as Vorakkar, but never one like her. And it wasn’t only her haunting beauty, or the color of her hair. It was in the way she was so frightened she could collapse, it was in the way her voice shook and trembled as she delivered her message…and yet, she remained firm and resolute. Brave.

That unsettled feeling in my gut returned, one I’d felt last night as I’d stared down into those widened eyes. Then came a stirring in my chest. An awakening. A decision.

I want her.

The thought came fierce and possessive and unexpected. It caught me off guard and when I felt a dull throb of pain, I realized I’d embedded my claws completely into the Dothikkar’s table.

It was more than simple want, however. I wanted her, lysi. But I also wanted to protect her. I wanted to consume her, taking her into me so deep that I might finally find the peace I so desperately sought. I was called the Mad Horde King for a reason.

It wasn’t about her. It was about me. I’d always been a selfish bastard. If I hadn’t been, I may never have become Vorakkar. I may never have been able to successfully lead my horde. And I certainly wouldn’t have been able to protect them. I’d failed my family. I’d failed my sister and my mother and my father…but I had never failed my horde.

So much was swirling in my mind that I’d almost forgotten her words, spoken so softly they’d almost been a whisper.

The Dothikkar recovered more quickly than the Vorakkars seated around his table.

“What message?” he sputtered, his brow lowering, his expression darkening. “What message could a vekkiri possibly have from a nameless king, who presumes himself to be one on my land?”

Her fingers were clutching the furs around her shoulders tightly.

“Lozza wants access to the Teru gulch,” she continued.

“Neffar?” the Dothikkar asked. Then, just as suddenly, he burst into laughter, the sound wheezing out from his lungs, booming so loudly it made her flinch.

“He wants free passage across Drukkar’s Sea,” Vienne continued, as if the Dothikkar’s laugh wasn’t drowning out her words. “Whenever he wishes, in addition to a ship of his own, so that he may reach the ice caps even during the hot season.”

The Dothikkar’s laugh died down. In its place was fury, morphing so quickly that it almost made me raise a brow.

I eyed Vienne, tilting my head as I studied her.

Who was she? And why was she speaking for a Ghertun, a Ghertun king no less, whom we’d only heard rumors of?

The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala, who stood in front of Vienne, asked, “And if the demands are not met?”

The human vekkiri, who was surrounded by Dakkari males twice her size, and an enraged Dothikkar, tilted her chin slightly, though her bottom lip trembled.

Brave kalles, I thought. Those words felt like a purr in my mind.

“Lozza will send his army from the Dead Lands. He will destroy everything in his path and lead them here, to Dothik, where he will overrun the city.”

“Madness,” the Dothikkar rasped out, walking the short distance to his throne on top of his gilded dais, where he sat, as if he needed to remind every being in the room of his power, of his position. “Absolute madness.”

The Vorakkar of Rath Tuviri, with his golden hair and understanding eyes, stood and regarded Vienne.

“Who are you, kalles?” he asked, his voice soft, keeping still when she eyed him as warily as she’d eyed me. “How did you come to be a messenger for the Ghertun?”

“I am no one,” she said, repeating what she’d told me last night when I’d asked her much the same question. “I am a slave under the Dead Mountain. Lozza tasked me with this.”

A slave? I thought.

“A sorceress,” the Dothikkar muttered from his throne.

I watched as the Vorakkars exchanged glances. The Dothikkar was a superstitious male. He had Rath Tuviri’s mother in his harem, after all, because he believed her golden hair was a gift from Kakkari herself.

There was a story, an ancient one, of a white-haired Dakkari female who had single-handedly destroyed a horde with a frightening power. It was said she’d been possessed by the wrath of our goddess Kakkari when the horde’s Vorakkar killed his bastard child, not born from the womb of his chosen Morakkari but from the womb of a warrior’s wife. He’d murdered in secret, wanting to hide his shame—but Kakkari had known and the white-haired sorceress had channeled her rage, her power.

The Vorakkar of Rath Dulia, seated on the opposite end of the table, pointed out, “She is a vekkiri. Not Dakkari.”

“If she was born on our land, then the breath of our god and goddess is within her,” the Dothikkar argued. I stilled, cutting him a sharp glare he did not see. His words made a hypocrite of him. For decades, he’d argued that the vekkiri’s plight was not his responsibility because they were not Dakkari.

But if the breath of Kakkari and Drukkar were within them, then they were our own and their struggles were ours to bear. And he had left them to famine and disease…and the Ghertun.

Even still, if the Dothikkar believed this vekkiri kalles was a sorceress, channeling the power of Kakkari…there was no telling what he would do with her.

“How many humans are under the Dead Mountain?” Rath Kitala asked, frowning. “We have heard no reports of a settlement falling to the Ghertun for over two years.”

“Not many,” she hedged. “I do not know how long we have been there. Since before the cold season. Perhaps longer.”

“You went underground with them?” Rath Kitala rasped. The Ghertun always retreated underneath their mountain when the frost came. They couldn’t survive the harsh temperatures above ground.

Her eyes came to him before they dropped away, before they flitted to me. Her shoulders shuddered, a long shiver racking her body, though she had heavy furs draped over her shoulders. Did I make her afraid too?

Of course.

She didn’t reply. There were too many questions lingering in the air, the tension in the throne room tight. The rest of the Vorakkars remained silent.

“I am to bring back a token of your acceptance of the terms, Dothikkar. Lozza wishes to have a heartstone of Kakkari. Or…or else…”

Vienne trailed off, flinching when the Dothikkar’s glare cut her to the bone.

“Take her back to the dungeons. Get her out of my sight!” the Dothikkar bellowed, waving his hand. The guard immediately clasped her arm, tugging her from the throne room, her white hair stark against the black furs around her shoulders.

A heartstone…

Vok.

Chapter Five

My body was beginning to waken from its frightened stupor.

I was sitting on the stone in the dark dungeon, gripping the fur cloak around my shoulders like it would be pulled away from me. It didn’t help that I was completely naked underneath it, my shift dress discarded.

I was sore. I was exhausted. I wasn’t hungry—though I hadn’t eaten anything in two days—only thirsty. And even with the furs, I was cold, shivering.

Had it been hours already since I’d delivered the message to the Dothikkar? Had night fallen?

The door to the dungeons echoed as it opened, but I paid it no mind. It had opened and closed countless times in the past few hours. Guards changing posts, perhaps. I huddled deeper into the cloak.

Long moments passed but then I felt a prickling on my neck. When I lifted my head, I froze.

Glowing red eyes peered down at me from the other side of the bars. I would’ve cried out in surprise had my throat not locked up, had my tongue not swelled in the cavern of my mouth.

It was him.

The Vorakkar.

With a quick flip of his fingers, I heard metal scraping and the door of my cell swung open.

“Come,” he said, his voice nothing but a growl. I was rooted in place, staring up at him. I wanted to stay in the dungeon. I didn’t want to move again.

Slowly, I rose on shaking legs. My lips felt dry. My tongue felt like it was coated in sand.

“Wh-where are you taking me?”

He didn’t reply—only watched me with his eerie gaze—and I swallowed, wondering if this was when I would die. Had I failed my family? Maman, Viola, Maxen, Eli? Would they remain under the Dead Mountain until they passed from this life?

My eyes were blissfully dry for once. I didn’t want him to see me cry. Not again.

Given no other choice, I stepped from the cell. My left leg twinged, muscles and tendons giving out from underneath me. Before I hit the hard ground, the Vorakkar caught me in his arms and, before I knew it, swung me up until he carried me against his broad chest.

My limbs went still, my body tense, my leg throbbing. He walked from the dungeon as my eyes flickered around. The guards stationed there simply looked the other way as we emerged into the familiar darkened hallway.

I didn’t speak as he walked us up the endless staircase. The staircase that had winded me until I was gasping didn’t even raise his heartbeat. I could feel its steady, strong rhythm against my arm, whereas mine was fluttering like a caged beast’s.

Instead of heading towards the throne room when we made it to the first landing, he continued up the staircase, rising, rising. We emerged on the next story of the keep, a lavish, carpeted hallway appearing when he exited left.

When we passed an open door, I saw there were rooms, private quarters. When we passed a closed door, I heard a moan echoing behind it and then the sound of skin against skin. Rhythmic sounds, animalistic groans followed.

Realization hit me.

My breaths came out quicker as panic took hold. Just like last night, I came to the conclusion that the Vorakkar could do whatever he wished with me and I would be powerless against him. I knew my own strength. I hated how weak my body was. And I’d felt his desire pressed against my belly last night.

The Vorakkar walked to the end of the hallway and nudged opened the last door on the right. Once he crossed the threshold of the room, he kicked the door shut with his booted foot and it slammed against the frame, the loud sound making me jolt.

“Skittish kalles,” he murmured, his voice soft. “When you were so brave before.”

Surprise whistled from my throat, a pathetic breathy noise.

“Brave?” I whispered.

“What else frightens you, I wonder?” he asked next. I gasped when he set me down on a raised bed. A padded bed, like a cushion. It gave a little under my weight. His hand came to my hair. Tingles exploded across my scalp, running down my spine when he stroked his hand through the long strands.

I pulled away, leaning back, casting my eyes around the room wildly, looking for something. Anything.

It was a spacious, comfortable room with lavish adornments, including the padded bed. The floor was carpeted with the softest rugs and tapestries. There was a golden basin in the corner, a fire crackling within it, warming my bones. I watched the flames dance for a brief moment before continuing my scan. A low table was in front of it, two cushions on the ground on either side. The table was filled with platters of food, but my eyes caught on a golden goblet, on the liquid glimmering inside.

There was a travel sack stuffed in the corner of the room and an open wardrobe next to it, filled with furs.

“Looking for a weapon, leikavi?” he asked, his tone almost amused.

The horde king stepped away from me, shedding the furs that stretched across his broad shoulders. When he turned to throw them over a rack by the door, I sucked in a sharp breath, my eyes widening at the sea of scars decorating his back.

He still wore criss-crossing straps across his chest, making an ‘X,’ and I saw two daggers strapped within them at his back. But he wore nothing underneath, allowing me the full visual of the wreckage of his skin.

I recognized the patterns to know he’d been whipped. Endlessly. The scar tissue was thick. The wounds had healed poorly, raised up from his flesh, winding all the way from the tops of his shoulders down to his trews, to where his tail protruded from them.

Was this the source of the darkness, of the pain and anger I’d sensed within him? It had to be. How could one endure this level of violence and malice without losing a little bit of their mind?

“Pretty, are they not?” he rasped and when my eyes met his, he gave me a dark grin, revealing sharpened teeth. The scar on his face was cast into shadow from the flickering fire but I knew it was there, only adding to the fearsome image.

I’d been right. He was insane.

“Why…why am I here?” I asked, my eyes snagging on the daggers sheathed into the straps on his ravaged back. I remembered when Maxen had tried to teach me how to wield a knife but I’d forgotten much of what he’d said.

He pulled the daggers from their places. The blades were gold, sparking reflections on the stone walls, and he placed them into a chest and locked it, slipping the key into a small pocket in his trews.

Next, he took off his sword. Thankfully, I could no longer hear the moans and gasps from a couple rooms over but I was still on edge, watching him.

“You look as if you expect me to devour you,” he commented, propping up the sword, still in its sheath, next to the locked chest.

Wouldn’t he?

“You look as if you have never seen a Dakkari before,” he said, cocking his head to the side, turning to face me fully, approaching me.

“I have,” I said.

He made a gravelly sound in his throat. “Then perhaps you have never seen a Vorakkar before.”

I licked my dry lips. Could he hear the thundering of my heartbeat? Could he see the way I shivered under the fur cloak?

“N-no,” I whispered. “I have not.”

Though a Vorakkar had ordered the attack on my village when I’d been young, though a Vorakkar had ordered my father—and many men in our village—to be killed for hunting, I’d never seen him. He’d waited outside the walls while his riders carried out his orders.

I wondered if this was the Vorakkar who’d been responsible for my father’s death. And if it wasn’t, I wondered if that Vorakkar had been in the throne room earlier this evening. My father’s murderer.

His clawed finger tucked up underneath my chin, the motion quick and frightening because his hand had been nothing but a blur. When he tilted my face up, forcing me to meet his eyes, he said, “We are going to discuss many things this night. But first, you will eat.”

My eyes widened. It was not what I’d expected him to say. A part of me had expected him to undress me, rip the furs away, and…and…

“Stop looking at me like that, kalles,” he growled, embers of his familiar rage firing in his gaze. “I already warned you once.”

Last night, I’d asked him if he would rape me. And he’d grown so enraged I’d used my gift on him as a precaution. He’d warned me with, “Never ask me that or I will give you something to fear.”

I dropped my gaze away when he walked to the wardrobe, pulling out a well-crafted brown tunic made from animal hide, buttery soft and smooth. He threw it over my lap before his hands began to pull at my furs.

Warm air brushed my skin and my nipples tightened almost painfully when I was exposed once more. I sat, still, with my head down, naked on a plush bed in the presence and possession of an insane Vorakkar.

My power was tapped out. I didn’t know when it would build again. I could escape, but only when I had it back…and I might need to use it on the Dothikkar instead.

His hand came to the shackles on my wrists and with a disturbing amount of ease, he crushed the lock and plucked them away from my skin.

Then he went still. I heard his soft exhales somewhere above me but I kept my gaze down in my lap, shifting my scraped, raw wrists until they covered my exposed sex from his view.

I don’t know what possessed me to do it but my gaze rose to meet his. Hesitantly. Slowly. Those red eyes were locked onto me and his nostrils flared when I peeked up at him. I could feel my heartbeat throbbing in my throat and I swallowed when the tips of his claws brushed the sensitive flesh there, down the column of my neck.

I felt it then. My power shifted inside me. It wasn’t strong enough to change his emotions but I sensed just a whisper of his anger. That same dark anger I’d felt before. Beyond that, though, I felt his desire, thick and potent, choking the air around me. The room seemed to change. The warmth turned to heat and another shiver raced down my spine. I wasn’t entirely certain it was from fear.

Lingering on the outskirts of that desire, I felt his confusion. His puzzled bewilderment. That I didn’t understand.

His touch lifted from my neck. The connection was lost, severed. Desperately, I sucked in a breath, as if I’d been held underwater for too long.

I was shaking, suddenly fearful, looking up at him with rounded, wet eyes. I’d never felt my gift respond that way before. But when I felt my belly tingle, when my body felt warm, I realized with panic that his emotions had become my own. Had he casted them into me?

The air felt thick and foggy between us. I felt a prick at the back of my neck, the tendrils of his throbbing anger. Then the reddened heat of arousal, of wicked desire, made me dizzy as it lingered, as it touched and caressed me.

And his eyes…those eyes were making me drown as desperation crawled its way up my throat. I was about to beg him to stop whatever he was doing, whatever he had done.

With a rough growl and a curse, he shoved the tunic over my head, pulling my arms through. I noticed he was careful not to touch my flesh and only when I was covered did he bite out, “Go eat.”

I rose on shaking legs, eager to retreat, limping over to the table in a hushed daze. I’d never met another being that could do what I did. I’d never given my gift much thought because it was something that I’d always had. Were there others with similar power? Was he one of them?

It certainly felt that way as I lowered myself onto the cushion, blinking down at the food, confused by how I’d gotten there.

The food looked decadent. I’d never seen so much in my life, all laid out in one place. Even the wealthier sibi under the Dead Mountain did not eat this much.

Across the room, in the corner, within arm’s reach of his sword, I saw the Vorakkar take a seat in a wide chair. It creaked under his weight and bulk as he rested his forearms on his knees, regarding me. The fire was warm on my back as I reached forward, selecting a cube of something unidentifiable. It was beige, however, and I’d eaten a lot of beige food in my lifetime.

When I popped it into my mouth and chewed, my eyes widened as flavors burst on my tongue. It was smoky and soft. Delicious. I had never had anything like it before.

I reached for another, just as the Vorakkar rasped, “Leikavi, we need to talk.”

The food turned to ash in my mouth.

Chapter Six

“I came to say only what I told the Dothikkar,” the human kalles said softly. “I can say no more.”

“Under this Ghertun king’s order?” I asked, leaning back in the chair, spreading my legs wide until I was comfortable.

“Lozza?” she whispered, her gaze shuttering. “Yes.”

“You will tell me everything,” I said, trying to keep my voice soft but failing.

I lived on the harsh and unforgiving plains of Dakkar. I trained horde warriors, I protected my people, I kept my gaze away from the shadows, and I fucked when the need grew too great. That was my life. I knew few comforts and certainly could not offer any to this wisp of a kalles, one so delicate she seemed like she could float away at any moment. I had been made into a horde king, forged in rage and sculpted by pain and hatred. It was all I knew.

I didn’t think I could be gentle or soft, even if I tried.

And this leikavi, this white-haired beauty with sad eyes…I feared I could destroy her without meaning to.

“Are you loyal to this king?” I asked, watching her closely, rubbing at the edges of the scar on my cheek.

She remained silent on that subject, but I spied the tightening of her lips. Nik, not loyal. Fearful.

“Were you…were you ordered to interrogate me for your Dothikkar? Is that why I’m here?” she asked, making my brows raise and my tail flick near my ankles. Her eyes strayed to the tip of it and she couldn’t hide the morbid curiosity in her gaze as she watched it twitch. “You—you could have just kept me in the dungeons. You didn’t have to bring me up here.”

“Asking me questions now?” I grinned at her and heard her small intake of breath. “There is the brave kalles I spied before. The same one who struck me across the face without thinking about the consequences.”

Her gaze dropped to her lap. A servant’s gaze, I knew. A slave’s gaze. One crafted from submission and, more than likely, punishment.

If I needed to scare her into giving me the answers I needed, I would. Undoubtedly. If the message she’d brought was true, Dakkari lives were at stake. Hundreds, thousands of lives could be lost if a war came to Dothik, not only lives in the capital, but across the hordes, across the outposts.

The Dothikkar would call them all to war if necessary. And they were duty-bound to answer. I needed to determine if the threat was legitimate or not.

“Trust me, leikavi,” I murmured, standing from my seat, watching her tense, “when I say that there will be consequences if you do not give me the answers I seek. You have never seen a Vorakkar before so perhaps you do not know the lengths to which we will go to protect our hordes. And the news you bring? The message you bring? It is a threat against us all.”

Her chest was heaving. She still never looked up from her lap.

I dropped down onto the cushion across from her. I snagged the goblet of brew and pressed it to her lips. “Drink, kalles.”

Her eyes went wide but her lips parted. When she had a healthy swallow, I removed it and set it down close to her trembling hand, which was pressed against the table. The brew was watered down, but it could still be quite potent and I needed her tongue loosened.

Vienne’s expression wasn’t quite a glare and my eyes lingered on her lips, where she licked a drop of the brew away. More blood rushed to my already hard cock. Not for the first time, I cursed myself, knowing I should’ve returned to the brothel last night after I’d left her. When had I ever reacted to a female like this? Never. Even when I was younger, when desire and lust had ridden me hard.

But vok, that little fire in her gaze made me restless. It made my trews tight and my dakke, the firm bump above my aching cock, heat and swell.

My jaw ticked and I asked, “You came all the way from the Dead Mountain? To Dothik?”

Her chin lifted, ever so slightly.

“You did not,” I said. “Not wearing only a cloak.” I reached underneath the table, ignoring her gasp, and I traced the soles of her bare feet with the tip of one claw. I felt blisters and sores, hardened callouses there, but not as many as there would have been had she traveled all the way from the Dead Mountain. They’d be ravaged raw. “And no protection for your little feet.”

She tugged her foot away and I let her.

“Nik, the Ghertun brought you here. Or close. Where?”

Her gaze dropped again, down to the table of food. I felt a twinge of pity that I had not let her eat more before I began my questioning. Then I ignored it.

A small flush was beginning to make its way up the column of her neck. The brew was no doubt warming her belly quickly, especially if she hadn’t eaten in a long while.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. “I can’t say anything more. He would know.”

“Lozza?” I chuffed. “Do you see him here?”

She didn’t trust me. Not one bit. I made her wary, on edge, like I did most beings. After she’d left the great hall, after the Dothikkar had stormed from it shortly after her departure, no doubt wanting to sink his frustrations and fears into one of his concubines for the evening, the Vorakkars had been left alone to speak.

With the exception of Rath Dulia—who would climb up the Dothikkar’s rear end if he could—we were all in agreement that the vekkiri needed to be questioned. We needed to know if the message was a serious threat and, more importantly, how great an army this Ghertun king truly had. We’d all heard the reports from the scouts. The Ghertun’s numbers grew rapidly. They fucked and bred like nekkisau in heat. It was reported they birthed in litters.

Rath Tuviri and Rath Kitala had wanted to question her, seeing as how their Morakkaris were human. They believed they could put Vienne at ease.

Only, I’d gotten to her first and I only wished I could see Rath Kitala’s face when he ventured down to the dungeons later this night to find her gone.

I told myself it had nothing to do with the fact that I wanted to see her, to speak with her again. I told myself I was doing my duty as Vorakkar, to my horde, to the Dakkari I had sworn an oath to protect. I didn’t trust anyone else.

Vok, I didn’t even trust myself.

“We can protect you,” I murmured, keeping my voice low until it sounded like a purr. “You do not have to return to the Dead Mountain. You can be free. We can return you to your village. You do not have to fear him.”

A laugh erupted from her, throaty, raw, and desperate. My nostrils flared with that laugh, my body tightening. I swore I felt hot, searing seed rising up my cock, the heat of it making me growl.

With a laugh like that, I almost believed the Dothikkar’s worry to be true. That she was a sorceress, that she’d been sent here to end us all. End me.

“You wish to protect me?” she whispered after her laugh died down. The pain in her voice was evident, cutting. “Then help me get a heartstone and return me to the Dead Mountain. I must be back before the black moon.”

The black moon would come in four weeks.

“Or what?” I growled.

She sucked in a whistling breath through her nostrils and she lifted her gaze to meet mine. Her eyes were wet and wide, but beneath their glassy surface, I saw determination.

Tendrils of heat curled low in my belly. That same possessive instinct, the one that wanted to claim her, burst in my chest once more.

Her hand curled around the goblet of brew and she brought it up to her lips, chugging down the liquid in one swift motion. I watched as she set it back down, licking the remnants from her lips. Underneath the table, I wrapped my hand around her slim ankle and her only reaction was a soft, audible swallow.

“I need to return by the black moon,” she repeated, holding my gaze. “Will you help me?”

I leaned forward, brushing my thumb against the soft flesh of her ankle. The inside of it felt like cool silk.

“And what price would you pay for the help of a horde king?” I taunted, a small smirk appearing. “What would you give me in return?”

Her chest heaved. Her eyes flickered in recognition.

“I would give you anything,” she replied, soft and determined, though her voice trembled as she said it.

A dark sound rose from my throat, wicked fantasies tearing at my mind. She knew exactly what I had meant. She knew exactly what she offered to me so freely.

“Lysi?” I rasped. “I am not a gentle male and I do not fuck like one.” Her ankle twitched in my grip. “You believe you could satisfy my desires?”

Her gaze burned into mine. Her brows lowered until I felt her small glare. She wanted to slap me across the face again but she was too frightened to.

“I—I would try.”

The room felt thick, the fire burning too hot. This was a dangerous game I played. I’d only meant to place her on the edge of discomfort but I feared it was I who suffered for it.

That was when I felt it again. The strange electric buzz around me, prickling the back of my neck, making me tense. My eyes never left hers and I watched them widen, watched her throat bob with her swallow. I knew it came from her. Three times now, I’d felt it, and only with her. I didn’t know what it was, or what it meant, but she was the cause.

I let her have her secrets, however, because she pushed to her knees, my hand releasing her ankle in the process. She came over to me, kneeling at my side. Warmth poured from her and when she slowly reached out to put her hand on my chest? She seared me.

Her fingers brushed a scar over my pectoral. Softly. Delicately. Like she feared hurting me. The thought would’ve made me laugh had I not tensed, my entire being focusing on that simple touch. All the blood that wasn’t diverted to my cock seemed to rush towards it, blooming under her fingers.

Acting purely on instinct, my hands shot out, curling around her slim waist and dragging her forward until she was in my lap, her thighs straddling my hips. Leaning forward, I angled my head and heard her startled gasp when I bit at her neck, hard. My tail wrapped around her leg, like I was afraid she’d pull away before I had a taste of her.

A part of me was tempted to take what she offered. Because right then, I would’ve liked nothing more than to bury myself in her hot cunt, to spend the seed boiling in my deva into her. Vok, I needed to!

“You do not know what you tempt, leikavi,” I growled, suddenly furious with her. Her scent wrapped around my mind, dulling my senses. No longer did she smell like rot and filth from whatever she’d used to hide the color of her hair. She smelled soft and warm, like a female in heat, and her scent made me crazed.

My hand wrapped around her white hair. It was like silk in my grip as I tugged her head back, exposing her throat, and I glared down into her widened eyes. Her throat bobbed with her swallow, her lips parted, a red mark from my teeth adorning her delicate flesh.

Like this, the sight of her almost made me come in my trews, especially when I saw her tightened nipples pressing into the hide of her tunic.

“Vok,” I cursed. Potent anger, mind-numbing desire, and that familiar hatred that swarmed my veins when I saw her hesitance rode me hard. I lashed out with, “You would whore yourself to a Vorakkar for this Ghertun king?”

She flinched and something faded from her eyes.

“I—” she started, her nostrils flaring.

I held her in an uncomfortable position, her back arched slightly, her chest straining towards me, the column of her neck exposed. She was vulnerable, completely at my mercy. And she knew it.

“I would do whatever it takes,” she whispered, suddenly as furious with me as I was with her.

She held my gaze as she spoke the words.

My jaw clenched. Then I asked her the one question that had been on my mind since she delivered her message.

“Why did he choose you?”

Why would a Ghertun king send a weak, malnourished, fearful little thing like her from the Dead Lands with an insurmountable task of infiltrating Dothik and delivering a message to the Dothikkar?

Before she could answer—not that she would, I knew—a fist slammed hard on the door of the room and it didn’t stop.

After a moment, the telltale sign of the lock being crushed vibrated the wood. And a moment later, a furious Vorakkar stepped through, his sword drawn. My sword was on the opposite end of the room and I cursed my own lack of foresight.

Rath Kitala leveled his blade at me and growled, “Release her now, Rath Drokka.”

My only response was a grin I didn’t feel.

Chapter Seven

Dizziness made me want to squeeze my eyes shut—but when I did, it only made the sensation worse. The only thing keeping me from toppling over was his possessive hold, which only tightened when the other Vorakkar came rushing inside the overheated room.

“Leave us,” the horde king beneath me drawled almost lazily, a grin on his features as he taunted the other male. “Can you not see we are busy?”

I sucked in a breath when he leaned forward and brushed his lips across the bite he’d given me. As he did, his eyes never left the other Vorakkar, the one who’d given me his furs when I’d been naked in the washing tub.

That spot on my neck tingled.

The other male was furious. I heard it in his tone when he rasped from the doorway, “They call you the Mad Horde King for good reason and now I finally understand why.”

Mad Horde King? I thought, my mind flashing to the darkness I’d felt swirling within him, the remnants of unfathomable agony.

Yes, I could believe the Dakkari called him that.

I felt the way the male underneath me stiffened, though that smirk never slid from his face. Did he not like to be called that? Did it insult him? Hurt him?

Then his eyes refocused on me and up close, I saw inky strands of black threading through the red of his irises. He leaned forward, his lips brushing my ear as he said, “Maybe I will take your tempting offer, leikavi.”

Before I could react, he released me, standing up and sliding me down onto the cushion.

He would help me?

Is that what he meant?

But for a price...

I knew exactly what he wanted, what he expected if he helped me.

I shivered, sitting sprawled in the hide tunic he’d given me, one that reached my knees.

“Finish eating, kalles,” he ordered, every bit the male who expected to be obeyed. Then his gaze trailed to the other Vorakkar, who still held his sword outstretched between them. “Then sleep. I will return later.”

Though I’d been exhausted before, I wasn’t tired now. Not in the least. Stepping past the other Vorakkar, he snagged his sword from its resting place next to the chest and stepped from the room.

As for the other male, the one who’d given me the furs, he seemed to trust the Mad Horde King enough to show him his back as he asked me, “Are you…injured, kalles?”

Injured?

I frowned but then lowered my head, looking down into my lap. “No.”

I sensed that the male hesitated. Only for a moment. Then I heard the whispering of a blade as he sheathed his sword and then his heavy footsteps retreated back into the hallway.

“You will be safe here,” he said quietly to me. “I promise you.”

I squeezed my fists at my sides, tensed, waiting. Then I sagged with relief once the door closed behind him…and I was left alone.

My eyes flashed up to the door and I rushed over to it, dragging the armchair the Mad Horde King had been sitting on with difficulty. I wedged it against the door though my arms shook with the effort. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to stop a Dakkari from entering, but at least it would give me time to prepare.

When I felt marginally safer, I went to sink down at the low table again, placing my back against the wall, staring at the door. My heart was still throbbing in my chest and when I placed my palm over it, it beat a frenzied rhythm against it.

Whether it was from the brew or the tingling bite on my neck—or both—I didn’t know.

There was a stranger in my skin. When I’d opened up my senses to the horde king, just moments ago, I’d felt the stinging urge of desire and arousal…but what frightened me most was that I didn’t know if it stemmed from him or from me. Or were his emotions influencing my own?

It had never happened before. When I used my gift and felt others’ emotions, there was a sense of detachment. A sense of detachment I’d relied on to protect me like a shield or else it would be too overwhelming.

But with him…

I swallowed.

With him, it was different. His emotions tore at me and I felt them deeply. His pain, his darkness…his desire. They became my own, if only briefly.

My stomach growled then, my appetite suddenly awakening. I dragged my gaze away from the door, down to the food in front of me. More food than I’d ever seen at one time.

Did it come at a price?

Everything did.

The Mad Horde King wanted me, desired me for whatever reason. I flushed, remembering how I’d shamelessly begged him for his help.

But he helped me before, I knew. He’d helped me slip away from the guards, last night on the streets of Dothik. Perhaps he would help me again.

I’d given him a truth. I would do whatever it took to help my family. They were depending on me. And if I failed, I would never see them again. Because if I failed, it meant my death.

Already, I was running out of time. I could almost feel the poison thickening my blood like a countdown.

Chapter Eight

“You are mad,” Rath Kitala hissed, “if you thought you could take her without us knowing.”

I regarded him, my arms crossed over my chest. We were all huddled in Rath Tuviri’s quarters, just down the hall from my own. With the exception of Rath Dulia, who was currently entertaining a female or two despite the fact that he had a Morakkari, a wife and queen, back at his horde, we were all meeting.

In secret, it seemed, judging from our hushed voices.

“I have met her before,” I decided to tell them.

“Neffar?” Rath Rowin asked, frowning. “When?”

“Last night,” I said, my skin itching with the proximity of the other Vorakkars. There were six of us, crammed into the small space. And we were not small males. “I discovered her in the city.”

“It was you who took her to the dungeons?” Rath Rowin asked.

“Nik,” I rasped, cutting him a glare. “I distracted the Dothikkar’s guards to help her escape. I told her to leave the city. She told me she needed to meet with the Dothikkar but vok, I did not know why she wanted to speak with him. Who would think she was a messenger for the Ghertun?”

“She was frightened when I came into your quarters,” Rath Kitala said, his tone sharp. “Or could you not see that? You may have helped her last night but she does not trust you now.”

“And even when I had her in my lap and my lips at her throat,” I grinned, cutting my gaze to him, “she asked me for my help.”

Rath Kitala’s nostrils flared. I’d seen more of the other Vorakkars in the past few moon cycles than I cared to…and tensions always ran high between us. We were kings in our right. We were used to making decisions on our own and we didn’t like to be challenged.

Rath Tuviri cut in, his golden hair shimmering with the flickering of the fire light. He said, “Try not to frighten the girl. I think we can use this to our advantage.”

All the Vorakkars’ eyes came to him.

“You have a plan?” Rath Okkili asked, raising a sardonic brow. “She says she needs a heartstone. How do you think to get one without collapsing our power system and enraging Kakkari in the process?”

There were five heartstones spread across Dakkar. One was here, in Dothik, protected in the Dothikkar’s favored temple. Two of the remaining four were in select outposts. The most successful hordes in our history became outposts once the Vorakkars decided to settle down. One heartstone was with Rath Okkili’s own father, who had been a great Vorakkar in his time and who still lived in his respective outpost, far to the south, nearest Drukkar’s Sea.

The fourth heartstone had been placed in an ancient temple, protected by priestesses of Kakkari. It was an isolated place, a bitterly cold place, to the north. Whenever a horde passed by, we were expected to give the priestesses ample supplies to last for the remainder of the year, but mostly, they survived on their own crops, which they were rumored to grow deep in the earth.

And the fifth heartstone…

It had been lost.

Or so many believed.

Over a hundred years ago, a darukkar, a horde warrior, had stolen it from under his Vorakkar’s protection when the horde had been assigned to deliver it to an outpost to the east. Even then, the Ghertun had lived in the Dead Lands. The Dothikkar at the time had believed the heartstone would help protect that area of land from the increases in attacks, that Kakkari would protect them.

The heartstones were powerful. They were fed from the sun and birthed from the earth, just as gold was. And while the hordes had no use for them, Dothik and the outposts were powered by heartstones. Lights and technology, specifically, but also faith.

The Dakkari revered them.

What Vienne asked, what the Ghertun demanded, was an impossible task.

Except…the fifth heartstone was not being used.

And I was one of two beings on Dakkar that knew where it was.

“You think to seek out the fifth heartstone?” I asked Rath Tuviri. “How would that be to our advantage?”

“It is the only one unaccounted for,” he replied. “The only one not in use. I will go to the archives in the morning and learn more about the darukkar who stole it, where it was last seen. But that is not the point. The heartstone is a tool, nothing more. A tool to gain this girl’s trust. We will never give it to the Ghertun.”

“We give her what she wants,” Rath Rowin said, “then she will give us what we want.”

Rath Kitala said, “She has been under the Dead Mountain.”

“Exactly,” Rath Tuviri said quietly. “For all our efforts, we have never been able to breach their land, much less the Dead Mountain. Yet, she has lived there. This kalles could tell us so much about them, how they live, how they eat, how large their army is and whether they are well-trained. Their weapons, if they have any, their technology. Their culture. The Ghertun have been our enemy for centuries and yet, they know more about us than we do about them. Why is that? Because they watch us, they study us, without us realizing it. We need to start doing the same in order to bring them under our control again.”

“We gain her trust and then use her for information about our enemy,” I murmured, “but then what? The Dothikkar will never give into Lozza’s demands. We all know this. He would sooner watch the outposts fall and this city burn.”

Rath Loppar, the eldest of us all, said, “We attack them before they attack us. This vekkiri will tell us how much of a threat the army is. She should want to, especially if she is a slave. We can help her.”

“Lozza has something over her,” I told them. “A loved one, perhaps. She is not loyal to him but she fears him enough to keep quiet.”

I could not even blame her for it.

“She told you this?” Rath Kitala asked, his eyes narrowed on me. He didn’t trust me. Not one bit.

I gave him a chilly smirk. “She didn’t need to.”

I decided against telling them about the strange energy I felt around her. That was a secret I needed to uncover myself.

“So we plan for a war?” Rath Okkili asked, his eyes shining. The Vorakkar loved bloodshed perhaps more than I, even though his father had been one of the more peaceful Vorakkars in his time.

“We need to find the heartstone to gain her trust, deliver the girl back to the Dead Mountain as a distraction, and lysi, plan for a war if we cannot prevent one,” Rath Tuviri said.

Vok. I did not need the others looking into the disappearance of the fifth heartstone. I had kept it a secret for a long time, since it was not my secret to tell.

“The kalles comes with me,” I decided.

“Nik,” Rath Kitala cut in immediately. “Absolutely not.”

“I was not asking,” I growled. “My horde is closest to the Dead Lands and closest to the ancient groves.”

The ancient groves…where it was rumored the darukkar had brought the heartstone along with his dying mate. It was common knowledge. It was true knowledge, actually, since that was where the heartstone rested. But the groves were so vast that it could take hundreds of years to search them before finding the heartstone.

“I will find the heartstone,” I lied to the circle of Vorakkars, “I will get information out of the kalles and then I will take her back to the Dead Mountain before the black moon.”

Rath Tuviri frowned. “The black moon?”

“Oh, I didn’t mention that?” I rasped, my tone rough. “She told me that was how long Lozza had given her to return.”

I remembered the haunted look on her face, the desperation she probably didn’t even realize had been shining in her gaze, when she’d told me that.

“Anything else she told you that you have failed to mention?” Rath Kitala growled.

He really did not like me.

Good.

My teeth flashed when I grinned. “Not that I can think of.”

Rath Tuviri looked at me closely and said, “You must not mistreat her if you expect to earn her trust.”

I snarled, the rage uncurling from me quickly, as I grated, “I have never harmed a female in my life. Dakkari or otherwise.”

Rath Rowin, who I knew best of all the Vorakkars, clasped a hand on my shoulder, though I stiffened at his touch. He told the group, “Rath Drokka will do as he says. I believe that. We will communicate by the thesper as needed. Rath Tuviri will research the lost heartstone at the archives and I will assist him. Rath Loppar, you will work with the Dothikkar. Convince him as much as you can that this is the best course of action for now.”

Rath Loppar inclined his head. He was the eldest Vorakkar, appointed by the Dothikkar’s father, the last great king. As such, the Dothikkar respected him the most and might listen to what he had to say.

“Rath Kitala and Rath Okkili, you should journey to the outposts and prepare them. If it comes to war, we need every darukkar they can spare,” Rath Rowin finished.

Rath Tuviri nodded, his eyes flitting around the group, lingering on me. “We are in agreement?”

“Lysi,” I said. “I will leave in the morning with the kalles. Send me anything you find in the archives by the thesper.”

Thesper were intelligent creatures, trained to carry messages over long distances. They were extremely useful, especially during the cold season, when Dakkari messengers could not be spared.

There was nothing more to be said. We would have to meet one last time before the black moon undoubtedly, to share what we learned, to reassess, but for now, we had our tasks.

Rath Kitala caught my arm before I left the room and murmured lowly, so the others could not hear, “The others might not see it, but I know the hearts of males like you. And they are as black and tainted as Drukkar’s wrath. Harm her and you will have Kakkari to answer to.”

I leaned closer, hissing, “If you knew me, Rath Kitala, then you would know my heart is the darkest of them all.”

His jaw clenched. His eyes flashed. I pulled my arm out of his grip and strode from the room. Only once I was alone in the hallway did I take in a deep, shuddering breath.

Rath Kitala’s words had hit something inside of me I thought long gone.

Regret.

Because he was right. I was a monster. And I had a feeling that the beast inside me demanded to be fed…and only she would sate that appetite. I wanted to gorge myself on her. I wanted to taint her. I wanted her to take away some of the darkness that had been festering in my soul for a long while.

I almost felt sorry for the little white-haired creature named Vienne.

Chapter Nine

I woke from a dream. It had begun as a memory at first, which had turned into a nightmare. I’d dreamed of my father, of his handsome, sun-kissed face and the wrinkles around his eyes. Of his laughter and smiles, even when we were hungry. Of the toys and games he’d created to keep us entertained, sticks and twigs that had become Dakkari warriors as we, the humans, battled them fiercely and won. Maxen had always whined when he had to play a Dakkari warrior.

Then I dreamed of a Vorakkar. A familiar Vorakkar with piercing red eyes and a deep scar running down his face. He bit my neck, drawing my blood, and then he stood over my father and cut his throat.

Gasping for air, my hands flew to my own neck, my eyes going wide, my chest pinched and tight. I sat up, struggling to breathe, tears streaming down my face.

It was only then that I realized I was being watched…by the very same Vorakkar I’d dreamed of. He was sitting in the chair, which was back in its rightful place close to the bed, not propped up against the door. His eyes were glowing red in the darkness.

“What is it that you fear, leikavi?” he murmured.

“You,” I breathed, still reeling from the dream, my mind spinning. I hadn’t dreamed of my father’s death in months. “And everything else.”

“What is it that you dreamed?” he asked next, never taking his gaze off my face.

My heartbeat was beginning to slow, though only slightly now that I knew he was in the room again. Blowing out a shuddering breath, I looked around the room, casting my gaze around to see if we were alone.

The fire was almost dead, flickering pitifully in the golden basin. Outside the window, I saw the early signs of dawn, streaks of red coloring the sky, though it was still dark. Not only that, I realized I was in the bed, underneath the soft, plush furs.

I’d curled up on the floor, in the corner, and I must’ve drifted off. But that meant he’d put me here. It meant he’d tucked the furs underneath my chin. Had he been watching me this whole time?

I commented, “You haven’t returned me to the dungeon.”

Tensing, I watched as he leaned forward in the chair. He grabbed a bundle from the ground and flung it across the bed. I saw they were clothes. Thick pants and a heavy tunic, similar to the one I was wearing. Boots and a fur cloak completed the bundle.

Surprised, I studied him.

“They will be big on you but they were the smallest I could find,” he explained, his tone a little gruff…as if he was unused to having to explain anything.

“What…what does this mean?”

“I will help you find a heartstone.”

My breath hitched. “You’ll help me?”

“How could I not when what you offered me is so tempting?” he murmured and I sucked in another breath that had nothing to do with relief.

He would help me at a price then. One I’d freely offered to him last night, though right now, sitting up in the bed in the early hours of morning, I didn’t know what had possessed me to offer such a thing.

Desperation made fools of us all.

I decided to ignore the implications of the deal I’d made with him for now. Instead, I asked him, “You spoke with the Dothikkar? He will give Lozza what he desires?”

His lips pressed together and he leaned forward until his elbows were resting on his thighs. His hair, now unbound around his shoulders, fell over one side of his face.

“Lysi,” he told me. “He will agree to the terms.”

Relief whistled through me, bright and clear. It was the first good news I’d had in a long time…perhaps ever.

“We leave as soon as you dress,” he continued. “Our journey will be long and hard. I hope you know how to ride a pyroki.”

I swallowed audibly. He knew perfectly well that I never would have ridden one before, so I chose to say nothing.

Instead, I climbed out of the bed and grabbed the pants, beginning to dress. I pulled them up and tied the sash around my waist as tight as it would go, all too aware of the intensity of his gaze. When it came time to change my tunic, I turned my back to him, pulling the one I was wearing over my head and dropping it to the ground.

It was silly to desire privacy when he had already seen my naked body.

Even still, I stiffened when I heard the chair creak as he rose. His footsteps approached as I fumbled with the clean tunic in my grip. Then I felt him brush my hair away from my back, his clawed fingertips dragging over the tops of my shoulders.

I suppressed a shiver and froze as his hand stroked just below the base of my neck.

I’d almost forgotten it was there. My brand. The Ghertun marking of three horizontal stacked lines. All their slaves were branded, even the Ghertun ones.

His hand trailed away, stroking down the line of my spine before falling away. He didn’t say anything about the brand. He only bit out, “Finish dressing.”

His tone was sharp and…angry. I didn’t hesitate in pulling the clean tunic over my head, followed quickly by the heavy boots that felt like boulders on my feet.

When I finally turned to meet his eyes, I couldn’t resist gathering the energy of my power between us and I pressed it forward. I wanted to know what he was thinking, what he was planning.

I felt the tendrils of his desire, but it was muted by disgust and rage. At the Ghertun, not at me.

I pulled away, shocked, and quickly lowered my head so he wouldn’t see my expression. My temple throbbed but I realized it was more from his emotions than the fact I’d tapped into my gift, albeit briefly.

“Vir drak,” he murmured in Dakkari. When he saw my confusion, he said, “We ride.”

* * *

There was a story Maman had told us as children. A story of an ancient war, long ago. Of a place called Troy, a place in the Old World. And in that story, she’d told us of a gift horse led into the enemy’s city and within that horse were warriors, waiting to attack from within.

Maman had smiled as she’d recited, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth…or else you might not like what you find.”

I thought of that story as the Vorakkar led me to his pyroki. It was still dark, though red streaked the sky. Another hour, I estimated, and the sun would peek over the mountain range to the west.

Coming from the Dothikkar’s keep, I had the distinct impression that we were…sneaking. The Vorakkar had been watchful as we’d left. His energy had been focused, intense. Any guards that we came across seemed to look the other way, though I’d caught the puzzled frown on one or two.

Once we made it to the stables, the Vorakkar exchanged a few words with the young Dakkari boy that was half-asleep on a stool outside the door. The boy had peered up at me curiously but I’d kept my face hidden within the darkness of the hood. He probably thought me small for a Dakkari.

A moment later, the boy brought out a pyroki. His pyroki.

I recoiled in fear, stumbling back into the Vorakkar’s hard chest. My breath fogged out in front of me and cold stung my fingers as I stared into the creature’s reddened gaze. Just like its master’s.

The beast strode towards us on all fours, its feet tipped in massive black talons that dug into the earth, much like the Old World horse from Maman’s story. It had more scales than flesh, however, glittering black in the low morning light. Just like the Mad Horde King’s flesh, his beast was painted with gold, flourishing swirls leading into sharpened angles.

The written Dakkari language, one that had fascinated me ever since I’d seen it under the Dead Mountain. The Ghertun sibi I was assigned to had purchased a tome from a trader at a steep price and when they went to sleep at night, sometimes I snuck to the shelf, carefully lowered the tome, and caressed its pages. I thought it beautiful.

The pyroki chuffed out a violent breath when it saw its master behind me and the Vorakkar stepped forward, taking the reins from the boy and dismissing him with a gold coin that made his dark eyes go round.

Before I knew it, the horde king turned to me, snatched me around my waist, and slung me over the beast’s back. A startled sound escaped my throat and the pyroki stomped its legs, the impact making my teeth vibrate in my mouth.

“Pyroth,” the Mad Horde King bit out to his beast, taking its snout into his wide palm and stroking softly. “Pyroth. Pevkell.”

At once, the creature calmed. I was siting, frozen across its back, my legs swung over both sides of its massive body. Even through the thick material of my pants, I could feel its heart pumping furiously against my calves.

The pyroki didn’t like me. Not one bit.

Once the Vorakkar calmed his beast, his gaze came up to me. His jaw tightened as his eyes ran over my form and then he swung himself up behind me. Underneath the safety of my hood, my face burned when he pulled me, until my backside was nestled against his groin and his inner thighs cradled my hips.

He grunted, reaching forward to take the gold reins, his arms bracketing my body until I had nowhere to go. I was tense, frozen, trying to keep as much distance between us as possible and failing.

“Vir drak ji vorak,” he said, his deep, rough voice vibrating through me. The words weren’t meant for me, however. They were meant for his pyroki, who started into motion at its master’s command.

I couldn’t contain the startled squeal that escaped my throat as the pyroki bolted into a run. The stables were on the edges of Dothik and had their own exit out onto the Dothikkar’s road and, by extension, the plains beyond. The pyroki had bolted into a furious sprint towards the gates and when it saw they were closed, that the guards stationed there had not opened them in time, the pyroki came to a sudden stop, kicking up dust and nearly throwing me off its back had the horde king behind me not caught my waist in time.

The Vorakkar growled, “Pyroth!”

I had the distinct impression that the pyroki tossed its head to signal its displeasure.

The Mad Horde King mumbled something in Dakkari, watching as the guards finally sprang into action and began opening the gates. It didn’t take long and once the pyroki saw the road cleared in front of us, it started to run again, though not quite the jarring full-sprint it had done before.

Craning my neck behind me, I watched the walled city begin to fall away. Before us, the Dothikkar’s paved road was lined with towering trees and the forests beyond them looked dark and sinister. But they blurred by as the pyroki increased its pace.

The Vorakkar began laughing and I tensed at the foreign, husky sound.

“What?” I asked, gritting my teeth when my rump landed painfully on the pyroki’s scaled back.

“She does not like you,” he told me once his laugh faded away. “I have never seen her so displeased about anything.”

She?

“I gathered that for myself,” I murmured, wincing when I landed hard again.

I prayed that wherever our destination was, it was close by. I’d been on the pyroki’s back for mere moments and already, I felt pain blooming.

“Livri,” the Vorakkar said next and all at once the pyroki gentled its sprint, slowing down to a trot.

I almost sighed in relief. And then I committed the word to memory. Livri.

When I shifted, my backside brushed his groin again and I sucked in a breath, leaning forward. When I rested my hands on the pyroki’s thick neck, hanging on, it flung its head backwards and I cried out, losing my grip and falling back into the Vorakkar’s chest.

My heart was thundering but I righted myself immediately. All right, so the pyroki didn’t want me to touch her. Fair enough.

It seemed the pyroki was just as prickly as its master.

“Will you tell me where we are going now?” I asked instead. I’d asked before we’d left the Dothikkar’s keep but all the Vorakkar had said in reply was that the heartstone we sought was not in the city.

“To my horde,” he said.

I jolted. “What? Why?”

Dread coiled in my stomach. My gut had told me something wasn’t right and I should’ve listened to it.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth?

I should have.

I was running out of time. Every day I was away from the Dead Mountain…the poison in my blood grew thicker and thicker. We didn’t have time to gallivant around Dakkar. I didn’t have time.

“No, please, just…” I shook my head, my throat growing tight. “Please, I need to get the heartstone and quickly.”

The Vorakkar didn’t say anything. Not at first, and I felt familiar desperation claw its way up my throat.

“Tell me one thing about you,” he finally said, “and I will tell you a story. About why we must go to my horde first.”

From behind, he pulled my hood away and it tumbled around my shoulders. Cool air threaded through my hair and it felt good.

A story?

“You know I cannot say anything about Lozza,” I told him. “Or the Ghertun.”

“Then tell me how you came to be in their possession,” he murmured, his voice low, almost like a purr, like he was weaving a spell around me. I stiffened when his hand dipped up the back of my cloak, until his hand curled around my hip. His palm was hot. I felt it even through the thickened material of my tunic.

“I—” I started. “I don’t…”

Before us, the sky was beginning to lighten. We hadn’t quite reached the end of the Dothikkar’s road but I could see where it gave way to the plains. The quiet, endless plains of Dakkar.

The only sound I heard was the clattering of his pyroki’s taloned feet on the stone. And a slight rustling of a breeze through the trees.

It was almost…peaceful.

My shoulders sagged.

I licked my lips and said, keeping my voice hushed, “About a year ago, they attacked my village. They came at night. We had no warning.”

I could still hear the screams. I could still feel the terror. I remembered my grandmother shuffling us into the hidden cellar, which my father had dug out years before. But just as my mother, my brothers, and my sister had dropped down into it, the door behind her had crashed open. I remembered the rasping sounds of their laughter, the wet sound of their blade as they plunged it into my grandmother. Her blood had dripped down, through the cracks in the floor.

Her sacrifice had meant nothing because the Ghertun had found us anyway. They’d killed my grandmother because she was too old to be of use to them.

“They slaughtered most of the village. They looted what food we had, the food we’d grown, pillaged our homes, and took some of us back to the Dead Mountain as slaves.”

“They chose you and your family?” he asked.

“Yes,” I whispered. “They—”

I frowned.

“I—I didn’t say anything about a family,” I said.

“I assumed,” he murmured and I stiffened when his hand came to brush my hair aside, draping it over one of my shoulders. “Why else would you do this if not to protect those you love? I know desperation better than most. I know the lengths to which we will go to protect our family. Or to honor them.”

I need to be careful with him, I thought.

He was intelligent, that much was obvious. He was a horde king. He was a leader. Of course he was intelligent. And observant.

“Why did they choose your family?” he asked next.

My lips pressed together.

Because I’d used every last bit of my gift to make them spare us. I’d used it on every last Ghertun that had attacked our village, persuading them to choose us, though I’d been passed out for days afterwards and the pain hadn’t subsided for weeks.

“I answered your question. I want my story now,” I said.

He chuffed out a sharp exhale that I felt whisper across my neck. His hand tightened on my hip.

For a moment, I thought I’d been fooled. Misled. Then he started, “Over a century ago, a horde warrior stole a heartstone during its transport to an outpost. It has been lost ever since and this is the heartstone we need to find.”

My stomach sank. Lost?

“There are only five in existence that we know of. Do you know what they do?”

“No.”

I hadn’t given much thought to the heartstone, only that Lozza wanted one desperately. I didn’t much care what it did.

“They possess great strength because it is said that Kakkari’s power lies within them. That they are fragments of her divine power.”

“And this darukkar…he stole it?”

“His wife was pregnant with their first child,” the horde king told me. “She had fallen ill and the horde’s healer believed that the child would be lost…as would his wife. The warrior would lose both in one single moment.”

My heart twisted in my chest, my brows lowering in understanding.

“He was desperate,” I whispered.

“Lysi,” he rasped. “He stole the heartstone, spirited his wife and unborn child away from the horde and to a place of Kakkari. There, he asked for her help in healing them both.”

“Did it work?”

We were nearing the end of the Dothikkar’s road. When I cast a quick glance behind us, I could only see the glittering turrets of the city, high and proud in the sky. The Vorakkar turned his pyroki east. Towards the Dead Lands.

“Everything has a price,” he told me gruffly. “He paid it with his life.”

I sucked in a breath.

“But lysi, leikavi,” he murmured into my ear, his lips brushing the shell of it, making shivers explode down my spine. “Lysi, Kakkari spared his wife, who has long passed into the next life, and his daughter.”

I gave a small smile he couldn’t see, though it was touched by sadness. I was glad. It was an act of love that had spared them, though how his wife must’ve suffered, knowing his sacrifice.

“How do you know all this if you said the heartstone has been lost since then?”

The reins in his hands loosened.

“Draki,” he commanded his pyroki, who began to pick up pace now that we’d reached the edges of the plains.

His lips returned to my ear.

“Because his daughter still lives,” he told me.

My breath hitched in hope.

“She is a member of my horde.”

Chapter Ten

When the sky grew dark, the horde king maneuvered his pyroki to a group of towering rocks and boulders. It looked like a miniature mountain range among the plains but would provide us with shelter and protection for the night.

I almost cried with relief once we stopped. Though I would have ridden straight to his horde—he’d told me the journey would take us several days—a selfish part of me wanted to rest. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. My lower half was numb and whenever I tried to move my feet, they tingled painfully. My arms and abdomen were sore as well, from holding myself up for the better part of the day.

Everything was sore, truthfully.

The horde king dismounted first, swinging his leg over easily. Then he reached up for me, grabbing me around my waist and pulling me down.

I hissed, grabbing onto his wrist to keep myself from toppling over. Pinpricks, like I was being jabbed with needles, exploded down my legs and it took them a moment to cease.

But when they did, I felt burning pain through my lower half. My thighs, my inner thighs, my backside. My bones felt like they were bruised, while my buttocks and thighs felt like they had been lit on fire.

The horde king frowned down at me but never released his grip. When I realized I’d grabbed onto him for support, I forced myself to step away, to stand on my own. But when I did, my legs shook and trembled and I damn near collapsed onto the ground.

He caught me, easily and swiftly, a testament to his speed.

“Let me see,” he rasped, his hand trailing to the tie around my waist.

“No,” I said, squeezing his wrist. “I—I’m fine. I just need to rest. Please.”

He ignored me. The silver light from the moon illuminated the clearing, bouncing off the golden markings across his chest, down his arms, and off his pyroki’s scales. The moon was a mere sliver now but would be full in two weeks…before disappearing once more. Then the black moon would blanket Dakkar.

I tucked my chin down when he loosened the tie and the pants fell from my bony hips, pooling around the boots, which he tugged off a moment later. He turned me, crouching in the earth, and my face would’ve burned right off had I not been in such pain.

I heard his curse when he lifted the hem of my tunic, baring my naked backside to his eyes. His hand came around my ankle, spreading my thighs. I almost cried out when the cool night air brushed across the chafed, bleeding, sore flesh.

He cursed again and then was silent. When I managed to crane my neck and peer down at him, his jaw was ticking. He looked furious.

At me? I didn’t know. Was he angry that I was so weak? That I couldn’t handle a single day on his pyroki before practically disintegrating before his very eyes?

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, old instincts kicking in.

His brow furrowed. His eyes flashed up to me, those red eyes burning.

The horde king didn’t say anything. Instead, he rose, towering over me once more. He turned to his pyroki, to the travel sacks around its flank. He pulled out a large, tightly rolled up fur, spread it out on the ground in front of me, and helped me lie down on top of it, guiding me down onto my belly.

The pain radiated and throbbed from my backside as I regarded him closely. He had turned back to his pyroki, pulling a small basin from the travel sack next, one I knew the Dakkari used for fires, and placing it close by.

Next, he got feed and water for his pyroki, who lay down in the earth, resting her own weary bones, no doubt. Only once she was taken care of did he start a quick fire, which made the clearing burst into golden light, flickering off the tall rocks and fat boulders that shielded us from most of the night winds.

Throughout the day, he’d made sure I ate the dried rations he gave me and drank water from a skin. I wasn’t all that hungry now but when he drew close with the water skin, I accepted it gratefully and tipped it up, taking a healthy swallow of it.

“You should have said you were hurting,” he rasped, watching me drink. He had something cradled in the palm of his hand. He held it up when he saw me looking at it. “Uudun. This will help.”

Before I could question him, he was kneeling at my side and I tensed when he dragged up the tunic, baring my buttocks and reddened thighs. It was still cold, even with the rocks as a barrier against the harsh plain nights. A strong shiver racked my body, a breeze curling up my tunic, chilling my neck.

He didn’t ask for permission. Instead, he opened the jar, something slippery and green inside, dipped his fingers in and pressed them to the backs of my thighs.

My eyes watered when it stung. My legs twitched against the sharpness of the pain, but otherwise I forced myself to lie still. He applied more and more. The salve was cold but after the initial sting, my skin began to tingle. Then, miraculously, the pain began to melt away.

But as the pain lessened, I became more and more aware of his hands on me, so close to the sparse white curls that shielded my sex. He moved from the backs of my thighs to my inner thighs, where the flesh was most tender and sore. And after the initial teeth-gritting sting, the pain there lessened as well, though there was still the sensation of heat, of something unwell.

I sucked in a breath when one of his claws brushed my sex and my spine stiffened.

He paused before making a sound in the back of his throat.

“I am not so much of a monster that I will fuck you when you are in pain, leikavi,” he rasped.

His words did nothing to settle the sudden fear in my belly.

“You do not trust me?” he questioned. I got the sense that he was mocking me with his tone, as if he knew that, of course, I didn’t trust him. No one in their right mind would.

“I—I don’t know what to make of you,” I found myself saying.

“Neffar?”

“Sometimes, you can be kind in your own way. Other times, you are deliberately terrifying, like you want me to be frightened of you,” I whispered, pressing my cheek into the fur.

I sensed him moving and then he was kneeling in front of me. His claws curled under my chin, lifting my gaze to meet his.

“You should always be fearful of me, kalles,” he said gently, softly, like he was speaking to me like I was his lover, not the messenger of his enemy. “Because sometimes, I do not know what I will do. And when I get into states like that, no one can stop me. I am not kind. Do not think of me as such again.”

I swallowed audibly at the unspoken threat in his words.

What does he mean? I wondered but was too scared to ask. I didn’t think I wanted to know. The others called him the Mad Horde King for a reason, didn’t they?

He released my chin and went to stoke the fire, burning brightly in the golden basin, returning the uudun jar to the travel sack.

“Are you hungry?” he asked next, his voice still gentle.

I pressed my lips together. He’d tended to my wounds, then he threatened me, and now he wanted to feed me?

“No,” I whispered, closing my eyes, overwhelmed.

“Then sleep,” he commanded gruffly. “Veekor.”

Sleep was a welcome reprieve. I could escape him for a moment, escape this terrible, terrible world. Perhaps I would dream of my father, of our happy times instead of his death. Perhaps I would dream of my grandmother, of Maman, of my siblings.

Please keep them safe until I return, I pleaded.

But whom my prayer was directed to, I knew not. Maybe Kakkari. She’d helped the horde warrior and his pregnant wife after all. And I would gladly pay a price if it meant my family was safe.

Sleep found me and it was blissful.

* * *

“I don’t know if that is the best idea,” I said, balking at his suggestion—no, his order.

He raised a brow.

“I was not asking,” he informed me gruffly, obviously annoyed, and it took everything in me not to break his gaze. If I ever questioned the Ghertun sibi I’d been assigned to serve, they would ensure my punishment so that it never happened again. I was tempted by those instincts to cower, to submit.

I was seated across the back of his pyroki already, looking down at him. The smallest of movements reminded me how uncomfortable the pain was. While the uudun salve had helped through the night, my skin hadn’t magically healed—it was still raw and red, though the salve had helped numb the area—and my muscles were still aching. Screaming, really. Muscles I didn’t even know I had.

The Vorakkar swung himself up onto the back of his pyroki after ensuring we left nothing behind. I almost winced when he settled his weight behind me, my thighs rubbing across the merciless hardened scales of the beast below us.

“We have two full days until we reach my horde,” he rasped, lifting me as if I weighed nothing. “You cannot last another day if you continue like this.”

Then he promptly placed me across his lap. His left arm braced my back, my buttocks were cradled by his groin, and my legs were draped across his right thigh, my booted feet dangling in the air, occasionally thudding against his pyroki’s side.

“Vir drak,” he ordered his pyroki and we darted into motion again, though the pace was slower. The Vorakkar realized this too and said, “Perhaps even three days.”

My lips pressed together. I held myself tensed and tight. My arm was squished against the broad muscles of his chest and I could feel them shifting with every rocking movement of the pyroki’s trot.

“The faster the better,” I said. “We don’t have to take it slow for my sake.”

He grunted, studying me. That was when I realized how close our faces were. Again, I could see those inky black tendrils shooting through the red of his eyes. I could see the puckered skin of his scar up close and for the first time, I wondered how he’d received it. It looked very deep, very old.

There was another scar I hadn’t noticed before on the opposite side of his face. His bronzed skin made it gleam golden near his strong jawline.

I realized, with a start, that he was strangely handsome—in a dark, cutting way. Looking at him was equally pleasing and terribly frightening.

I turned my head to regard the open plains in front of us, if only to break his gaze for a moment.

“Looking a Vorakkar in the eyes is a sign of disrespect, you know,” he told me, his tone sharp.

I froze, tensing even further in his lap. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

Yet, he’d let me look at him multiple times before this and said nothing? I didn’t understand him.

“The Ghertun did not teach you that?” he questioned. “Though they taught you some of our language? Though you know to fear a Vorakkar, as you should?”

“They didn’t teach me to fear a horde king,” I told him. “I’d already learned that for myself.”

The muscles in his arm tightened across my back. “Lysi? How did you learn that?”

I didn’t respond.

He let his question slide.

“What else did the Ghertun teach you?” he wondered, his tone softening.

I sensed him loosen the reins and the pyroki’s pace sped. Suddenly, I realized I was thankful. I felt pain from my thighs and buttocks, but not nearly as much as I would have had I been riding the way I’d been yesterday. And this way prevented further injury as I healed, though the position made me extremely uncomfortable.

Inhaling sharply, I felt him turn my face, though I kept my gaze on the wide, strong column of his throat. His neck was probably bigger than my thighs, I mused.

“Look at me, leikavi,” he commanded.

Surprisingly, a flare of annoyance shot through me and my gaze shot to his, narrowing.

“You cannot berate me for looking you in the eyes and then order me to in the next moment,” I said. The words felt good tumbling from my lips, though I didn’t know how he’d react to my insolence. “You choose one or you choose the other, horde king. So tell me what you prefer.”

What I didn’t expect was for him to laugh. It was a booming, loud laugh that seemed to echo across the wide, quiet plains. It was still early morning, the sun was still slowly rising, the earth still.

It was shockingly warm, his laugh. Rich and deep.

I found my lips were parted as I listened to it, found that some of my previous annoyance had given way to bafflement.

“I liked you better when you were slapping me across the face,” he purred.

I frowned, beyond confused. I wondered if all Dakkari were this…perplexing.

“Now, leikavi, I told you a story yesterday,” he murmured. “Now it is your turn to tell me one.” He gave me a dark grin. “And as you do, you are not allowed to break my gaze.”

At least I had my answer.

Chapter Eleven

“What story do you want to be told?” she asked me, frowning.

I breathed in her soft scent deeply until I could taste it on my tongue. I frightened her. Unsettled her. And yet, she’d still stood up to me, glaring at me as she sat draped across my lap.

I…liked that about her.

What story did I want to hear?

I wanted to hear all her stories. But I knew that she would not tell me what I truly wanted to know. Not yet.

The logical part of my mind—the part that I ignored most of the time—told me I needed to gain her trust. And I wouldn’t be able to do that if I kept frightening her, or threatening her, or unsettling her all the time.

I needed to tread carefully. There was more at stake here than my own…entertainment. She might open herself up to me eventually. But it wouldn’t be today, or tomorrow, or the next day. But it very well needed to be before the black moon. Even before then, I amended mentally, to allow me time to make plans.

“Tell me about why you learned to fear the Vorakkars.”

She tensed. “No.”

“Why?” I rasped.

Nillima, my pyroki, picked up her pace suddenly, briefly, and the force of her gait bounced the kalles in my lap. She sucked in a painful breath while I forced myself to hide my growl. The rocking, grinding motion of her backside over my cock was not helping matters. At times, she moved on me like she was fucking me and I needed a distraction.

“You told me the story of the heartstone yesterday because I told you about when I’d been taken to the Dead Mountain. It was an exchange of information,” she informed me.

A slow grin spread across my face and she stared at my sharpened incisors with a strange expression. “Very well. I am a fair male, after all,” I murmured, though my tone sounded mocking to my own ears. “One of your stories in exchange for one of mine then.”

She was suspicious. But intrigued. She’d liked the story of the heartstone yesterday. She was a female who enjoyed stories. I had felt her excitement, her sadness, her contentedness. Those emotions had poured from her easily as she’d gotten lost in the short tale I’d told her.

And she wanted another. A greedy kalles with an appetite for others’ stories.

Well, I had many stories. Not many that were suitable for a female like her but I had a few she might like to hear. Maybe even my sister’s own story.

My mood darkened at the thought, a crippling wave of sadness descending over me. My empty, battered heart gave a dull, pitiful thud, always searching for her and knowing she was gone forever. Yet through the sadness, I found that thread of rage and I gripped it, hanging onto it, until it pulled me away.

Anger, fury, and rage…my oldest and truest friends. They had kept me warm even when my soul had frosted over.

“Tell me why you concealed your hair then,” I said, my tone coming out harsher than I’d intended.

She was still frowning. Nillima jostled us again and her fingers clutched the furs that draped over my chest. I didn’t even think she realized it.

A strand of her hair fluttered across her cheek. Another strand whipped across my chest.

“Maman always told me to,” she said quietly, keeping my eyes bravely.

“Mam—an?” I repeated, brow furrowing.

“My mother,” she told me.

“Is that a different language than the universal tongue?”

“I think so,” she said. When her eyes strayed, she seemed to remember my command quickly and they darted back to me. “There were many languages on Old Earth. My mother called her mother maman, who called her mother maman. As a way to remember. But I am also certain so much has already been lost.”

My lips pulled down. Her voice was gentle, soothing even, but I sensed her sadness. For the first time, I wondered about the vekkiri and what they’d lost. The Old War had destroyed their colonies in space and forced them to scatter across the universe, searching for a new home. I knew little of their home planet or of their cultures. Not many did.

“And why did your mother tell you to hide the color of your hair?” I asked, absorbing this information quickly.

“Because it is unnatural for someone so young. I was born with white hair. My mother always told me it was because I’d been born afraid, that all my mother’s fear after the Old War had transferred itself into me and because of that…I was different. I would draw attention, unneeded attention. Especially among the Dakkari.”

I grunted.

“One of the Vorakkar had golden hair,” she murmured softly. “But other than him, I have never seen another like me. None human, at least, unless they were an elder.”

Rath Tuviri’s golden hair was perhaps the reason he was a Vorakkar. Or, at least, the reason why he’d been allowed into the Trials. Because his mother had wanted it and as the Dothikkar’s favored concubine…she’d succeeded in bending his will.

Females were dangerous and Rath Tuviri’s mother had manipulated the Dothikkar by his cock.

“And when I was young, my mother had a dream that I would be taken away,” she confessed softly. “She always believed it was because I was different and she was so afraid, for so long.”

“Then you did not take all her fear,” I commented.

“No,” she said. “A horde came to my village when I was a young girl. One of the Dakkari saw me and I—I still remember the look on his face. He was frightened, almost. My mother thought they would take me right then, so she quickly led me away, slipped out from the village, and hid me in the woods nearby until the horde passed on. The next day, she made a hood that I wore. And if it was too hot for it, she would conceal my hair with a mixture of earth and soot, to darken it.”

Yet, her eyes would still have given her away, I thought to myself. A grey so light they almost matched the beautiful hair she’d tried to hide.

Unable to help myself, I reached forward and caught a strand beneath my fingertips. Her pink lips parted and my gaze was drawn down to them. My kakkiva hardened further when I thought of those soft lips on my flesh.

Her breathing changed, becoming quicker.

With her tone soft, she said, “Are you satisfied with my story?”

I grunted.

Not nearly.

But there was panic in her gaze that bloomed the longer I gazed at her.

“I make you nervous,” I purred. “Why?”

“W-why?” she asked, her eyes widening. “You know why.”

“Because you fear the Vorakkars? Because everything frightens you, as you claim?” I lowered my voice, leaning closer. “Or because you know that once we reach my horde, I will take you to my furs to make good on our agreement?”

Her breath hitched when I reached between us to adjust my thickening cock in my trews. I thought her eyes would grow so wide they’d pop from her skull when she saw my length outlined along the hide.

She turned away, an enticing bright red coloring her cheeks.

Vienne’s voice came out a little strangled as she said, “It’s your turn.”

The corner of my mouth rose in a lazy smirk. “For what?”

“I told you about my hair. As you wanted.”

I cast my gaze over the plains in front of us. In the distance, over a half day’s journey, I saw the pillars of towering trees that signaled we’d entered the eastern lands. Ancient trees that had been planted by one of the first hordes to roam that land, and their seedlings had spread. They looked out of place amongst the otherwise empty plains, but they would be a welcome reprieve. I enjoyed the hush of the forests of Dakkar, the quiet.

“That darukkar, who saw you when you were a girl,” I decided to tell her, “it was very likely he was frightened.”

“Of me?” she couldn’t help but ask, frowning. “But why?”

“You are not the first being on this planet with hair like this,” I told her, trailing my claws down the light strands, feeling her shiver in response. “The first was a Dakkari sorceress, who was said to wield a great, unseen power.”

She stiffened in my lap.

“What?” she whispered.

“She destroyed almost an entire horde overnight, though some survived to tell the tale.”

“But…but why?”

“The Vorakkar had been dishonorable. Not only to his Morakkari, but to his own blood.” When I took my gaze from the forest in the distance, I saw her expression was astonished. Her emotions were so easy to read. It was…strange. Different. “He fucked a darukkar’s wife, got her with child, and then killed the babe once it was born to hide his shame, especially from his Morakkari.”

A soft gasp escaped her lips.

“That’s…that’s terrible. He killed his own child?”

I inclined my head.

“The accounts of who this sorceress was, or where she came from, are unclear, but it was assumed that she was a member of his horde. On the night that the Vorakkar took his child’s life, she became enraged. Those that survived say she channeled Kakkari’s power, fed by her grief. The account says she created a storm above the horde, bringing down unseen strikes that made the ground shake and fires burn. She destroyed everything. Everything the Vorakkar had touched, or cared for, was gone.”

Her neck turned and she gazed away, though her eyes were unseeing. I wanted to know what she thought of. I wanted to know what she was hiding, what she was truly afraid of.

“And the sorceress?”

“Gone,” I rumbled. “Disappeared. She was never seen again. Some believe that Kakkari’s power killed her as well, though her body was never found.”

“So that was why the Dothikkar called me a sorceress,” she murmured quietly. “I had wondered.”

“He is a superstitious male,” I said, feeling a prickling of annoyance whenever I thought of him. “He did not know what to make of your sudden appearance.”

“That was a terrible story,” she said, her face still turned to the plains.

I chuffed out a sound of disbelief. “I quite like it.”

“Why?”

My shoulder lifted. “It is a story of vengeance.”

“Vengeance?” she said, frowning. Then her eyes returned to me. “More like unnecessary slaughter. The sorceress was wrong to kill so many. They were punished for their horde king’s crimes. Females. Children. What is so noble and honorable about killing innocent beings? She was a villain. That was not vengeance. It was murder.”

Her words struck something in me and I growled, “And what do you know of vengeance, leikavi?”

“Enough to know that sometimes you never get it,” she said, her voice throaty, her eyes narrowed slightly. “And that you can spend your whole life letting it consume you, poison you, or you can make amends in your own soul and move forward.”

For a moment, I was speechless, glaring down at her, my jaw tight.

“It was the horde king’s responsibility to bear his punishment on his own. Wasn’t his child’s death enough? Why spill more blood?” she finished, her eyes shimmering with tears though she glared.

“The horde is an extension of its Vorakkar. A crime brings about vengeance and there is no escaping it once it comes. That is the way of our world,” I grated.

“And sometimes,” she said, “I wish I was a part of a different world. Not this one.”

I thought of my family. Of my sister, my mother, my father. Of their cries and screams, of my lungs burning as I sprinted towards our home, panic and dread churning in my gut so strong I’d almost vomited. What I remembered most was that I’d heard my sister’s screams streets away. And no one had come to her aid. I hadn’t gotten to her in time.

Bitterness twisted within me.

“You think I do not wish the same, kalles?” I rasped. “As you said, you must make amends in your soul…and move forward.”

Chapter Twelve

Gold streaks shimmered through the sky as the sun descended. It was something I’d missed seeing. Under the Dead Mountain, I’d been cut off from the sky, from the earth.

Sparkling, wispy trails floated and danced above us, like they were celebrating the setting of the sun, the end of another day. It was a phenomenon that happened rarely.

It was beautiful. Breathtaking. I was all too aware of the horde king’s eyes on me as I tilted my face back to watch the tendrils glimmer and shift, catching the rays of the golden sun. Soon, I would be back under the Dead Mountain. Soon, the sky would be taken from me once more, so I might as well enjoy it while I could. Even if his red gaze made the back of my neck prickle.

In my periphery, I saw the forest looming to our left. The darkness of it made me anxious. The Ghertun called it the Dead Forest because of the creatures that lurked there. Because any Ghertun that entered it never returned.

So, when the Mad Horde King steered his pyroki towards the edge, I said, “Please, I don’t want to go in there.”

He said nothing, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, and soon I was craning my neck up to look at the line of trees that guarded its entrance. The glimmering, shifting waves of the sunset were soon blocked out by the shadowed canopy of their vine-laden branches.

“Kakkari writes our destinies before we are ever born into this world,” came his voice. It was…surprisingly soft. “You should not be so afraid all the time.”

I swallowed. I didn’t think I believed that. Because if that were so, Kakkari was a cruel goddess. How could I think anything different when she had already written my father’s death, my grandmother’s death, both of whom had only given their love to their family? What of the countless deaths of our villagers? They’d been senseless, gruesome murders. Or of the terrible things that my sister had to endure at the hands of her Ghertun sibi?

“You think if I’m meant to die today, then nothing I do will matter?” I questioned.

“Lysi,” was his clipped response.

I was strangely annoyed, hurt even, by the sentiment. Those emotions loosened my tongue and I asked, “Then how do you think Kakkari wrote your end?”

He chuffed out a breath, the arm that braced my back tightening. “Most likely in battle.”

“Because you were born for bloodshed and war?”

His red gaze flashed down to me. I didn’t expect the delight in his gaze. The malice there.

“Lysi,” he purred. “Why else would I be in this world?”

“You think you’re only a killer?”

He grunted but didn’t reply.

“And yet, you are a leader,” I said softly. “A Vorakkar. If you were only meant to kill, why would Kakkari not have simply made you a warrior? Why craft you into a king?”

I didn’t need to use my gift to know that my words struck him. His jaw tightened. His eyes flashed.

He growled, “You know nothing, vekkiri.”

I didn’t understand him. Not at all.

Below us, his pyroki stilled.

The horde king froze.

My heart rate suddenly ticked up, my spine tingling. Danger? Unconsciously, my hand curled around the furs of his cloak, pressing closer to his body.

“Be very still,” he rasped into my ear. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his hand go to the hilt of his sword.

“What is it?” I whispered, hardly daring to breathe.

“Jrikkia pack.”

I didn’t know what that was but I cast my gaze wildly around the clearing. We hadn’t ventured far into the forest, but far enough that it was dark and cold. That was when I noticed it was dead silent. There was no sound, no insects buzzing or wildlife scampering across the floor or creatures crooning in the trees.

That was when I saw them. Black, unblinking eyes that glittered like jewels from the darkness. A set of eyes that made my heart speed, that made me want to recoil in horror.

They were just ahead of us. The horde king had said there was a pack? Which meant there were more?

A slight whispering sound across the forest floor came from our right. Before I realized what was happening, the Vorakkar unsheathed his sword and, with a quick blurring arc of his arm, plunged it into the head of a giant black beast that had leapt towards us out of nowhere.

I cried out in alarm. And then I heard the pyroki below us make a horrible keening cry before we were both thrown off its back. Another of the beasts had attached itself to the pyroki’s flank, digging its massive clawed talons into its side, and the impact had dismounted us.

When I fell, I hit the ground hard and all my breath rushed from my lungs. I gasped, trying to get air, my gaze flying around the clearing, trying to see how many there were.

“Get to the tree!” the Vorakkar ordered, already rushing towards his pyroki, who was trying to buck the black jrikkia off its flank. The horde king swung his bloodied sword at the beast and cut through the joints of its claws, which were still imbedded in the pyroki. A loud, anguished growl echoed as the jrikkia thudded to the ground and then the Mad Horde King plunged the tip of his sword into its head, its body going slack.

When I looked back to the pyroki, two of the dismembered claws were still hanging from its flank. Black blood poured from the horde king’s creature, thick slashes decorated its flesh.

“Nillima, kassim,” the Vorakkar ordered, jerking his head towards me. The pyroki, even with her terrible injury, followed her master’s order and sprinted towards me, vibrating the forest floor.

I had somehow scrambled to the trunk of the nearest tree, had pressed my back to it, and the pyroki stopped before me, pounding the ground with her claws. Protecting me? Her eyes were wild with pain, flickering from side to side.

Another jrikkia flung itself from the darkness and I watched as the pyroki reared back, going onto two legs, and smashed her front talons into the body of the creature.

It fell with a shrill cry and the horde king’s sword followed, cleanly slicing its head from its body.

Then came two more, jumping from the darkness and the shadows of the trees, one in front of the horde king and one at his back. They circled, prowling on all fours, their long necks and even longer snouts perfectly still.

“Watch out!” I cried when the one at his back sprung first.

Right when he spun, the one at his front attacked as well. So fast it was a blur, he cut a line across one of the jrikkia’s abdomen, spilling blood and making it stumble. But the other crashed into him, snarling, taking him down to the ground with a heavy thud.

I heard the horde king’s roar and then the jrikkia’s head snapped to the side. It dropped, heavy and still. The horde king had broken its neck with a sharp twist. Then I watched as he lunged for the last remaining injured creature and drove his sword deep.

My heart felt like it was in my throat. The Vorakkar had moved so swiftly. His expression was grim, focused, as his gaze scanned the shadows, looking for more jrikkia.

Only after a long moment did he look at the carnage across the forest floor. Four dead jrikkia, their black blood spilled, sickeningly shiny in the low light. Was this why the Ghertun avoided the Dead Forest? Because of these creatures? I had never seen anything like them before.

Then his gaze came to me, red and otherworldly and infinitely terrifying. His words returned to me. That he’d been made to kill. The dead creatures around him, the memory of his speed, his unflinching certainty as he dispatched every last one of them…now I knew he’d spoken the truth.

He wiped his sword on the fur of one of the fallen beasts before sheathing it. His pyroki was still hovering in front of me, her breathing labored. She was in pain.

The horde king went to her, stroking her snout, murmuring soft words to her in Dakkari that I didn’t understand. Then he came around her side, looking at the injury, his jaw tight. He plucked the dismembered jrikkia claws from her, dropping them to the ground without a second glance, leaving five deep gashes in their wake.

I finally found my voice. It shook as I asked, “W-will she be all right?”

His voice was guttural, husky as he said, “Lysi.”

His chest was streaked in blood. “Are—are you all right?”

The question made him turn. His eyes seemed brighter after the attack. As if the battle had invigorated him, but I knew that couldn’t be right. It would be a horrible realization if he’d enjoyed that.

“I would like to believe that Kakkari would not end me with a mere pack of jrikkia, leikavi.”

It was chilling to think that just a moment before, we’d been speaking of death.

“They would’ve ended me,” I said quietly, wrapping my arms tight around my torso, shivering, “had you not been here.”

He didn’t say anything to that.

Instead, he broke my gaze to look over his shoulder, at the dead creatures scattered across the floor.

“We will rest here for the night,” he decided.

“Here?” I asked, my voice going higher. I peered around the tree trunk I was still pressed to. I could still see the plains through the trees. Open space, golden sunlight. “Even after this?”

“We will not find better protection than spilled jrikkia blood,” he informed me, “though I would be surprised if there was another pack here.”

I frowned. “You mean, they don’t live in the Dead Forest?”

“The Dead Forest?” he repeated, raising a brow. He huffed out a sharp exhale. “Nik, they live east. Yet, they seem to come further and further west every year.”

“They do not look like any beasts I’ve seen on Dakkar before,” I commented softly, slowly peeling myself away from the trunk.

“They were brought by the Killup. These are their creatures.”

Understanding dawned. The Killup were another race that lived on Dakkar, that lived even further east than the Dead Lands. I’d seen a few under the Dead Mountain. They’d worn the slave mark of the Ghertun as well.

I stepped around his pyroki.

It embarrassed me but I said, “Thank you. For your protection.”

I’d meant what I said. If I had traveled this way, had a pack found me, I would’ve been torn to pieces before I’d ever even seen them coming.

“Do not thank me for killing,” he said, his tone on the edge of a growl. “I already told you what I am.”

I didn’t know what to make of his words but he stepped up to his pyroki and hefted off the heavy travel sacks attached to her side. He murmured something to her in Dakkari and slowly, she lay on the forest floor.

“Can I help?” I asked.

“Get the water skin and the uudun,” he said, jerking his head towards the discarded sack.

My own pain was forgotten as I knelt in front of the bag and pulled both from its depths.

Then I came to kneel at his pyroki’s side and watched as he took the golden fire basin from the sack and began to build a fire. When it flared to life, I couldn’t help but look over at a fallen jrikkia, at its open dark eyes. In a way, I felt sorry for it. Beasts and animals weren’t like us. They didn’t kill for the sake of it. They killed to survive, when they were hungry.

Reaching forward, I leaned towards the jrikkia and closed its open gaze, my fingers drifting to the impossibly soft fur around its pointed ears.

Tears pricked my eyes. Perhaps leftover emotion from the terror, the shock…and sadness that these creatures had to die so that we could live. But I understood the way of this world. It was cruel and unfair. I was simply glad to be breathing.

The horde king was watching me, the fire flickering in his gaze, making his eyes appear like molten embers. Slowly, I pulled my hand away from the beast and turned my attention back to his pyroki.

Out of curiosity, I let my power build between the pyroki and me. I had never tried my gift on a creature before, only on Dakkari, on humans, and on Ghertun. I imagined cupping the energy between us and I pushed, pushed into the empty space…focusing…

I found nothing.

I dropped the one-sided connection, my shoulders sagging slightly. Perhaps I could have eased her pain. She had helped to protect me, after all.

When I looked back to the horde king, he was heating his sword in the flames and my stomach dropped. I knew this method of healing. My eyes went back to the wounds along the pyroki’s side and saw what her master had seen. The deepest gash along her side hadn’t clotted yet. All the wounds were deep.

“You will need to do this,” he rasped. “You are not strong enough to hold her down.”

My first reaction was to protest, but I knew it wouldn’t help. He was right. I could be useful to her if I did this, though she might hate me even more than she already did.

“Lysi?” he rasped.

I swallowed, my gut churning.

“I will.”

He nodded.

“Brave kalles.”

Chapter Thirteen

I was sweating by the end of it and the pyroki did, indeed, hate me all the more for it.

But the deed was done and her wounds had been sealed after they had been cleaned. I sat back, feeling strangely ill, the scent of burning flesh still lingering in my nostrils. The horde king was still kneeling by his creature’s side, winding thick swaths of bandage around her flank.

He cared for the creature. Tremendously. That much was obvious. And even though I didn’t like him, or trust him, his obvious love for her made me soften towards him. It meant his heart wasn’t only empty darkness and hatred if he could love.

After it was done and the pyroki had closed her eyes, resting, the Vorakkar rose and said, “Stay here. I will return shortly.”

“Where are you going?” I asked in mild alarm, still feeling like the remnants of the dried meat I’d consumed earlier would make a reappearance.

He jerked his head towards the shadowed line of the trees. “To wash. There is a stream not far. I will bring back water for you and then we will eat.”

He stooped down to gather the water skins we’d used to wash his pyroki’s wounds…and then he stalked away. I could hear his hard footsteps and I saw the sway of his tail as he disappeared into the shadows.

Then I was alone. The bodies of the jrikkia were piled near the base of the tree, a grotesque, disturbing mound of darkened fur. I huddled closer to the sleeping pyroki, drawing my knees up to my chest, and waited. I jumped when the fire crackled loudly.

I tensed when I heard a trickling sound in the distance but then I realized it was only water. I heard sporadic splashing, close enough that it was comforting.

My eyes went back to the mound of jrikkia.

When the trickling stopped, however, and no sound came after that for many long moments, I found my hands trembling, my eyes trained between the two tree trunks where the horde king had disappeared.

What is he doing? I wondered, my belly beginning to churn in fear again. When the canopy of the trees rustled behind me, my spine tingled and then I was up on my feet, though my entire body protested in response. My backside throbbed from falling off the pyroki. The flesh on my inner thighs screamed as the hide of my pants brushed it but I hurried forward nonetheless.

It was perhaps a foolish thing to do but I stepped beyond the clearing, scanning what laid beyond the thick tree line. I didn’t need to go far. I found the stream—he’d been right, it hadn’t been far from where we were camping for the night—and then I stilled, trailing my gaze along the winding, babbling water, searching.

Until I found him.

And when I did, my mouth went dry, my eyes went wide, and I immediately ducked behind the wide trunk of a tree, the roughened bark of it pressing painfully into my back.

His head had been turned in my direction and I prayed he hadn’t heard me. My eyes stared, unseeing, into the darkness. He’d paused briefly in what he was doing and then I heard his roughened pants again, soft huffs of breath that escaped him, followed by an unmistakable rhythmic sound.

I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid he’d discover me if I returned to the clearing now. I thought it a miracle he hadn’t heard me when I’d approached—but perhaps he’d been too lost in his pleasure.

My face flamed. I didn’t dare breathe as the rhythmic sounds came faster.

I want to see, came the thought. I didn’t deny the wanting and it bloomed in my belly. It was curiosity, I told myself. Of males, of Dakkari males, of him. Nothing more.

Slowly, I turned against the trunk until my front was pressed against it. And, with a small breath, I peeked out from behind it.

The horde king had his head tilted back, the long, strong column of his golden throat exposed. He’d cleaned himself up, his hair dripping water across his bare shoulders. He had one hand braced on a boulder next to the stream, his back bowed. And his other hand was working between his thighs, stroking his thickened length.

My nipples immediately tightened beneath my tunic, pebbling hard against the material. A tingling sensation stroked from my belly to my sex, warming me. I’d always loved the sensation of arousal, whenever I’d felt it before. It turned my mind to mush. I’d continuously been in awe of its power but had always been too hesitant to explore it more.

I didn’t dwell on the fact that watching the horde king pleasure himself made me aroused. I didn’t want to think about what that meant, so I simply ignored it.

And I simply watched.

“Vok,” he hissed softly, his hips bucking, and my treacherous little heart leapt in delight, my breath coming more quickly.

When I shifted to see better, the rough bark of the tree dragged across my nipples and I bit my lip against the sensation. This was the power of arousal, I knew. Because I was covered in his pyroki’s blood, we’d been attacked by jrikkia, he’d been nothing short of terrifying to me…and still, I was watching his hand speed and then slow over his engorged cock with bated breath and rubbing my nipples against a damn tree.

Arousal was dangerous.

Yet, I didn’t want it to end.

His body was unlike any I’d ever seen before. His scars told of his battles—of stories I wanted to hear, however dark—his muscles were perfectly sculpted and honed, befitting a warrior king who had shed enough blood in his lifetime. He terrified me, yes. He also fascinated me.

I watched as a shudder racked him, a low growl rising, his hand speeding.

Licking my lips, I pressed closer, sliding my fingers across the bark.

Then I almost gasped when his eyes lazily opened—those twin, red orbs glowing in the darkness—and he looked in my direction. Heart hammering, I ducked behind the tree again, cursing myself, pressing my forehead against the trunk.

Had he seen me? I wondered.

I couldn’t be certain.

Fool, I thought, biting my lip even as my body throbbed.

I knew I’d been found out because the forest went quiet again. The sound of his hand against his flesh ceased, his roughened pants ended.

My only hope was that I could escape before he found me. When I looked again to see where he’d gone, the space by the stream was empty.

The back of my neck tingled. I felt his heat, scented his skin, before I heard him.

Then he rasped in my ear, his lips brushing the sensitive shell of it, “Spying now, leikavi? If you wanted to watch, you only needed to ask.”

I gasped when he kept me pinned in place against the tree. I turned my face so my cheek rested against it, and sucked in a breath when he brushed my hair to the side, a cool breeze drawing over my nape.

“I told you to stay there,” he said, his tone taking on a darker edge. “There are more dangerous things lurking in this forest than the jrikkia.”

Like you? I wondered silently.

His hips pressed me firmly into the trunk and the force of it put pressure against my groin. I bit my lip. Though I was gasping and mortified that he’d discovered me, even though I feared what he would do in retaliation, that warm, deep, blooming arousal hadn’t left me. Not one bit.

Suddenly, his hips pressed more firmly and the bark of the tree stimulated the pleasurable spot between my thighs, a spot I’d only explored in darkness and whenever I found time alone—which was almost never.

My tongue felt like it was glued to the roof of my mouth. I felt his hard, hot length through the material of my tunic. He was much taller than I was and his cock pressed into my back.

“Do you want to watch, leikavi?” he murmured, leaning forward and nipping at the skin on the back of my neck. Goosebumps broke out over my arms. “Because I need to come. Desperately.”

Still, I hadn’t said a word. I wanted to leave…and yet, I didn’t. I could easily draw on my power, change his emotions, and make him release me.

Yet I didn’t.

The horde king shifted to my side and the pressure on my hips released, though his shoulder and the side of his chest kept me in place. When my eyes flicked down, I sucked in a shuddered breath. His cock was next to my waist, still untucked from his trews.

Unconsciously, my fingers curled against the trunk. The head of his cock was large and shimmering with the beginnings of his seed. He was massive, thick and long. A small bump right above the base of his shaft was swollen. He was so aroused his cock was almost completely pressed against his abdomen in one long, curving arc.

His hand came to the base before stroking upwards, squeezing around the head. A drop of his seed rolled down the side and I tracked it. He exhaled sharply, a small groan vibrating his chest, which I felt thrum in my own body.

“Vok, leikavi, I can feel your gaze on it,” he groaned.

My head felt like it was spinning. The darkened forest, which had at first been so terrifying, now felt different. Altered. Strange. A hushed quiet that felt like we’d entered an alternate realm, an alternate world.

His head dropped forward. His hot breath fanned out on the back of my neck. His hair, still wet from the stream, fell forward and wetted my tunic. His scent—warm and musky—was all around me. I felt like I could taste him on my tongue.

Another drop of his seed rose and he growled, his hips punching forward until his length slid through his clenched fist.

“I would not have been able to last another day. And battling always makes me want to fuck,” he rasped. His lips came to the side of my throat. “I can feel your little heartbeat. Quickening. Tell me…is it because you are frightened again? Or because you’re needing a male?”

Swallowing back a gasp, I watched with a hooded gaze as he rolled the pad of his thumb over the slit at the head. I licked my dry lips, wetting them.

His dark laugh filled my ears, heating the tension surrounding us. “Your cunt is wet from watching me, leikavi? Isn’t it? I can smell it. Your body does not lie.”

His crude words barely fazed me. That was how deep I was in arousal, in the warm heat that made me want to surrender to him. I felt like a stranger in my own body…and what scared me the most was not what could happen. It was that I wanted it to happen.

Still, he didn’t touch me. My body was throbbing, my skin humming, my sex tingling so acutely it was almost painful. Instead, his hips fucked his fist faster, his breathing becoming more ragged and labored.

“Vok, vok!” he cursed, his voice dragging out in a long groan. “I’m going to—”

A rough, short bellow tore unexpectedly from his throat. His forehead dropped and I felt his teeth on the space just behind my ear, biting me but not enough to hurt. Just enough to mark.

The only sound that came from me was a whimper when I watched his cock twitch and expand…and then ropes of milky white seed burst violently from his tip. His ravaged groans vibrated across my skin, his body pulsing and rocking, and the essence of him marked the ground in front of us, glimmering on the forest floor.

Then quiet came. His hand dropped away but his forehead was still pressed against me. The strong bulk of his chest brushed my back with every quick breath he took.

Like I was in a daze, I blinked slowly. My fingers were still curled into little claws of my own. I felt like I was one touch away from something. What did it feel like? His pleasure?

“Go,” he growled into my ear. “Go back before I fuck you against this tree. And this time, stay there.”

He released me and I almost stumbled. My knees were shaking. When my gaze met his, I wondered what expression he saw in my face to make his jaw clench tight and his nostrils flare.

The next moment, he turned his back to me, returning to the stream, tucking his spent cock into his trews as he went.

My good sense returned. Shame and embarrassment quickly followed it.

Without a backwards glance, I fled, running back to the clearing where his pyroki lay. I didn’t bother looking back, though my neck prickled.

I saw the golden glow of our fire ahead. When I burst through the thick tree line, I saw a grey shadow move. A grey shadow that had been crouching by the pile of dead jrikkia…and when the shadow whipped around, I saw its eyes and I realized our mistake too late.

The Vorakkar had said the jrikkia had been brought to our planet by the Killup. Only, he’d wrongfully assumed the ones that had attacked us had been a wild pack of them, drifting too far west from their home.

Now I realized they’d been the Killup’s scouting pack.

A slim, chiseled stone blade came to my throat from behind, something wet adorning the tip. Two pairs of smooth, cold hands gripped my arms on both sides as the grey shadow with pitch black eyes approached me.

Movement flickered to my right. Then to my left.

More Killup emerged from the trees, their feet silent across the forest floor. I heard only a whisper of their clothing against their dark grey skin. I counted over ten, males and females alike, stone blades all drawn. Not even the Vorakkar’s pyroki had heard them. She still slept by the fire.

Over by the mound of dead jrikkia, the first Killup I’d seen approached me. Their leader? His clothing was a slightly darker shade of grey than the others and he wore a black band of fabric around his throat.

I saw my frightened face reflected in his eyes when he drew close. He tilted his head as he regarded me carefully. The gills on the sides of his neck fanned open.

It only occurred to me right then that it might be too late to scream.

Chapter Fourteen

Before I knew what was happening, the Vorakkar had burst from the tree line, his golden daggers drawn. He didn’t make a single sound as he aimed them for the nearest Killup’s throat.

“Wait,” I gasped out, my neck pressing into the stone blade held tight against my skin. “Don’t!”

They didn’t need to die. None of them did.

The horde king hesitated briefly at my words…but it cost him. The Killup he’d intended to strike whirled away, alerted to the danger, and five of the Killup jumped to his defense. They seemed to move as one, silently, slashing out their own blades at the horde king’s unprotected flesh.

He dodged easily and I frantically built up my gift’s energy, filling the space between the leader and myself.

Even though it wasn’t fully ready, I pushed into the Killup’s mind, my pupils dilating at what I found. He was…oddly calm. He was saddened by the slaughter of his jrikkia but he accepted their deaths. He feared for his fellow Killup because he recognized the Vorakkar for who he was…but he was prepared to lose them if necessary. He was prepared to die.

It was a mere flash of emotions and then they changed. I sensed he’d decided to fight, that he would order his Killup to swarm, to take down the horde king with a single blow.

Without wasting another moment, I delved and pushed. The cool, startling sensation of changing minds was not something I would ever grow used to. I knew how unnatural it was, how invasive. But at this moment—and all the moments I’d ever chosen to do so—I felt my interference necessary.

“Let us be,” I said softly and the leader’s gaze flickered back to mine. The gills on his neck flared. I felt the strange irritation that crept into his mind at my request. I pushed harder, though I felt a little resistance. Already, my temple began to throb, my vision began to waver. “We are only passing through. I am sorry about your jrikkia but they attacked us. We had no choice.”

Giving one final push before the connection dropped, I pulled away.

The Killup leader called out to the five Killup surrounding the horde king. I saw that while I’d been inside his mind, one Killup had been injured—there was a deep stab wound in his shoulder—and others had cuts from the horde king’s daggers. But still, they outnumbered him. Though they were lithe and sinewy, Killup were not small beings. Neither were Dakkari. But unlike humans, Killup matched the Dakkari’s height…and apparently some of their strength since I spied similar injuries on the horde king.

His red eyes glowed as they found mine before he cut them back to his opponents, who had all ceased advancing on him at their leader’s order.

Nausea began to flood my belly as the pain in my mind bloomed.

It was necessary, I resolved. No one had to die. The jrikkia had already given their lives. No more blood needed to be spilled.

“Why is a human traveling with a Vorakkar?” came a voice, raspy and quiet, nothing more than a whisper.

I turned back to the leader.

“Why are Killup so far west?” I returned in response.

His head tilted again. When I’d been inside his mind, I’d felt no malice, no ill will. He hadn’t wanted to harm us…but had thought it necessary to preserve the lives of his fellow Killup.

“I am sorry about your jrikkia,” I told him as a wave of dizziness made me sway. The two Killup that were holding me in place held me upright.

At the leader’s inclined head, their hands fell away. As did the dagger that had pressed into my flesh.

A low growl reverberated around the clearing. It came from the horde king. My stomach churned in dread at the look in his eyes and the way they flickered to the Killup. He was calculating. He wanted blood and he intended to have it.

I rushed over to him, pressing through the line of Killup to reach him. It was surreal to me that just moments before, he’d been against me in the most erotic and dangerous and arousing moment of my life.

Before he lashed out, which would threaten the tentative peace, I gathered the energy once more, though I gritted my teeth against the pain of it. It felt like a dagger being thrust into my temple, dragging across my brain.

I pushed, finding that familiar turmoil within him. That lingering darkness, that rage. He needed bloodshed. He needed it like a balm.

What has happened to you? I wondered.

I soothed, dulling that bloodlust as best as I was able, pressing a hand to his chest to steady myself. My hand slipped in black blood from a deep cut across his pectoral, smearing it across his flesh.

“They don’t want to harm us,” I whispered, holding his gaze as sparks flashed in my vision. “It’s—it’s all right.”

His brows furrowed. I felt the tension in his muscles easing as I pushed into his mind harder, even as bile rose up in my throat.

“Please,” I said, swaying. “Hanniva.”

I felt a trickle under my nose and he reached forward with his fingers. Red blood came away with them.

“Leikavi,” he rasped, his tone mildly alarmed.

“Don’t hurt them, horde king,” I said.

With the last of my energy, I tore away from his mind, gasping as my vision darkened. My knees gave out and I fell.

The last thing I remembered was his arms around me.

Chapter Fifteen

The majority of the Killup melted back into the darkness of the forest as the kalles fell.

“What did you do to her?” I growled, my eyes flashing to the single Killup that remained in the clearing. A male, the one she’d been speaking to.

She was limp in my arms and I dropped my daggers on the earth in order to carry her towards the fire. When I gazed down at her, red blood trailed from her nose. I didn’t know that humans bled red. The sight of it made discomfort coil deep in my belly.

She was so pale. She’d always been but it seemed like the last of her color had been leeched from under her skin.

“This was not our doing,” the male said, his voice so soft I almost didn’t hear him over the roaring of my heartbeat. “I give you my word.”

I chuffed out a sharp exhale. Like his word meant anything to me.

My sword was lying next to Nillima and I unsheathed it immediately after I laid the kalles down.

Turning to the Killup, I trained it between us.

His eyelids twitched as his black, glassy eyes flicked down to the tip. He remained standing, his long arms still at his sides. He didn’t move for the stone blade tucked into the band around his thigh.

I was familiar with Killup. There was even one living among my horde, perhaps the only Killup among the hordes, though I knew of a couple who had been accepted into outposts at their Vorakkars’ discretion.

“You are their leader?” I asked. She’d done it again. My rage had been dulled. That frantic thing within me, that beast that demanded blood, had been calmed. Was that the reason for her blood? Had that been the reason for her collapse?

“Vorakkar,” the Killup said, his gaze flickering again to the sword held between us. “Like she said to you, we did not want to harm you.”

Blood from the gash across my chest said otherwise.

“We were surprised to find our sarl slaughtered.”

Sarl? I thought. Then I remembered. That was what the Killup called the jrikkia.

“They attacked my pyroki,” I growled. “They ambushed us. I do not regret killing them all and I would do it again.”

The slits of flesh on his neck flared and I tensed. I knew that some Killup had the ability to emit toxins into the air with their gills, though I did not know if it was by choice or not.

“They strayed further than I thought,” was what he replied and I watched as the gills closed once more. Even still, I kept my distance. “We have been searching for them.”

“Where did you send the others?” I demanded.

“Away,” he replied. “Away from you.”

Intelligent male.

“Then why did you stay?” I rasped.

His gaze flicked to the vekkiri kalles behind me.

“Curiosity,” he said, surprising me. His head tilted. “You journey with a human? Away from your horde?”

My gaze narrowed, beginning to think clearly for the first time since I spied the Killup through the trees, since I saw them press a blade to the leikavi’s throat. The need to protect her, the ferocity of that emotion, had surprised even me.

Begrudgingly, I lowered my sword and sheathed it at my hip. The Killup seemed to relax as I did.

The Killup had never been our enemy. They kept to themselves, abided by our laws, and respected Kakkari and our earth.

It didn’t explain why a pack of them were so far west, however. When I’d found Bissa a handful of years ago, the lone Killup child of my horde, he’d been but an infant, abandoned and hungry. A darukkar and his wife had taken Bissa in, raised him as their own, loved him as their own.

“How do you know where my horde is?” I questioned, turning back to the vekkiri behind me.

“We have journeyed far. The last horde we saw was one to the south a half moon cycle ago. We have not come across any since.”

“And why have you left the eastlands?” I asked, crouching next to Vienne. I brushed a lock of her white hair away from her cheek and grabbed a piece of torn, clean cloth—the last of it from when we’d bandaged Nillima—from my travel sack.

His head tilted down. “The east has been growing…inhospitable. For many years now. So close to the Ghertun, we have faced many losses. We seek a new home for our people. I was tasked with finding one.”

Surprise made my brows lower. “The Dothikkar has heard no reports of this.”

“We have tried, Vorakkar, many times to seek an audience with him. He turned us away.”

That I could believe and it only made my frustration with the Dothikkar deepen. He was a selfish male who was not made to be a leader. His father had been one. The last true Dothikkar. But his son only cared about the gold lining his pockets, the fine brew filling his goblet, and his precious walled city.

“If the hordes ride against us at our new home, that is the chance we will take. But our people have suffered and we seek a new life. A better life.”

“Yet you tell me your plans. Knowing I am duty-bound to report this to the Dothikkar.”

His head inclined.

I barked out a sharp laugh. “Luckily for you, I care not for my duty to the Dothikkar. Find your home, Killup, but make certain it is well hidden. The Dothikkar has never set foot on the plains and I doubt he ever will…but some Vorakkar are still loyal to him.”

The Killup rarely showed emotion but I knew this leader was surprised by my flippant, treasonous words.

“Go north,” I told him, blotting away the blood from underneath Vienne’s nose. Her features were slack, her eyes twitching beneath her lids. “Killup prefer the cold, do you not? Not many hordes venture there, especially after the cold season.”

“You…” the Killup trailed off. “You are not what I envisioned a Vorakkar to be.”

So, he had never met one.

“You were eager enough to have me killed,” I growled softly, casting my gaze back at him once the kalles’ face was clean.

“A mistake,” he said. He pulled something from a pocket in his vest. “Our blades are soaked in enuwip. It is why your cuts have not clotted.”

I stilled, my brows lowering, before I looked down at my chest. The deepest gash had, in fact, not begun to clot and still bled freely, leaking a waterfall of blood down my flesh. The smaller cuts along my arms were in a similar state.

“Enuwip?” I repeated, my mind working. The Dakkari had nothing like this.

“A plant we grow in the eastlands. One from our home planet that we managed to root here.”

He approached. In his hand was a round disk of hammered, silver metal. He opened the top of the disk, like a chest lid, and inside was a blue balm, smooth and glossy.

“This will negate its effects,” the Killup said, handing it to me. I stroked the pad of my fingers across the balm. It came away like a thick cream, like uudun, and I swiped it across my wound. Immediately, the bleeding began to slow. Dakkari healed quickly. It should have clotted mere moments after I’d been cut. I hadn’t even realized the wounds hadn’t because of the kalles.

I realized the implications right then. That the Killup could’ve left, that my wound might never have stopped bleeding…and then what?

“I kill your jrikkia…and you decide to help me?” I growled, my gaze flashing up to his. I was still crouched at Vienne’s side. She hadn’t stirred at all, though her chest rose in a steady rhythm.

“You are not what I expected,” he repeated, as if it was his answer. “To be truthful, I did not know if the enuwip would work on a Dakkari. We have only ever used it on Ghertun that have breached our land.”

My nostrils flared, my mood brightening until I almost grinned at the Killup.

“It works on the Ghertun?” I rasped.

He inclined his head. “It works in a different way, however. It stuns them from first contact. Paralyzes them as they bleed.”

That made me grin. “How intriguing.”

The Killup blinked slowly, tilting his head, studying me as I waded through the mess that was my mind.

I stood. The Killup was almost as tall as me, but his build was more suited for stealth than sheer strength.

“I think I have a solution to your problem, Killup, and mine. One that would ensure the Dothikkar’s blessing for your new home, so that you will not have to hide or fear that you will be discovered.”

His eyes flickered back and forth between mine. “I am listening.”

My grin widened.

Chapter Sixteen

When I woke, I was cradled against the horde king’s chest, draped across his lap. The familiar rocking motion told me we were once again on his pyroki…and it was nearing nightfall.

How long have I been asleep? I wondered.

My vision was back to normal but I still had the remnants of a headache, lingering behind my eyes.

“You finally wake,” came his voice, ragged and deep.

My cheek was pressed to the fur cloak he’d draped around himself and I kept my head there, not wanting to move too much. Instead, I flexed my feet, wiggling my toes in the boots he’d given me.

“What…what happened?” I asked softly.

“You collapsed,” he informed me, as if I didn’t realize that already. “You have been asleep.”

“How long?” I whispered, fearing his answer.

He hesitated. “Two days.”

I closed my eyes briefly. More lost time.

Two days?

“What happened with the Killup?”

His arm tightened at my back.

“You...you didn’t hurt them, right?”

“Nik, I did not,” was all he said. Relief whistled through me and I huffed out a soft breath. “You care deeply for beings beyond yourself. Why is that?”

His words surprised me. I swallowed, reaching out to trail my fingers over the pyroki’s neck, though she tossed her head at my touch. My lips almost quirked. She still didn’t like me but she obviously felt better after her injury.

“They didn’t want to hurt us.”

“How could you be so certain?” he asked, his tone deceptively…casual. “Would you have bet your life on it?”

Those black threads through his red eyes seemed to waver when I looked back at him. “Yes,” I said easily, ignoring his first question.

“What injured you so that you needed to sleep for two days?” he asked next, his tone gruffer.

He was pushing for information. No one outside of my family knew for certain what I could do. And they would never tell a soul. Even I recognized that what I could do was powerful, though it came at a cost.

Did he suspect something?

“I…” I licked my dry lips but I didn’t feel thirsty. Had he been giving me water? “I get bad headaches sometimes. I’ve had them since I was born,” I told him. Not a complete lie but certainly not the complete truth.

His eyes flickered over my face. I was all at once very aware how close we were and in the next moment, I remembered something else. That night in the forest…watching him in the darkness, feeling his heat against me, before the Killup had come.

My cheeks burned and I looked away.

All he said in reply was, “I will find out all your secrets soon enough.”

His tone was like a caress, his voice soft and husky. His words were a threat and yet, he’d made them sound like a sensual promise.

I shivered in his arms, much to my embarrassment.

“What happened to the Killup?” I asked again.

“They fled when you fell,” he told me.

At least no one died. That much I could be thankful for.

“There are Killup under the Dead Mountain,” I murmured. “Also slaves.”

“Do you speak to them?” he asked. “Know them?”

“No,” I said, watching the rise and fall of his chest. His warmth seeped into me and though I’d just slept for two days, I felt like I could close my eyes again. “We aren’t allowed. But I fell once while I was delivering something to another sibi. I’d been awake all night and was weak. Their Killup helped me up, though she was punished for it. She didn’t have to but she helped me.”

My voice sounded far away as anguish made my chest burn. They’d beat her for touching me and I’d stood there trying not to cry. My sibi had very rarely punished me but that Killup had had dark bruises running all along her grey flesh. It made me sick to think about. I never saw her again. Afterwards, it had always shamed me that I hadn’t tried to help her, even if I would’ve been punished too. It haunted me that I’d only stood there, silently. Like a coward.

“Sibi?” he asked quietly.

“A household,” I murmured, still thinking of the Killup. “Higher class sibi have slaves.”

He made a huffing sound deep in his throat but before I could curse myself for telling him something like that, he asked, “Are you hungry?”

I angled my gaze up at him, frowning. “You aren’t going to interrogate me on sibi?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. I didn’t look away from his lips when he said, “I have already learned that you will tell me whatever you wish to…and nothing that I want to know.”

My lips parted.

“I do know that you have not eaten in almost two days and that you must be hungry.”

He was…surprising.

Three times now, I’d delved into his mind but only twice had I gone deep into those emotions that burned through him like fire. I realized that I’d never had the need to alter anyone’s emotions twice. Once was enough and those that I did it to I usually never saw again.

However, I’d pushed into this horde king’s mind to experience his emotions multiple times now and I wondered what the consequences of that would be.

Because everything always had a price.

Turning my gaze from him, I looked at the landscape, tensing a little in his arms. To the east, I saw the unmistakable shadow of the Dead Mountain. We had entered the mountainous region of Dakkar. Sharp pillars of stone rose around us, like large daggers that had been thrust into the earth. Some were wider than others, some were so thin that I thought they would crumble with a stiff breeze.

An inkling of foreboding ran through me. The pillars only grew more numerous. The Dead Lands were littered with them.

“Your horde is so close to the Ghertun. Why settle them out here?”

“Ungira,” he rasped.

I didn’t know what that meant.

“This is where they live after the frost. They mate through the cold season and their numbers need to be culled.”

So ungira were a type of game.

“I don’t understand the Dakkari sometimes,” I said softly, peering around a pillar as we passed.

He grunted.

“You don’t allow humans to hunt because you say it takes from Kakkari. But you are allowed to do it?”

His nostrils flared, his gaze cutting to me. “When the Nrunteng settled here, they hunted opiril. You will never see one though. They hunted them to extinction, wiped out an entire species over the course of four years, though the opiril had been around since our beginning.”

I bit my lip.

“When vekkiri arrived, one of the first villages wiped out a small herd of wrissan that were meant to grow through the warmer season to feed my horde,” he rasped.

“You were a Vorakkar even when the first humans arrived?” I asked, surprised. How old was he? And when had he become a Vorakkar?

He exhaled sharply. “Nik, I was born in a horde. My father was a darukkar.”

A warrior, I knew now.

“With the wrissan gone, the horde fell. We had to return to Dothik or else we would have starved in a single moon cycle. We used the last of our stores on the journey to the city.”

His fists clenched on the reins, his golden skin whitening. He squeezed so hard, I thought the chain would disintegrate in his hand.

Without thinking, I placed my fingers over his fist, not knowing why I wanted to soothe him. His sigh was gruff but his hand loosened nonetheless. I stared down at his hands, at the myriad of raised scars there. His hands were calloused and rough. The hands of a warrior.

“It was never about hunting, kalles. It was always about a careful system that the Dakkari hordes have had in place for centuries, one that honors the beasts that roam our land, one that honors Kakkari. Outsiders do not understand our ways. They never will. They take but do not give.”

Carefully, I said, “Perhaps because the Dakkari have never given them the chance to. I was born here. On Dakkar. On the same planet that you were. This is the only home that I’ve known…and yet, I’d never heard about the overhunting or why we weren’t allowed to hunt.”

He grunted.

“There has to be a better life,” I whispered. “For everyone.”

“Our Dothikkar does not give weight to the lives of vekkiri. Or Killup, Nrunteng. Or Ghertun.”

“And what about the Vorakkars?” I asked quietly. “Do the Vorakkars care?”

His jaw tightened.

He didn’t answer and I turned my gaze away. I didn’t know why his answer mattered to me. What I asked didn’t matter at all, actually. Even if I wished there was a better life ahead, I didn’t actually believe there was one. Not for me at least.

My fate was to return to the Dead Mountain, to work there until I died. The Ghertun controlled me. They always would. I couldn’t survive for more than a month away from them, even if I managed to escape. The poison, the vovic, coursing in my blood ensured that.

But you are free now, I thought.

I looked up at the darkening sky. At the bright stars that were beginning to shimmer overhead. Stars and constellations I’d missed under the mountain. A cool breeze threaded its way through my hair.

I was riding a pyroki, of all creatures, with a horde king of Dakkar, a male who was equally terrifying and fascinating to me.

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this was an adventure. A quest, like the old stories Maman had always recited to us. I was on an adventure all my own…

A part of me knew it was the only one I’d ever get. The three and a half weeks that remained until the black moon was the only hint of freedom, of life, of excitement I’d experience.

Kakkari had always meant for me to die under the Dead Mountain, hadn’t she? Whereas the Vorakkar behind me believed she’d written his death on the battlefield.

The ground began to vibrate.

The sound echoed off the pillars until the plains seemed to boom. Loud rallying cries and chants rose up from every direction.

My heartbeat roared in my ears and my hands clutched onto the horde king’s furs, pressing closer, seeking protection and comfort from a male I knew better than to trust.

The Vorakkar bellowed out a phrase in Dakkari and the cries grew louder. The vibrating became so loud that my teeth rattled.

“W-what’s happening?” I asked the Mad Horde King.

When I saw his dark grin, when I saw a quick mass approaching us from the front, when I spied Dakkari with blades strapped to their backs, riding on gold-painted pyroki, I feared I already knew the answer.

“We have arrived at my horde, kalles.”

Chapter Seventeen

My horde came into view, a warm glow rising above it in the blue darkness.

Tension released in my chest, a knot unravelling. This. This is what I’d worked so hard for.

The thunder of my darukkars on their pyroki behind me alerted the horde to my return. With satisfaction, I saw that the wall had been built in my absence, a necessary defense in ungira territory. The gate was open and I spied Hedna, my pujerak, sitting atop his pyroki at the entrance.

His expression was stoic as he took in the white-haired vekkiri female sitting across my lap.

“Greetings, my friend,” I rasped in Dakkari.

He reached across the gap between us when I pulled Nillima next to his pyroki. We clasped arms, though his gaze strayed to the female who was looking up at him with large, unblinking eyes.

I almost smiled. Had her fear returned? She feared anything and anyone new. My skittish leikavi.

Hedna’s brow rose when he met my gaze. “Have you followed the path of Rath Kitala and Rath Tuviri?”

I huffed out an amused yet harsh laugh. “Nik.”

“Then she comes to bring destruction to our horde?”

“Perhaps just destruction to me,” I returned. His head tilted but I didn’t elaborate on my words. “Anything pressing for tonight?”

“Nik,” he replied. “Rest. I know you do not sleep on these journeys.”

“Srikkisan,” I agreed. Tomorrow. I hadn’t slept since…since the night I’d discovered the female in my lap sneaking around Dothik.

“Will you need a voliki for her?” he asked.

“Nik,” I rasped. “She stays in my furs.”

My pujerak sighed. “Then I will send a bath and food shortly.”

“Kakkira vor,” I murmured.

“I am glad you are home, Vorakkar.”

I turned Nillima towards the entrance gate. “I fear it will not be for long, pujerak, but I will tell you all in the morning.”

Hedna frowned but inclined his head. I couldn’t have asked for a better pujerak, a better friend. We were complete opposites in every way. He was calm and cool-headed, whereas my temper ran hot. Ours was a relationship that worked well, one that served the horde well.

“Vorakkar,” came the cries as we entered the encampment. The female on my lap stiffened as we encountered the sight of dozens and dozens of Dakkari, rushing forward to greet me.

Nillima tossed her neck but my fickle beast enjoyed the attention as hands reached out to stroke her, passing over her side and then my legs. It was customary for the Dakkari to greet their Vorakkar as such...though a part of me would never feel completely comfortable with the countless hands that stroked over my flesh in the process.

None of my horde met my gaze out of respect but I saw the way their wide eyes lingered on Vienne. The whispers and murmurings began to start. Some shrank back quickly after they offered their greeting, making certain not to touch her.

It was expected. Not only was she a strange vekkiri—some of my horde had probably never seen a human before—but she would remind them of our ancient legend, of the female sorceress.

It was unavoidable, however. In the crowd, I sought out Lokkaru but I didn’t see the elderly female anywhere.

The land I’d chosen for my horde backed up into one of the smaller mountains in the eastern lands, providing protection from the back, so we would not have to enclose the entire encampment. At the base of the mountain was where my voliki lay, close to the pyroki enclosures. With satisfaction, I saw the water well had been dug and erected so that we would not have to travel every day for our supply. I saw that to the west, our crops had already been sowed. I saw the stone grinder for the last of our leiso crop had been prepared as well.

The horde had accomplished everything I’d wanted in my absence.

There was still much to be done. We would stay in the east longer than usual this year so more preparation was necessary. Added to that was what was to come…the threat of the Ghertun, the heartstone, the possibility of battle.

Tomorrow, I thought. This night, I needed rest.

The horde members fell away the deeper we rode into the encampment until there was blissful silence once more. Even the vekkiri in my arms seemed to relax.

When we came to the pyroki enclosure, I slid the kalles down to the earth and jumped down from Nillima. The mrikro, the pyroki master, was waiting to take her, approaching us, though his gaze kept straying to Vienne.

“Mrikro,” I greeted, sliding my hand across Nillima’s bandaged flank. “She was injured from jrikkia.”

His brow rose but he inclined his head.

“I will monitor the wound closely, Vorakkar.”

I spoke soft words of praise into my pyroki’s ear and then patted her neck before I unfastened the travel sacks from her flank. “Feed her well tonight.”

The mrikro inclined his head and then led her away.

Turning back to Vienne, I said, “Come, kalles.”

“Where are we going?” she asked quietly, falling into step beside me, though I had to shorten my strides to accommodate her.

“To my voliki,” I murmured, pressing my claws to her lower back, nodding at the domed tent that came into view.

She stiffened when she saw it but her steps didn’t falter.

I barely suppressed my smirk. Brave kalles, I thought.

I might just need to have a taste of her tonight.

Ducking through the flapped entrance, I narrowed my gaze, scanning the quiet stillness of it. My eyes flickered to the darkened shadows, half-expecting to see the face of my dead sister lingering there…or the faces of those I’d killed…or the faces of those I’d never even seen in my lifetime.

But the shadows were quiet this night.

Satisfied, I pulled the female through, her palm soft in my rough grip.

I left her standing in the entrance as I made my way around to the raised basin, sparking a fire quickly to warm the cool darkness.

Outside I heard the trudge of footsteps and before I could move her away, I heard her surprised squeak as the flaps hit her backside. She scurried away, moving to the side, as two males brought in the washing tub and more followed with steaming buckets of water.

As they filled it, an older female named Arinu brought in a large tray covered with food, setting it down on the low table.

I groaned, the scent of smoky braised wrissan filling the tent.

“You have outdone your last batch, nevretam,” I murmured at Arinu.

Her features flushed in pleasure and she patted my arm. “You do not know that. You have not tasted it yet.”

I stole a chunk of the wrissan, throwing it into my mouth before she could protest.

“Lysi,” I growled softly, the meat quickly melting in my mouth, flavor exploding on my tongue. “Your best yet.”

“Only because you have been eating dried rations and the slop from the Dothikkar’s bikku. Anything will taste good to you, Vorakkar,” she said. She was the best cook in all the hordes, yet she would never take praise or compliments for her skill. She saw it as her duty, as her honor, to feed us all…and to feed us well.

“Is this the last of the wrissan?” I asked, pleased that it had lasted us this long.

“Lysi. I saved it for you since I know how much you enjoy it.”

“Kakkira vor,” I murmured. Though Arinu didn’t meet my eyes, she inclined her head before her gaze strayed to the frozen vekkiri next to my weapons rack.

Arinu held out a hand for her. “Come, come, little one. Come eat. You must be hungry,” the female said.

“She does not speak much Dakkari,” I informed Arinu.

“Yet, she knows what I said,” the older female returned because Vienne slowly peeled herself away from the wall. My white-haired kalles approached her, reaching forward to take her strong, wrinkled hand. Arinu led her to the table and gestured for her to sit.

Vienne looked up at me, then to Arinu. She gave the older female a small, wavering smile, and whispered, “Kakkira vor.”

Arinu’s head tilted. She looked at Vienne but addressed me as she commented, “I thought you said she did not speak Dakkari.”

“I said ‘much.’ She knows some,” I answered, gazing down at Vienne also, who had reached forward to take a lobbas root, not the wrissan. She’d most likely learned some of our language from the Ghertun, which was…troubling.

“She is quite beautiful,” Arinu commented, reaching down with a gentle touch to stroke Vienne’s hair. “I have never seen a creature like her.”

Neither have I, I thought to myself but didn’t voice it.

“Eat, little one,” Arinu ordered, touching her fingers to her own lips to demonstrate her words. I watched as Vienne nodded. Arinu turned back towards me, keeping her gaze on my throat. “Send for more if it is not enough. I know how much you need to eat. We are glad to have you home, Vorakkar.”

The older Dakkari female departed the voliki then, just as the males were finishing with the washing tub. I dismissed them and once we were alone again, I began to undress.

Vienne’s breath hitched. I could hear the way the air whistled through her slim nostrils and my tail twitched in amusement. I unstrapped my sword, my daggers, shrugging off the furs I wore around my shoulders. Next, I unlaced my trews, tugging them down my legs.

As I stepped past her, my tail dragged over her leg and I heard her soft gasp of surprise.

“Shy now, leikavi?” I rasped, watching her gaze dip down to my cock before it flitted away just as quickly. “When before you had ached to watch me?”

Color flamed her cheeks and she reached forward, grabbing another lobbas from the dish and popping it between her lips. So she wouldn’t have to answer?

My lips curled and I shook my head, stepping into the washing tub. With a deep groan, I slid into the hot water, feeling the heat seep into my knotted muscles, loosening and soothing them. The gash across my pectoral from the Killup’s blade had already healed after their leader had given me the blue balm. If anything, that balm had helped speed my recovery and I couldn’t help but wonder what other plants the Killup grew in their land.

I felt her gaze on me. She had another lobbas poised near her lips but she seemed to have grown…distracted.

I sensed she was a needful, sensual creature. That night in the forest—which made my cock hard whenever I thought of it—had proved that. She might fear me but she’d been so aroused that night I had been able to smell it. Her skin had been hot and flushed, her gaze rapt and eager.

I wondered if she was untried, if she’d ever experienced that animalistic frenzy of sex…but then a darker thought came to me. The Ghertun were known to rape and pillage when they attacked settlements. It didn’t matter if they were human, or Killup, or Nrunteng settlements. The Ghertun were conquerors, which was what led to the destruction of their own planet, long ago. It was in their blood.

“Tell me, kalles,” I murmured, “what your experience with mating has been.”

Her full, pink lips parted, those grey eyes flickering.

“W-what?”

“Willing, or otherwise,” I finished quietly.

She understood what I was asking her.

“I…I have not been raped,” she admitted, though the set of her jaw told me something went unspoken. “Not by the Ghertun. Or Dakkari. Or anyone.”

Relief pierced through me. How relieved I felt should have worried me but I told myself it was only because I intended for her to warm my furs…and if she didn’t think me a monster while she did, it would be infinitely more pleasurable for both of us. The things I could show her…

Her tone was slightly defensive and beguiling as she added, “I—I have had sex. I think.”

I made a bewildered sound in my throat. “You think?” I repeated, narrowing my eyes.

I could tell she hadn’t meant to say anything. Her cheeks were the reddest I’d ever seen them. That flush even extended down the column of her neck and that fascinated me.

Unconsciously, I leaned forward in the washing tub, my gaze riveted on her.

“Tell me, leikavi,” I murmured, trying to soften my tone.

“No,” she said quickly. “I—I didn’t mean to…”

She trailed off. On the tray, she saw the goblets of brew Arinu had brought and took a swift sip from one, only to cough as the potent wine burned down her throat. This wine was not watered down, not like the wine I’d given her in Dothik.

“Let us trade then. A story for a story, lysi?” I murmured, knowing she liked stories.

Once she was done coughing, I knew my words intrigued her. She wiped the back of her hand over her lips, her grey eyes calculating.

“What story will you tell me?”

“What do you wish to know?”

Her gaze flickered down at the table.

“I—I want to know about your scars,” she said.

My spine stiffened in the washing tub but I laid my arms on the edge to conceal my sudden tension.

“The ones on your back,” she clarified. A soft breath escaped me in relief.

An easy enough story to tell.

“Lysi,” I said. “Very well.”

Chapter Eighteen

Mortification ran hot, trailing over my flesh. Mercifully, he decided to speak first.

“They are my Vorakkar markings,” he told me, turning slightly in the massive bath so that I saw the deep whip marks. “The last hardship of the Vorakkar Trials.”

Disbelief threaded through me.

“All Vorakkar wear them. Because if one does not, if they do not cover every part of his back, then he did not complete the Trials.”

I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. I had never given much thought to how Vorakkar were chosen.

“And these Trials, you complete them all and you become a horde king?”

“Lysi.”

“How many are there?”

His grin made my belly heat. “Too many and not enough.”

“And…has a Vorakkar ever failed the last Trial?”

He began to scrub at his flesh, washing his body. “Nik. Because when you get to the last Trial, after them all, it is perhaps the easiest.”

“You think it’s easy to be whipped hundreds of times?” I whispered, aghast. I had thought that those scars had been the cause of the rage within him.

But now, I wasn’t so sure.

“Physical pain is fleeting, leikavi,” he said, his tone surprisingly…gentle. Like he was speaking of something else entirely more pleasant than having one’s back stripped of flesh.

And all Vorakkars experienced this. They all wore the scars. I tried to think back, to the Dothikkar’s grand hall, when the other horde king had given me his furs, if he’d had scars too. But I’d been too frightened to notice much of anything.

“What would you endure if it meant you could have everything you have ever wanted?” he asked me next.

My brows lowered.

To be free of the Ghertun, to have my family safe and together again, to live a free life?

I would endure…anything.

“You wanted to be a Vorakkar that much?”

His red eyes glowed, water dripping down his cheek, over his scar.

“I wanted to right wrongs done against me and mine,” he rasped. “I wanted to return to wild lands under my own terms. Being a Vorakkar allowed me to do that.”

There was something in his tone that reminded me of how he’d fought off the jrikkia. An unparalleled and focused drive, unbending in its ferocity. Savage, even.

I wondered what wrongs had been done against him…and I shuddered to think what he’d done in retaliation.

“Now,” he said, water trickling as he rose from his quick bath. “Come wash while the water is still hot.”

His body gleamed golden in the light…and this time, I didn’t look away from him. Water sluiced from his skin as he reached for a large cloth to dry off with. Never had I seen a body like his…and I doubted I would ever see one like his again. He was different from me, from anyone I had ever known.

My earlier realization, that I had three and a half weeks left before the black moon, returned to me.

My adventure…my last taste of freedom.

I was away from the Dead Mountain, with fine food warming my belly, and a hot bath awaiting me. All the while, I hadn’t seen my family in weeks. And even then, we had only caught glimpses of one another in passing.

All the while, they suffered under the Dead Mountain—Viola most of all.

But even when I returned, would anything change? Lozza had promised to release my family from their sibi, to free us from his darkened stone city if I came back with the heartstone…but we didn’t know the effects of the poison. If there was a cure. If we would ever be truly free. Or if the vovic would simply rot us from the inside out regardless.

Lozza could simply be tricking me, lying to me. Maybe he never intended to let us go. All I had was his word. The word of a Ghertun king. It was more than I’d ever had before.

Water dripped down the horde king’s chest as he approached. His thickened cock swayed back and forth. My lips parted as I watched it.

You offered him whatever he wanted, I reminded myself. In exchange for his help.

What I hadn’t expected was to want him too.

What I hadn’t expected was for him to desire me.

But he did. Even in my inexperience, I recognized that. I didn’t know why he did.

He stopped in front of me, still completely naked, his cock jutting forward. There was a challenge in his gaze as I stared up at him.

When his cock twitched, I sucked in a soft breath and looked at it. My lips parted when I saw more seed had gathered at his tip. The Ghertun had always said the Dakkari fucked like beasts in heat—constantly—and a part of me wondered if there was some truth in that.

He reached down to help me stand. Then his fingers were on the laces of my own pants. They were so big on me that they slid down my legs and over my boots once he had them untied.

“Relax,” he growled gruffly when he saw my hands shake. “The only thing I mean to do in my furs tonight is sleep.”

Relief—and a weird sense of disappointment—made me sigh, which made his lips twitch. He knelt in front of me, stripping me of my boots and then my pants, leaving me standing in nothing more than a tunic.

When he rose, I couldn’t help but gather my power between us, feeling it tingle in the empty air.

I’m just curious, I told myself. His red eyes glowed, the corner of his lip twitching down slightly as he reached for the hem of my tunic.

When the energy had gathered fully, when the back of my neck prickled and it felt like an electric buzzing had started to trail down my arms, I pressed forward into his mind, softly at first, almost like a gentle stroke.

I shivered, my eyelids going half-lidded at what I found. He was the calmest I’d ever felt. The waves of his emotions were no longer a tumultuous storm, punishing and intense, but rather a calm lake, mirrored and glassy, with not even a hint of a rippling breeze.

Did he find peace among his horde? Was that the cause?

Underneath the calm stillness, however, I sensed something else. His want. His desire. And when he tugged the tunic over my head, leaving me standing bare in front of him, that desire surged and compounded until I was left shaking, until my cheeks were flushed and my eyes were bright.

Clumsily, I pulled out from his mind, suppressing my gasp. I swallowed, confused once more when I felt his arousal and peace linger in my own mind. This had never happened before. I never took on the emotions of others, not even my family’s.

So why was it different with him?

I didn’t know what it meant but it was possible that my gift was changing again, strengthening perhaps. Just like it had done when I was younger, when seemingly overnight I’d been able to change emotions instead of just observe them.

My temple throbbed with the small intrusion but not as terribly as before. It was manageable…and worth the cost.

“Kalles,” he rasped, his eyes stroking down my body. He didn’t touch me, only looked.

“Yes?”

I’d never been naked with a male before. My nipples were hardened into stiff peaks, my belly warm from his lingering desire. My sex throbbed when I saw his cock bob between us.

“Your bath grows cold,” was what he growled.

Sliding my gaze past him, I saw the water was still steaming but I rounded him nonetheless, choosing to break the tension thrumming between us.

My inner thighs still felt tender as I walked but when I slipped into the washing tub, I sighed in contentment and pleasure. My wounds stung briefly before they were soothed by the heat.

As I got my body back under my control, I carefully avoided the horde king’s gaze, but I knew he was watching me. In my periphery, I saw him occupying the place where I’d been sitting.

I scrubbed my skin with the wet cloth draped over the edge until my skin was pink. Then I washed my hair before dunking underneath the water completely. When I resurfaced, my hair hung in translucent strands around my shoulders, some sticking to my cheeks and my neck.

Attempting to steer the conversation into tame territory, I asked, “How long will we be here?”

His home, his voliki as he’d called it, was spacious and expensively furnished with plush rugs and carpets lining the floor. It was domed, supported by thick beams of black metal in the center, poles that surrounded the mess of exquisite furs that comprised his bed. Behind the bed was a shadowed area that the fire’s light didn’t reach, but I thought I spied chests and storage. The washing tub had been placed close to the entrance and close to the low table where the food was. A weapons rack with glimmering blades and swords was mounted onto one of the curved walls.

Saving the Dothikkar’s keep—and not the dungeons—it was the nicest and most comfortable place I’d ever been. I was surprised. I’d always had this image of Dakkari hordes as…barbaric. I knew they were nomadic, following game across the planet, wherever they might lead.

Remembering the sight of the horde as we passed through the walls, seeing all the Dakkari faces peering up at us, the carefully spaced voliki, the training grounds I’d spied, the crops, the resources that had been gathered…I came to the realization that hordes were just like small cities. Organized, well-kept, disciplined, efficient.

“As soon as Lokkaru tells us something of value, we will depart,” he murmured.

My gaze cut to him, lips parting. “You just told me her name.”

“She would have told you it regardless,” the horde king said. Save for the golden cuffs around his wrists and the gold tattoos inked into his flesh, he was still naked, though mercifully he’d thrown a fur shawl across his thighs. Sitting on the cushion at the lower table I’d been occupying, he was sprawled comfortably, leaning his back against one of the stabilizing beams for support.

I watched as his tail flicked across the rugs and the gold on his wrists cast beams of light across the walls.

“I thought the Dakkari didn’t like to give out their names.”

“They do not,” he said. And suddenly, with a burning need, I wanted to know his. Would I ever know it? “But Lokkaru does not care about such things. She is a terun. An elder. She does not have much time left.”

Fear and dismay went through me.

“Do you think she still remembers anything about the heartstone?” I asked softly.

“It is difficult to say. Her mind comes and goes. So pray to Kakkari that she remembers something.”

And if she doesn’t?

But I let that fear go unspoken.

“I’m sure she will,” I said, wanting to remain positive. She has to.

There was still time left. But we couldn’t delay long.

“Will we meet with her tomorrow?”

“Lysi,” he murmured, his eyes never leaving me. I didn’t need to push into his mind to know what he was thinking. His gaze trailed down to the surface of the water and he frowned…as if frustrated that it blocked his view of me.

Heat bloomed between my thighs once more and I pressed them together to stifle it, even though it put pressure on my pyroki burns.

“Come out from there, leikavi,” he ordered once I was done washing.

“What will I wear?”

There was that feral, untamed look in his eyes and I envisioned that that glassy, still lake in his mind rippled. Just slightly.

“I will keep you warm,” he promised, his voice dark and husky.

Though the water was still hot, I shivered in its depths. “I can wear the tunic I was wearing before.”

He made a sound in the back of his throat. Not what he wanted?

“Shy now, kalles?” he mused. “When I first encountered you, you were wearing a shift so sheer you may as well have been wearing nothing at all.”

Even still, he rose from his position, going into that shadowed darkness behind his fur-mounded bed.

“That dress was made of Ghertun skin,” I informed him. “Their moltings. Of course it was sheer. They do not want to spare their valuable resources for us.”

Quiet came from the darkened side of the voliki before he murmured something in Dakkari. It sounded like a curse. I heard a chest open and then boom closed. When the horde king emerged, that fire was back in his gaze.

“They made you wear their sheddings?” he growled.

“I suppose it was better than nothing,” I said softly, watching him warily as he approached. Waves were beginning to rise in that calm lake of his. “Right?”

“Wrong,” he rasped. He was irritated. Why did the thought of me wearing Ghertun skin upset him? “Stand.”

I did as he asked, stepping from the bath, but stilled in surprise when he dried me off himself. His touch was gentle as he swiped the dry cloth across my flesh. The material rasped over my nipples, which he lingered on, wanting to make sure they were very dry. When he trailed the cloth between my legs, I jolted as tingles raced up my spine. He stroked there, once, twice…before I grabbed his wrist, my hand wrapping around the hot gold cuffed there.

I imagined my eyes were pleading with him…but for what, I didn’t know. His mercy?

Or more?

A muscle in his jaw jumped as he tossed the cloth away. He gave me a sand-colored tunic, fresh and clean…and smelling of him.

As I pulled it on, he returned to the low table. The hem reached my upper thighs, not as long as the one I’d been wearing before. And the material was quite thin and light. A part of me wondered if he’d picked this particular tunic on purpose.

When I met his eyes, his maddening smirk told me as much. His gaze dropped and when I followed, I saw my wet hair had already made the material transparent where it draped over my breasts.

His voice was rough as he said, “Come sit with me as I eat. You still have a story to tell me. Do not think I’ve forgotten.”

Dismay spread.

When I approached, meaning to sit on the opposite cushion, he reached out and snagged my waist, pulling me down until I was in his lap once more. He tucked my legs on both sides of his hips, until the position was identical to the night in the Dothikkar’s keep.

My heart was hammering in my chest, especially when I looked between us and saw his cock right there. It brushed the hem of my tunic every time it bobbed. And yet…I’d been in his lap so much in the past three days that oddly, it didn’t seem that strange to be sitting this way.

He leaned forward, the tip of his nose pressing to that space underneath my ear. His inhale made my eyelids close, tingles spreading across my scalp.

Is this how he treats his lovers? I wondered. Because truthfully, it wasn’t a terrible thing to be kept by him. Overlooking his volatile emotions, of course, that tumultuous storm that hovered constantly.

The Vorakkar leaned back before reaching around to grab the small plate of what looked like meat. I watched as he ate, his jaw flexing, the scar on his face pulling.

“Why are you called the Mad Horde King?”

The question slipped from me before I thought better of it. Briefly, his chewing stopped, his eyes flashing.

Then he relaxed again.

The other Vorakkar had called him that after bursting into his room in the Dothikkar’s keep. Did he remember? He must.

“Because sometimes I see beings that are not there,” he answered. My breath escaped me in a rush. “And sometimes, I like killing too much. Sometimes I crave it.”

If he’d meant to unnerve me…it had worked.

“But we are not speaking about that this night,” he said, his voice almost like a purr, soft and deep.

He saw beings, people, that weren’t there? Like…spirits?

I wanted to ask him the many questions that arose from his admission but I knew he wouldn’t answer. In addition to unnerving me, he’d also meant to intrigue me. And he’d succeeded.

“Push your hair over your shoulder, will you, leikavi?” he murmured. I frowned, hesitantly brushing it back…before I remembered. He threw another chunk of meat into his mouth and his gaze went half-lidded as he gazed at the obscene outline of my nipples against the wet material of his ridiculously thin tunic.

A small scowl crossed my features, which I think surprised him because he laughed, loud and deep as I maneuvered my hair back to the front, making certain it draped across both my breasts.

“Oh, come now,” he murmured. I swore he pouted. “Surely telling you why the Dakkari call me the Mad Horde King earns me a nice treat. It may make me more amenable to other questions. I would become so distracted I might not realize what I let slip.”

I blew out a small breath, regarding him carefully. He was a strange male, that much was certain.

But he was a male nonetheless. And I’d watched Viola tease the boys in our village enough when we were younger to know how to react. I’d been jealous of her then.

Slowly, though my belly tingled with the dizzying forbidden rush of it, I brushed back the hair covering my right nipple as a compromise. Did my spine straighten as I did? Did I purposefully present my breast to him, like an offering?

I couldn’t be certain. However, I admitted, silently to myself of course, that I…liked his gaze on me.

“Ah, how you please me, leikavi,” he rasped, his eyes glimmering with the shadows and highlights of the fire burning in the basin. “I cannot wait until you let me suckle them.”

My breath hitched, his words immediately conjuring dozens of images in my mind. I wondered what that would feel like.

“Now, tell me what I want to know,” he commanded with all the high-handed authority of a male expecting to be answered. The command of a Vorakkar, one who’d been whipped endlessly, one who looked at me with fire in his eyes, one who saw people that were not there…

How could I deny him anything?

Chapter Nineteen

“Maman always protected me,” Vienne began. “I told you that when I was younger, she had a dream—a premonition, she believed—that I would be taken from her. Since then, she kept me close. Sometimes, too close. She didn’t let me roam the village alone, not unless my sister or my brothers were with me. My father took pity on me, however. He was still alive then and he knew how desperately I craved time…away. Alone.”

She’d just wanted to be free, I mused.

Reaching around her, I snagged the goblet of wine, tipping it up to my lips. The wine burned a wonderful heat down my throat, quenching the worst of my thirst, as I listened to the pleasing, quiet lull of her voice.

“I was never alone,” she admitted softly. “One day, my brothers were out repairing fences and my mother, grandmother, and sister were working in the home. My father let me walk the village myself. He told me it was just our secret. Then he left to help my brothers.

“There was a boy. One who I think fancied my sister. My sister’s very beautiful, so all the boys in our village liked her,” she said quietly. “But that day, he was talking to me. And looking at me. And I wanted to do something a little reckless because I knew I might not get the chance again.”

She blew out a small breath, color heating her cheeks.

“He kissed me and…I liked it,” she admitted softly. “We slipped into the forest next to our village.”

“Go on,” I murmured, my eyes straying to her lips. I swallowed when her tongue darted out to wet them.

“It happened so fast. He was kissing me and then he, um, pushed into me. Twice. Then it was over.”

I huffed out a sharp breath.

“That’s all,” she said quietly. “It’s not much of a story.”

Her cheeks were burning and I found the sight of her like this quite…tantalizing. I also found it tragic that that had been her first experience with sex and pleasure.

“Did he make you come?”

“C-come?” she questioned.

My lips curled.

She swallowed. “No,” she admitted softly. “I’ve never…I mean, I’ve never felt that.”

I realized what she was saying and my nostrils flared.

Vok!

She’d never orgasmed before?

Temptation rode me hard, flaring my pupils and making one of my claws curl into her waist. If she were any other female, I would have had her on her hands and knees right then, tonguing her from behind, listening to her whimpers and moans filling my voliki as she orgasmed on my tongue. Then I’d have slid into her with long, deep strokes, growling as she received me so sweetly.

Vok. Arousal filled me. How long had it been since I last felt this way? How long since it had felt this consuming, this intense?

Perhaps never, I mused. With Mala, sex had been different. Then again, that female had been nothing more than a parasite, feeding off my grief, using my body for her pleasure.

“Leikavi?”

She released the corner of her lip she’d been nibbling after her confession. “Yes?”

“I will promise you this. When I fuck you, you will know it. You will crave it.”

I didn’t think she knew how much her desire showed on her features. At my words, her eyes went half-lidded, her nipples puckered even more under my tunic. Her soft pink lips parted and there was one thing I found I could not deny myself.

Leaning forward, I caught her bottom lip with mine, sliding my hand into her white hair, catching the back of her neck. I held her in place as I gave her my kiss. She froze at first, shy, unsure what to do. But then my leikavi let out a shuddering breath against me and when her tongue darted out to taste me on her lips, I captured it and suckled.

Her startled gasp filled the space between us. My cock bobbed, my dakke swelling and throbbing, my seed beading at my tip. My grip on her tightened, my need surging. I hadn’t taken release since the night of the jrikkia, when she’d watched me from the shadows. Remembering her curiosity, remembering her needy, greedy little gaze on my cock only stoked the roaring fire that was beginning to consume me.

You need her to trust you, that rational part of my mind reminded me.

Would she trust me after I gave her the rough fucking on the floor of my voliki that I craved? Or would she look at me like I was a barbaric brute, with her scorn?

For some reason, I couldn’t stomach the latter. Not with her.

But her lips were so sweet, her tongue warm and tentative against mine. I kissed her the way I wanted to mate her…thoroughly. I pulled away when I felt her little nails curling into my chest. When had she placed them there? Her dull little claws were dug deep, clasping me to her.

I’d been right. Though sheltered, my leikavi was a sensual creature, one who needed to be introduced to the pleasures of the flesh.

With time, I told myself.

When I unclasped my hand from the back of her neck, it shook.

Her gaze was still half-lidded, that warm desire still directed at me. I was unused to the females I took to my furs looking at me like that. With…softness.

The females I mated all knew what I was and I knew what they were seeking. They wanted a piece of the story I’d found myself woven into…the tale of the Mad Vorakkar, who laughed as he killed and fucked like a snarling beast. They wanted a piece of a Vorakkar, all while knowing I would never take a Morakkari, a queen.

And so, they looked at me with lust and possession and always, always fear. Like I could kill them as easily as I fucked them.

But Vienne, this little vekkiri kalles, sitting so sweetly in my lap, clutching me to her, who had knowingly teased me with the sight of her breast through the almost-transparent tunic, looked at me with warmth.

Maddening.

It was discomforting when I longed to stroke her hair in response. It was discomforting when I wanted to kiss her more gently this time, like she was…cherished.

Vok, I cursed.

This was why I didn’t get close to females.

Because as much as I hated that she looked at me like I wasn’t a monster or a crazed beast…I also craved that softness in her gaze.

“I need sleep,” I said, my tone gruffer and more cutting than I’d intended.

She swallowed, blinking. Right before my eyes, I watched that softness fade. I watched realization and wariness return.

When it did, when I saw a little bit of her fear, I felt more in control. I felt relief.

Sick in the head.

Lysi, always.

“All right,” she whispered, her lips still reddened from my kiss.

I stood, bringing both of us up, and setting her on her feet. The fire was dying but I didn’t bother to throw more fuel onto it. We would be warm enough through the night.

She hesitated at the end of the bed, still standing next to the low table, as I climbed underneath my mound of furs. I almost groaned with pleasure. I’d pushed my body hard the past few days and now it was time for much-needed reprieve.

“Come, kalles,” I rasped, sliding my gaze over her. The furs brushed my hardened cock, tickling over the heated flesh.

Hesitantly, she walked to the other side, her bare feet brushing the carpet. The dying fire illuminated the outline of her body in the tunic. She was small, thin, but her hips were gently flared. Her light grey eyes seemed to glow as she looked down at me. Her beautiful hair had begun to dry but the ends were still dripping. When my gaze dropped, I saw her nipples were still pebbled.

My mouth watered.

Vok, she was…exquisite.

“As long as you are with me, you sleep beside me,” I murmured when she hesitated again.

She slipped under the furs and my tail reached out, wrapping around her calf, pulling her closer.

Despite moments ago, when I’d felt relieved to see the evidence of her fear, I still…needed her close to me. I didn’t understand it. But I was too exhausted to care right then.

Rolling towards her, I clasped her tight, tucking her into my body. Her wet hair pressed into my shoulder. My cock was nestled between us, throbbing against her soft belly.

Vok, it felt right.

So damn right, to hold her like this. I remembered the way I’d reacted to her when she’d been led into the Dothikkar’s great hall. That undeniable drive to protect her, as if I was meant for it.

I’d wanted to protect her as certainly as I’d wanted her to surrender to me. Now, I wondered if I craved being conquered in return.

“Veekor,” I ordered, my arms tightening around her. I felt her warm breath across my chest and my eyes closed. “Sleep, leikavi.”

* * *

I woke in a cold sweat, my heart hammering against my bones, sucking in breath.

Movement came at my right. Something warm.

My tensed muscles relaxed when I saw Vienne, sleeping. She shifted, tossing her head. I wondered if she too had nightmares.

Sitting up, I scrubbed a hand down my face before my claw drifted over the deep scar on my cheek. It throbbed, like the mere memory of how I’d received it had gotten the nerve endings firing again. Icy hot pain. Blood filling my vision, making everything dark.

My sister, her eyes open and unseeing, her dress around her waist, blood bubbling from her mouth.

A shuddered breath released from my lungs and bile rose in my throat.

Squeezing my eyes shut didn’t help. I could never get that image out of my mind once it returned. I growled, curling my fist and then hitting my temple. Over and over again until the pain bloomed, until I could think of something other than that night, the night everyone I loved had been taken from me. A senseless crime.

When I felt calmer, when I relished the throbbing pain at my temple, I looked back at the kalles in my furs.

She shifted again. Her legs kicked, her lips parted.

My heart slowed the longer I looked at her. And when I brushed a hand through her dry hair, when I lay back down next to her, pulling her close once more? I felt like I could actually breathe again as I drew her scent deep.

I closed my eyes, knowing I needed a full night of rest, though I didn’t remember the last time I’d had it.

“Davik.”

My eyes flashed open and I froze.

I listened, wondering if I was seeing things, hearing things again that weren’t there.

“Davik.”

A rough breath tore from my lungs.

Nik. No spirits this time.

It had come from Vienne.

My name was on her lips, in her dreams…

It was a name she should not know. A name I hadn’t heard since my sister’s death. A name I had never given her, though she’d given me hers on our first meeting.

My blood turned to ice in my veins. My temple pounded harder.

For the first time, I wondered if the Dothikkar had been right.

If this white-haired beauty was a sorceress…come to destroy us all.

“Davik!”

Chapter Twenty

“Davik!” she cried out. He could hear her voice but the ungira in front of him was coiling to strike, tightening its thickly corded muscles.

Devina, his sister, was crying, tears streaked down her face. He could almost feel her fear but he would be brave for her. Lomma would be proud if he was brave. So would their father, though he was out on a hunt, and wouldn’t return to the horde for another week. It was his duty to protect his family.

The ungira had come too close to the horde. The Vorakkar and a large portion of the darukkars, his father included, were absent. Davik had found the slithering beast, who made its home burrowed in the ground, while they’d been out exploring.

Now, it was targeting them. His sister was in danger. He was in danger. The horde was too far away to call for help. All he had was a makeshift blade he’d crafted from sharp stone. It had taken him all week and he’d been excited to show his father when he returned.

“Davik!” Devina screamed when the ungira struck out fast, its fangs flashing black, coming towards him with lightning speed.

Determination made his mind go quiet. He knew fear, but he didn’t understand why it made others foolish. He never wanted to be foolish. He wanted to be a darukkar, like his father…and only the bravest and strongest of Dakkari could be warriors.

At the last moment, Davik dropped to the ground, though the ungira’s single talon, which had emerged from its long belly for its defense, slashed his side. Its strike cut him but with a small bellow, Davik plunged the stone blade into its belly, where his father said was the ‘hunting spot,’ hearing its hissing shriek in response.

As its black blood spilled over him, as the slithering beast died in a moment, falling on top of him…Davik grinned. He’d done it.

The world sounded muffled underneath the ungira’s bulk. He felt a sharp pinch in his side, from where the beast had cut him. He felt tired. He wanted to close his eyes. It was hard to breathe under the weight of the ungira but he wanted to bring it back to the horde, to show his mother that he’d hunted it. That he was the youngest Dakkari to ever take down an ungira.

“Davik,” Devina sobbed. He heard her on the other side. He sensed that she was pushing, pushing the ungira with all her might. Little grunts and tearful gasps followed. Davik had the odd thought that she would be angry with him. Lomma had just gifted Devina a new dress and now it would be blackened with blood.

Light burst in his vision and air filled his lungs. She’d done it! Devina had actually managed to push off the ungira from where it had him pinned.

“You saved me,” she gasped, her identical eyes wide. He was older, even if it was only by a little bit of time. It was his duty to protect her. “You saved me, Davik.”

He was still gasping from being crushed under the ungira’s weight, still covered in its blood…still grinning.

“Nik, you saved me,” he told his sister.

But that was how it was meant to be.

They had shared everything in life, even their mother’s womb. Why would glory—or death, for that matter—be any different?

* * *

Savagely, I was torn from the dream…and it felt like a piece of my soul had been torn away with it.

I gasped, drawing in breath desperately, like I’d been crushed underneath the ungira and not…Davik.

My eyes flew to the horde king, who had me pinned underneath him, who was glaring down at me with his red and glowing gaze, his hand poised at my throat.

“Who are you really?” he growled.

“W-what?” I asked, scared, confused. My head was throbbing, like I’d used my gift. But I knew that I hadn’t. I’d been asleep! I’d been…

Dreaming.

His memories?

Impossible. It had never happened before.

Yet, everything had felt so real. The ungira’s cold flesh, its coiled body, its crushing bulk. The shrill fear in Devina’s voice, her relief so palpable I had felt tears well in my throat. The ground underneath me—no, not me. Him. The warm blood that had bloomed under my—his—tunic.

I was losing my mind.

“How do you know that name?” the horde king growled, his tone furious.

My hand came up to rest on his thick wrist, my fingers brushing the warm gold of his cuffs. His Vorakkar cuffs, ones I’d never seen him without.

His hand at my throat wasn’t squeezing me. It was more to keep me in place, keep me still as he interrogated me.

“Your name?” I whispered, staring up at him. My gift was evolving, I realized. Changing.

Or…was it because I’d entered his mind too many times? Changed his emotions once too many? Had I unknowingly absorbed some of his memories in the process? From his past, of his sister, of his childhood on the plains of Dakkar?

My question made him more enraged. I could sense his restlessness, crawling underneath his skin. He was disturbed.

I was disturbed.

Davik had been young in the dream—no, the memory—no older than ten. And his sister…

He had a sister.

One he loved desperately. I had felt his affection for her, his pride in keeping her safe. Where was she now?

“Is it your name?” I asked, suddenly scared at what he might answer. Because if it was…if I’d just dreamed his memories…

I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know if I could stop it.

“Please,” I pleaded with him softly, looking up at him with tears in my eyes, my temples pounding, making the world go fuzzy.

The Mad Horde King stared down at me. He was naked above me. I’d kicked off the furs during the dream. His thighs kept my hips pinned and his hand felt like a claim of possession on my throat, like he owned me, like he could do whatever he wished with me…

And gods, I didn’t think I’d stop him.

“Say it,” he rasped.

His Vorakkar command. One I couldn’t help but obey. That voice, dark and sinful, threaded up my spine, made my nipples tighten.

“I want to hear it from your lips,” he growled.

He wanted me to say his name.

“Say it!”

“Davik,” I whispered.

His fingers flexed on my throat. A shuddering sigh escaped him, his eyes falling closed. Like he couldn’t bear to hear it? Like it pained him?

“Say it.”

I swallowed. I was certain he could feel my heart beating in my throat.

Licking my lips, I murmured, “Davik.”

“Again,” he said quietly, his eyes opening, the red of his circular irises flaring.

“Davi—”

With an anguished, raw sound that tore from his throat, he silenced me with a rough kiss. His hand tightened, drawing me towards him. I could do nothing but gasp against his lips, my palms squeezing on his wrists.

It was a kiss meant to punish. Even in my inexperience, I recognized that. He was punishing me for daring to speak his name, when I knew that I shouldn’t know it. The Dakkari considered their given names sacred. I knew that.

So, a horde king of Dakkar would keep his especially close, wouldn’t he?

I wondered now if anyone outside his horde even knew it. If anyone inside his horde knew it.

His teeth hit mine, one of the sharper points cutting into my lip. I tasted the metallic bite of my blood and the whole world seemed to sway when he licked it away, when he stroked his tongue against mine afterwards.

I was completely at his mercy, pinned under his weight like he’d been by the ungira. When I felt his hips drop, when I felt him grind the length of his hard cock against me, my sex tingled, my belly warmed, my desire unfurling rapidly.

I was feeling aroused by this?

I didn’t understand it.

When he sucked on my tongue again, I swore I felt it in other places.

A whimper escaped me when his cock slid over my tunic, between my legs. When had I widened them for him? But there was no denying he’d sunk against me, was cradled between my thighs.

When he ground down again, the heat of him rubbed over that single spot that felt so good and I couldn’t conceal my moan.

His hair fell over us, curtaining us from the world. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me in the darkness. He thrust over me again even as he glared.

He tore his lips away from me, taking away his kiss. He bit at the fleshy part of my ear and rasped, “You could come from this, couldn’t you, leikavi? For the first time.”

My answer was a shuddering moan when he bucked his hips.

Yes. Something was happening. The pleasure kept building. The muscles in my legs were tightening on instinct, my hips lifting against his. A deep throbbing came from inside me, one that demanded to be satisfied.

His flesh was so hot against me. My hands were still wrapped around his wrists. The gold cuffs felt scalding.

His dark laugh made my neck tingle.

“Nik,” he purred. “Not tonight.”

Something was wrong. His tone was mocking.

He pulled away from me so fast. Whereas before I’d been overheated, now my skin felt chilled like ice.

Davik stood from the bed, his cock still hard, the tip weeping with his desire. He grabbed his trews from the floor, pulling them up quickly. His movements were jerky, rough, like he was furious.

I didn’t understand. Before I knew it, I’d built up the energy of my power…to try to understand. Building, building it between us, feeling the skin on my arms prickle into bumps. Pushing forward, I felt his need. Then I felt his anguish.

“Nik,” he bellowed sharply. “Stop.”

I was so shocked, so stunned that I dropped the small connection, leaving me dizzy.

“I do not know what it is you do, sorceress,” he spat, “but you will not get your claws any deeper into me. Do you understand?”

My chest clenched. The haze from my desire faded quickly, like I’d just plunged into icy water, though I still tasted him on my tongue.

Sorceress?

“You are dangerous,” he rasped, glaring at me.

Then he stormed from the voliki, though it was the dead of night, as if he couldn’t stand to be with me a moment longer.

Chapter Twenty-One

“Come.”

His voice pulled me from my thoughts and I blinked as the stream of golden morning light filled the voliki. He’d only ducked his head inside, the first I’d seen of him since he’d left during the night.

I pulled on my pants, tying the lace tight at my waist. I kept on the tunic he’d given me last night, tucking it into the waistband. The material was no longer transparent now that my hair no longer wet it. After pulling on my too-large boots, I joined him outside.

He regarded me carefully when I met his eyes. He was still bare-chested, his golden tattoos on full display. For the first time, I wondered how the Dakkari inked the designs onto their skin. I wondered if it hurt.

In the light of day, he looked…better. His face was no longer contorted in blind rage. He simply looked tired.

Which wasn’t surprising considering he’d barely slept. I wondered if he had slept during our journey to his horde—I didn’t remember a time when he had. He’d always been awake when I had been. Except last night…that was the first time I’d seen him sleep. His face had been relaxed, though his lips had been turned down into a frown.

I’d joined him in sleep shortly after, only to be awakened with him on top of me, his hand at my throat, fury in his gaze.

Last night hung between us.

Heavy.

Knowing.

He knew I had some sort of power. He could sense it, which had stunned me. Even when I’d used my gift to feel the emotions of my family members, they’d been oblivious. Yet, he could feel me?

How?

“Did I scare you last night?” he asked.

Breath whistled through my nostrils when I looked up at him.

“Did you want to?” I asked him in return.

“Lysi,” he murmured, scraping a hand down his face. “I did.”

He’d wanted to scare me?

“I…” he trailed off. He shook his head. He appeared…so incredibly tired. “I needed you to be as scared as you make me feel sometimes.”

His confession left me bewildered.

I scared him?

I almost wanted to laugh.

“I’m—I’m not a sorceress, horde king,” I whispered, wanting him to know that, at the very least. “I don’t have the power to destroy a horde. I would never do anything like that.”

I didn’t know why it was so important to me for him to know that. But that word had echoed in my mind long after he’d gone. It made my mind go sour.

His jaw tightened. “You have more power than you think.”

My brow furrowed.

“Come,” he growled, his tone hardening, like he already regretted saying that. “We will go see Lokkaru now. She is awake.”

I nodded wordlessly, following him when he turned from me and walked towards the bulk of his horde.

It was still early in the morning, the sun so bright I had to use my hand to shield it from my eyes. Not many Dakkari were awake. The volikis were quiet with sleep and rest and those that did roam around stayed to themselves, only inclining their heads to their horde king in respect before regarding me with suspicious interest. Then they continued with their morning duties.

The voliki we stopped in front of was like all the rest, situated towards the middle of the encampment. Reaching out, I stroked my finger over the hide that covered the domed home. It had grown impossibly soft with the passing years.

“How old is she?” I whispered, studying the hide, not wanting to meet his eyes.

“One hundred and five years.”

The oldest living member in our village had been seventy before they’d passed on. Could the Dakkari really live this long?

I didn’t doubt it.

“Nevretam terun,” Davik called out.

A soft voice came from within and the horde king held the voliki flap entrance open for me. Taking a small breath, I ducked inside. I felt his heat behind me when he followed a moment later.

The voliki was brightly lit, a fire roaring in the golden basin. The home was much smaller than the Vorakkar’s, which was to be expected, but was comfortable and warm. A high bed of furs was in the center, though the elderly female we sought was on a cushion on the floor, seated before a table which was covered with her morning meal.

At first sight, I thought surely Davik was mistaken. This female was not one hundred and five years of age. Her hair was silky and black, hanging to the middle of her back. Unlike the other Dakkari females I’d seen while riding through the horde the night before, Lokkaru wore no adornments or beads in her hair. Her clothing consisted of a long, thick dress the color of moss and a white fur shawl draped across her shoulders.

When she peered up at us, I saw her eyes were yellow, not red like the Vorakkar’s. Her age showed more in the deep wrinkles of her face, in her slow, careful movements as she brought a goblet of steaming liquid to her lips.

Once she finished sipping it, it shook as she replaced it back on the table. Inclining her head, though she was one of the first I’d seen to hold his eyes, she greeted, “Vorakkar.”

“Terun,” Davik murmured, inclining his head in return. “We have come to seek your help.”

She blinked, long and slow, and then her gaze shifted to mine. I was tempted to press into her mind…but I was slowly realizing how intrusive it was. How easily I’d always used it, almost as a greeting towards others. Uncomfortably aware that Davik would know if I used my gift, I simply mirrored his actions, dipping my head towards her.

“What help could I be?” she asked, in the universal tongue. Her voice was scratchy, as if unused, but soft.

Davik’s hand came to my lower back, surprising me. He led me forward, had me sit across from Lokkaru at the table, and he knelt next to me, sitting back on his heels.

“You confided in me once. When you first asked to join my horde,” he started. “Do you remember what we spoke of?”

A look of confusion passed over her features. She looked around her voliki. A strong scent of incense perfumed the air. “I have always lived here.”

“Nik, terun. You joined my horde ten years ago, after the cold season. You were living in Dothik, selling fruit you stole from the Dothikkar’s gardens.”

A mischievous smile crossed Lokkaru’s features. It was so unexpected and surprising that I felt my lips twitching in response. Had she really been stealing from the Dothikkar? Ten years ago would have put her at ninety-five years old.

“You tried to sell me some hji. I knew the only place to get hji in the capital was from his gardens,” he said.

Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at Davik. His voice had gone a little quiet, soft. He liked this female, respected her. He’d discovered her stealing from the Dothikkar…and instead of turning her in, he’d taken her into his horde?

“Lysi,” she said, now grinning. Her eyes brightened. “The Dothikkar does not even like hji. He had too much of it and the guards always napped around sunset.”

Davik smiled and my breath almost left me. It wasn’t his dark, cutting smile, or his mocking one. It was genuine. And it was beautiful.

I thought about this Davik before me now. Then I thought of the Mad Horde King, with his storm of rage brewing underneath. How opposite they were.

His eyes locked with mine. His gaze dropped to my lips and I realized I was smiling at him. I ducked my head, biting my lip to hide it, as silence stretched out in the voliki.

The horde king turned back to Lokkaru. “You told me of your mother, of your lomma. And your father. Do you remember?”

A long breath escaped her. When I looked at her, I was surprised to see the tears glimmering in her gaze.

“Lysi,” she said. “Of course I remember, though not what I said.”

This will take time, I realized, my shoulders dropping slightly. There were only three weeks until the black moon and we hadn’t even begun to search for the heartstone yet.

“Nik,” she said, her eyes darting around the voliki, like she was seeing something we couldn’t. “That is not true. I remember. I remember Lomma. She told me…what was it? She told me love grows and it grows true, as long as it is nourished. Like my father.”

Davik caught my eyes again. He shook his head once, though I swore I spied relief in this expression.

“You must be hungry, cossa,” she said to me. “You look hungry.”

She held out a bowl of something dark blue and mashed. I took it from her. Then she presented me with another small plate of flat, beige-colored circles. She peeled away the top layer, scooped up the blue mash with it, and folded it neatly inside. Then she pinched the circle closed until it was neat before giving it to me.

“Good for the womb,” she informed me, looking at the wrapped beige ball in my hand. “Kasba root.”

The womb?

Davik made a chuffing sound in his throat and my face flamed with realization.

She thought…she thought that Davik and I…

I stuffed the ball into my mouth to avoid saying anything, to avoid meeting the horde king’s gaze. I looked anywhere but at him and my eyes caught on another table in the voliki. On it was a smaller basin fire that was heating what looked like animal fat in a clear jar, melting it into a liquid.

Next to the basin was a bucket, a stick wrapped in twine lying across it. I realized what it was. She was a candle maker. That was when I saw all the candles around her voliki, most melted down into pools, though none were lit now. Their color was chalky white, but back at my village, one of the women had made wax with vibrant colors, using things she’d foraged from the forest for dye.

An idea came to me. My grandmother had become quite forgetful in her old age too. Her memories came and went. Some were gone forever but others returned. I’d noticed that she remembered the most when she was not trying to remember. She would tell me stories as she wove strands of fiber together for a blanket or a shawl, stories she might not have told me otherwise.

“Do you make candles?” I asked Lokkaru softly, gesturing over to the table, the taste of the kasba root lingering in my mouth. It had a pleasantly sweet yet spicy aftertaste and the circle she’d wrapped it in was a thin dough, chewy and soft.

Her eyes followed my hand and her spine straightened when she saw her crafting station. “Lysi.”

“Will you teach me how to make them?” I requested. I gave her a soft smile when her eyes returned to mine, when her head tilted. “I’ve always wanted to learn.”

The Ghertun could see in the dark very easily, so there had been little use for candles, or fires, or light underneath the Dead Mountain.

The idea excited her. When I glanced over at Davik, he was regarding me with a stoic, almost calculating expression.

“Lysi, lysi,” Lokkaru said, rising from the table with surprising ease.

“A woman in my village used to add dye to the wax to make them colorful,” I told her. She rounded on me with an intrigued expression. “Perhaps we could try to add dye for some of them.”

Her expression was lively with the possibility. That mischievous smile was back. “We could steal dried kuveri from Arinu.”

My brows rose.

“Terun,” the horde king said, shaking his head. “Though you do not regard given names with importance, others do not feel the same. I have already told you this.”

My gaze flashed up to Davik’s and his jaw tensed when he saw me looking. His words were a reminder of last night. I knew his given name now. He’d asked me to say it, over and over, before he’d…

Before he’d kissed me. Again.

I cleared my throat.

Lokkaru’s head ducked. “My apologies, Vorakkar.”

“And no stealing,” he said, his voice a little gruffer after our exchanged glances.

He stood. As Lokkaru shuffled over to her candles, he leaned over me, his long, unbound hair brushing my cheek. I tensed, sucking in a small breath as he rasped in my ear, “You will stay with her?”

“Yes,” I whispered, tilting my head to look back at him.

His gaze burned. His nostrils flared when his eyes trailed to my lips, to the little cut in the corner where his teeth had accidentally cut me. I knew what he was remembering…the metallic taste of my blood that he’d licked.

Tension thrummed between us as Lokkaru hummed to herself.

“You have much to tell me tonight, leikavi,” he murmured, reaching down to brush the back of his claw over the cut on my lip.

I inhaled a sharp breath. About my gift, I knew.

“Do not let her light the candles you make,” he told me. His gaze traced up to Lokkaru’s figure. “She forgets them.”

I frowned but nodded.

He leaned forward, his teeth scraping across the side of my neck, and heat curled in my belly.

“I will return for you later.”

He made those words sound like both a threat and a heated promise.

Then he was gone, pulling away, and ducking under the voliki’s entrance before he disappeared from sight. Outside, I heard his heavy footsteps retreat, heading towards the front of the encampment.

All the while, I brushed my fingers over the small bite he’d given me.

From the other side of the voliki, Lokkaru sighed, “Finally, he has been conquered. Now you must nourish him.”

Before I could question her words, she turned around, her movement slow, shaky, but determined.

“Now, shall we go steal those kuveri?”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Hedna’s stare was discomforting. The set of my pujerak’s jaw told me he was deep in thought.

It was just us on the training grounds. I sat with my back to the fence, cleaning his blood off my sword where it had cut him during sparring. The night was growing darker and darker. When I tipped my face back, I saw the moon, filling more each night.

Nothing had come from Dothik, no word from the Vorakkar of Rath Tuviri about his research into the heartstone at the archives. I had sent word through the sole thesper I kept among my horde. The winged creature had set off towards the city early this morning and would arrive soon, I imagined. If the winds were in their favor, thesper could travel at incredible speeds.

“And the kalles?” Hedna asked me. I had told him everything that had transpired in Dothik, our first moment alone after our sparring session, one I’d desperately needed. Well, I hadn’t told him everything. “Do you think she can be trusted?”

I thought back to last night.

Davik!

My name rang like an echo in my mind. I hadn’t heard it since…

I growled, turning my mind immediately away from that memory. Not even Hedna knew my given name. No one alive did…except for her.

“I intend to find out,” I told him.

“How?”

All I did was give him a grin that flashed my teeth in the moonlight.

He sighed, shaking his head. “I suppose I should be gladdened that you have finally taken an interest in a female.”

My hand paused in the cleaning of my sword.

“I have taken interest in females before.”

“For mating, lysi. This…this is different.”

His words made me uncomfortable. I stood from the ground, sheathing my sword.

“You seem calmer,” he noted. I braced myself for his next question. “Have you had any...occurrences?”

Not since before Dothik. Not since her. I wondered if her power had anything to do with that.

“Tell me, pujerak,” I said, changing the subject, “what you think of war with the Ghertun? Now that I have told you all that happened in Dothik?”

He let his question slide. Crossing his arms over his chest, his eyes raked over the encampment. Our horde had grown since the cold season. Three more children had been born and I’d granted the requests of four new families to join us out on the wild lands, two families from Dothik and two families from an outpost who had grown tired of settled life. The urge to roam would always be in a Dakkari’s blood.

“I think the Ghertun will keep pushing their boundaries until we give them reason not to,” Hedna said quietly. “They have terrorized the Killup, the Nrunteng, and the vekkiri. And last year, there were reports of missing Dakkari in the outposts. Given that we now know they keep slaves under the Dead Mountain, I wonder if they were responsible for that.”

Entirely possible.

“The kalles is our best plan. Forget the heartstone, Drokka. You might never find it.”

And yet, even Hedna did not know that Lokkaru had been born because of that heartstone. I had kept her secret these long years because it was not mine to tell.

“We need to use her,” my pujerak murmured, keeping his voice low.

I thought of the warmth in her gaze last night as she sat in my lap by the fire. I thought of the way her breath shuddered from her when I kissed her, the way her hands clutched me close, though she perhaps didn’t realize it.

Unease coiled in my belly.

“She needs to believe that she will get the heartstone,” I told him. “That is the only way she will ever trust us.”

“And in the meantime?”

I had been thinking about that. The Vorakkar in me told Hedna, “We learn everything we can about the Dead Mountain and its king. Then we send her back. Use her as a distraction, make Lozza think he will get everything he wants, and use that to our advantage.”

“Then we go to battle,” Hedna finished. “A quick attack when they are unprepared.”

Lysi.

So why did the thought of sending the leikavi back to the Dead Mountain fill me with apprehension when it would soon be under siege?

“Then what are you doing out here with me?” Hedna asked, thumping my back as he passed. “Go learn more about our most interesting guest. Seduce her with your infamous charm and make her tell you all.”

My brow rose and I gave him a dry look.

“And try not to scare her too badly,” Hedna added.

My lips curled.

* * *

When I reached Lokkaru’s voliki and ducked inside, it was well after dark and the home was quiet.

My chest gave an uncomfortable squeeze when I saw Vienne, perched on the floor next to Lokkaru’s bed of furs. The elder female was sleeping. The leikavi had been watching her.

Trays from their evening meal were laid out on the low table, all empty. Both goblets of wine were empty as well and when I regarded her carefully, her cheeks were a little flushed from the alcohol’s warmth.

I tilted my chin back and she nodded, rising slowly. When I looked over at the table where Lokkaru made her candles, I saw wide, blue-colored columns and I huffed out a small breath in amusement.

Before Vienne followed me out, she threw another brick of fuel onto the fire to make certain the voliki remained warm for Lokkaru. There was an…ache in my chest at that. Something unfamiliar I didn’t like.

I met her outside and when she emerged from the entrance, a cool breeze made a strand of her hair whip across her face. She closed her eyes, taking a deep lungful of the night air into her, her lips curling into a small, pleased smile…and even that made me hard for her.

Vok.

I drew her to me, acting on my instinct to have her near. Her hands settled against my chest in surprise. When I leaned down, I smelled something mixed with her scent. Something sweet and intoxicating.

“You smell like kuveri,” I murmured, burrowing my nose into her hair.

“I—I’m not surprised,” came her whispered voice. “We used so many for the dye. Truthfully, I think I’ll smell this way forever.”

“That would be most pleasing,” I purred.

I spied the vein in the slim column of her throat beginning to throb harder. After last night, I didn’t know if it was from fear…or something else entirely.

I led her away from Lokkaru’s voliki, back towards my own.

“I thought that maybe I would be staying with Lokkaru tonight,” came her soft voice.

My brow furrowed. “I said I would return for you.”

She didn’t say anything in reply. I peered up at the night sky. It was late. The encampment was nearly silent.

“I was sparring on the training grounds. I did not expect to be there long but there was much to discuss with my pujerak.”

I was unused to being accountable to anyone for my actions, yet I didn’t find it as irritating as I’d thought it would be.

“Your pujerak?” she asked.

“My second-in-command,” I told her. “He takes over responsibility for the horde when I must be away. He also acts as my advisor.”

Her booted feet treaded roughly over the dirt. I needed to see about getting her more suitable coverings, ones that actually fit. I frowned when that realization sparked unease within me. Like guilt.

“And what did he advise you about me?”

“Seduce you into submission.”

A sudden intake of air whistled through her nostrils, but she was saved from answering when an echoing hiss in the distance reached the encampment. A soft shrieking cry followed.

I noticed that she took a step towards me as she asked, “What was that?”

“Ungira.”

Her eyes darted up to mine. I wondered why she suddenly looked so…pensive.

“Nothing to fear,” I told her. “Ungira are more active at night. They are sensitive to the light. There are no nesting grounds nearby. I ensured that before we began to make base.”

When had I ever reassured another to assuage their fear? And yet, I didn’t like to see her frightened of anything.

She relaxed, nodding, but she stayed close.

We continued towards my voliki, which was at the base of one of the only mountains in ungira territory. There were deep fissures dissecting the mountain, however. Perhaps due to the earthquakes that had once plagued this region. The fissures led nowhere. All of them were dead ends, ensuring that we wouldn’t be ambushed from the back of the encampment.

However, near one of the fissures, close to where the pyroki enclosure was, I spied movement and shadows. I stilled, stepping around a darkened voliki, wondering if my mind was playing tricks on me again.

“What is it?” Vienne whispered, noticing my sudden tension.

Relief made me sigh when I heard a sharp moan, which cut off abruptly. Huffing, I noticed my palm was gripped tight around the hilt of my sword and I released it.

“Come see,” I murmured, pulling her in front of me, staying close to the voliki. “I know you like to watch.”

“Watch wh—”

She cut herself off with a soft gasp.

“And they obviously wish to be seen,” I rumbled, stepping closer to her.

Catching a couple mating was not an uncommon occurrence among the horde. Dakkari had always been taught to revere mating and sex, that it was a healthy need.

One of my darukkars—Uqon was his given name—had a female pushed up against the stone of the mountain. They were deep enough into the shadow of the fissure that they weren’t too noticeable—and yet, they were not deep enough.

I recognized the female. She was a bikku. She worked with Arinu, helping to cook and prepare the food, an honored and difficult task. It was no small feat to feed an entire horde and it was no surprise that the female was still dressed in her working wear, even this late into the night.

Uqon had approached me about taking a mate shortly before I left for Dothik. I’d granted him the honor to take one after the first hunt last year, when he had taken down a wrissan singlehandedly. Was this to be his chosen bride?

Vienne was hovering in front of me. Her long hair swayed down her back as she pressed for a closer look and my lips curled into a dark smirk, my cock thickening with her eagerness.

Uqon had the female’s dress tugged up around her waist, had her bent over a boulder, her palms flat against it. He was fucking her from behind, his clawed hands gripping her wide hips. A shaft of moonlight speared them and I saw the female biting her lip, her eyes half-lidded, trying to hold in her moans. It only made Uqon drive his hips into her harder. A dangerous game. He wanted her to scream for him, yet she didn’t want to be caught.

Too late.

My gaze, however, was drawn to the kalles in front of me, a far more arousing and tantalizing sight.

Her lips were parted, her cheeks were even more flushed than they’d been before from the wine she’d drunk with Lokkaru, and her chest rose and fell quickly.

I straightened, my nostrils flaring. Vok, she was getting aroused. Very aroused. The look on her face reminded me of that night in the ancient forest, her gaze greedy and hot as I pumped my seed onto the ground before her, like an offering.

I tried to remember my unease with her. I tried to call forward all the reasons why I should be wary of whatever power it was that she possessed.

And yet my tail curled around her ankle, wrapping tight, anchoring her in place.

As if breaking out of a trance, her desire-filled gaze came to mine, just as the female finally let out another moan. Vienne’s pupils dilated when I heard the darukkar’s victorious growl.

Pulling her so that her back was against my chest, I faced her forward again, my arms wrapping around her waist. Her warmth was against my skin, her kuveri-perfumed flesh making my mouth water.

“Is that what you want, leikavi?” I purred in her ear, brushing aside her starlight-colored hair. “Are you wondering what that feels like? For a male to be deep inside your aching, needy cunt?”

Her shuddering breath told me her answer. I felt her nipples against my forearm, felt her legs shift and squeeze together.

“You want to know what it feels like, that need, that desire? You want to feel that divine pleasure, building and building, until it explodes inside you, breaking you into a million pieces? There is nothing like it, leikavi.”

She let out a small whimper and I almost groaned.

The darukkar quickened his pace. The rhythmic slapping of their flesh together reached us. His hips began to jerk.

“You see that?” I growled. “He’s losing control.”

Unable to keep myself from touching her any longer, I pulled her tunic out from where it was tucked into the waistband of her trews and slid my hand up. Teasingly, I traced my claws up her belly, delighted when she bit her lip to hide her gasp.

“He’s going to give her his seed. Her cunt feels too good. She’s clenching around him, squeezing harder and tighter like a vise.”

Her body jerked when my fingers found her peaked nipple, when I gently stroked the budded flesh. Her body tightened, her eyes falling shut when I pinched it, rolling.

“Does that feel good?” I rasped in her ear.

Vok, she needed to be fucked.

Every instinct I had as a male told me this. She was a female who had never experienced pleasure before, who was shuddering with need at the smallest touch. I believed I could make her come just from petting her nipples.

With a huff, I tore at the laces of her trews. When her knees trembled, I reached inside. Her whole body jolted, a soft cry tearing from her throat when the pad of my finger found the bundle of nerves between her legs.

“Vok,” I cursed, running my fingers down her slit, careful of my claws. “You are soaked through, leikavi.”

My little sensual creature liked dirty things whispered in her ear and liked watching others fuck.

Blood was rushing so loudly in my ears that when she whispered something, I didn’t hear it.

“Neffar?” I rasped.

She shivered when I pinched her nipple again. Her hand stroked my other arm, which was deep inside her trews. Her gentle touch made seed push from the tip of my cock—and I didn’t understand it. Not when before I’d always needed it rough to get off. Yet, she stroked me like a lover…and it only made me want to fuck her more. It made me crazed for her.

“I w-want to feel it,” she whispered again. I froze when she tilted her head back to look at me. She was frightened, but I saw something else in her eyes. Determination. Fierce determination, so surprising and arousing that it briefly left me without a single thought. “I want to feel what it’s like. At least once before…”

She trailed off.

Before she returned to the Dead Mountain.

“Please.”

I had her off the ground before she could say another word, swinging her up until she was forced to wrap her legs around my waist.

Striding to my voliki, I promised in her ear, “I will give you much, much more than once, Vienne.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

The sound of my name on his lips did strange things to my body.

The tingling between my legs grew more intense as the horde king ducked under the entrance to his voliki.

“You—you know my name?” I whispered, eyes still half-lidded. The sound of that horde warrior’s groan was still ringing in my ears.

Then I remembered. I’d told him my name…on our first meeting in Dothik. The night when he’d shielded me from patrolling guards, when he’d told me to leave the city or else I would be discovered.

Only I’d needed to be discovered.

“Oh, I remember now,” I murmured before he could say anything. “I told you that night.”

Davik had remembered my name. That moment had seemed like weeks ago.

“Lysi, kalles, you did,” he growled. “And now your given name is mine.”

Then does that mean his name is mine too? A little voice whispered in my mind.

“Vienne is not my full name,” I told him.

His eyes narrowed at that—with determination, I realized. My lips parted. He wanted all of it. And now he was determined to uncover it.

He tossed me back onto his furs before wrapping his hand around my ankles and pulling me to the edge. My tunic rode up, exposing my abdomen, but he tore it off a moment later. My boots and trews quickly followed—until I found myself blinking up at him, wondering how exactly he’d gotten me naked so efficiently.

Davik ran a hand down his face, as if…as if he couldn’t believe the sight of me. Shaking his head, he leaned back, raking his reddened gaze down my exposed body.

My skin felt overheated, like I’d been in the sun too long—but I relished that feeling. When I’d been in the dark, under a mountain, I craved this feeling. This feeling of being frightened and trembling but excited and impatient. Alive.

And gods, the look in his eyes? I shivered with that look. I’d never felt coveted by a male in my life. With the exception of Kyl—for those brief moments in the forest next to my village—but after that moment, he’d never met my eyes directly again. He’d gone back to gazing longingly after Viola, as if he’d tried to replace her with me and found me lacking.

But Davik?

A part of me knew it didn’t matter that this was fleeting. I would return to the Dead Mountain regardless, empty-handed or not…or else I would die. It was simple.

Until then, however, I wanted to feel. I wanted to feel desired and coveted. I wanted to feel pleasure. I wanted to feel wonderful, new things before I went back to the darkness.

I had a feeling the Mad Horde King, who was looking down at me with possession and lust, whose eyes promised me everything I wanted, would show me everything.

I didn’t want to be scared anymore. I’d felt enough fear to last me an entire lifetime. For once, I wanted to be brave. I wanted to be bold and take what I wanted for once. I had the power to, with him, here in his place, away from my life as a Ghertun slave.

In fact, I’d never felt more powerful as the Vorakkar knelt between my spread legs on the floor next to his bed of furs. He’d pulled me to the edge and his palms gripped my ankles before sliding up my thighs. I felt sparks over my skin wherever he touched me.

Tension filled the voliki. Davik was…intense. Focused entirely on me, as if he would kill anyone right at that moment if they got between us. A part of me knew that he might relish it…and strangely enough, that realization didn’t disturb me. It should have but it didn’t.

“First, I’m going to lick you here,” he rasped, brushing his fingers over my sex, making my back arch up from the furs at the fleeting contact. His voice had changed. It was deeper, darker, animalistic. Maman had always said the Dakkari had beasts within them. And Davik’s? I had a feeling he’d let it out from its cage.

He wasn’t smiling but I could tell he was delighted with my reaction. There was a glint in his gaze that promised me wicked, wicked things…

“Do you want your first orgasm to be upon my tongue?” he growled. “Or around my cock?”

Wetness flooded between my legs and his eyes darted there.

“Vok,” he hissed, leaning forward eagerly, like he couldn’t wait a moment more.

All at once, his hands were gripping my thighs, squeezing, pulling them wider until I was obscenely exposed to him…

And then I felt the long, hot stroke of his tongue between my legs.

“Uhhhn,” I cried out, my hips bucking, my eyes rolling back into my head.

Nipples tight, body tingling, I could do nothing but feel the sensation of him lapping between my legs.

“You will come on my tongue,” he decided, his tail flicking up to stroke my ankle. It was rigid, yet soft, just another petting from him, another way he could touch me. “Because, leikavi, you will not last long enough. You are already there.”

I wanted to see him, I wanted to see everything. So, even though my arms shook, I pushed up on my elbows and I shivered when I watched his dark tongue flick out, when he licked a droplet of my arousal.

My breath hitched. He was right. I was so close to something. And I bit my lip to keep from smiling because I knew that I would finally feel that elusive pleasure tonight.

Davik saw me watching. His eyes narrowed and, probably for my benefit, he slipped that long tongue into my opening. My whole body jerked and I moaned. He was pushing, merciless.

He made a rough sound between my legs and then he pulled away. Before I could protest, he’d leaned up, capturing my lips in a sinful kiss that made my head spin.

“Taste yourself, Vienne,” he growled. His Vorakkar command. “Taste how much you want me. Taste how much your body needs to be mated.”

That sweet musk covered my tongue and I eagerly searched for more. It felt like such a wicked thing to do…but I liked it. I wanted more.

“Delicious,” he purred, pulling away much to my disappointment. His eyes were bright, practically glowing in the hushed darkness of his voliki. Only a small flame flickered in the basin.

My body acted on instincts I didn’t even know I possessed. Because when his head dipped, I arched my back, trying to draw his gaze.

Now, he did smirk, those hooded eyes knowing. “You want to be kissed here too, leikavi?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

I didn’t have to wait long. He nuzzled my breasts, brushing his lips over the hardened peaks. They were sensitive and I nearly jumped from the furs when he drew one into his mouth, suckling hard.

I gasped when he switched to the other. When he lightly grazed the sharp points of his teeth on the tips, my lips parted, my head lolling around my shoulders. The little pain added to my pleasure and I didn’t know why. There were so many things I wanted to explore.

Did I have enough time to explore them all with him? What could he show me?

“Soon,” he rasped, reaching forward to roll one nipple between his fingertips, his claw pricking me, “I will see if I can make you come, just from playing with you here.”

He gave a low curse at whatever he saw reflected in my gaze.

“The things I will do to you, leikavi,” he told me. A warning. A promise.

I watched as he brought two of his fingers up to his lips, watched as he neatly bit off the sharp points of his claws, dulling them.

“But right now, you will come for me,” he growled, dropping back between my thighs, taking the position he’d been in before. “I want it on my tongue.”

Excitement burned with my arousal.

He set upon me like a starved beast, licking at my sex once more. So quickly and thoroughly that I felt like his tongue was a million places all over my body.

A moment later, I realized why he’d dulled his claws because I felt pressure at my opening. When I looked down, he was slowly pushing into me, back and forth, the friction wonderful, the sensation new.

Deeper and deeper he went until his fingers were stretching me, filling me so much I began to tense.

“Relax, leikavi,” he grunted before resting his scarred cheek on my thigh, licking that sensitive bud at the top of my slit, making me moan. “Vok, you’re tight.”

Too tight? I wondered, dismayed at the possibility that we simply wouldn’t fit.

His fingers curled and my thoughts scattered, my hips jerking against him. That pressure had turned into exquisite pleasure, a full-body tingle beginning from my sex and blooming across every inch of my skin.

“Ohhhh!”

“There, leikavi?” he rasped.

“Yes!”

The pressure intensified, the tingling growing when he gently suckled my clit between his lips. My breath tore from me, ragged. I gasped when I couldn’t get air, when every part of me was focused on his lips and his tongue between my legs.

“Come for me now,” he growled.

Something was happening. My body was rocking against him, with a mind all its own. That pressure was building, my inner walls had begun to tighten around his fingers, a deep clenching inside me that was about to…to…

“Oh gods,” I whispered, my eyes widening.

Davik’s fingers curled again.

His tongue laved and lapped mercilessly against my slit.

That pleasure burst within me, careening me over an unseen edge.

Finally, finally, I thought desperately.

I fell back on the furs, back arching, my legs tightening around the male between them, wanting to keep him there forever.

It felt like an explosion had gone off inside me. Tingling pleasure pierced me, snatching the air from my lungs as I gasped. I may have screamed, cried out—but I couldn’t be certain. I was hovering in this place of unfathomable sensation and feeling…and I never wanted to leave it.

All too soon, it began to fade. All too soon, I could breathe again.

Light returned as I watched shadows flicker across the top of the voliki above me. My sex clenched rhythmically around his fingers, which I realized were still inside me. Every inch of my skin felt sensitive. When I brushed my fingers across my breasts, I almost gasped.

That was what I’ve been missing, I thought, my lips curling up into a smile. That wonderful, dizzying, uncontrolled pleasure.

And I wanted more.

When I looked down at Davik, my lips were still curled into a grin.

Already, I felt that tingling return, that warmth spread. So soon?

His expression hit me as…undone. He growled, those eyes flashing, and I sucked in a breath as he stood, as he ripped through the laces of his trews like they were made of parchment.

In another moment, he was nude in front of me. As he’d been last night. My gaze ran over him, unapologetically. Over the golden raised scars from his battles, over the swirling tattoos adorning him, Dakkari words I desperately wanted to learn, words I wanted to whisper into his skin as I traced the gold of them with my tongue.

Ridged slabs of unyielding muscles greeted me. Somehow, he appeared stronger, bigger. His body was made for war, for killing. And yet, I got the strangest sense that it was made for me. For this.

His cock was engorged, the head shining with the beginnings of his glossy seed. The tip was rounded like a bulb.

“Ahh, vok, leikavi,” he hissed. I watched his cock jerk, more seed dripping from the little slit. “When you look at a male like that, he gets very wicked, dark ideas.”

When I looked up at him, I think he saw just how much I wanted to explore those ideas with him.

His jaw clenched so much that the edges of the scar down his face pulled. I wondered if it hurt. I wondered how he’d gotten such a scar.

He crawled over me, his movements graceful, silent. Like a predator stalking its prey.

His cock rested on my belly and I sighed when he licked and sucked the juices from my orgasm off his fingers.

Wicked, magnificent male, I thought.

In the back of my mind, I knew I didn’t recognize this female. This Vienne that I had become. I felt like a stranger in my own skin as I looked up at him, delighted, waiting…and yet, I’d never felt more like myself.

Freed.

His weight dropped over me, his hands bracketed on both sides of my head. His hair fell forward, just like last night, curtaining us from the world until I only saw his red, glowing gaze that promised me everything.

His scent was…addictive. I swore I spied a little blood on his side—he’d told me he’d come from the training grounds—but he smelled fragrant, like rich earth, and warm. I pulled him into my lungs, wanting to memorize that scent.

“You liked your orgasm, leikavi?” he rasped, leaning down to trace his nose down the column of my throat. It seemed he liked my scent too because he drew it in deep.

Liked?

That didn’t seem like an adequate enough word, but I whispered, “Yes.”

He pulled back, locking his gaze with mine again. I remembered when he had told me that no one was allowed to meet a Vorakkar’s gaze as a sign of respect.

Yet, I thought it would be a tragedy if I couldn’t. Especially since his eyes made me feel shivery and wanted and a little on edge.

“Now,” he started, his voice deepening into a purr, “I want another. This time, it will be on my cock, lysi?”

Chapter Twenty-Four

My blood was rushing hot. Her scent was all around me, making it difficult to think. I shook my head, trying to stay in control. Because if I lost it, I might hurt her. And I didn’t want that.

But vok, she was…everything. She made me crazed. She brought my madness to the front of my mind tenfold. She teased me and tempted me in a way no female ever had before.

The taste of her arousal was still on my tongue and I leaned down to lick her skin. Little bumps broke out across it as I lapped at her delicate collarbones, dipping my tongue into the little shadowed space there before trailing down to her mouth-watering breasts. They were small—at least smaller than most Dakkari females—but vok, I’d never seen a more arousing sight. Her nipples were a tantalizing color, a mixture of pink and brown.

Ravenous, I sucked the entirety of one breast into my mouth, rolling her stiff nipple with my tongue, feeling her jerk. Her hands curled into my back, just below my shoulder blades. I marveled that at one time, this female trembled with fright at the sight of me. And now…she clutched me to her like she was afraid I’d leave.

I grinned, releasing her breast with a slick pop before turning my attention to the other.

My cock was throbbing and hot, so demanding it was almost painful. When I looked down, I saw I’d left a little pool of my seed on her soft belly.

The sight unleashed something primal in me, something feral.

I growled, feeling my dakke, the bump above the base of my cock, grow larger.

“Vok,” I hissed. The urge to mate her hard and rough made my grip tighten on her flesh. Losing control. Losing it fast.

I shook my head hard again as I reached for my cock, as I nudged my hips down. I needed her now—and I wouldn’t wait a single moment more or else I’d come undone.

“Ohhhh,” she moaned when my hardened, thick cock slipped through her slick folds. I let it rest there, throbbing against the little ball of nerves that I’d discovered brought her great pleasure.

“You are very tight, leikavi,” I rasped, finding the last of my control to tell her so. “It may hurt at first.”

She nodded, only saying, “Please. I can handle it.”

As if I could deny her when she begged me so sweetly.

It was all I needed. I had prepared her with my fingers as much as I possibly could, so I decided to take her quickly, to try to minimize the pain.

With a sharp bellow, I thrust my hips forward in a single motion. She sucked in a sharp breath, her body tensing around me, which only made my pleasure that much more intense.

“Lysi,” I groaned, seated deep inside her hot, tight cunt.

My instinct was to fuck.

I craved that rough, claiming, animalistic mating, bordering on violence, but I knew I needed to be gentle with her. My life had always been filled with violence, with bloodshed. Was it any wonder that I craved it in the furs as well? Especially after what Mala had crafted me to be? Especially after what Mala had taught me in her bed?

Nik, do not think of her, I hissed silently, shaking my head to try to dislodge the thoughts.

When Vienne’s hands came to my trembling arms, when her fingers traced up the length of them, over my shoulders, and down my chest, her touch was light, exploring, even though I had hurt her.

She possessed a delicate soul whereas mine had been hammered mercilessly and crafted in a forge of heat and rage and hatred. How could I ever be right for her?

But right then, with her gentle touch, I found I wanted to be.

With ragged breaths, I forced myself to still, though I was seated as deep as I could possibly be within her.

Her face was drawn, her lips pressed together. In pain, I knew. I’d felt her flesh give around me. I knew that despite what she believed, the vekkiri boy she’d snuck into the forest with had not gone far enough within her to claim her as his.

I did, I thought, which filled me with primal satisfaction. It made me feel like a callous bastard, especially when she was in pain.

She was still petting my chest though, stroking her hands down the muscles that had been honed and built over my lifetime. Her touch…calmed me. My mind didn’t feel like fragmenting. I was focused.

And I knew that she liked it when I talked to her. When I whispered wicked things into her ear.

“Your cunt feels so good, leikavi,” I purred. Her breath hitched when I nibbled at her bottom lip. I remembered the taste of her blood when I’d accidentally cut her flesh last night with my teeth. The taste of it had made me crazed. “I know you ache, kalles, but it will pass. Then I will show you everything.”

Her lips parted. “Like what?” she challenged.

A rumbling sound climbed up my throat. I bit at her lip harder, feeling her peaked nipples brush my chest.

“You feel how hard you make me?” I growled, giving her a small thrust that made her muscles tighten around me. Just a taste of what was to come. “You feel me throbbing inside you?”

“Y-yes.”

Excitement made her light eyes gleam in the soft golden light.

“I will show you how many times you can come on this cock,” I promised. “I will teach you to need it. I will show you how to make me lose my vokking mind.”

When she moaned, when her hips jerked down, making me slide inside her, I bit out a sharp curse.

“Lysi,” I panted. “I think you may already know that last one, leikavi.”

“Show me,” she whispered.

With a rough growl, I pulled slowly from her body, shaking my head against the tight, sucking grip of her cunt. When the tip of my cock was poised at her entrance, I thrust forward again, this time more slowly, her shuddered gasp filling the air between us.

“Lysi?”

“Y-yes,” she replied, her eyes going half-lidded again, that flush beginning to spread up her throat and across her neck.

Goddess, she pleased me.

I shifted forward, plastering the front of our bodies together, though I was careful not to crush her with my bulk. When I thrust into her again, a surprised cry fell from her lips, her eyes going between us though she wouldn’t be able to see anything.

“You feel my dakke?” I purred into her ear.

“Ahh gods, yes! Wh-what…”

She trailed off, her eyes rolling back into her head when I thrust again.

That bump above my cock stimulated our females. It seemed to line up perfectly with vekkiri females’ pleasure centers too. When engorged, it pulsed with my heartbeat. It was hard and hot against her most sensitive place.

The pleasure was sublime. The feel of her cunt was dizzying, making it hard to think. I hissed when I thrust into her for the fourth time, the sound mingling with her desperate cry when my dakke thrummed.

My control was beginning to disintegrate.

“Spread wider,” I growled, hardly recognizing my own voice.

Helplessly, she shifted her thighs around me, allowing me deeper inside. Yet, it wasn’t enough. I gripped her legs, wrapped them tight around my hips until they looped across my lower back. Her little feet brushed the base of my tail and I groaned.

And when I sunk into her again?

I went deep.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head as her guttural cry made me push forward harder.

Perfection.

Too good, came my desperate thought. Vok!

Then that control snapped. I growled, gripping her tighter, pounding my hips against her, once, twice, the energy inside me readying to give her everything.

“D-Davik?”

She sounds frightened. The thought sounded far away, echoing in my mind, trying to penetrate the thickened wall that had risen between reason and blinding, lustful need.

She should be frightened, was my next thought.

Chapter Twenty-Five

His eyes glowed when I said his name.

I hadn’t meant to. It had slipped out. Then a flash of anger had come over his face, that cold darkness that I had always sensed inside him.

My instinct was to use my gift to soothe him—but now that I knew he sensed it, I thought better of it. So, instead, I stroked my hand over his chest since he’d seemed to like it before.

He closed his eyes, shaking his head once, hard. As he did, he thrust deep into my body and my breath left me. It was rough, punishing. The pleasure mingled with the pain…but I didn’t like it. I wanted the Davik that had been present with me before, the one who had kissed me like he couldn’t not kiss me and whispered wicked things into my ear as his body stroked inside me. Not this angry male who was using his strength against me, not for me.

“Davik, stop,” I whispered, my teeth clenching after another thrust.

His eyes were glowing but I wouldn’t be cowed. Not about this. I held his name on my tongue and if he thought it had power then I would damn well use it.

It might’ve held power after all because he stilled inside me, his arms shaking on both sides of my head.

“You’re hurting me,” I told him, looking up at him. Maybe Dakkari females could take this roughness…but I couldn’t. My sex was still tender from when he’d first entered my body.

“Vok,” he hissed, his whole body tensed and tight.

A myriad of emotions passed over his face, his eyebrows drawn. He didn’t look at me—he squeezed his eyes shut tight, as if shamed. Then his forehead dropped down onto mine. I felt the way he trembled. I sensed the unleashed power and strength within him…but I also thought that he was trying to rein it back. For me?

He spoke something and if he hadn’t been so close, I might not have heard it. He said, “I want to be right for you, leikavi.”

My brows drew down. He felt my expression pull and he lifted his forehead away to look down at me.

Right for me? What did that mean?

Then determination stole over his expression. He pulled out of my body—gently—and I gasped when he flipped us over, changing our positions on his bed of furs.

I swallowed as he lifted me—as if I weighed nothing at all—and settled me across him so I straddled his hips.

My breath left me as I stared down at him, placing my hands on his wide, warm chest to brace myself.

“Like…like this?” I questioned, uncertain. “But…”

“I am yours to do with as you please,” he rasped, his hands gripping my hips. Then, almost to himself, he murmured, “I can be right for you.”

Confusion mixed with my intrigue. Then I sighed when he ran his cock head between my legs, coating the tip with my arousal before swirling it around my clit. Swallowing, I felt that heat flare to life in my belly once more and I bit my lip, looking between us at what he was doing. Liking the sight.

With a half-lidded gaze, I looked down at him, spread out before me. His long, thick black hair was spread on the furs beneath him. His soft lips were downturned slightly, but then parted as he groaned, deep in his throat, when he briefly slipped inside me. The column of his throat was tense and tight, strong. I followed it down to his broad chest, to the scars and tattoos adorning it, to his flat dark nipples that I found myself wanting to kiss.

He was magnificent. And he was underneath me, rocking his hips as if needing to be inside me before he forced himself to still. Sweat dotted his brow and I watched as he shook his head again. As if trying to forget something.

“Fuck me, Vienne,” he growled, his hands tightening on my hips. His Vorakkar command. His voice was dark and husky.

I shivered over him as one of his hands trailed to my breasts, rolling and brushing my nipples, stoking that fire that smoldered within me. He brought it roaring back to life again and I found myself wiggling over him.

My body knew what to do, had proved to me that I could trust it in matters like these. Davik hissed when I rose slightly…and then sunk down slowly onto his cock. When I felt tenderness, I pulled off, gave myself a moment, and then tried again…taking him deeper and deeper every time. I did that until I was seated fully on top of him...and he was growling and shaking beneath me.

There was a shimmering sheen of perspiration covering his chest once I was done. His eyes were a little wild but they didn’t hold that anger that had scared me before. As for me, I was rolling my hips back and forth, seeking that place that had felt so good.

I used his chest as leverage to rock on top of him and I gasped when I felt that sublime pleasure return to me, my fingernails curling into his flesh unconsciously.

It was a strange feeling…to have someone else in my body. As if I wasn’t entirely my own anymore. As if he owned a small part of me now and always would.

“Say it,” came his voice, penetrating my dazed, hazy thoughts.

I blinked down at him, trying to focus on forming words but even that seemed impossible at that particular moment.

“W-what?”

“Say it,” he commanded again. “I need to hear it.”

It hit me. I knew what he was asking for. What he wanted.

“Ahh,” I moaned when he thrust his hips up into me with only a hint of the roughness he’d wielded before…only this time it felt good. It felt right.

Licking my lips, I snapped my hips down. In my inexperience, it took me a little while to find a good rhythm but he guided me, using his hands to bring my hips down as he thrust up—until our bodies were working together in the most perfect way.

I’d never thought anything could feel this good.

“Vienne,” he growled.

I gave a soft cry when his dakke thrummed against me again. The connection was lost when I rose but I leaned forward—grinding down on him—until I found it again.

I was gasping, desperately trying to pull air into my lungs, when my eyes caught on his. He reached up, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck, pulling me forward until our abdomens were pressed firmly together and his dakke rubbed against me continuously.

“Davik,” I whispered.

His pupils dilated. His hips thrust up into me harder and I groaned. My breasts were bouncing between us, my nipples dragging across his chest with every thrust. My clit was tingling, his dakke firm and unyielding against it.

“Vok, you’re going to make me come!” he rasped, his expression fierce. He was losing control again. Even I saw that. He was slowly unravelling, his hips jerking up between my legs harder, his rhythm growing choppy. He was becoming stronger.

When we’d spied the Dakkari couple mating in the shadows of the mountain, what was it that he’d said?

“You see that?” he’d growled. “He’s losing control. He’s going to give her his seed. Her cunt feels too good. She’s clenching around him, squeezing harder and tighter like a vise.”

“Ohhhh, Davik,” I gasped, feeling that bundle of heat expand. My legs were beginning to tighten, my toes curling into the furs.

“Lysi! Come on my cock!” he ordered. “Let me feel you, leikavi.”

It was too much. His pace picked up between my thighs, which made his dakke thrum harder over me. All the while, he held my eyes, captured them so I couldn’t look away. My brows drew together, my whole body tingled.

And then that pleasure crested…and I began to fall with it.

My orgasm ripped through me, a harsh cry tearing from my throat. I spasmed around Davik, feeling too full with him.

Through the blood rushing in my ears, I heard his hoarse roar. I saw his eyes squeeze shut, his expression slackening, his lips parting. Then, between my legs, I felt his cock thicken further, rubbing against my sensitive, clenching inner walls. The friction was divine, acting to elongate my pleasure, stimulating it even more.

His guttural bellow rang in my ears when I felt something entirely different. Heat erupted inside me as he thrust mindlessly. He pumped his seed into my body, an endless amount. My hips jerked and I felt like I was coming again. A second smaller orgasm erupted, making me moan as the hot lashes and spurts of his seed filled me.

He gave another desperate, hoarse groan before his body slackened, before he fell back amongst the furs, his chest heaving, both of us sweaty and spent.

His cock was still throbbing and hard inside me as I collapsed forward. My cheek pressed next to his nipple and I felt the strong thud of his heartbeat, quick and sporadic before beginning to even.

The Dakkari recovered fast, I realized. I still felt out of breath and weakened.

When I dared to lift my head, I saw he was staring up at the ceiling of his domed voliki. His expression was unreadable…but it made dismay and dread churn in my belly. He looked almost anguished and yet pensive. His jaw was clenched tight, despite the fact that the rest of his body was loose and relaxed.

Then he met my gaze, his eyes flickering down towards me. He erased his expression with surprising efficiency, blinking once, twice, three times, before the backs of his claws came up to brush against my lips.

Who are you? I wondered silently, staring at him, thinking about his expression and what had caused it. Had he not liked it? But he’d seemed to.

When he spoke, it wasn’t what I expected.

“Tell me your name, leikavi,” he rasped, his voice low in the sudden hushed quiet of the voliki.

“You know my name.”

“I want it all now,” he said. So, he hadn’t forgotten my little comment. “So I can have as much power over you as you have over me.”

My breath hitched when his hips moved slightly, when his still hardened cock slid against my sensitive inner walls.

I didn’t think I had another round of that left in me. I didn’t even think I could move right then.

“Vivienne is my full name,” I told him softly, thinking it fair. Especially since I’d stolen his name from his own memory. “But Maman and my siblings have always called me Vienne.”

He looked thoughtful again.

“Vivi,” he murmured.

I stilled.

My father had never called me Vienne. He’d always called me Vivi. His Vivi. And hearing Davik call me that brought a welling of emotion, brought tears to my eyes before I blinked them away.

I didn’t want him to call me that…and yet I did. It felt good. It felt familiar. It reminded me that at one time, I’d been happy. We’d been happy, my family and I. Though we hadn’t had much, at least we’d had each other.

Then a Dakkari horde had stolen it all away. The Ghertun took what was left.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“My father always called me Vivi,” the little white-haired creature lying against my chest told me. Softly, she said, “He was killed by a Vorakkar.”

I tensed.

Her words from our journey to my horde returned to me. She’d told me she’d learned to fear the Vorakkars but would not tell me why.

Now I knew.

There was a lingering question in her voice…and that unspoken thing made me pull her off my body. There was a wet sound between us as my seed leaked from her and I reached over towards the furs hanging close to the fire basin, the ones I used to dry off after baths. I cleaned my cock first, still slick from my come and her own.

“What are you asking me?” I growled softly before turning towards her. Even though irritation made my voice gruff, I tried to be gentle as I wiped my seed from between her thighs.

Her breath hitched. I saw she was tender, a little reddened. Some blood had mixed with my seed and the sight of it made me angry all over again. The tension was just bubbling under the surface of my skin, waiting to break free.

I’d almost lost control with her. In a bad way. Then again, I’d been trained to.

That thought cut me. A flash of a memory rose before my eyes. Of her body on top of mine, of her golden eyes glowing in the darkness, and her gold-painted lips smearing across my skin. She’d always painted herself for our…encounters.

Nausea roiled in my belly—my still hardened cock finally began to soften—but I breathed in deeply, throwing the spare furs back towards the fire. I swore I could smell that cloying, overly spiced perfume that Mala had always worn across her neck in the air.

But then I smelled kuveri when Vienne shifted on the furs and I sucked in a lungful greedily, needing it to ground me before my mind took me to other places, places I didn’t want to go.

I refocused my attention on her, opening my eyes to pin her in place. She was watching me carefully, with a similar expression to the one she wore when she used whatever power it was that she possessed over me. But I didn’t feel the telltale tingling, that strange buzzing sensation that thrummed the air between us.

“You are asking me if I killed your father?” I rasped. I needed this anger. I needed this anger as a distraction before my mind fragmented. Already, I could hear the rushing in my ears, already I was looking towards the shadows behind her.

My little Vivi didn’t say anything. She merely stared up at me—when had I stood from the bed?—and I wondered if she needed this distraction as well.

I huffed out a breath. Sex never relaxed me. Not fully. The aftermath always made me feel restless and I was half-tempted to throw Vienne back onto the furs for another round, if only to expend some of the energy building inside me. But I would hurt her if I did. I didn’t think I could be gentle this time, not with her accusation making my temple throb and irritation at her making my blood heat.

I wondered what had brought this little standoff about.

Because you called her Vivi, I remembered.

“You see, leikavi?” I said, narrowing my eyes on her. “Names do have power. They have power to make you feel things you might not want to.”

She blinked, surprise evident in her gaze. Then…guilt?

“Nik,” I growled, the taste of her still coating my tongue. “I have never killed a vekkiri in my life. Nor have I ordered any of my darukkar to.”

“You…you haven’t?” she whispered. Her startled expression made me feel like I was being scraped away on the inside.

“If you think me such a monster, Vivi, if you think it was me that killed your father,” I snarled at her, “then why did you beg me to fuck you? What does that make you?”

She gasped, unable to contain the hurt and shock in her expression. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.

I didn’t wait. Instead, just like last night, I jerked my discarded trews up my legs and shoved into my boots, my tail waving wildly in irritation behind me. My temple throbbed harder.

That was when I saw it. A shifting in the light in the corner of my voliki.

Nik, nik, nik, I thought but I felt helpless and unable to look away, wanting to see her.

Despair pierced me, my grief rising up like it did every single time I saw her. My sister’s shadowed figure stood next to the empty chests that were meant for a deviri, an offering to my Morakkari, my future wife. Gifts that I should’ve been accumulating and collecting for her over these long years as Vorakkar. But since I never intended to take a queen, I hadn’t bothered and the chests sat empty and discarded, a constant reminder that if I couldn’t protect my own family, I had no right to take a wife for my own…or make a family of my own.

“Davik,” came Vienne’s voice, but it sounded like she was far away.

My gaze connected with my sister’s shadowed eyes, my own. Their red color was faded, however. She was smiling at me but it was sad.

“You know better,” my sister, Devina, said, her voice nothing but a whisper threading through my ears.

You know better. She’d always told me that, after I lashed out, or did something our mother didn’t like. She’d always been the calm one of us, level-headed and pragmatic, whereas I embodied turmoil and trouble.

Then it happened just like it always did. Black blood began to bloom underneath the light dress she wore, spreading over her abdomen. Bile rose in my throat, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.

“Pyroth,” I breathed, pleading. Stop. But I didn’t know if it was meant for the blood spreading rapidly or for myself. “Hanniva.”

“Davik!” came my name. My sister’s mouth had sounded it out silently but the voice had been Vienne’s.

I felt hands on my face, over my scar. Vienne was in front of me, trying to get my attention.

Bellowing, I jerked out from beneath her hands, tearing my gaze away from my dead sister, feeling that constant dull ache in my chest where Devina’s life force should’ve been.

It isn’t her, I thought desperately, my temple beginning to pound. It should be. She should be here. But she isn’t. Gone. Lost.

Taken.

I needed to kill Jarun and Ollisan all over again. Those sons of whores. I wouldn’t be right until I felt their blood on my hands again. To this day, the Dothikkar had never known what happened to them. No one but me did.

My eyes were unseeing as I pushed away from Vienne. She stumbled back, words I couldn’t understand falling from her lips. I couldn’t breathe. My chest felt tight. When I left my voliki, when I felt the cool night air brush through my hair and across my face, I sucked in a deep lungful, needing to get it into my lungs.

I laughed, the sound desperate and humorless, echoing across the encampment.

That night, when I’d still been deep inside Vienne, as she was rocking her hips against me so sweetly, beginning to tighten around me, with her soft moans in the air, looking at me like she’d found something utterly wonderful…I thought I’d found a semblance of peace. I’d felt more centered, more in control than I ever had before.

She’d smiled as she found her pleasure, pure and delighted and innocent…and I’d felt something give and loosen within me at the sight. A surrendering of something I’d never given a female before.

Just this night, I thought I could be right for Vienne? I thought I could be someone different, someone gentle for her?

This is who I am, I knew.

The Mad Horde King, who saw shadows that spoke. The Mad Horde King, who couldn’t fuck a female without remembering her, with her cloying scent and seeking hands, who had once fed on my desperation and grief like a parasite. The Mad Horde King, who had butchered the ones responsible for his family’s murders, who had grinned as their blood dripped from his hands.

My laugh died.

I was the Mad Horde King and I would never be anything different.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chills ran down my arms.

The back of my neck prickled.

I stared at the voliki’s entrance and then I heard a burst of Davik’s laugh before it slowly faded away.

His footsteps retreated and then he was gone.

Shivering, I wrapped my arms around my naked body and slowly turned to face the shadowed section of the voliki. My eyes tracked over the space that Davik had stared at intently.

Because sometimes I see beings that are not there.

That was what he told me when I asked him why he was called the Mad Horde King.

Yet…I wasn’t quite sure that those beings weren’t there.

There was energy there. I felt it. I sensed it. I gathered the energy of my own gift, imagining that it filled the space in front of me before I pressed it forward, seeking, searching slowly and hesitantly for something that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to find.

I almost gasped when I felt something pressing back. A lightness speared through me and the tight muscles in my body relaxed. My fear melted away. Whatever was there…it wasn’t an evil thing. Whatever was there felt wonderful. It felt safe and peaceful. The emotions changed abruptly and I felt my eyes well up when intense sorrow covered me like a shroud, making it hard to breathe. Suffocating.

Then the connection broke. My breath left me as if pulled from my lungs…and then whatever had been there was gone.

I was alone again. The chills on my arms faded and I realized I was crying, tears tracking down my cheeks.

Swallowing, I wiped them away, never taking my eyes off the shadowy place of the voliki.

My chest squeezed when my thoughts returned to Davik. To what had occurred between us…and then what had occurred in the aftermath.

“If you think me such a monster, Vivi, if you think it was me that killed your father then why did you beg me to fuck you? What does that make you?”

I flinched. Just remembering his words and the malice in them made my gut churn. I stole a fur throw off the bed and wrapped it tight around my shoulders. When I walked towards the fire basin, suddenly chilled, the space between my legs twinged. Muscles I never knew I had ached.

I’d finally discovered something I’d wanted to experience for a long time. So why did it make me feel so empty? Why did the place where my heart thudded in my chest ache?

Was it because of Davik’s words? Was it because I knew I’d cut him with my own unspoken accusation? Or was it because I was alone—again—and I remembered the utter despair and grief that had contorted Davik’s expression, an expression I didn’t think I would ever forget?

I chanced another look behind me at the empty space beyond his bed of furs. How often had that happened to him? And who was it that he saw?

I feared I knew.

Shivering underneath the furs, I looked towards the voliki’s entrance.

I wondered if he would come back.

I realized I wanted him to.

* * *

My dreams were peaceful that night. I didn’t dream stolen memories but when I woke it was still dark.

The fire was smoldering in the basin and I saw a dark shadow beside the bed. For a moment, I thought it was the unseen being I’d encountered earlier, the being that had been haunting Davik.

Instead, it was Davik. His red eyes were glowing down at me as I shifted up in his bed. As my eyes adjusted, I saw his expression more clearly. And again, he looked exhausted. Last night, he’d only gotten a little sleep, since I’d woken him with his name on my lips.

I was still in that soft place between reality and dreams. I reached out for his hand and pulled gently. His knee found the furs.

“Come sleep,” I whispered. “You need rest.”

A rough exhalation escaped him. I could sense the way his muscles loosened, how something seemed to release from him.

He joined me on the furs. I wasn’t used to sleeping beside someone anymore. In my village, Viola and I had shared a bed, but I’d never slept beside a male before Davik.

His scent was different. More earthy and musky, like he’d been sweating. I found I didn’t mind, that I liked it.

It didn’t surprise me when he clasped me to him. I’d put on a tunic once I went to bed. I’d waited up for hours, waiting for him to return, but finally I’d given in to sleep. His arm came around me and I had no alternative but to rest my cheek on his chest. My palm flattened hesitantly against his bare chest. He was radiating heat like a flame.

A mere moment later, his breathing evened out. My hand rose and fell steadily on his chest. When I peeked up, his eyes were shut, his expression slack.

My heart gave that little foreign twinge again.

Then I joined him in sleep.

* * *

The horde king slept like the dead.

I was actually worried as I gazed down at him, nibbling my lip with indecision. The sun had begun to set in the sky the following day and still he hadn’t woken. He’d barely even moved.

I’d slept longer than I usually did myself, waking with the sun bright overhead deep into the afternoon. Even then, I’d probably only roused because a young Dakkari female had brought in a meal. She’d left without a word and I’d risen to eat because I’d been ravenous.

After my meal and after I’d dressed, I sat on the edge of the bed of furs, waiting. I felt different. My body felt changed and I was sore in places I never knew existed. When I moved too quickly, I felt aching twinges and I was reminded of how deep Davik had been inside my body, the way he’d bellowed with his release, his deep, pensive expression afterwards.

Then I recalled our fight, the energy I’d felt in the shadows of the voliki, him returning early in the morning hours, pulling me close in his furs.

“Drokka,” came a voice from outside the voliki’s entrance.

My heart leapt in my throat and then I peered down at Davik. Drokka. I’d heard that before, hadn’t I? What did that mean in Dakkari? Was that the name others called him, those that didn’t know his given name?

Davik didn’t rouse so I rose from the bed, striding hesitantly towards the entrance.

Golden evening sunlight greeted me when I stepped out. As did the hulking bulk of a Dakkari male, who was clearly surprised to see me in place of the Vorakkar.

“Kalles,” the male said, his eyes flitting behind me, gaze narrowing. “Where is the Vorakkar?”

I wondered if this male was Davik’s second-in-command. What had he called his title?

Pujerak, I remembered.

“He’s sleeping,” I told him, relieved that the male spoke the universal tongue. I bit my lip. “He’s been sleeping all day, actually. I’m a little worried.”

The male leveled me a strange look, running his eyes down my body and back up. Not in a way that made me uncomfortable, but it struck me as assessing.

“Did he sleep last night?” the male asked, keeping his voice low.

I flushed.

“Not much,” I hedged.

“The night before?”

I felt the color in my cheeks deepen further.

“Not much,” I repeated. The male blew out a sharp breath. “Are you…are you his pujerak?”

The dark-haired male tilted his head at me. His eyes weren’t red, like Davik’s, but rather gold. He looked to be around Davik’s age, however, a Dakkari male in his prime.

“Lysi, I am,” the male rasped.

“What does Drokka mean?” I asked next. “Unless you’re not allowed to say.”

The pujerak’s gaze went back to the voliki’s entrance. “Drokka is the Vorakkar’s line and the designation for this horde. He is the Vorakkar of Rath Drokka. We are all Rath Drokka because this is our home and horde. You see?”

Davik of Rath Drokka.

I nodded. I shifted on my feet and then winced when I felt a deep muscle pull slightly.

The pujerak frowned at my wince. His eyes ran back down my body and then up again, as if searching for something. But I didn’t know what.

“Would you like to check on him?” I asked. “Just to make sure he isn’t…unwell.”

The pujerak’s eyes widened. Then he laughed, the sound making me start.

“Kalles, here is some advice. Let him sleep,” he said once his laugh faded. “He needs it. When he goes without for too long…”

He trailed off, his expression sobering. I thought of the shadows in the voliki last night and Davik’s stricken expression.

“He needs it,” was what he repeated, not saying anything more. Already, he was turning his back to me. Over his shoulder, the pujerak said, “When he wakes, tell him to find me. Tell him a thesper has come from Dothik.”

“A thesper?” I called after him.

“He will know,” was all the pujerak said.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

My voliki was empty and quiet when I woke.

There was no sign of Vienne. For a brief, startling moment, I wondered if I had dreamed her up entirely. If she was just the next phase of my fragmenting mind after hallucinations of those I’d killed.

Then I scented kuveri. In the furs on my bed. The place where she’d lain beside me was disheveled. Someone had placed more fuel onto the fire and the food on the low table was half-eaten.

When I looked down at my body, I found I was dressed in my trews, still in my boots. Confusion descended before I remembered that I’d gone out to the plains, half-hoping I’d find an ungira, before I’d returned the voliki, returned to her, and slept.

Vok.

I felt rested. Recharged. Yet my head was pounding and I needed food. How long had I been asleep?

And where was Vienne?

I didn’t need to wonder for long because just as I pushed up from the bed, someone entered without announcement…and only one being would dare, only because she didn’t know any better.

The white-haired kalles ducked inside, struggling to carry a food tray that was almost twice as large as she was. Her arms shook with the effort but she stopped in her tracks when she saw me sitting up in my bed.

“You’re awake,” she breathed.

My brow furrowed. Just how long had I been asleep?

“Three days,” she answered, as if I’d asked the question out loud. Perhaps I had. She struggled towards the table with the tray before setting it down loudly. Some broth from a bowl spilled out but she paid it no mind. Instead, she straightened and looked at me with an assessing gaze.

My body tightened in response to her almost immediately, my nostrils flaring, my cock beginning to stir in my trews. She looked disheveled. Her hair was tied back but tendrils had come loose to frame her face. Something dark stained her cheek, which smeared when she wiped the back of her hand across it. But she was flushed, her eyes bright. She was wearing another tunic of mine—telling me she’d gone searching through my chests—but the same pants.

I drank in the sight of her like she was sweetened wine.

“It’s night now,” she told me, shifting from one foot to the other.

“Where have you been?” I asked, my voice hoarse and husky. Unused.

“Today? With Lokkaru again. I spend my days with her.”

I stilled, wondering if the elderly female had remembered anything about the heartstone as I slept. I didn’t think it would happen but Lokkaru’s mind was unpredictable at best.

I stood, rolling out my neck. That was when I noticed a washing tub in the corner, though the water was probably cold. I desperately wanted to bathe and then I would eat.

Vienne eyed me as I approached her. She nibbled on her bottom lip and a flash of heat raced down my spine. I’d bitten at that bottom lip myself.

“I…I was worried about you,” she admitted softly, darting her gaze down to the food tray. “You were asleep for so long but your pujerak told me it was normal.”

I grunted. So she’d spoken with Hedna?

I stopped in front of her. Reaching out my hand, I grasped her chin, forcing her to meet my eyes. Her grey gaze was wide, knowing. Much had transpired between us before I’d gone to sleep. Much that we hadn’t discussed.

“You were worried for me?” I rasped.

She blinked. “Yes.”

She wouldn’t be worried for me unless she’d begun to care for me. Had she begun to trust me too?

I didn’t dwell on how that realization made me feel.

The pads of my fingertips trailed to her cheek, to the smudge there. I wiped at it. It was boiled kuveri mash. She and Lokkaru had been making more candles, evidently.

“Did Lokkaru say anything about the heartstone?” I asked next.

Disappointment spread across her features and I felt relief. Her lips pressed together and she shook her head, stepping away from my touch and kneeling by the low table. She began to organize the food in a manner which made me frown. She cleared away the half-eaten food—her meals—piling it onto the tray and replacing it with the fresh dishes, from Arinu, no doubt. Her motions were efficient and quick.

“Leave it, leikavi,” I told her when she rose with the dirtied tray.

“I’ll just go take this back,” she said quietly, her eyes still cast towards the tray. A slave’s gaze. “I will leave you to eat.”

I wondered if serving food to the Ghertun sibi—what they called their household, I’d learned—that owned her was one of her responsibilities under the Dead Mountain. The thought made hot anger rise. Not at her, however.

I snagged her wrist and she gasped when the tray crashed to the floor of the tent, spewing the leftover food over the rugs and breaking the dishes it had come in.

“I said leave it,” I rasped. “I will return it later.”

Her eyes darted to the floor between us. She had the instincts of a slave but why had they returned now? Because she was uncomfortable? Because I’d hurt her with my cruel words three nights ago? Because she’d witnessed me speaking with the shadows? Or because I’d been too rough with her during our first fucking?

You’re hurting me, she’d told me. Her voice had been quiet, patient, yet firm.

Just remembering those words made self-hatred burn down my chest.

It was likely all of those reasons made her wary of me now that I was awake.

Just three nights ago, she’d grinned as she found her pleasure riding my cock. Now, she could barely meet my eyes. Before, it had been relief in her gaze to see me awake but now she seemed nervous.

And I…didn’t want that.

You know better, was what my sister had always said.

So, though I’d never asked for it in my entire life, I murmured, “Forgive me.”

Vienne’s breath hitched, her gaze connecting with mine in surprise.

“Hanniva, leikavi,” I murmured, brushing my fingers over cheek again.

Please.

I knew she knew that word.

My voice was gruff. I was unused to issuing apologies, had only ever done so to my sister and mother. A Vorakkar never apologized.

“I did not mean to hurt you,” I told her, my jaw clenched and tight. “And then I did not mean to lash out at you afterwards. I did not mean for you to see…”

I trailed off, my gaze lifting briefly, tracking to the shadowed space in my voliki. My chest gave a dull pang and I swallowed, remembering the black blood blooming across my sister’s abdomen.

When I looked back at her, her eyes were there as well, as if she too had seen what I’d seen. But I knew it was impossible. My mind had become so warped that sometimes, it was difficult to know what was real. When I went to battle, when I lost too much sleep, when I dwelled too much on my past life…those occurrences—as Hedna liked to call them—grew more and more frequent.

One day, I feared I would lose myself entirely to them. I feared I would lose myself to those shadows, that I would join them there and never return.

Swallowing, I waited for her to speak. Our eyes connected and held. I was relieved when she didn’t twitch her gaze away.

Slowly, she pressed a hand to my bare chest. Right where my heart was thudding away.

“Use it,” I rasped. “So you know I speak the truth.”

Her eyelids fluttered in surprise, her lips turning down into a frown. I’d meant her power—whatever it was she was capable of doing, though I had a relatively good guess of what that was—and she knew it.

There was something else there. Fear. In the lightness of her eyes, there was the flickering of fear.

Because I knew her secret?

Then that flickering shifted. Her lips flattened. She seemed to decide something…and a moment later I felt what it was.

That buzzing sensation crawled up my skin and I forced myself to keep from shuddering. It felt like tendrils of energy caressing my flesh, sinking into it, into me.

It felt good and before I knew it, I felt my cock thickening with her invisible touch. Then those tingles came across my scalp and I closed my eyes, filling my lungs with a deep breath of air.

I heard her gasp, felt her dull little claws curl into the flesh of my chest. When I opened my eyes, I saw her own were half-lidded. She looked dazed—like she wasn’t entirely present. Like she was somewhere else entirely.

Because she’s in me, I realized.

That energy pulsed and thrummed until the tension filling the air between us became too thick. It felt like warm air before a storm, crackling with something. Awaiting something powerful and dangerous and awe-inspiring.

I growled, dipping my head, my hand delving into her hair when I couldn’t take it anymore. She met my roughened kiss with enthusiasm that surprised even me and I groaned as I stroked her tongue with mine. Her other hand gripped my arm, just above my Vorakkar cuffs, and her nails sank deep.

Pulling away with a hiss, I rasped, “Do you still ache?”

Her brow furrowed. “W-what?”

“Did I hurt you?” I trailed my hand down to her trews, brushing my thumb along the seam that ran between her legs. “Here?”

“Oh,” she breathed, biting her lip. She was blinking, trying to surface from the haze of lust and need that we’d somehow found ourselves wrapped in again. “I feel fine, but…”

She blinked again and I jerked, feeling her abruptly pull out of my mind. Her shaking fingers brushed across her right temple and she stepped back from me, her booted foot crunching over a fragment of a broken dish from the spilled tray.

My body was throbbing with want and need. Hers was too, I knew. That tantalizing flush had begun to crawl up the column of her throat and when she looked at me, she couldn’t conceal her interest.

But something had stopped her.

“Your…” she trailed off, trying to get back her breath, which I might’ve stolen from her. “Your pujerak told me that a thesper arrived for you from Dothik. He told me to tell you once you woke. It—it sounded important.”

I stiffened and the blurry haze of desire slowly began to fade. Thoughts of duty, of responsibility took its place.

Vok.

“When?”

“The first afternoon,” she replied.

I cursed. Why hadn’t Hedna woken me?

But I knew why. He knew I needed to sleep.

I was already heading towards the entrance, regret and frustration filling my chest. Before I left, however, I looked back at her, saw her standing, frozen, at the end of my bed.

“We have much to talk about, leikavi,” I rasped. “Tonight. When I return.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The horde king returned to the voliki in a blackened mood.

My breath hitched when his eyes immediately found me, sitting in the middle of the bed, cross-legged.

His mood blackened further when he saw the floor had been cleaned and cleared of the old food and broken dishes but he said nothing. Instead, he stripped off his trews and strode, naked, to the cool bathing tub and stepped inside.

I was only in a tunic, my legs and feet exposed. My pants were hanging near the fire, drying after I’d tried to wash them.

“You are not a slave here.”

His voice was soft but firm.

“I know,” I said, just as softly.

He closed his eyes briefly as I studied him. I didn’t know what had happened earlier, after I’d entered his mind at his command. It had been strange, consuming…and oddly intimate. Even during his apology, I’d sensed the truth in his words. I hadn’t needed to enter his mind to know how he felt about the events of three nights ago.

“I owe you an apology as well,” I decided to say, picking at the furs that tickled my legs on the bed. Water trickled when he turned to look at me, his brow furrowed.

“For what?”

“For that night,” I said. “Truthfully, I have no idea who the Vorakkar was.” The one that had my father killed. “It was wrong of me to accuse you of anything. I think…I think I was just feeling…vulnerable.”

I didn’t know if that was the right word but it was the only one I could think of to describe my emotions that night.

“And you were right. Names do have power. I didn’t realize how much.”

“Because I called you Vivi?”

I licked my lips. It didn’t hurt as much, hearing him say it now. That first time, though, it had felt like a punch in the gut.

I cleared my throat. “My father wanted a better life for us. He grew up in the old Earth colonies. He knew what peace felt like, what the lack of fear felt like, until his home was destroyed and that was taken from him too.”

When I darted a peek up at him, I saw Davik was watching me carefully from his place in his bath. I got the strange sense that hearing me speak was helping to keep him calm, keep his mood steady. So I kept talking.

“Hordes didn’t pass by our village often. The men took risks. They hunted so we were not hungry. They gathered materials and supplies from the forests so that we might live more comfortably, though they knew it was against your laws. We were a small village, one of the last to settle here. We thought we were safe. Until a horde came. I saw my father executed,” I told him, though I didn’t meet his eyes. I kept my gaze on the furs, kept picking at the little tufts of hair across it. “I watched him die, heard my mother’s screams, and my sister crying. And all I could do was stand there, like I was seeing something from someone’s else life. Not mine. It was a nightmare but I never woke up.”

In some ways…I was still asleep.

“I am sorry about your father, leikavi,” came his voice. “I truly am.”

When our eyes connected, I knew he was. I knew that he was because he knew deep, terrible loss as well. Loss that festered like a wound, one that never quite healed. I knew because I’d sensed it—I’d felt it. Buried inside him.

I cleared my throat, trying to shake off the memories. I couldn’t allow them to suffocate me. I needed to move forward, like always.

“What I’m trying to say is that,” I started, meeting his eyes, “my father always called me Vivi and hearing you say it…it just brought back a lot of buried memories, some happy and some sad. And I…I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything. And I don’t think you’re a monster.”

His jaw clenched.

“And…and if you don’t want me to have your name,” I said, “I will never speak it again. I promise you that. I promise that I never meant to steal it in the first place.”

The horde king blew out a long, even breath. His gaze flickered to the fire in the basin, watching the flames dance for long moments.

Finally, he said quietly, “I want you to have my name.”

Something warm spread in my chest at his words, the sensation foreign and startling.

“Really?”

“Lysi,” he murmured, his gaze returning to me. “But I want to know how you discovered it.”

I owed him that much. I’d stolen his memory, after all. It was his knowledge by right, even though it exposed me and my gift. If my mother knew what I was about to confess to a horde king of Dakkar, she’d lock me away before I could even open my lips.

Davik finished washing quickly before he stood from the bathing tub. He passed a clean fur over his body once before striding towards the low table, still heaped with food. He gestured for me to join him there and I carefully scooted down the bed, slipping from the edge, sitting across from him at the table.

“Did you eat?” he wanted to know.

I nodded but I always felt like I could eat more. Like my body had been starved for too long and wanted to make up for what had been lost.

“Eat more, leikavi,” he commanded, as if he could read my thoughts.

I reached forward for a small bowl of broth, but he placed a few chunks of meat inside it before I spooned the silky liquid out.

“What does leikavi mean?” I asked quietly.

His jaw worked as he chewed his food, flexing powerfully. When he swallowed, he said, “In Dakkari, it means small, beautiful one.”

My breath hitched, my brow furrowing. Beautiful?

I’d never thought of myself as such. Viola had always been the beauty. My brothers were very handsome as well, but I’d received none of their good looks.

He thought I was beautiful?

I spooned more broth between my lips to try to hide some of my shocked embarrassment…and pleasure. A rather sizable, vain part of me liked that he thought I was beautiful. I wanted to be beautiful…for him.

And yet, as I thought of Viola, I knew that beauty came at a price. And if my sister had her way, she’d hide herself away forever. She’d wish to be so hideous that no one ever looked at her again.

I sobered, my chest squeezing.

Tonight as I’d looked at the moon, it was nearly full. I had a little over two weeks until the black moon. Barely any time at all. Already, half of my time was gone. And what had I accomplished?

Making candles in a Dakkari horde.

Breathing in a slow breath, I decided that we needed to get this conversation over with. It was past time.

“What do you think it is that I can do?” I asked him.

He took a healthy swig from his wine, his throat bobbing as he swallowed.

“Nik,” he said, surprising me. “I want you to tell me. In your own words.”

Fair enough.

I took a deep breath. “I can sense someone’s emotional state. I can enter their mind and understand what they feel, though I cannot understand why.”

Davik stopped eating to give me his full attention.

“A-and I can change someone’s emotions,” I said softly, carefully. His eyes flashed. “Most of the time, I can bend someone’s will to my own.”

He peered at me, his brow furrowed. “Most of the time?”

“It doesn’t always work,” I admitted softly. “Sometimes the mind is too strong-willed.”

“Is that why the Ghertun sent you to Dothik?” he asked. I could practically see the way his mind was working.

Biting my lip, I nodded.

“They know about what you can do?” he growled softly, gripping the edge of the table, his claws beginning to scrape at the wood.

“No,” I said. “Not specifically.”

“What does that mean?”

I placed my hand on his when he made a deep mark into the table. He frowned down at our hands and then seemed surprised when he saw what he’d done.

When I leaned back to pull away, he caught my palm, keeping it in his. When the back of his claw traced my thumb, surprisingly gently, I shivered.

“D-during the cold season, I crossed paths with Lozza. One of his wives had birthed him another four sons,” I told him. “There was a celebration held and the higher ranking sibi were invited.”

His lips pressed together.

“My sibi brought me, as most sibi did with their slaves.”

“Do not call yourself that,” he growled softly.

My brow furrowed, my lips parting in surprise, but I moved forward with my story.

“Those celebrations are usually the only chance I have to see my family,” I confessed.

Davik tensed, his grip on my hand tightening ever so slightly.

“And my sister,” I started, my throat growing tight. I cleared it. “My sister’s sibi…he treats her terribly. I saw her sibi strike her because she accidentally spilled food when she was serving him. Then he hit her again and again and I went over to him…and I made him stop.”

I shuddered, remembering the hatred in his mind. The malice. He was cruel because he liked to be cruel.

“It drew the notice of Lozza. He saw it as entertainment. He didn’t realize it was because of my gift that I could change the wills of others. He thought it was a talent. He thought I was simply persuasive.” I smiled but it was bitter. “A silver-tongued human he thought nothing more of than a lowly pet.”

Davik’s nostrils flared. He dropped my hand, leaning back against the pole which jutted up towards the canopy of the voliki.

“He kept an eye on me though. After that. I felt it. I knew that he was planning something and when he summoned me to his throne room one afternoon, I knew that something was about to change.”

I could still feel the fear I’d felt that day. Yet, I’d also felt relief. Selfish, profound relief that I’d be free of the Dead Mountain, if only for a short period of time. And then tentative hope had sprouted when he’d told me his terms.

“Lozza knew he couldn’t send a Ghertun to Dothik. The Ghertun would be killed on sight. He knew that humans are seen as the weakest race out of us all. He knew a female human would be very little threat to deliver a message. He thought I was persuasive…but he also thought me expendable, should the Dothikkar wish to kill me instead of listen to me.”

Davik made a sound in the back of his throat. Was he thinking of that day? When I’d been led into the great hall of the Dothikkar? When the Dakkari king had looked at me, much like Lozza had—amusing, a brief entertainment, but expendable?

Then I’d ruined it all by opening my mouth.

Right then, remembering that day, I was tempted to smile. The look on the Dothikkar’s face had been…bewildered. As if he couldn’t understand how such a lowly human like me could bring such turmoil to his city.

“So, no,” I told him softly. “Lozza doesn’t know about my gift. What I can truly do. Because if he did…I don’t think he would have let me out of his sight at all.”

I shuddered. For that, I was grateful. To be a slave of Lozza’s was unthinkable.

Now that I’d begun to speak of it, I couldn’t stop. It felt…nice talking about it. Instead of keeping it bottled up inside me, always afraid someone would discover it for themselves and then use it against me.

“My gift hurts me when I use it,” I said. “My head feels like it’s splitting in two, I get nauseous, I feel weak and dizzy. Lights get so bright they are blinding. Usually I sleep for a very long time afterwards.”

He nodded, as if he’d realized this already.

“But only when you change emotions,” he finished for me. Davik processed this all quickly. I could see how fast his mind worked, though he’d already had his suspicions before.

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “When I only want to feel, it doesn’t hurt me like that. It’ll only give me a brief headache before it goes away. But even now, it seems to be…changing.”

His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Earlier,” I said, biting my lip as I felt a flush spread up my neck. “When I entered your mind…it didn’t hurt me. At all. It felt different. My gift might be changing again, getting stronger.”

When I’d been younger, I’d only been able to sense people’s emotions. My mother simply thought me an empath, more sensitive to others’ feelings. She’d dismissed it. After a while, however, my gift shifted, changed as I aged. Not only could I sense someone’s emotions, I could alter them. When I’d told my mother that, she’d looked at me in horror. As if seeing me for the first time. As if I were some beast in her daughter’s skin.

I shut my eyes, taking in a deep breath, before I met Davik’s eyes again.

“You…” I licked my lips. “You’re the first that’s ever felt me.”

His red irises flared briefly.

“Felt my gift, I mean,” I said softly, feeling my cheeks heat. “Not even my family could tell when I was using it. What...what does it feel like to you?”

“Like my skin is electrified,” he rasped, making my breath hitch. “Like I’m being touched. Then there’s warmth and I swear I can feel you, all over. In the air I’m breathing. Underneath my skin. In my blood. On my tongue.”

His words tightened my nipples, which was not the response I’d expected.

“It’s different with you,” I confessed after a short pause. “Even that first night. There was something different and I—I don’t know why or what it is.”

“Maybe because my mind does not work like others’. Maybe because I am…” he trailed off.

Mad?

Was that what he was going to say?

I didn’t think that was what it was.

I thought…I thought it was because he was like me. Different. He was connected to something larger, something beyond himself.

He had a gift all his own…only he didn’t realize it. He thought it was made of hallucination, of madness. Whereas it was very likely he’d been born with it. Just like I’d been.

When I opened my lips to tell him these things, no sound came out.

“Tell me how you discovered my name,” he commanded softly, staring at me from across the table. He’d stopped eating, though he had to be starving. I wondered if he thought any differently of me now. If I would catch him staring at me like I’d sometimes caught my mother staring at me: with wariness. “You said you can only sense and change emotions.”

I lifted the goblet of wine to my lips to ease the dryness of my throat. “I said that I think my gift might be changing.”

He waited. He’d brought a hand up to trace the line of the deep scar on his left cheek, an unconscious habit, perhaps.

“I’ve never had reason to change someone’s emotions more than once,” I said. “And with you, I’ve done it twice now.”

“The first night in Dothik,” he murmured. His brow furrowed. “And with the Killup.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I think it’s connected. That night when I said your name…I’d been dreaming. And I think—no, I know—I’d been dreaming a memory of yours.”

His spine stiffened. The tension in the voliki grew so thick it was suffocating.

“Which one?” he growled.

Chapter Thirty

Vienne looked at me steadily. For once, she seemed…calm. Unafraid of my temper. Perhaps she knew by now that just because I was quick to anger, that anger did not mean I would hurt her. That anger wasn’t even directed at her. It was directed at me. Myself.

She surprised me—my little leikavi—when she reached across the table and took my hand. Her touch was soothing and I felt my shoulders loosen. I watched as her eyes darted over my features, studying me, before they trailed to my lips.

“I dreamed of you when you were young,” she whispered, as if speaking too loudly would crumble the careful sense of peace she was building within me. She wasn’t using her gift, however. Just her gentle touch, which I was coming to crave. “Here. In the eastlands. Your first ungira kill.”

I knew the memory she spoke of. It rose in my mind. That sun-filled day, Devina’s laughter as we walked further and further away from our encampment, our souls filled with the desire to roam and explore.

“And I knew your name,” Vienne said quietly, “because your sister was screaming it because she was so frightened for you.”

I shut my eyes, pain blooming in my chest. I swore I could still feel the slicing cut of the ungira’s talon across my belly—where there was a small scar to remember that day—but in reality, it was only my loss, my grief.

Some days, losing Devina, losing my family, was still as fresh as the moment after I’d watched her die—the moment after I’d felt her die inside my own soul.

“Davik,” she whispered.

I opened my eyes and found Vienne was next to me, kneeling by my side, her hand on my face. When had she moved?

“I’m sorry,” she said.

But I didn’t think it was for the stolen memory, the inadvertent intrusion.

I think she knew. That Devina, my sister—my twin—was no longer alive.

I’d been wrong that day. Because though we’d shared glory, Devina and I, we hadn’t shared death. She’d gone ahead of me. Left me behind.

I made a sound in the back of my throat as her fingers trailed down the scar on my cheek. Her touch was still gentle but I needed it to be rough. I needed it to hurt.

My jaw tightened.

“I need you, kalles,” I rasped, my brow furrowed, my lips turned down into a scowl. “Right now.”

Her breath hitched at whatever she heard in my words. She knew what I meant.

“Davik,” she whispered, unsure of my mood, hesitant.

With a growl, I pulled her into my naked lap, my cock thickening, readying. She gasped when I suckled her nipples between my lips, through the thin material of the tunic she’d stolen from my chests. Her hands trembled before they rested along my shoulders, before she stroked her fingertips along a slab of muscle there.

Still so fucking gentle.

Frustration and want and need and lust and anger built up in my chest.

Still, I suckled on her nipples, wetting the material until it was transparent, until she was panting from it. After a moment, when I pushed up the hem, when I swiped my finger across her slit and found her wet, I didn’t want to wait anymore.

I froze when she reached between us and took my cock in one of her soft hands. Tingles exploded up my spine as she stroked once, from the root to my very tip, where the beginnings of my seed had begun to pool.

My back arched against the pole I was leaning on, a rough cry tearing from my throat.

She was biting her lip, her eyes half-lidded. She wanted this just as much as I did, this sensual little creature who terrified me, who enthralled me.

“Get me in you now,” I growled roughly when she stroked again. “Or I will come all over your thighs.”

My grip on her waist tightened, half-afraid she’d pull away, and I needed this.

“Hanniva,” I rasped, my eyes catching on hers. Begging now. “Please.”

Vienne took a shuddering breath before I felt her shift. She might have been inexperienced with sex but she was curious. About me. About this.

My cock slipped between her lips and it took a few swipes against her before her body gave…and I sunk inside.

“Lysi,” I hissed, even when I felt her tense around me. Still tender?

But she didn’t pause. She rocked her hips over me steadily and slowly. Maddeningly. A constant growl had risen from my throat by the time I was seated all the way inside her cunt.

“Ahh,” she cried when I lifted her slightly, when I slid out and then thrust back inside, hard enough that her breasts bobbed underneath her tunic.

Lysi.

This was what I needed, what I craved. A distraction. A moment away from old memories.

And yet, sex brings old memories too, I knew. Memories best left forgotten.

I could not win either way.

And yet…

Vienne’s moans and hitched breaths filled my ears…and they were like a balm on the ragged edges of those memories, dulling them until I felt more confident that I could keep them at bay. Her grey eyes were luminous and wide as they stared into mine.

The longer I looked into them, however, the more panic began to rise.

Something was happening between us, something I didn’t think I could stop, something that had sparked from the first moment I’d seen her—covered in filth and frightened in Dothik.

Nik, nik, nik.

To keep it away, I thrust harder into her body and a breath whistled out from her lungs. I pounded between her thighs, our flesh slapping together hard, filling the voliki with the sounds of mating and lust and anger.

“Davik,” she breathed. I growled when I felt her hands clasp my face and I tried to shake her off, not meeting her eyes. But she pulled me to her as I drove mercilessly into her until I was forced to look at her and look deep. “Gentle. Please. I know you can be.”

My chest expanded with a long draw of air. I stilled inside her, leaning forward to press my forehead to the side of her neck, my shoulders shaking. Her hands were stroking down my cheeks, drifting towards my jawline. Then down my neck, my chest. So soft and sweet.

I can give her this, I thought.

I decided right then that I wouldn’t fear this, that I wouldn’t fear her.

With a deep huff against her skin, I stood, still deep inside her body. She gasped, clinging to me.

I brought us down to the furs on my bed, tugging up her tunic until she was naked underneath me.

“You touch me like no one else has before,” I rasped quietly to her, pressing a kiss to her collarbone, reaching down to widen her thighs. I withdrew from her, holding my breath, the feel of her sublime.

She gave me a shy smile that thudded deep in my chest.

“I…I like touching you,” she said as her palms trailed down my chest. “Is it okay that I do?”

“Lysi,” I hissed, feeling like her hands were stroking every inch of me.

She gasped, a lush cry falling from her lips when I thrust forward slowly, filling her, stretching her.

“Good?”

“Yes,” she whispered, her eyes falling shut when my dakke pressed against the bundle of nerves between her legs.

“Gentle,” I murmured, pressing more kisses to her flesh. Her neck, her breasts, before finding her lips. “Lysi?”

Her eyes met mine as I kissed her slowly.

“Yes,” she whispered against me.

I wondered if this was how wild pyroki felt before they were tamed. I thought of Nillima, my own pyroki, how I’d found her in the wildlands, injured, alone, scared, rejected by her mother. I’d brought her back and though she’d nearly tried to kill me in her fright in the days afterwards, I cared for her until she learned to trust me.

I had the strangest sense that Vienne was doing the same thing to me. Taming me with her gentle touches and her gentle, knowing eyes and her soft smiles. I was rebelling against her, lashing out at her, fighting against what I truly wanted: to give in, to find peace.

I found I wanted it.

I wanted her to tame me.

So, I stroked her body with mine. I slid deep, I groaned into her skin, I felt her hair and her nipples glide over my chest, I tasted her lips and her tongue and felt her gasp into me, filling me with her breath.

Before long, I felt her tightening. Her little claws were beginning to dig into my shoulders and I huffed, my pace increasing, giving her long, full strokes of my cock.

When she began to come, I pulled back to look down at her features, knowing what I would find. There was a brief smile—that smile that sizzled in my blood—before her lips parted, her eyes closed, and then she was deep in the pleasure of her orgasm.

That smile triggered my own. She took me deeper inside her, pulling and demanding my seed, and I gave it to her, bellowing out my release, feeling it burst from me.

Pleasure from sex had always been fleeting but this continued for long, long moments and when it was finally done, I dropped down beside her, pulling her against me, shuddering.

I waited for the restlessness to come, as it always did. I waited for my blood to feel like it was bubbling under my skin, as it always did.

Only it didn’t come.

Chapter Thirty-One

“What are thesper?”

My question was a whisper against his skin and I had the strangest sense that I could smile until I fell asleep.

It was later in the night but the fire in the basin was still burning hot. Davik had put more fuel onto it after another round of sex. And now, after our third, I was lying boneless and content against him, nestled in the crook of his arm, tracing his scars and the golden tattoos embedded into his skin.

Something was different about him. The horde king was almost…relaxed. As relaxed as I’d ever seen him, so different than the first time we’d had sex, when we’d fought and he’d stormed from the voliki after seeing whatever it was he’d seen in the shadows.

And he was touching me. Soft little caresses all over my back, up and down the bones of my spine. They were lazy touches but they made me tingle. A deep sadness had lodged in my chest briefly as he did, knowing that soon I would never experience this again. I would never lie next to a male like this again. It was only with him and it was only temporary.

He was gliding the backs of his claws across the upper cheeks of my bared backside but then he stilled at my question, only briefly before he thumbed the bones at my hips.

“They are creatures,” he told me, his voice roughened with his contentment. I wondered if he was tired, if he wanted to sleep, but then I remembered he’d been sleeping for three days. “Creatures that can fly over long distances.”

“Like birds,” I said, remembering my mother telling me about those. Creatures from the Old World, creatures that had thrived in the colonies as well.

He made a sound in his throat. “Perhaps. We use them sometimes to send messages.”

“Your pujerak said one came from Dothik,” I commented, shifting my chin so I could look up at him. His red eyes flickered down to mine and his other hand came to brush my lips. The look he was giving me made my heart pound…and I was certain he could feel it.

That look made me feel like I was melting. Melting away like the frigid frost after the cold season.

I wanted to melt away until there was nothing left of me. Until I was this little pool on the ground, this little mess.

“Lysi,” he said. “Two of the other Vorakkars were in the archives in the city, looking for whatever information they could about the lost heartstone.”

My heart thudded again but for an entirely different reason. Instead of excitement, I’d begun to feel dread whenever I thought of the heartstone. And because of that dread, I felt guilt because I thought of my family, still underneath the Dead Mountain, and I knew that the heartstone was our only hope…if Lozza kept his word.

“Did they find anything?” I whispered.

“Just what we already know,” he told me and I hated that I felt relief at that. I was a selfish woman, for wanting to lie here in his arms and not think about what would come next. “You spent a lot of time with Lokkaru while I was asleep. She didn’t mention anything?”

“No,” I said, swallowing. “She just mentioned more about love and how you nourish it and feed it. I asked her about her mother, about what she was like, and she said that was a ridiculous question because she thought I was her mother. And when I told her I wasn’t, she stopped talking entirely and went to sleep.”

His jaw set and his chin tilted down, those soft lips morphing into a deep frown. “She gets worse as the days pass. The cold season was difficult for her. Before it, she was healthy and…there. Her mind was stronger.”

“You care for her,” I guessed.

“I care for all those in my horde,” he told me. “But Lokkaru…”

He went quiet for a brief moment.

“A few years ago, I was having a difficult time,” he told me. “The Ghertun had attacked a Nrunteng colony and when I journeyed there with a few darukkar, there were so many dead. We helped bury them, gave them back to the earth, back to Kakkari, but even still…that night I swore I saw them again. Rising up. Shadows in the night all around me.”

I tensed, which he could feel. Air whistled from his nostrils and he stroked me, as if to calm me and to calm himself.

“When I came back to the horde, Lokkaru saw me, saw something in my eyes, and she told me that sometimes the dead have a way of returning. After that, there were a couple days I don’t remember. Lost time,” he said gruffly. “But when I woke, she was tending to me.”

My heart ached for him, heavy and full in my chest.

“No one really knows what I see,” he admitted to me. “Very few in my horde do but she was the first being that I felt truly understood what haunts me.”

“Davik,” I whispered. “You’re not mad, you know that, right?”

His brow furrowed.

“There’s nothing wrong with you.”

He breathed in my words but I knew that he didn’t believe me.

“I have always been this way,” he said, dismissing my words. “My sister called them my demons. My demons in the dark. She was always afraid they would get her too.”

I wasn’t surprised by what he was implying. “You’ve seen them your whole life?”

I knew his answer though he didn’t speak it.

For some reason, though I tried, the words wouldn’t come out. That he wasn’t plagued by madness but that he had a gift. Like me. Perhaps an unwelcome one.

His hand trailed beneath the fur, his fingers brushing me between my legs. A distraction? A diversion?

“Will you tell me something?” I whispered, my breasts growing heavy as familiar heat began to bloom from his expert touch.

“Neffar?” he grunted, stroking the seam of my sex, finding his seed still coating me when he dipped his finger inside.

“What happened?”

My question made him still. His eyes flashed up to mine.

“Nik,” he rasped, shifting.

For a brief, agonizing moment, I thought he would pull away from me again but he only moved so that he was hovering over me, pulling the furs away to reveal my nude body underneath. His hands went to my legs and spread them wide as he played with me. My lips parted, the familiar coils of desire and lust beginning to spiral.

“Not tonight, leikavi,” he rasped, looking down at me. His expression wasn’t angry—I’d dared to ask such a private question—and I knew he knew the one I’d asked. “You owe me a story first since I told you one this night.”

He leaned down to kiss me and when I gasped, he delved his tongue inside and stroked my own, making the world go hazy.

Against my lips, he murmured, “Besides, maybe you will dream it.”

My eyes shot open.

As he slowly began to press into my body, as my walls stretched tight around him and his chest filled and expanded with the pleasure, he rasped, “Though I pray to Kakkari that you do not.”

* * *

I did dream that night. But not what Davik feared. And it was a strange dream.

A very strange dream.

Davik and Devina were sitting together on a grassy hill, looking over a breathtaking view of valleys and waterfalls. I knew that I was dreaming a memory—his memory—but I was myself. I wasn’t seeing it through his eyes—I was an outsider looking in. Though I stood right beside them, they didn’t see me.

I knew they weren’t in the eastlands, for this place was far too lush and beautiful to be in the east, and as I drank in the view before me—all loveliness in the silvery moonlight—a breeze brushed over my cheek and beside me, I saw Devina shiver.

“Here,” Davik said, removing the furs from his shoulders to place around his sister. “I told you to bring your shawl.”

Devina shot her brother a sheepish smile. They were young, though not quite as young as they’d been in the ungira memory I’d stolen. This was, perhaps, four or five years later. Davik had grown big, coming into his strength. And Devina’s impish features had turned lovely and beautiful.

It was strange seeing Davik without his scar on his cheek.

“I wish we wouldn’t leave,” Devina said. “I love this place. Do you think Lomma can convince Father to leave the horde so we can settle in Rath Rowin’s outpost? I think it’s near, isn’t it?”

They spoke in Dakkari, but I could understand every word.

“Don’t speak such things,” Davik replied. “Father would be upset if he heard you say that.”

“I’m tired of travelling so much,” she said. The look Davik shot his sister told me that he didn’t feel the same and this was perhaps where the siblings differed. “I wish we could stay in one place. For the rest of our lives.”

“I want to be in a horde forever,” Davik replied. “It is in our blood to roam.”

Devina sighed and looked down at the valley of waterfalls. “We are coming of age. Perhaps I will marry soon. And hopefully he won’t be a darukkar. Perhaps a merchant. And we can live in Rath Rowin’s outpost together and have many children. Or maybe in Dothik.”

Davik grunted. “Why would you want to live in that city? It’s too loud. Too…crowded.”

“I like it,” she said. “It’s exciting, don’t you think?”

Davik clearly didn’t and I almost smiled at the bewildered expression on his face. There was something about him…something light and unburdened. The Davik I knew now was severe, sometimes cold, and very often angry. And still, I was drawn to him.

“Do you think you’ll find a bride soon?” Devina asked her brother, cocking her head to the side. “Maybe Jeva?”

Davik leveled her a warning look. “Why Jeva?”

“Everyone knows you’ve been tupping her in the forest. Even Lomma knows.”

Davik groaned, biting out a low curse under his breath.

“I’ve been noticing Jarun lately myself,” Devina told Davik. “He is so handsome and I think he might like me. Maybe he has ambitions of being a merchant. Maybe he likes Dothik.”

Davik was annoyed. Even I could see he was protective of his sister and he growled, “Jarun is a damned fool and I forbid you from even looking at him.”

His tone reminded me so much of the Davik I knew now that I almost smiled. I drew closer, looking down at the two young Dakkari.

Devina snorted. “You’re not Father, you know.”

“I’m older than you are,” Davik countered. “And Father is away.”

“I like Jarun,” Devina said, doubling down. “And he’s terrible with a sword, so I don’t think he’s destined to be a darukkar, which bodes well for our future.”

Davik growled, annoyed again.

“And I like Jeva for you.”

“I don’t care if you like Jeva for me,” Davik said. “We are done talking about this.”

There was a long stretch of silence between the two siblings and the breeze rustled through the valley below, billowing silver mist from the waterfalls.

“I worry about you, Davik,” Devina said softly, reaching out to take her brother’s hand. “I worry that we will be separated soon. Because you know that you want to remain in the horde and I know that I do not. And so I worry about who will take care of you when I am not there.”

“And who will take care of you,” Davik started quietly, “when I am not there?”

“We have been together our entire lives,” Devina said, turning her gaze back out to the valley. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe as I watched her sad expression. She looked so lost for a brief second. “I do not know how to live without you. But I think we always knew that one day, we would be separated. I’ve always had this feeling that it would happen and it scares me. I just want to make certain that someone will be there to take care of you.”

Davik was frowning. His tone was gruff when he said, “We will not be separated, Devina. You know that if the outpost is what you truly want…then I would live there too. But I beg you, do not choose Dothik. I…I do not think I could bear living there. At least in the outposts, we are still in the wild lands.”

Devina smiled, but it was sad. And I realized that Davik had misinterpreted her words entirely. She was trying to tell him something and what she was trying to tell him made a cold shiver race down my spine in icy realization.

Had she always known her fate?

“Jeva would be good for you, brother,” she repeated, nodding as if she’d decided something. “You need someone patient, someone kind, someone forgiving. Because you have a nasty temper. Lomma is always saying you need to be…well, more like me.”

Devina pealed into soft laughter at Davik’s disgruntled look. He stood, looking up at the sky.

“Come on,” he said. “We should be back by now. We leave soon and Lomma will need help packing the chests.”

Devina nodded and I watched as his sister stood…and then I watched them disappear, walking back towards the glow of golden light in the distance, where I assumed their horde lay.

When I tried to follow them, I found my feet were unmoving. I was stuck, frozen in place, and my breath hitched as panic began to swell in my breast.

That was when I realized I wasn’t alone.

Next to me, a figure appeared and I almost cried out with my surprise.

Shock raced through me, my breaths coming out fast when I realized it was Devina. But not the Devina that had just left the clearing with her brother. This Devina was slightly older, though just barely, and she stared after the two figures in the distance with a longing expression on her beautiful face before turning to me.

Wake up, I screamed silently to myself. Wake up!

“I’m dreaming,” I said, almost to myself. “The memory has changed into a dream.”

“Lysi,” Devina said before shaking her head, “and nik.”

Yes and no?

“I had to see you for myself,” she said. “I wanted you to see this. This moment.”

I shook my head but it felt like I was so deep underwater that the movement seemed slow and quiet. “What do you mean?”

“I can never be whole again,” she said, her eyes going back to the siblings in the distance. “Though I was never whole. We never were. We were a part of each other from the moment Kakkari planted us in our mother’s womb. Together. Always.”

My lips parted. With jarring realization, I knew what I had missed before. It was always there, but I’d never pieced it together.

“You were twins?” I whispered. “Born together?”

“Lysi. Always together,” Devina replied. “Two souls as one. When we are apart, we are broken. Never whole.”

Devina had long dark hair that brushed her waist. And her eyes were the same as Davik’s, red with black and golden threads weaving through the color. Sad eyes, luminous in their grief.

She was wearing a light-colored dress and the longer I looked at her, I gasped, cold dread going through me when I saw something spreading across the material.

“You’re bleeding!”

Devina looked down at her abdomen and then she looked back up at me. Blood trickled from her lips.

Horror rushed through me. When I blinked, the blood was gone.

“What…what’s happening?” I whispered.

This was a dream, wasn’t it?

Or was it not?

Emotion burst through me, just like a few nights ago. Golden and pure, filled with love and grief and hope.

“You saw me,” Devina said. “You felt me. And I know that you can help him.”

“How?”

“Help him,” Devina pleaded softly. “You are different like us and I know you can help him. Because we can never be whole unless he can let go of me. He has held on for so long. I want to be freed.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, shaking my head, tears beginning to pool in my vision as the emotion I felt began to change. It became more desperate. “I want to help but I can’t even help myself!”

Determination crossed over Devina’s features, so similar to an expression her brother made that I gasped.

“I know you can help him,” she said, her voice soft and quiet and certain. “Help him and I will help you.”

* * *

I woke with a guttural cry, waking Davik immediately. When I felt his hand on my clammy forehead, he cursed and I found his glowing eyes in the dark.

I looked around, not certain if this was real or not. But I realized I was crying, tears streaming down my face, a sob lodged in my throat.

My emotions felt shredded, torn apart, and there was deep anguish within me, a coldness I wasn’t sure I could ever shake. Hers? I’d somehow carried Devina’s emotions inside me from the dream.

“I-I don’t know what’s happening to me!” I cried.

“Leikavi,” Davik murmured, tilting my face up, concern etched deeply into his expression. “I’m here. It’s all right.”

No, it’s not, I thought, breathing through my nostrils, desperately trying to get air into my starved lungs. I’d surfaced from something, but from what?

Slowly, my breathing began to calm. I stopped gasping for air though I couldn’t stop crying. Tears streamed down my cheeks in a solid, never-ending line no matter how many times Davik thumbed them away.

Finally, the emotions—the grief, the anguish, the loss—dissipated and I felt like I could breathe again.

I looked into Davik’s eyes and he slowly brought me back from the dream, whispering tender and gentle words in Dakkari that were meant to soothe me…and they did.

When I shuddered out a final breath and calmed down, he asked, “What did you dream?”

He was trying to keep his expression neutral so he didn’t alarm me. I knew that. But also, he feared what I’d dreamed, as if he was trying to keep something from me. Or shield me from something.

When I opened my lips to answer, I found the words were stuck in my throat. I couldn’t say anything. And so, instead, I leaned forward and kissed him, cupping his scarred cheek in my palm, tight.

He huffed out a long breath into me as he tasted my tears.

And when I reached underneath the furs for him—wanting to feel something else, to banish the emptiness I’d felt inside that dream—he moved over me, giving me what I wanted, what I needed.

When he was inside me, we didn’t have to speak at all.

Chapter Thirty-Two

“You have been good to me,” Lokkaru said, her voice soft and sure as we walked around the encampment. She was holding onto my arm for balance and she patted my skin. “I have enjoyed our time together.”

“I feel the same,” I said softly. Sometimes Lokkaru had perfect clarity, like now. Other times, she spoke in Dakkari to me, expecting me to answer, or called me by a name not my own.

Dakkari children raced across our paths, chasing one another. They briefly glanced at me, giggling, before they sped away on their bare feet and a soft, longing smile crossed my features before I could help.

Then it faded because I knew that wishing for children was not something that I could afford.

Still, I should have been happy that they no longer stared at me like I was some monster. I had been at the horde for over a week now and the shock of my appearance seemed to have worn off. I walked in the encampment almost every day with Lokkaru, who always said fresh air had healing power.

And in that time, I’d met many Dakkari, though some could not speak the universal tongue. All of the horde members adored Lokkaru and were happy to speak with her. By extension, they spoke to me as well, if they spoke my language, though I liked to think I understood a little more Dakkari every day.

I thought…I thought I could be happy here. I got lost in a daydream that my entire family was here, that they had their own little voliki, and that we were safe and happy and together. I dreamed that Maman would work with the cooks because she’d always loved food and always tried to make our meager rations as tasty as possible for us growing up. I dreamed that Maxen would train with the darukkar and that Eli would love to work with the pyroki.

And Viola…I dreamed that she would fall in love with a Dakkari male, a good male, one who would protect her and worship her and make her happy again. Because she was a shell, a shadowed shell of a person now, all the light gone, taken from her with violence and cruelty. I wanted to see it returned.

As for me…I dreamed that I woke every morning in a certain horde king’s arms because who else could keep the shadows away for him? I could speak to the shadows, after all.

“What is wrong?” Lokkaru asked me now, breaking me from my thoughts.

Tears had pooled in my vision without my realizing it and I dashed them away, embarrassed.

“Nothing,” I told her, patting her hand on my arm as we weaved through the maze of voliki.

“Tell me.”

“I…I just miss my family. So much it hurts sometimes,” I said to her.

“I see,” she murmured softly. “Where are they?”

I sobered. “Far away.”

“Dead?” she asked, her question leaving me shaken.

“N-no,” I said quickly. “No.”

The Ghertun have them…but I am going to get them back, I added to myself.

Suddenly, I drew up short when I saw a flash of grey skin among another group of laughing children. My lips parted when I saw a young Killup, running and playing with them.

“There are Killup among the horde?” I asked softly, in wonderment. “But I haven’t seen any.”

“Bissa?” Lokkaru asked, following my gaze. “Nik, only him. The Vorakkar found him. He had only been days old at the time.”

“The Vorakkar found him?”

“Lysi,” Lokkaru told me and I wondered if she should have told me the Killup’s given name or not. She had a habit of doing that. Giving me names of Dakkari I knew were not mine to know. “The Vorakkar used to wander. Almost every night, into the wild lands. Not so much anymore.”

My heart ached, just thinking about him wandering. Alone. Because I knew what he’d been looking for. Or what he’d been trying to escape.

Devina’s face flashed into my mind, her lips forming the words I heard floating through my ears.

Help him.

I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, my heartbeat stuttering in my chest.

“He found Bissa one night. Abandoned. Near here actually. We were in the eastlands then. He brought him back and a Dakkari couple, who had been unable to have children of their own, wanted him. They’ve raised him.”

I watched the young boy, watched as the gills on his neck flared with his happiness as the children chased one another.

“If the Vorakkar hadn’t found him, he would be dead,” Lokkaru said, her voice somber. “What a tragedy that would have been. Many outside the horde think our Vorakkar is cruel. That he deals with demons and is not fit to lead. But I disagree. I think he is the best Vorakkar of them all. The strongest. They just do not understand him.”

Warmth bloomed in my chest, which helped banish some of the lingering anguish I still felt whenever I thought of Devina. It had been two nights since I’d dreamed of her. After I’d woken and I’d latched onto Davik, needing him, I hadn’t slept. Even today, I felt the lingering exhaustion pulling at the edges of my mind.

“You understand him though,” Lokkaru said quietly and when I turned my gaze on her, I found her eyes on me, staring deep. “Don’t you?”

“I do,” I whispered. And I knew what she spoke was the truth. Softly, I admitted, “He terrified me when I first met him. Sometimes he still does but in a different way. But I know that he is good.”

Lokkaru nodded, seeming satisfied with whatever she found in my words.

I realized she was steady today, that she was alert. And as we resumed making our loop around the encampment, as our feet crunched over the earth and the rich fragrance of the soil drifted up to meet us, I realized that I could not pass up this opportunity.

My daydream might be foolish and an impossibility, but if I didn’t find that heartstone—no matter how much I hated to think of it—I knew that my family and I had no future anywhere.

The key to finding it was buried somewhere in Lokkaru’s mind. If only I could find it.

“I miss my mother,” I told her. “And my father. My mother loved him dearly and he adored her. Growing up, I always wanted a love like that. I didn’t think I’d settle for anything less.”

I glanced over at her with a small, sad smile.

“Did your parents love each other?” I tried.

“Oh lysi,” Lokkaru whispered and I swallowed, keeping my breathing steady. “Very much. I never knew my father but my lomma loved him. I could tell from her words. How she spoke about him. I wish I’d known him. Sometimes he visits me, though he cannot speak.”

Chills raced down my arms. “How do you see him?”

“In dreams, like always,” she said, smiling at me like we shared a secret.

“And what does he do if he doesn’t speak to you?” I asked.

“He looks at me,” she said. “And he strokes my cheek. I have his eyes. One day soon, I will be able to speak with him, to say all the things I wish I could.”

Her words made my chest ache.

“My father doesn’t visit me in my dreams,” I said. “I wish he did. Usually, I don’t dream of anything. Nothing at all, just darkness.”

Lokkaru let out a long sigh.

“Does your mother ever visit you?” I asked. “In your dreams?”

“Not for a long time,” Lokkaru said. She frowned, growing agitated and I felt my belly sink, knowing I didn’t have much time left. Her brow furrowed. “Though I cannot remember if she actually ever did.”

“What did she look like?” I asked quickly. “Maybe if you describe her, you can remember her more clearly.”

“She…she had dark hair and blue eyes. Like the heartstone’s eye.”

My breath left me.

“Nik,” she said, shaking her head. “She had red eyes. I—I don’t know why I thought they were blue.”

“You…” I licked my lips. “What about the heartstone?”

“Neffar?” she asked, looking at me. I realized I’d stopped walking, had turned towards her.

“You said something about a heartstone. Blue like the heartstone’s eye. What did you mean?”

“Nik, I did not say that,” she said, frowning, shaking her head.

My shoulders sagged, though my heart was still throbbing in my chest. But it was progress, wasn’t it? She’d actually mentioned something about the heartstone.

Blue like the heartstone’s eye?

I was disappointed. Yet, the selfish part of me was also relieved. I wanted to live this life, just a little while longer. I didn’t want it all to disappear just yet. And I knew that once we had a lead on the heartstone’s location, it would all disappear. He would disappear, like he’d never been.

“What would you like to do today?” I asked her quietly instead, trying to shake off the moment. I knew if I pressed too hard, her mind would scatter completely. “It’s a beautiful day. It’s growing warmer.”

“Then let us spend it outside. Fresh air heals, you know.”

I smiled. “I know.”

Just then I caught a glimpse of Davik and my breath hitched.

He was walking with his pujerak, their heads bent as they discussed something. I watched as the group of children—the one Bissa was running with—rounded the corner of a voliki sharply, one of them crashing into Davik’s strong legs.

The child fell but didn’t make a sound as he stared up at the Vorakkar in shock, his golden eyes wide.

Davik frowned down at the boy but his expression softened, ever so slightly. I watched as he crouched down in front of the Dakkari boy, as the other children in their group were hiding around another voliki, Bissa included, craning their necks around the corner to see what was happening.

I couldn’t hear what they said but Davik spoke to the child and he nodded. Davik gripped the child’s hand and pulled him up, turning him this way and that way, inspecting him for injury no doubt, before sending him on his way with a ruffle on his small head.

Sudden longing went through me. I remembered my dream, the dream Devina had wanted me to see. Of Devina wanting a good female for her brother. And right then, I wanted to be that female. I wanted him to be mine and the sudden ferocity of that thought frightened me because I didn’t know where it had come from.

Davik’s gaze flickered across the clearing and he saw me standing with Lokkaru. He stared, those familiar red eyes, the ones I’d woken up to, burning into me. He’d been busy last night with his pujerak. We hadn’t spoken since two nights ago—or rather, since the early hours of that morning when he’d moved inside me and made me shatter into a million pieces. It had, perhaps, been the best night of my life…except the dream had come afterwards.

I knew that he wanted to talk about that dream. And we would, I knew.

But right now, he merely stared, his expression softening even further, though I didn’t think he realized it.

I did.

And I wondered if this was how my mother felt when she’d begun to fall in love with my father. This terrible feeling of panic and warmth and turmoil and wonderfulness.

Just that thought, just knowing what was happening, made it all the more terrible. Because I could never have him. My daydream was just that…a dream. There was no future for us and I was a fool to think otherwise.

It was suddenly very warm and the longer Davik looked at me, the hotter I became.

When I took off the furs around my shoulders, revealing just my thin tunic underneath, I looked at Lokkaru and said, “Let’s go find some shade or I’ll burn up.”

We started forward but I felt Davik’s eyes on me, even as he and his pujerak resumed their strides, continuing on to wherever they’d been heading.

Lokkaru began to laugh.

“What is it?” I asked.

She looked at me. “He is the best of them, isn’t he?”

I knew she meant Davik.

I looked down where her hand rested against my now bare arm, my fur shawl draped across my other arm as we walked on.

“He is,” I whispered. “I—”

My blood went cold. Because underneath where Lokkaru had placed her hand, I saw something that hadn’t been there this morning—though I couldn’t remember if I’d checked.

Small black veins had begun to spread along the underside of my forearm, beginning at my wrist.

Dread curled in my belly because I knew what it meant.

The Ghertun’s poison had begun to thicken in my blood.

I was running out of time.

Chapter Thirty-Three

When I returned to my voliki that night, I found my leikavi washing in the bathing tub.

In a dizzying rush, I felt my cock thicken, a response that I should’ve been used to by now. She froze when I walked in but then her shoulders relaxed when she saw it was me. A primal satisfaction went through me as I gazed at her…as my eyes ran to the water that lapped at her pink, small nipples.

It felt different between us. I felt…changed. Not so much on edge. My mind didn’t feel as fractured and scattered as it usually did and my eyes didn’t immediately dart around the darkness of my voliki—they only looked at her.

When I walked to her, she regarded me as she stroked the cloth over her bare shoulder. I crouched in front of the washing tub, dipping my hand underneath the water, and was pleased that it was hot for her.

I had just come from the training grounds so I was in need of washing myself. I stood, stepping from my trews, watching as her lips parted when she saw how hard I was for her.

A shy look came across her face when she realized what I intended, a look that drove me mad in the best possible way. I’d done all sorts of wicked things to her body already and she could still look shy?

I climbed in behind her and she shifted uncertainly, sitting up straight as my legs went around her. The bared expanse of her smooth back met me but my jaw tightened when I saw the Ghertun marking just below her neck.

Branded. The sight pushed me towards the invisible edge of my mind.

She tossed her white hair back, to cover the mark as if she knew what I was thinking. I growled, pulling her towards me so she was cradled by my thighs, her back to my chest, and my arms came around her, my fingers lazily stroking one of her nipples.

A breathy sigh escaped her as the hot water began to loosen my tightened muscles.

Slowly, she relaxed as well, melting against me as I stroked my hands over her body. I realized I could be gentle with her. I liked to be gentle with her, for her. It filled me with pride, touching her this way.

Her arms rested against my thighs and I felt one of her palms wrap around the end of my tail. She’d always been curious about it but this was the first time she’d actually touched me there.

“You owe me a story,” I informed her, rasping the words into her ear before I nibbled on the soft flesh of her earlobe, making her shiver even in the steaming water.

“Can we skip stories tonight?” she asked, her voice going breathy as my fingers began to wander down her belly. “And just head to bed?”

I chuckled in her ear, the foreign sound not mocking for once, but genuine. I’d been gone the night before—meeting late into the night with my pujerak and the small council of my horde. When I returned to the voliki last night, she’d already been asleep and I’d left before she woke in the morning.

And so, we hadn’t mated last night. Nor had we spoken of her dream—the one she’d woken from in fright and sorrow.

“Eager for more play, rei leikavi?”

“Perhaps,” she whispered.

“Or perhaps,” I said, “you fear what I will ask.”

She sighed. “I know what you will ask. And you’re right…maybe I do fear it.”

Her honesty was refreshing.

“Let me pet you for a little while,” I told her after a moment. “Then you can wash me, we will take our evening meal, and then see what comes afterwards, lysi?”

She let out a shuddered breath when my fingers found her slit, when I brushed the back of my claw over the swollen bud at the top.

Vienne turned her face, seeking my eyes, her palm tightening on my tail. Then she rested her cheek on my pectoral, the tip of her nose pressing into my flesh.

“You always smell so good,” she whispered.

Affection bloomed, the emotion as foreign as my laugh.

“And with the exception of the first night I met you, leikavi,” I rumbled to her, hearing her gasp when I pressed the little bud harder and made little circles, “your scent always drives me mad.”

She huffed out a small laugh. “It was filth from the stream. Perhaps it was also meant to keep you away, though it obviously didn’t work.”

“How did you get into Dothik that night?” I asked, pressing my forehead against her, gritting my teeth when her hips rolled to meet my touch, when my cock rubbed against her backside.

“I will never tell,” she whispered. “It’s my secret.”

Maddening female, I thought.

That deep, raspy chuckle rose from my throat again. “You and your secrets.”

“You and yours,” she replied softly.

My chuckle died and I sighed, though I began to circle my fingers faster over her. A cry tore from her lips, her nipples tight against my arm.

“If I fit my cock inside you right now,” I whispered in her ear, “will I find you wet and ready for me?”

“Yes,” she replied, almost immediately.

“Do you still ache from two nights ago?” I murmured. “I wasn’t too rough?”

“I can take you,” she responded and I felt her lips curl against my chest.

“Oh, lysi?”

“Lysi,” she said.

My nostrils flared, lust riding me hard.

“You think to tease a Vorakkar and come out unscathed?” I growled in her ear.

She bit her lip and stifled a moan when I began to rock against her backside, grinding my aching cock against her.

“Nik, I want to hear your sounds for me. Your gasps, your moans, your screams,” I said. “Do not hide them from me. I own them. They are mine, Vienne.”

Her eyes blinked open, her gaze half-lidded as she regarded me, that tantalizing, familiar flush creeping up her neck.

Vok, I wanted her. I’d thought about her every spare moment of the day and when I’d seen her walking with Lokkaru this afternoon, all I could think about was dragging her back to my voliki and burying myself inside her until I felt the peace she’d brought me. I had never felt this consumed before. Not even by—

I cut my thoughts off before they took me somewhere I didn’t want to go, a place that made it hard to be gentle when I wanted to be for Vienne.

Growling, I took my hand from between her thighs and turned her until she was facing me, straddling my hips. Gripping my cock, I slowly fed my length inside her and I groaned as she wiggled down over me. She was still so fucking tight that every time I entered her, I needed to be careful. But eventually, she relaxed around me, letting me in, letting me stretch and fill her.

Her arms looped around my neck and I guided her hips over me, rocking against her, fucking her with short thrusts that got me deeper.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to my brow. Then they trailed over my eyelids…down my cheek. My scarred cheek. My chest felt tight as she kissed me there and panic and warmth and desperation filled me—all those emotions pulling me in different directions—and above all, I thought that she was just so damned sweet. That I didn’t deserve to be with her, that I didn’t deserve her touches or kisses, that I didn’t deserve to be inside her body, or feel the peace that she brought me.

But vok, I wanted to deserve her.

It was a dangerous thing…these emotions that were beginning to build in my chest, stacking and filling all the empty spaces inside me. For the first time, I wondered if I could be whole again.

We came together in a dizzying rush, our cries and groans filling the voliki until she collapsed against me, keeping our lips pressed together, and I could feel the rapid thud of her heartbeat against my flesh.

She didn’t kiss me so much as breathe into me. And I was breathing into her, trying to calm the thundering boom in my own chest.

Afterwards, she pulled back, gave me that small, shy smile that made my cock twitch inside her, and I groaned.

She was playing with my hair, threading her fingers through it. Then her eyes drifted down and her lips thinned, her jaw clenching.

“Neffar?” I asked, my voice lazy. “What is it?”

She snatched her arms back from where they were resting on my shoulders.

“Nothing,” she whispered, placing her hands against my chest. I frowned but didn’t press. Then her stomach growled and her cheeks flushed, though I didn’t know why.

“Why are you embarrassed?”

“I—I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ve been so hungry lately. I feel like I’ve been eating so much.”

I wasn’t surprised. “You needed it.”

It had been almost two weeks since I’d first seen her in Dothik and even in that small amount of time, she looked healthier. Her frame would always be lithe and lean, but her ribs weren’t as prominent, her hips were softened…even her breasts appeared fuller.

I grunted, my gaze drawing down to them, my mouth watering for the peaked nipples, wanting to suckle and nibble and stroke them with my tongue. I felt just as insatiable with Vienne as I’d been when I was younger—tupping females in forests or in private places almost daily, wherever and however. Most Dakkari males went through some sort of awakening, when the need to mate became too strong.

Though I was tempted, my kalles needed food, so more play would have to wait. Quickly, though I was still wedged inside her, I washed with the discarded cloth and then pulled her off me gently, washing my seed away between her thighs, making her breath hitch and my eyes flare with want.

I dried us off and handed her a fresh, clean tunic, knowing she wouldn’t want to eat naked, my peculiar little vekkiri. I, on the other hand, had no such qualms about it and pulled her into my bare lap at the low table, feeding her bites of braised ungira, the meat soft and flavorful. Only once she was full did I finish off the rest of the meal, aware that she watched me intently as I did.

“Neffar?”

“Nothing,” she whispered, her cheeks flushed again. “I just like looking at you.”

I bit back a grin and my tail flicked to her outer thigh, dragging across her skin. Her eyes went down to it and she reached out. I watched as she touched it, feeling that touch at the base of my spine.

Then I froze, frowning.

Grabbing her arm, I pulled it towards me, turning it so that her wrist was exposed.

“What is this?” I asked, certain the black webbing of her veins underneath her pale skin hadn’t been like this before.

She went still in my lap as I traced them. They started at her wrist and had begun to crawl up her forearm.

“It’s nothing,” came her quiet voice. When I met her eyes, I frowned. “It’s—it’s an after-effect of my gift. Sometimes. When I use it too much.”

My frown deepened at her words. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” she said quickly. “But it stays a long time before it goes away. It’s nothing.”

I made a sound in the back of my throat before releasing her arm. She folded her hands and rested them against my lower abdomen, her flesh cold even after our hot bath and her filling meal.

Something prickled at the back of my neck, chilling me, and I turned my head, looking into the shadows—peering into them, afraid that they would peer back. But I found nothing and then the sensation was gone, allowing me to relax.

It was strange that it would happen now anyways. I’d gotten a lot of sleep and felt rested and centered.

Because of Vienne?

A silence stretched but it wasn’t uncomfortable. There was just an unspoken question between us, filling the space, and Vienne nibbled on her lip as she watched me.

“Just tell me,” I started, “if your dream was about me. If you saw another of my memories.”

I had worried over it since she’d woken two nights ago, terrified that she’d seen the events of that night…or perhaps when Mala used to fuck me and use me…or the night when I’d been covered in blood, a lifeless body at my feet deep in the Dothikkar’s woods, as my laugh boomed through the deadened trees.

Vienne’s grey eyes drifted down to my lips and she reached up to place a hand on my chest. She liked touching me. I liked her touching me.

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s just that…I’m not entirely sure it was yours.”

“What does that mean?”

She went quiet, debating something in that mind of hers.

“Your sister was there,” she told me and I stiffened. “It was…”

“Did I…” I trailed off, licking my lips, my throat tightening. “Did I do anything terrible?”

She frowned. “No.”

Relief whistled through me at her confusion. So she hadn’t seen any of the memories I feared she’d see. And maybe she never would. Maybe if she stopped touching and connecting with my emotions, the memories would stop.

“I don’t want you to go into my mind anymore, Vienne,” I told her, keeping my voice low. “You said my memories are the first you have ever dreamed, so maybe they will stop with time…as long as I don’t feed them to you anymore.”

“Feed them to me?” she asked, her eyes flashing. “I’m not like a parasite, Davik. I don’t mean to see them. I don’t want to. It just happens. And besides—”

She cut herself off and I could see that my words had struck a nerve. I sighed. Whatever she’d been about to say was lost as her irritation rose.

“I am sorry, leikavi,” I murmured, apologizing to her for the second time in a handful of days when I truly didn’t remember the last time I’d apologized to anyone, though it had probably been to Devina…or my lomma. “I did not mean it that way. But there are things that I have done, moments in my past that I do not want you to see,” I confessed.

The anger in her tight expression began to soften. “Like what?”

I huffed out a small breath. “Moments of rage. Moments when I’ve killed. Moments I’ve...” I trailed off, trying to ease the tightness rising in my chest. My voice was gruff and hardened when I said, “They are moments I do not even want to relive again. I do not want you to either.”

Because then…she truly might understand what I’d told her weeks ago. That I truly was a monster.

And what would happen then?

She would fear me. She might recoil from my touch.

In Dothik, when I’d brought her into my personal chamber from the dungeons, I’d wanted her to fear me. But now?

It would tear at me if she did.

“Do not go into my mind anymore, Vienne. Promise me.”

“I don’t know if I can promise that, Davik,” she whispered.

My brows furrowed.

“My gift keeps me safe, no matter how much I don’t like to use it.”

I realized what she was saying. “I would never hurt you,” I growled.

“I know,” she said, her expression softening, which only added to my confusion. “But just like in Dothik, what happens if there comes a time when we want different things? What happens if there comes a time when I will need to make decisions for myself? I have my family to think of. I cannot be controlled. Especially by you.”

“So you will just control others?” I snapped. My heart was racing and I felt her press her palm harder against the angry thrumming, as if she was trying to soothe it.

“I’m trying to be realistic, Davik,” she whispered. “We—we both know that this is temporary. A small piece of time before everything else comes rushing back in.”

I cursed low under my breath.

“I can protect you,” I rasped, the words sounding stilted even to me.

She smiled but it was sad and that expression tore at me. Because I realized that she believed I couldn’t.

“Can’t…can’t we just enjoy this?” she asked softly. “Can’t we just enjoy this while it lasts?”

In her eyes, there wasn’t an alternative. And I realized that I couldn’t give her one without revealing our plans to her, without revealing that we never intended to give in to the Ghertun’s demands, which she believed. Without revealing that I’d been deceiving her, that I knew where the heartstone lay, that Lokkaru had told me its location long ago.

Give it time, came the voice. It didn’t sound like my own. It was much too calm, much too rational. Give it time and maybe soon, she will trust you. Maybe soon, she will realize that you can protect her, that she has nothing to fear…

“Please,” she whispered, leaning forward to brush her lips against mine. And I felt myself give in to her. Releasing a breath, I returned her kiss, cupping the back of her neck, pressing her into me.

“On one condition,” I rasped.

She pulled back, wariness in her gaze. “What is it?”

“Tell me what memory you dreamed.”

Her parted lips closed.

“On one condition,” she said back.

My brows rose.

She swallowed, her eyes flickering back and forth between mine.

“You tell me about your sister.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

It was a gamble.

A large part of me thought he would shut me down, that he would grow angry since I knew it must be a painful subject.

But the expression that stole over his face was knowing. As if he’d been expecting it. His eyes flickered over my shoulder, looking towards the shadows. As if he thought talking about Devina would summon her. As if he wanted it to.

“I cannot promise—but I will try,” he finally said.

I blew out a small breath. I hadn’t realized how much I’d wanted him to confide in me about her until I felt my heart beating with anticipation. I wanted to hear about his sister from his own lips, not from his stolen memories.

“Last night,” I started, knowing that I would’ve told him regardless of whether he’d agreed or not, “I dreamed of when you and your sister—and your horde—were somewhere with these beautiful waterfalls deep in a valley.”

His chin dropped again. “The Trikki. The southlands.”

“You were older. You both were compared to the first memory I had of the ungira. You were leaving the…the Trikki soon, I think. You said you had to help your mother pack up chests. That’s what you and your sister spoke of. She said that she was tired of travelling all the time, that she wanted to get married and settle in an outpost, or maybe in Dothik. She said she thought a male named Jarun was handsome and thought maybe she would marry him.”

Davik stiffened underneath me, tension coiling tight in his body. He’d been protective of his sister, hadn’t he? Was that the reason for his sudden unease?

“She said she hoped he wouldn’t want to be a darukkar because she didn’t want to live among the hordes any longer,” I said quietly, looking at him, leaning forward to touch his scarred cheek in an effort to comfort him. He was still sitting rigid underneath me. “Though you did. You never wanted to leave the wild lands. Even still, you said you’d follow her wherever she wanted to go but begged her to settle in an outpost, not in Dothik.”

Just the thought brought a lump to my throat. That he would sacrifice his desires for his sister’s happiness. Didn’t that speak to him as a male? One who’d had great ambitions of becoming a darukkar, just like his father?

And now…he was a Vorakkar. Leading his own horde across the wild lands of Dakkar.

“I remember that night,” he said gruffly. “One of the last nights before everything went wrong.”

Dread pooled in my belly. Devina had said she’d wanted me to see that particular memory. Was that why?

“She…” I trailed off, wanting to tell him what had happened after they’d disappeared from the memory, only to have Devina take their place. A different Devina. An older one with blood pooling from her abdomen and her lips. I was a coward, however, and instead said, “She said that she wanted you to find a good female, one who would watch over you when she was gone.”

His jaw flexed and tightened. His brow furrowed and even I could see the pain blooming in his eyes from my words. But then my breath hitched when I noticed something else in his gaze…longing.

I was rattled by the realization that he wanted a female. A wife. So why hadn’t he taken one already?

Though that thought sent a surprising sizzle of jealousy to the pit of my belly—though I had no right to feel it—I knew that any female would be lucky to have him, despite his temper. Lokkaru had been right…he was the best of them. Others just couldn’t see it.

“Why…why haven’t you taken a wife yet, Davik?” I whispered to him, his cheek cool underneath my palm. “She wanted you to have one. Someone who would care for you.”

Like I do, I thought, the realization making a bubble of sadness well up in my chest.

Was that what Devina had meant when she’d begged me to help him? She said she wanted him to let her go because she wanted to be freed. But how?

I couldn’t quite meet his eyes but I knew he was looking at me intently.

“The other Vorakkars…don’t they take wives? Isn’t it your duty to?”

“Lysi,” he murmured and I sighed when I felt his hand come to my hair, when he ran his long, steady fingers through it. “But I decided long ago that I would not.” He added softly, “That I could not.”

“Why?”

I gathered the courage to meet his gaze. I suspected there were many females among his horde—beautiful, strong, bold Dakkari females—who would be happy to fill the position.

His nostrils flared. That longing in his eyes had never faded and the longer he looked at me, the more that look made my heart pound.

“For many reasons,” he said. “Reasons that we will not speak about tonight, however. Reasons that are difficult to explain.”

Fair enough, I thought but I couldn’t stop the disappointment from filling me.

“Maybe you should reconsider those reasons,” I found myself saying. Devina had wanted it, after all, right? And I was trying to help, though the words felt like blades on my tongue.

“Was that the end of the memory?” he asked, steering the subject back on course.

There was more, of course. What had come afterwards.

But I knew he would be angry and upset if I told him. Perhaps even disturbed. His dead twin sister, two halves of the same whole, had come to me in a dream—just like Lokkaru experienced with her father and perhaps even her mother, though she could not remember.

How could I tell him what I’d experienced when I didn’t even understand it yet myself?

Feeling a lump lodge in my throat, I said, “Yes.”

He looked at me carefully. “Why did it upset you so much? That memory? When you woke, I feared you had seen…” he trailed off.

“I—I don’t know,” I stumbled. “I just…sometimes I can feel the emotions from a memory. That memory…it felt sad.”

At least I could tell him that truth.

“I remember being irritated in that particular memory. Not sad.”

“Because of Jeva?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood. The female he’d apparently been ‘tupping in the forest.’ A female even his mother knew about.

A small scowl crossed his features. I gave him a small smile before I felt it even out.

“I…” I licked my lips, shaking my head. “I don’t understand it. This part of my gift, it’s all so new.”

A long breath escaped his nostrils and his chin tilted down again. I felt terrible lying to him, keeping the truth from him. But until I worked through this new manifestation of my gift, I wanted to keep it to myself, or at least ease him into the knowledge that his sister was still…alive in spirit. And lingering.

“Will you,” I began, “tell me about her now?”

“Not here,” he said.

His eyes slid over my shoulder again and I nodded, smoothing my thumb over his cheek one last time before I rose from his lap.

“You will not ask me why?” he asked, staring up at me, his tail curling around my ankle to keep me steady.

I already knew why but I told him, “Your reasons are your own. This is your story, after all. And hers.”

Slowly, his tail released me and then he stood. We dressed quickly, pulling on trews and furs in silence, though he watched me the entire time. His gaze made me feel shivery and strange…but protected. I realized that I felt protected with him and that knowledge made me freeze as I tied the laces on my trews tighter. I racked my brain and realized the last time I’d felt true fear for my life, fear I’d felt almost every day under the Dead Mountain, had been when the jrikkia had attacked us in the forest.

“What is wrong, leikavi?” he murmured, coming to me after sheathing his daggers to the x-shaped holster across his chest, daggers I’d rarely ever seen him without.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I told him. I shifted on my feet, craning my neck to meet his eyes. Davik was so tall, so broad. I’d noticed that the darukkars didn’t even have his level of strength, as if a Vorakkar had to be stronger than all of them.

My first instinct was to shield my thought from him. Then I realized I wanted him to know, to have it.

“You make me feel safe,” I said quietly. “That’s all. I realized it just now.”

A gruff sound bubbled up from his throat. His hand slid into my hair and tingles erupted over my scalp and journeyed down my spine, the sensation pleasurable and warm.

“It’s a nice feeling,” I whispered when he drew close.

Then he was kissing me…but it was different than how we’d kissed before. This kiss was untamed and raw, bordering on desperation and anguish. Before I knew it, tears had welled up behind my closed eyes and I clutched at his shoulders, fearing that if I didn’t use them to anchor myself, I’d fall away completely and disappear in a single moment.

He was consuming me. But I had the strangest sense that I was consuming him as well, taking him into my body in an entirely new way that had nothing to do with sex.

His scent was warm and heady and musky and it made my head spin as we kissed even harder. His body was thick and solid against me, tethering me to this place, this moment. And it didn’t frighten me—the intensity of this kiss—because like I’d admitted to him…he made me feel safe.

It felt…freeing.

All at once, my mind flashed to Devina. To her sad eyes as she pleaded with me to help him so she could be freed, so they both could.

I broke the kiss, drawing in ragged breaths as his lips landed across my cheek, my jaw. He stooped low, dragging that hot mouth down to the column of my neck where he nipped and laved and marked. His tongue soothed his bites and I shivered, though heat was building between us fast.

“Don’t distract me,” I whispered, stepping away on shaky legs, giving him an equally shaky smile.

“I changed my mind,” he rasped to me, his fingers loosening the tie over my furs. “Let’s go to our bed instead this night.”

Our bed.

How good those words sounded…as if I owned something. As if I owned something with him. As if I had a right to be in that bed at all.

“No,” I told him, stepping away from those dangerous, dangerous hands. “Let’s go before you actually change my mind, horde king.”

He let out a deep chuckle, though it sounded slightly strained. He let out a small breath and the sound filled me with relief. At least I knew these emotions weren’t one-sided. At least I knew he was as affected by that kiss as I’d been.

We walked from the voliki and I was surprised when Davik led us towards the pyroki enclosure. The pyroki master, the mrikro I believed he was called in Dakkari, was absent, gone home to his own bed for the night.

Davik let out a shrill, sharp whistle at the fence and I heard movement from the shadowy figures in the darkness. The sound of taloned claws running in the earth, and then his pyroki was before us, tossing her long neck when she saw her master.

“Her name is Nillima,” he told me quietly. The encampment behind us was dark and silent, though I saw smoke rising from some of the voliki, some still glowing with the warmth of the fires burning within. “She is one of my oldest friends.”

I smiled, knowing what he told me was a gift, an offering. Masters were almost as secretive about their pyrokis’ names as their own among the Dakkari, or at least that was what Lokkaru had mentioned to me a couple days ago when we’d passed the enclosure and watched the pyrokis for a few hours. Lokkaru had enjoyed watching them.

“Nillima,” I whispered. It sounded familiar. “I think you said her name when the jrikkia had come. I remember it.”

After Davik brought her out from the enclosure, I reached out to touch the pyroki’s neck. However, she made a sharp sound and trotted away from my touch, huffing out a puff of air that was like smoke from her nostrils.

I shook my head. “She still hates me, I see.”

“She has always been jealous,” Davik told me. “She is a selfish, possessive creature.”

His hands came to my waist and he lifted me onto Nillima’s back before climbing up behind me. The position was so familiar that I swore I felt my inner thighs give a throb of protest, remembering the pyroki burn that had come from riding on Nillima’s back for too long, all the way from Dothik to the horde of Rath Drokka.

“You should get used to riding on a pyroki, leikavi,” he rasped quietly in my ear. “Though I promise, we will not go far.”

His words made me pause. Why would I need to get used to riding on a pyroki? I would not be here much longer, after all.

Unless—

No, I thought, firmly keeping my mind from going to that hopeful place. Because it could never happen, would never happen.

“Why did you choose her?” I asked, in an effort to distract myself from my dangerous thoughts.

“It is more like she chose me,” he rumbled, leading Nillima quietly through an entrance close to the enclosure, one separate from the front. I realized it was an easy exit for darukkars or hunters, perhaps, so they wouldn’t have to lead their pyrokis through the horde.

“What do you mean?”

“After I was appointed to my position of Vorakkar, after I passed the final Trial,” he began, “I was expected to choose my pyroki from the Dothikkar’s own…collection.”

He said that word as if it was distasteful.

“But I did not,” he murmured as we left the encampment, as the wild lands of the east rose to greet us. It wasn’t as richly beautiful as the place I’d seen in his memories—the Trikki, a place I desperately hoped to see one day, though I knew I would not, with its lush, vibrant valleys and silvery waterfalls—but the eastlands had their own quiet beauty. “It was my first moon cycle as Vorakkar. I had led my horde—small and new then—to the north and one night, I left to go out to the wild lands. I had no place in mind to go, but I just kept going.”

Wandered, I thought.

Lokkaru had said that Davik used to go wandering a lot at night.

“I came across an ice forest. It was the cold season then. The first frost had long fallen. And on that quiet night, I heard a sound from inside the ice forest. A sad sound. A calling.” Davik reached forward to stroke Nillima’s neck and she pressed up into his touch, the little lush that she was. “Inside, I found her. Still young. She was injured. Her mother and her siblings had abandoned her because of it.”

Something tugged at my chest, deep and achy. My touch settled over his wrist, on the golden cuffs that encircled him there, hot to the touch.

“I brought her back to the horde, though she fought me the whole way. It made her wound even worse. But somehow, I managed to get her back. In the days that followed, I watched over her. She was not…easy. More than a dozen of my scars are from her.”

“Will you show me which ones?” I asked, the question off my lips before I second-guessed it.

“Later,” he promised, nipping at my ear as he did. I shivered against him and his arm tightened around me.

“But you healed her,” I said, wanting him to continue with his story. “Eventually.”

“Lysi,” he rasped. “From that moment on, she’s been bonded to me.”

The Dakkari had a special bond with their pyrokis, one that I didn’t think humans, or Killup, or Nrunteng, or Ghertun could understand.

I went quiet, listening to the sound of Nillima’s claws curling into the earth as she propelled herself forward. Surprisingly soothing, one I’d heard a lot on our journey from Dothik.

“You’re…” I tilted my head to look back at him, as a breeze lifted a strand of my hair and blew it across my cheek. “You’re very caring, you know. It’s in your nature.”

Disbelief shot through his eyes and he snorted. “How do you figure?”

He didn’t believe me. That much was obvious.

“Lokkaru told me about the Killup child you found,” I told him softly. “You take in little helpless creatures that you find. You give them a home, give them stability. You make them feel…safe.”

He stilled when he realized what I was saying. “You count yourself among those little helpless creatures?”

I blew out a breath. “All I’m trying to say is that you’ve called yourself a monster. And I don’t see one at all. I don’t know why you can’t see it. You’re the opposite of one. You’re in the habit of helping others even when you don’t need to.”

“I am certain not many would share your view, leikavi.”

Lokkaru did.

“And if you knew all that I have done, all that I am capable of…” he trailed off, his words a warning. “You would think otherwise too.”

“Then let me be the judge of that,” I said. “Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever done and let me decide for myself.”

He huffed out a breath. Then, with a tone I couldn’t recognize, he murmured, “Sometimes I wonder what happened to that frightened little creature I stumbled upon in Dothik.”

My lips twitched, though I didn’t feel much amusement in his words. “Maybe she realized there was nothing to be frightened of.”

“Perhaps there is.”

A long stretch of silence floated between us. The only sound was Nillima’s clawed hooves digging into the earth as she walked.

I don’t know why but I felt hurt, disappointed, though I thought I had no right to be. I didn’t own his stories, his memories. I had wanted him to confide in me, to trust me with them…but his silence was answer enough.

“Davik.”

His words were harsh and tight. “I am trying, leikavi. I truly am. I—I just…I cannot make the words come. I have never spoken about this. There are many things I have never spoken of.”

My shoulders sagged. “It’s all right,” I whispered. “You don’t need to—”

He lifted me, making me gasp, turning me around on Nillima’s back so I faced him as he brought her to a stop. I looked up at him in surprise, my hands coming to rest on his chest to keep my balance.

His arms wrapped tight, as if I would pull away.

“Davik?”

“I want to tell you about her, leikavi,” he rasped, dropping his forehead down to mine. “About what happened to her and my family.”

“But you need more time,” I guessed softly, hearing what went unspoken in his voice.

“Lysi. One day, I will tell you everything,” he promised.

My smile was sad because I knew that that day would never come. “I understand.”

When he pulled away to regard me, his expression was tight. His eyes flickered like he was trying to decide something, his lips pressed tight together.

His exhale was sharp and then he said, “But I will…I will tell you about what happened afterwards. After my sister and my parents died. I will tell you my story in reverse. And it is something I should have told you before I ever even touched you.”

My brows drew together. His voice was grim…as if whatever he was about to tell me was another one of those things he’d never spoken of.

“Sex is…sex can be difficult for me,” he murmured.

I stiffened, my lips parting, unsure where he was going with this…all the while remembering that night he’d taken me to his bed for the first time. Something had been strange about it and not only because he’d been too rough in the beginning. He’d kept saying he wanted to be right for me—as if he was already broken.

“After my family died, I was alone,” he said, his voice gruff. “I was alone in Dothik with little gold. The hordes…we have no concept of payment, not like in the capital. We work together to live. We exchange goods, not gold. But in Dothik, gold is life and without it, you are as good as dead.”

I sat still, my hands still pressed to his chest so I felt how quickly his heart was beating beneath my palm.

“There was a female that took me in from the streets,” he rasped. “Her…her name was Mala.”

Unease churned in my gut because I knew. I knew where this story was leading and I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for it. But I needed to hear this because it was Davik’s story. I wanted to know every part of him, every happy memory, every darkened corner.

“She housed me and fed me. Truthfully, I do not remember much from that time. I was still deep in my grief. The world did not seem real without my family. Nothing did. The only emotions I felt were rage and despair. And Mala…she fed on those things. She fed on me.”

“She…” I whispered, swallowing. “Did she rape you?”

Davik flinched, his hands tightening around me. He went silent and I sat, frozen in front of him. The world started to buzz in my ears, the blood underneath my skin rushing restlessly.

“Lysi,” he rasped and I knew how hard it was for him to say that word. “But at the time, I do not think I realized that. In my eyes, I was exchanging sex for food. For shelter. In that way, I felt more like a whore. But Mala…she liked to be fucked a certain way.”

My heartbeat was pounding in my temple.

I want to be right for you, leikavi, he’d said, while deep inside my body. I remembered thinking he’d been using his strength against me, not for me…that first time we’d had sex.

His breathing was ragged, his exhales filling the space between us. “She…she trained me to fuck her rough, to hurt her. She liked it. She craved it. Soon, that was all I knew too.”

Oh gods.

“Though it has been years and years since she last touched me…sometimes I still slip into the way I was with her. I was so used to fucking my rage and grief and fear into her that it is difficult to disassociate those emotions from sex.”

“Davik,” I breathed, my brows drawn, my throat tight.

“I did it with you,” he admitted. “You felt it. I felt fear with you and I slipped right back into that place. I fucking hate it. I hate that I hurt you.”

“Why did you fear me?” I whispered.

His jaw was tight and tense. Slowly, his hand reached up to brush my cheek, to smooth back my hair.

“Don’t you know why, leikavi?” he asked quietly.

The emotion that welled up in me was despair. Because I could never have him as my own. When I’d left the Dead Mountain, I had never expected to meet a male like…him. I had never expected for these feelings he stoked to come roaring to life like a fire, licking at me, consuming me, burning me up.

I felt rage all my own for him. For what he’d experienced when he was at his most vulnerable. I shook with it. I hated the female that had taken advantage of him, that had used him.

“I cannot promise you that I will be right with you. Not always, leikavi,” he murmured. “But I will always try to be. Though I will understand if you do not want this. If you do not want me anymore because—”

Leaning up, I kissed him to cut off his words, feeling my eyes prick with tears. How could he even think something like that?

Davik hesitated for only a moment and then his mouth was moving against mine, tugging me more firmly against him.

Against his lips, I murmured, “Rest assured that I will always want you, Davik.”

Those red eyes burned into me when I pulled back to look at him. His hand dove into my hair, gathering it into his palm, tugging on it gently until my neck was exposed to him.

My lips parted when his teeth bit at the column of my throat. I looked up at the night sky as he marked me—as if he needed to after what had just transpired between us—inhaling his warm scent that made my head spin.

Behind a dark mass of clouds, the moon peeked through, full and bright, and my lips thinned. Every night, more and more of it would disappear, melting into a single silver sliver. Then the black moon would blanket Dakkar. A black moon would blanket the Dead Mountain.

I wondered if I even had the amount of time allotted to me. I wondered if the poison would’ve already claimed me by then.

Even though he made me feel safe, Davik wouldn’t be able to protect me from the poison slowing the blood in my veins, thickening it to stone. Only another dose of it would save me, the dose I took every two weeks under the Dead Mountain. The dose all the Ghertun slaves took so we weren’t tempted to escape. Escape would’ve been easy. There were many paths, unguarded paths, that led away from the Dead Mountain.

But the Ghertun knew that they could control us with the threat of death. The poison was extracted from a plant that only grew in the dark, acidic soil, deep in the mountain. And the death was agonizing. Slow and agonizing. I’d come close to it once, after all.

Davik stiffened, his arm tightening around me so much that it almost stole the breath from my lungs.

For a moment, I feared I’d said something out loud, something I didn’t want him to hear.

When I glanced at him, his head had raised from my neck, his attention was forward, peering into the darkness, towards a grouping of rocky pillars, pillars that jutted high all over the eastlands. Worry flowed through me—thinking he was seeing another shadowed spirit, his twin perhaps—but when I looked in that direction, I froze too.

“No,” I breathed.

Something reflected in the moonlight. Eerie, watchful black eyes met our gazes, unflinching. Five pairs of eyes total, eyes that were nothing more than vertical slits. Their teeth were razor-sharp, like blades, and yellow, stained from the roots they so enjoyed gorging themselves on. Their legs, bent heavily at the knee joint, just like a pyroki’s, shifted as they tracked us and I swore I could hear their bones creaking in the quiet.

A pack of Ghertun were watching us from within the shadowed darkness.

Bile rose in my throat, that familiar, bitter fear returning to me in a rush, as if it had never left.

Chapter Thirty-Five

“Let me speak to them,” Vienne said, her voice soft and shaking. “Please!”

We had just made it back to the encampment. As we did, I bellowed a war cry to my darukkars, loud and echoing, and in an instant, they were racing from their volikis, dozens and dozens in a rush.

“Nik,” I snarled down at her. If she hadn’t been with me, I would’ve gone after the Ghertun right when I’d spotted them spying in the darkness. How long had they been watching us? Watching her? “Never.”

“Davik, you don’t understand,” she said. “Please! I need to—”

“Nik, I do not understand and I never will,” I told her, shoving her into the arms of a warrior guard. To him, in Dakkari, I said, “Do not let her from your sight. Take her back to my voliki and stay with her until I return. Find another guard to stand watch outside.”

“Lysi, Vorakkar,” the guard, Urik, replied.

Vienne’s gaze flared in disbelief, mingling with her fear and her panic. She obviously feared the Ghertun—fear that made me want to kill them, so she would never feel that kind of fear again—and yet, she begged me to see them? Speak with them? For what purpose?

Not now, I thought, watching as Urik began to drag her away, though she struggled in his grip. There was a Ghertun scouting party that we needed to track down and eliminate. I would deal with my leikavi’s anger later. Right now, the horde was in danger.

Still, I watched her until she was lost in a sea of darukkars as they raced to their pyrokis, remembering the way she’d trembled with barely leashed fury as I told her about Mala. One of my darkest secrets, now bared to her forever.

Hedna found me. “What is it?”

He was still fastening his sword to the belt around his hips.

I shook my head, erasing all memory of Mala. I was a Vorakkar now, not a young male frightened and alone in Dothik.

That was my past. And I took solace in the knowledge it was gone forever.

“Ghertun,” I informed Hedna.

Ghertun who had seen her. Ghertun who knew that she was here, among my horde, I amended quietly.

They needed to be eliminated, no matter what.

His lips pressed together.

“What are we waiting for?”

* * *

“One is alive,” a darukkar reported to me, eyeing me because I was dripping in green blood, blood that had splattered across my chest and across my cheek when I’d beheaded one of the Ghertun.

I grunted, scowling, hardly capable of words. Whenever I killed, I grew quiet. Like I knew I was just adding to the shadows that I would see. My own private little army of the dead.

“Your orders, Vorakkar?”

I didn’t reply. Instead, I stepped over another dead Ghertun, stalking over to the small group of darukkar that had assembled close by. In the middle of them, surrounded by the points of their swords and lying on the ground, was the last of the scouting party. A breathing Ghertun with green blood rolling from the corner of his mouth.

My darukkars fell away when I approached.

“Rothi kiv,” I growled at them. Leave us. I wanted to speak with this Ghertun alone.

If my darukkars were surprised, they didn’t show it. On my periphery, I saw Hedna lingering, however.

“You too, pujerak,” I said, keeping my gaze on the vertical slits of the Ghertun’s eyes. They closed from left to right, not top to bottom, a translucent film covering them for a brief moment before it peeled back with every blink.

“We can take him back to the horde,” Hedna said quietly.

“Nik.”

This Ghertun would not set foot inside my horde. This Ghertun would not get close to her.

Hedna knew I would not be swayed and he, too, fell away, giving me and the Ghertun privacy. His breathing was ragged in his chest, his hand pressed to a wound in his abdomen, trying to keep the blood inside.

“You spy for Lozza?” I asked him quietly.

Those eyes blinked slow, that film appearing before peeling back.

“Tell me what I wish to know, Ghertun, and I might be persuaded to let you scurry back to your mountain.”

A laugh bubbled from his throat, wet and scratchy. “You?” he asked, his tone incredulous, even this close to death. “I know who you are.”

My jaw tightened.

The Mad Horde King.

“Then that is all the more reason to speak,” I rasped, narrowing my gaze on him. “Don’t you think?”

My dagger flashed in the moonlight as I cleaned it off on his skin, the edge of the blade just pricking his scaled flesh. His breathing quickened. For the first time, a flash of uncertainty flickered in his gaze.

“Were you looking for her?” I asked, my tone deadened and even.

“Who?”

My head cocked slightly and I grinned down at him. My teeth flashing made him blink faster, his breathing going rapid again as he desperately eyed the dagger in my hands.

“The female?” the Ghertun asked, his voice shaking. “No.”

I remained silent, so he would know that answer wasn’t enough to slake my thirst.

He continued quickly. “Our king just told us to watch for her. We followed her to the city, to make certain she got inside. Nothing more.”

“Tell me what you know about her.”

“N-nothing,” he rasped, more blood leaking from his lips. “Just that she is a slave. A—”

His words cut off in a pained howl as I slammed the flattened edge of my blade into the seeping wound at his abdomen, digging deeper.

“You should not call her that,” I commented. “Not in front of me.”

Through his raspy gasps, I saw his eyes flicker at whatever he heard in my voice. Realization made the slits of his eyes grow wider. He blinked, as if the darkness of death was beginning to take him. His wound was mortal. He wouldn’t live much longer.

He began to laugh—terrible, thickened sounds that made the back of my neck prickle with revulsion.

“She is already dead, horde king,” he told me, his blinks becoming longer and longer.

“Neffar?”

“She was dead the moment she left.”

I growled, pressing my dagger deep, ignoring his choked cry of pain. “Tell me what you know!”

“Help me,” he said, his hand going for a sword that my darukkar had already taken from him. He was weaponless, dying. He knew he had nothing left to offer. “Help me and I will tell you how to save her.”

He lies, I thought.

“I—I don’t want to die. Not yet. Not by a Dakkari,” he spat that word as if it was sour on his tongue.

“Then tell me what I want to know,” I hissed.

“It will take her quickly once it sets in.” He began to laugh again. “You will watch her die.”

My nostrils flared, something shifting in my chest, something unfamiliar. Panic. Fear, for someone other than myself. The last time I’d felt it…it had been when I’d watched my sister die.

Nik.

“What are you talking about? What will take her?” I growled. “Tell me—”

The Ghertun went limp, his laugh dying in his throat all at once, as if that last, lingering effort had drained him of his life force. The film covered his eyes, though his eyelids remained open. No more blood pushed from his lips.

Dead.

I wouldn’t see him in the shadows, I knew. He wouldn’t haunt me.

But his words certainly would.

You will watch her die.

I hadn’t delivered his mortal wound but I wish I had.

“Burn them,” I bellowed to Hedna. “Burn them all.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

As I paced the floor of Davik’s voliki, I felt anger choking me.

Anger.

It was bitter in my throat, tasting of bile and frustration. I had felt it earlier, on Davik’s pyroki as he told me about Mala and his abuse when he was younger. But this was different. This was anger at him, not for him.

That might have been my only chance, I thought again as my bare feet treaded over the plush rugs and carpets lining the domed home.

Mala had had nothing to do with how he’d treated me after he’d spied the Ghertun. That had been all Davik, the Vorakkar, the horde king who expected his orders to be followed.

He hadn’t even listened to me. He’d decided for me, turned me down before I could give him a reason to let me speak with the Ghertun. I wore their mark on my flesh. They wouldn’t needlessly kill a slave…and they had to know who I was. What Lozza had sent me to do.

They might have even had a dose of the poison—both my antidote, for more time, and my doom—of the vovic that they grew deep in the Dead Mountain. The Ghertun smoked it. It was a drug. A relaxing drug and harmless to them. But when it was heated and compressed and the oil was extracted and left to age, its properties changed. The process made it deadly, so that even Ghertun slaves were vulnerable to it, though less so.

Most who owned slaves always had a dose of the vovic on them. Just in case.

That might have been my only chance.

A lucky coincidence. Or at least a lucky encounter, though I’d detested seeing a reminder of the race that kept me a prisoner.

Davik hadn’t seen it that way. He’d dragged me through the encampment. He’d thrown me into the arms of a guard, who stood watching me pace from the entrance of the voliki, and I knew another one was stationed just outside the door.

He’d made a decision for me without listening to me at all.

Which was why I’d been right not to give him my promise. The promise he’d asked of me, not to enter his mind anymore.

This is why, I knew. Because earlier this evening, my will had not been my own. He’d taken it from me.

I was mad and frustrated. And even still, underneath those hot emotions, I was worried. For him. I was still reeling from what he’d confided in me earlier. I felt compassion for him while also feeling burning rage.

My heart and my head were a tangled mess. This was why I should’ve kept my distance. Developing feelings for a horde king of Dakkar had never been a good idea in the first place.

I heard his voice outside, no doubt dismissing the guard. Davik entered the voliki and I almost gasped at what I saw. Green blood—Ghertun blood, I knew—was splattered across his bare chest, dried down and dark. He was scowling, his jaw tight.

But it was his eyes that made me still in my pacing.

He was furious too.

He’d been…unhinged.

That look reminded me so much of when I’d first met him. When he’d purposefully tried to frighten me in Dothik, when he’d purposefully tried to put me on edge around him, as if he got off on my fear or at least enjoyed it.

But I knew better now.

His eyes were cruel and hard, like chips of ice. But I’d studied him long enough to see that underneath that furious exterior…something was wrong. Something had unsettled him.

“Rothi kiv,” he rasped to the guard, who immediately inclined his head and left, leaving me and an enraged horde king alone.

My belly burned.

“You had no right to brush me aside like that,” I said through a clenched jaw, though my voice was soft. “I needed to speak to them.”

I wasn’t afraid of him anymore. This was us. I trusted that I could give him my anger and he wouldn’t hurt me for it.

Davik stalked towards me, his heavy booted feet falling hard on the rugs.

“Cease speaking, kalles,” he growled, invading my space, his hand curling around the back of my neck, as it always did.

I glared at him. He was running hot, his temper rising.

What had his sister said in that memory? That he needed a female patient, kind, and forgiving because he had a nasty temper?

No, Devina, I thought. He needs a female that will give his anger right back to him, to challenge him with it.

His palm was hot at my nape and the metallic tang of Ghertun blood rose between us. He backed me up until the pole stabilizing the voliki’s ceiling was pressing hard into my spine. Davik seemed to grow in size, his muscles shifting and rippling in his anger.

“You will never get near another one again,” he growled, his eyes practically daring me to argue. And if I did? There would be consequences. “I ordered my pujerak to burn them. They are nothing but ash now.”

“No,” I whispered, aghast, shocked.

Gone.

Any chance that they’d had vovic on them was lost now. Disbelief made my spine straighten. I felt like I was burning. Like my chest was on fire with my anger.

“I’m glad I didn’t make that promise to you,” I told him. I pushed at the solid bulk of his chest, though it flaked off some of the Ghertun blood. “I’d glad I didn’t because—”

He flipped me until the pole was pressed between my breasts, my cheek against the strong black metal. I felt him rip my trews open, splitting the seam down the back until the ruined material pooled around my ankles.

“I am not right tonight, Vienne,” he rasped. “Vok, I am not.”

I gasped, stilling against him. He pressed his hips forward, keeping me pinned. He was hard at my back, his cock thick and ready. His teeth came to my neck and I shivered when I felt his bite, when I felt him hold it…like a beast forcing its mate to remain still.

“Come into my mind,” he taunted, though I heard an edge to his voice. Like a plea. Desperate with despair. After what he had shared with me earlier, I knew that this was different. This moment was different. “Come into my mind and make me stop…or take your fucking, leikavi. Your choice.”

My heart was hammering in my chest, twinging with what I heard in his voice. My anger and frustration were morphing into need.

They were feeding it.

I didn’t understand why.

“I will not be gentle,” he warned in my ear before biting it, making my nipples tighten. A warning. A promise. “Not tonight. I cannot be right tonight, Vienne. Though I promised. Vok!”

Still, I didn’t use my gift, though I had gathered it like a shimmering veil over me. I knew Davik felt it too. He’d told me it felt like fingers over his skin, touching him all over, and he groaned.

A cry tore from my throat when he thrust into me from behind hard, sheathing himself inside as far as he could possibly be. Stars burst in my vision, my lips parting, the tendrils of energy from my gift sizzling over me.

I had never thought it could be erotic—the power I wielded. But on his next brutal thrust, I bit my lip to keep him from hearing my ragged moan and then I unleashed that power over us, almost unconsciously, wrapping us both in it.

“Vok,” he groaned.

I gasped as his need ran hot in my blood, my eyes widening when I felt the depth of it. It went beyond simple need, however.

“Oh gods,” I whispered.

He was frightened.

For me.

And it made him so, so angry, that fear, because it made him feel helpless.

He wasn’t angry at me. Not at all. And just like I’d known, this was different. If I was going to love Davik, I would accept all his flaws, all his demons, all his darkest secrets.

And what was happening between us now?

I had a feeling it would unravel us both.

His clawed hands gripped my hips, pulling them back for more leverage, forcing me to clutch onto the pole to keep my balance.

My teeth clattered together as he unleashed his own power over me, as he unleashed the strength that he’d been holding back.

His thrusts were so swift, a quick punch of his hips, that it felt like he never left my body. He was there, every moment, filling me and owning me and claiming me as his.

Davik gave me his strength, his ferocity, as he kept me still for my fucking. Desperate, ragged sounds tore from my throat, cries that I hardly recognized as my own as the pleasure mixed with the pain, heightening into something entirely new, something that scared me but something that I craved.

His mind was jumbled, a mess just waiting to be untangled. His emotions flashed quickly, cycling through his fear, his desire, his bloodlust, his grief, his need, on an endless loop. He fucked those emotions into me, pouring them into me, until they filled me just as readily as his cock did.

Then I was coming around that cock, my orgasm taking me by surprise, stealing the last of the breath from my lungs.

Disbelief spread through Davik’s mind. “I can feel you, rei leikavi. Vok!”

He could feel my pleasure?

It set off his own. I gasped, shaking uncontrollably as he began to lose himself to his own desperate pleasure. His mind went blank with it and I felt it explode within me like a second orgasm, this one even harder than the first.

Oh gods, oh gods!

My legs gave out, my vision blackening. The only sensation I felt was Davik’s hot seed filling me up, coating me inside, and his strong arms catching my fall, bringing me up until my back was against his chest.

He shuddered and fucked and groaned against me.

Afterwards, quiet stretched between us as we both tried to calm our breaths. I still hadn’t moved. Neither had Davik. He clutched me to him like he needed me close…and since I was still deep in his mind, I knew for a fact he did.

What just happened? I couldn’t help but think, over and over again.

There were moments in my life when I’d known nothing would be the same. Usually they were tragic, horrible moments. Like watching my father die, then my grandmother. Like being taken by the Ghertun. Like watching my sister be abused by her sibi.

Or they were moments like meeting a horde king with red, glowing eyes. Like going into that horde king’s mind for the first time in Dothik, knowing that something about him called out to me.

And this…this was another of those moments. Feeling him deep inside me, his rough exhalations across the back of my neck, connected to his mind, deeper than I’d ever been before. This felt...

Permanent.

In that mind, in Davik’s complex web of emotions, I felt determination rise suddenly, so strongly that it blocked out everything else.

Still embedded deep inside me, he grasped my chin between his fingers, turning my face until I met his eyes. Instead of the wildness I’d seen earlier, now I only saw certainty.

Unwavering resolution.

“Davik,” I whispered, my brows furrowed.

“I have no deviri to offer you, leikavi, but that cannot be helped now. I will make it up to you with time.”

Deviri?

“What are you talking about?”

His jaw was set. He was as steady as I’d ever seen him, his emotions stable and firm. That mating, as intense as it’d been, had seemed to calm him. It seemed unreal to me that earlier this evening, he’d been feeding me in his lap and then we’d gone out riding on Nillima, his deep voice in my ear as he told me one of his darker secrets.

“You are mine now, Vienne,” he murmured. My breath hitched. “Though I think we own one another.”

“What? Davik, I don’t—”

“You will be my Morakkari,” he said, that jaw tightening further in his decision. “My queen. My wife. My mate.”

I froze.

“I have decided. It is done,” he said. As if to himself, he said softly, “This is the only way to keep you safe.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“You’re insane,” I gasped out. “This is the first time I’ve actually thought you’re insane, Davik.”

His jaw flexed. “Nik. Actually, for the first time, I think I am completely sane. For the first time, I am thinking clearly when it comes to you.”

I tore away from his grip—nearly stumbling over the ripped trews encircling my ankles before I kicked them off. At the sudden movement, a rush of wetness flooded from my sex. His cock slipped from me as his seed trailed down my inner thighs.

Davik glanced at it, his eyes flaring hot and primal and satisfied, while I felt panic spiral within me.

“You will be my Morakkari, Vienne,” he said.

“You cannot simply make me your Morakkari, Davik,” I said, trying to rein in my disbelief, my bafflement.

I was still reeling from what had just happened between us—the intensity of the sex, the roughness of it and how I’d craved it, the realization that Davik was frightened for me, and the knowledge that I was dangerously close to…to loving him completely, with every part of myself.

I shook my head, pressing my fingers to my temple. I’d been angry at him, hadn’t I? Before he’d stalked into the voliki. So why was it so difficult to recall that anger?

“Lysi, I can,” he replied, stepping towards me, capturing my shoulder with his palm to keep me still when I began pacing again.

I froze, gasping because I realized I was still inside his mind.

No, no, no.

When I tried to release him, I felt resistance, as if he’d tethered me to stay. His brow furrowed, as if he felt me trying to retreat.

Then he snarled when I finally broke the connection, tearing from his mind almost violently, which made my breath come out quick as pain bloomed at my temple.

“Vok, leikavi,” Davik rasped, pinching the space between his eyes, as if it had pained him as well. “I felt that.”

“I—I don’t know what’s happening,” I said, my voice shaking. “You’re…you’re not thinking clearly, Davik.”

I didn’t need to be inside his mind to know that his determination was still a solid, unyielding thing. It shone from his glowing eyes. It was pressed into the hard line of his mouth, in the utter stillness of his tail behind him.

“As my Morakkari,” he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken at all, “you will have the protection of my horde. Of my darukkar, of their swords. And as a Morakkari of Dakkar,” he said, emphasizing the name of our planet, “you will have the protection of all Vorakkar who ride in the wild lands. You will have the protection of their swords. You will even have the Dothikkar’s protection.”

“Davik—”

“The Ghertun will never touch you again. They will not get close to you unless they wish for their own deaths.”

He didn’t understand. I would be tied to the Ghertun for the rest of my life, however short it may be. The vovic ensured that.

If he tried to prevent me from returning, he was killing me himself.

“That protection,” he said, his voice dropping low as he stepped towards me, “extends to your family.”

That made me pause.

Then more pain came, though it had nothing to do with my headache. For a brief moment, I remembered my daydream. Of my family, safe, here. Among his horde. They were happy in that dream, content with their lives. As for me, I had dreamed I was happy with him, in his furs, at his side…and he at mine.

In another reality, that may have even been possible. Now, that daydream only taunted me with what could have been.

“I will not rest until they are returned to you,” Davik murmured, reaching out to touch my cheek. My lips parted when I saw affection in his gaze. Warmth. For me. “That will be my promise to you, Vienne. A vow to my wife that you will have them back. They will be safe here.”

Tears filled my eyes but he’d seen me cry so much that I wasn’t even embarrassed by them. His words felt like a punch in my gut. So sweet and tantalizing. A dream that was just within reach but would slip further and further away the closer I came.

“You can’t promise me that,” I told him.

He frowned, his eyes narrowing. “You think I cannot bring them to you?”

I didn’t doubt that. I doubted that they would live long enough to ‘be safe here,’ as he claimed.

This was exactly what I’d feared.

And I feared I would have to use my gift on him one last time in the coming week. The need to flee the horde was buzzing underneath my skin now, no matter how much the thought cut me. I didn’t want to leave this place.

I didn’t want to leave him.

Soon, he might not give you a choice, my mind whispered.

A sense of calm washed over me because I knew what I had to do. I’d always known that this was temporary. That he was. A small, exciting, gut-wrenching, wonderful blip in my life.

I’d never been in love before. I’d never experienced the kind of warm, settled, nourished love that my parents had. But once, my mother had told me that when she’d fallen in love with my father, just looking at him made her heart ache with pain while also making her feel like bursting with happiness.

I’d never understood that until now. How someone could make you hurt while also making you incredibly happy…

I think Maman ached when she’d fallen in love with my father because she knew that one day she’d have to live without him.

Like Devina, maybe she’d had a feeling, a knowing, of what was to come.

I didn’t have the gift of foresight but even I knew what would come next.

“Just give me time,” I whispered. I was a coward. I couldn’t tell him ‘no.’

His eyes darted back and forth between mine, trying to read something in my expression that wasn’t in my words.

“This…this is a lot to take in right now, Davik,” I said, hoping that he would understand. “After everything that’s happened tonight…”

I still felt his seed leaking from my body. I felt marked. I felt changed.

He thought I was talking about his roughness, his intensity during sex tonight and I saw a flash of shame cross his features. But since I was a coward, I didn’t correct his assumption.

“Very well,” he said, inclining his head. His eyes were still flickering between mine. He knew something was wrong…but he couldn’t figure it out. “We will discuss it more in the morning.”

I nodded, though I had no intention to.

“Let us sleep,” he murmured. Then he glanced down. “Or would you prefer to bathe first?”

“Actually,” I said, stepping around him, “I want to check on Lokkaru. To make sure she’s okay after the commotion earlier.”

Davik frowned.

I wiped up his seed still trailing down my thigh with my torn, discarded trews, knowing I would need another pair. But for now, I merely shoved my feet in my boots and grabbed Davik’s fur cloak, knowing it would cover me all the way down to my ankles.

“You sleep,” I told him. “I’ll be right back.”

His jaw was tight and he followed me outside when I stepped from the voliki. The encampment was quieter than it’d been before the Ghertun but darukkars were still milling around. It seemed as if Davik had posted more nightly patrols but still, as I made my way towards Lokkaru’s voliki, I felt his eyes on me the entire way.

The knowledge gave me a lump in my throat but I swallowed it down. When I reached Lokkaru’s home, there was only a small glow flickering from underneath the entrance flap. I ducked my head inside, only to find the older Dakkari female sleeping in her bed.

I stepped inside and breathed in the sweet scent of kuveri. I thought I would be sick of it by now, since we’d made dozens and dozens of blue candles with the berry, but it was comforting. Familiar.

It was warm inside the voliki so I briefly shrugged out of Davik’s furs, my tunic hanging just above my knees. My gaze trailed down to my wrist, my lips pressing together when I saw more veins had blackened and were continuing to trail up my inner forearm. When I pressed my fingers into my flesh, I felt a throbbing ache. From experience, I knew it would turn into burning, shooting, teeth-gritting pain.

Once, I’d displeased my sibi under the Dead Mountain. I’d stayed out late on an errand. I’d been trying to sneak into the mines because I knew that sometimes my brother, Eli, worked there. I’d desperately wanted to see him. I’d returned, however, disappointed, only to realize that I’d forgotten the food my sibi had sent me out to get.

They didn’t hit me. They didn’t yell at me. They didn’t withhold my meager rations. Instead, they’d done something far more cruel.

They’d withheld my dose of vovic. Slaves usually received one every two or three weeks, days that I used to count in my mind silently, anxiously. Though we could survive without a dose for a month, the pain by the end of that month was usually too debilitating. My sibi knew that. They’d kept me in withdrawal for three days. Useless to them, spread on the floor where I slept, sweating, my bones feeling like they would break, the blood in my veins burning like it was on fire.

The pain had been so severe I hadn’t been able to call upon my gift. I had never felt more helpless.

I’d been so grateful to them when they finally gave me my dose. I’d worked extra hard to please them in the following weeks, the knowledge of which made me sick to think about now. Because I was a coward. I was a spineless coward.

I was staring, unseeing, inside Lokkaru’s voliki. My vision was wavering, watering, and I dashed away the tears that ran down my cheeks, angry. I was angry.

I was angry with Davik, for trying to give me everything I wanted but could never have. I was angry at him for not finding me a year earlier, before I’d ever taken that first dose of vovic between my lips. I was angry at him for using that body on me, because now I would come to crave it, miss it. I was angry at him for showing me he wasn’t the cruel monster I’d believed him to be that first night in Dothik because I’d already begun to fall in love with him.

I was angry that my father had died. I was angry that my beautiful, beautiful sister was abused and raped by her sibi almost weekly. I was angry that the few Ghertun underneath the Dead Mountain who would look at me in shame and apology whenever I crossed their paths had done nothing to help us. I was angry that I was too weak and too cowardly to help us.

My breath came hard and quick. I was staring at Lokkaru, who held my future in the fractured, glittering remnants of her mind. I needed to breach it, to find the lost heartstone.

Without that heartstone, I had no power.

Lozza had promised me freedom and safety—a life free from vovic—when he’d sent me from the Dead Mountain. I’d entered his mind as he promised me that. And while I couldn’t read thoughts, I could read emotions. Lozza had been amused. There had been deceit in his mind, naturally, but whether it was a lie about a possible antidote, or a lie about releasing my family and me…I didn’t know.

The only way forward was to have hope that there was an antidote. When I returned to the Dead Mountain with the heartstone, I would use my gift on Lozza, in front of all of his council, in front of his wives and children, in his darkened hall. I would force him to give me the antidote, the antidote that would free us from vovic’s clutches forever.

His council, his family, might think it was strange that he would give it over to me, a lowly slave. But it wouldn’t be as suspicious as if I had forced him to give it to me at any other time. In their eyes, we would be settling an agreement we’d made. I would hand him a heartstone as he handed me the antidote, after all.

No. There was an antidote. I had to believe that. Or we were as good as dead.

I could only rely on myself. No one else. Not even Davik, who’d promised me everything I’d wanted while taking my choices away.

With that thought in mind, I strode forward and crouched at Lokkaru’s side. If entering Davik’s mind multiple times gave me his memories then perhaps with Lokkaru it would be the same. I could harvest her memories and if I was lucky I would find the one I wanted. But it was better than doing nothing at all. It was my only chance.

I gathered my power in front of me, building it in the space between myself and the older Dakkari female. It came easily. So much more easily than it normally did, more evidence that it was growing stronger, more powerful.

Then I pressed forward…

Into coldness. Into nothingness.

A ragged gasp tore from my throat like a sob and I stumbled back, nearly toppling over the fire basin that was burning low in the voliki. My back hit her workbench, rattling my spine, toppling blue columns of candles around me, which thudded to the floor.

Horror and disbelief kept me sprawled, the icy tendrils of that brief intrusion into her mind crawling over my skin.

“Lokkaru?” I whispered, afraid. Nausea built up in my belly.

Oh gods.

Then I was scrambling up from the ground, throwing more fuel onto the fire so it roared to life.

So I could see.

And when I looked back at Lokkaru, I saw what I feared. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly curled in a secretive smile, one she’d worn earlier just that afternoon.

But her chest didn’t move with her breaths. When I touched her hand, lying stiffly at her side, it was cold.

Oh gods.

She was dead.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Vienne was pale and listless as she stood towards the back of dozens and dozens of Dakkari.

The horde had gathered to give Lokkaru back to the earth, back to Kakkari. I’d chosen to have her buried on the shores of one of the only lakes in the eastlands. They were few and far between but this lake had a beauty of its own and reflected the moonlight on the edges of the territory.

Since most of the eastlands belonged to the ungira, we’d needed to travel far enough away to ensure no packs were nearby. They burrowed under the earth and I wanted to ensure that Lokkaru rested with peace as Kakkari welcomed her home once more.

I was keenly aware that the lake was near the ancient groves, where Lokkaru had told me the heartstone lay, buried with her father’s body.

The horde had traveled the majority of the afternoon, forgoing daily tasks, daily duties, daily trainings. Our horde lay empty and deserted further east but we would return in the early hours of morning after we said our final goodbyes.

It was my duty as Vorakkar to dig out the earth where Lokkaru would rest. She was wrapped in shimmering gold cloth, from head to toe. Her body had been cleaned and lovingly washed, her skin oiled. She’d been adorned with gold and trinkets, her face veiled in transparent cloth.

The golden glow of torchlight illuminated her resting place. I wiped my brow, my bare chest streaked with black earth, as I lifted my arms towards Hedna, who lowered Lokkaru’s stiff body into them.

I turned and gently laid her inside, kneeling in the deep earth beside her. For a moment, I breathed in the fragrant soil, an ache settling in my chest. It was dark there and I knew what I would see before I did.

The shadow of Lokkaru was next to me. Her eyes were glowing, a soft smile on her face that seemed frozen into place.

“Do not fear this,” she whispered to me, the appearance of her shadowed form making my breath hitch in my chest, that familiar panic rising. “This is not a terrible thing.”

I squeezed my eyes shut, my head beginning to pound.

Not now, not now, I pleaded with myself.

When I opened my eyes, Lokkaru’s shadow was gone and my breath released in a rush. Turning my eyes down to her veiled face, I touched her cheek, murmuring a prayer to Kakkari.

“Lik Kakkari srimea tei kirtja,” I murmured.

May Kakkari watch over you.

I stayed there for long moments and then I knew it was time. I rose, pulling myself from her grave, nodding at Hedna before seeking out Vienne once more.

As the rest of the horde came forward, circling the grave, murmuring their own prayers to Kakkari, I went to my leikavi, tucked behind them all.

I was worried about her. She’d returned to my voliki the night before, short moments after she’d left. She’d looked pale.

In a small, calm, even voice, she’d merely said, “Lokkaru is dead.”

She hadn’t cried. She’d seemed…numb. In shock.

She’d been that way ever since, and beyond my own grief, I was worried. I felt woefully helpless in situations like these. I did not know how to care for a female. I did not know how to comfort her with words.

I should know these things. She would be my Morakkari, after all. I wanted to comfort her.

“Leikavi,” I murmured to her, softly so no Dakkari around us would hear. “Tell me what you need.”

That got her attention and she blinked, looking up at me in saddened surprise.

“What I need?” she whispered.

I inclined my head.

Her brows furrowed and she said, “Oh, Davik.”

“Neffar?”

She glanced back at the crowd gathering around Lokkaru’s grave. “This isn’t about me. This is about you and your horde’s loss. Please don’t worry about me.”

I frowned. “You have as much of a right to grieve as the rest.”

“I feel like I don’t,” was what she whispered, looking up at me with shimmering eyes, shaking her head. Her arms were wrapped around her body and though the night was unnaturally warm for the season, she trembled like she was cold, a fur shawl wrapped around her shoulders. “I knew her for a week. You’ve known her for ten years.”

“Time has nothing to do with grief,” I told her and she looked up at me in saddened surprise.

Though Vienne had only known Lokkaru for that short period of time, it didn’t diminish the affection they’d felt for one another. I also worried that it had been Vienne that had discovered her body. Vienne had already seen so much death within her own family—her father, her grandmother. Both deaths had been gruesome and violent.

I cupped the back of her neck. Though I still could smell the earth clinging to me from Lokkaru’s grave, I scented her underneath it…soft and sweet and warm.

Dropping my forehead to hers, I decided to say nothing right then. We would discuss this once we were back at the encampment, once she was warm in my furs and had recovered a little more from the sadness that covered her like a veil.

When I pulled back, needing to return for the final burial, Vienne caught my hand. Her voice trembled as she said, “I—I think she knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That she was leaving soon.”

“Lokkaru was old,” I said gently, reaching out to brush her cheek. “Her time in this life was over. She has gone to the next.”

Vienne looked like she wanted to say more, her eyes darting between mine. Then her shoulders sagged slightly and she nodded, releasing my hand. I frowned, catching hers again when I realized her fingers were chilled to the bone.

“You are freezing, Vienne,” I murmured, my brows furrowing.

“I’m all right,” she assured me. Her eyes looked past me, towards the grave. “It looks like they are waiting for you.”

When I turned, I saw the eyes of my horde on us, though they averted their gazes quickly.

“Come,” I said, pulling her forward. “You will be at my side, as my Morakkari should be.”

Where you belong, I added silently.

When I knew that she would be my wife, that definitive moment last night—that determination that had risen within my chest, certain and absolute and unyielding—still left me reeling with its potency. But I didn’t question. For all my faults, I always made firm decisions and stood behind them.

As I pulled her forward, I didn’t notice her hesitation as she fell into step beside me.

Or maybe I simply ignored it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The dream felt muddled and hazy. It felt wrong as it tugged at the edges of my mind.

I was sobbing in this dream. And I knew it was a dream. So I did everything that I wanted that I couldn’t do in my reality. I cried and screamed until my throat was raw. I saw the stiff face of Lokkaru, looking up at me from her bed, where she’d died, only this time her eyes were open and staring deeply into me.

It made horror coil in my chest. Lokkaru’s face morphed into my grandmother’s, with her light blue eyes and grey hair that she’d always kept trimmed short and out of the way. Only I saw red blood appear across her throat.

It was a dream so I changed it, wiping away the image of my dying grandmother, but I sat huddled, trapped in the confines of my mind and not knowing what was happening or why.

I kept my eyes squeezed shut but I could hear what sounded like a stream nearby, though my vision was blackened, though I couldn’t see anything anymore.

Someone touched my shoulder.

I kept my eyes closed, feeling like a small child though I was grown.

“Cossa,” came a voice. A familiar one. My breath hitched, my eyes flying open, and there stood Lokkaru, wrapped in her golden cloth that she’d been buried in, a transparent veil over her features. “You see? I told you dreams are powerful.”

“L-Lokkaru?”

She looked alive. She looked well. But I knew this was a dream, that it wasn’t real.

Or was it?

I thought of Devina, of her plea to me. She’d showed me a memory, an important one to her, and I had believed that real, hadn’t I?

“You’re here?” I whispered, rising from my crouched position. When I looked down, I saw the black veins on my arms had disappeared. “How?”

“We are never gone,” she said. “Though only some possess the gift to see us.”

Like Davik.

“Did you go to him yet?” I asked. “In his dream?”

“He has not slept yet, cossa. You are riding back towards the horde and you sleep in his arms on his pyroki.”

I knew that. Even still, speaking with her felt like wading through water. Heavy and slow. It made me drowsy, though I already slept. It was strange. So strange.

“I appeared to him as he can see me,” she said. “But he rejects his gift from Kakkari.”

“He does not understand it,” I whispered, a flash of guilt piercing me. “I don’t even know if I understand it. This.”

“You are not meant to,” she said. “I never questioned it. It is simply a part of you, as it was a part of me.”

My vision swam. The tears that leaked down my cheeks felt like ice. I was surprised when they didn’t shatter, frozen, at my feet as they dropped.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m…I’m so sorry, Lokkaru.”

“For what, cossa?”

“For—for not checking on you earlier. You died…you died alone. I found you and you were so cold. I tried to enter your mind and all I felt was…n-nothing. I felt nothing at all.”

Her face never changed.

“I did not die alone, Vienne,” she told me. “My mother and father welcomed me and I went with them gladly. It was time. But this new life is strange. It works in different ways. I feel my hold on your world lessening and I want to say goodbye. Because I do not know what comes next.” She wore a secretive, mischievous smile, one very similar to when she’d gleefully imagined stealing kuveri for our candles. “But I am excited to see, to learn.”

Would she come back? In my dreams?

“The mind is powerful, Vienne,” Lokkaru murmured, looking at me intently. “Yours is as strong as I have ever seen. You fear your gift, as Davik fears his?”

“Yes,” I whispered. Because I knew it was changing. I felt it.

I realized this might be my last chance to speak with Lokkaru, to see her. The faces of my family flashed in my mind. When I looked down at my arm, I swore I saw a shadow of black veins but then it was gone.

“I have to ask you something,” I said, urgency infusing my tone.

Lokkaru inclined her head. “Is this what you have needed to know? I realize now you were trying to ask me something, but my mind came and went.”

“It’s about the heartstone,” I said.

Her face was smooth and unblemished. The longer I looked at her, I swore I saw her features flicker to a younger version of herself.

“You want to know where it is,” she guessed.

“Yes,” I whispered. “You asked me yesterday…you asked me where my family was and I said far from here. You assumed they were dead.”

She inclined her head.

“But they are slaves under the Dead Mountain,” I told her, a lump in my throat, my breath coming fast. “I need the heartstone, any heartstone, in order to free them. That’s why I’m here. Davik…he said you might know where it is.”

Lokkaru’s expression did change then. Sightly. A small downturning of her lips. It was puzzlement.

“Davik knows where it is, cossa,” she told me.

Even in this dream, my stomach dropped.

“What?” I whispered. I shook my head. “No, he—he said you might remember. But that your mind was—”

“I told him where the heartstone was when he accepted me into his horde, Vienne,” Lokkaru said. “The exact location, the one my mother told me herself. Because she thought that one day, I would go seek it out, that it would give me Kakkari’s protection. I did seek it out but I did not take it when I found it.”

Disbelief spread through me, in addition to something that felt an awful lot like…betrayal.

“Davik knew?” I whispered, hurt spearing me. “This whole time, he’s known where the heartstone is?”

“He told me he did not want to seek it out. That it was better lost,” Lokkaru said. “I agree with him. The heartstone’s power is not well understood. It can be dangerous.”

“I need to know where it is,” I told her, deafened to what she was saying. Something shifted in my breast, possibly similar to the determination I’d felt within Davik last night, when he’d told me I would be his Morakkari. “My family will never be free without it.”

I will never be free, I amended silently…only I heard the words echo in the space between Lokkaru and I.

The heartstone was the only thing I had left to bargain with.

Her features softened. “Oh, cossa.”

“Please,” I begged, swallowing.

“It is dangerous,” Lokkaru warned.

“I would do anything for my family,” I told her, stepping towards her, though the distance between us didn’t shorten. The dream seemed to expand, shifting in its dimensions. “Please, Lokkaru. I need your help. I’m—I’m already dying. I don’t have much time left and I need to reach my family before it’s too late.”

“You plan to give the heartstone to the Ghertun?” Lokkaru asked softly.

My stomach sank when I heard the hesitation in her voice. “I need to,” I told her, unable to lie. “But the Ghertun cannot use Kakkari’s power. It means nothing.”

“Like I said, the heartstone’s power is unknown. Cossa, I cannot—”

“Please,” I whispered again. “I—I don’t even know if I’ll make it, if I have enough time to find it. But I have to try. I have to.”

Lokkaru peered at me closely. The veil over her face seemed to ripple with an unseen wind.

“I have to try.”

I tried not to think about Davik. That he’d known this entire time and said nothing.

The dimensions of the dreams shifted, narrowing and then widening. In my mind, I felt Lokkaru’s presence, both disturbing and comforting. I had never felt another in my mind but I knew this was what Davik must have felt.

“I will show you, cossa.”

Relief pricked me like a knife.

In my mind, she guided me east, the landscape passing before me, though parts of it seemed washed out and blurry, as if this was from her own memory and it was hazy. It went faster and faster but I remembered it all, as if it were a map stamped into my own mind.

The memory centered on one area. The ancient groves, I knew. The place Davik had told me about in his story about the heartstone.

Then Lokkaru showed me what I’d been seeking.

There was a beautiful, old tree. Weathered but strong. At the end of a stream, deep in the ancient groves, its black trunk stood proudly, its branches glimmering in sunlight. Its leaves seemed like they were painted in gold.

“My father,” Lokkaru said in my mind, unseen.

Tears pricked my eyes at the love I heard in Lokkaru’s voice.

“My mother buried him with the heartstone and this tree grew from him. It was nourished from him and his love. The heartstone is within. Somewhere, with him.”

My breath hitched. When I’d first met her, Lokkaru had told me, “She told me love grows and it grows true, as long as it is nourished. Like my father.”

She’d been speaking of her mother.

This tree was beautiful. The tree was Lokkaru’s father’s grave. His final place of rest. A shrine. A testament of his sacrifice for his family, of his love for them. He’d died so that his unborn daughter and wife could live.

And in order to save my family, I would have to desecrate it. I would have to destroy it, this place of love and beauty, in order to find the heartstone, in order to fulfill my agreement with the Ghertun king.

Lokkaru, still in my mind, said softly, “You will have the strength, cossa. You will do what needs to be done.”

* * *

I woke from the dream. A sense of calm had settled over me, though it was brittle.

Just as Lokkaru said in the dream, we were still riding towards the horde. It was late, the moon high overhead. The darkness of the plains settled over Dakkar like a heavy blanket.

I was on Nillima’s back and I felt Davik’s arms around me. The back of my head rested against his chest and the gentle sway of his pyroki beneath us threatened to lull me back to sleep. Because I was so tired. I felt so damned tired. Another symptom of the vovic, a warning of what would come in the next few days.

I heard dozens and dozens of pyroki behind us, as their Vorakkar led them home. The Vorakkar who I’d begun to trust.

The Vorakkar I’d begun to love, I thought, my heart pricking. It felt like my chest had been cracked and a little bit of me was leaking out.

“You’ve known,” I whispered, that sense of calm still swallowing me. Maybe it wasn’t calmness at all. Maybe it was numbness.

“Neffar, leikavi?” he rasped in my ear. He dipped his head, nudging the tip of my ear with his nose, an affectionate gesture.

But I didn’t feel anything.

“You’ve known this entire time.”

Davik stilled. Then he was turning my face towards him, his brow furrowed, his mouth downturned as he studied my features in the moonlight. Trying to read me.

“Neffar?” he said, his tone darker, more serious this time.

I realized he couldn’t know. Because if he knew, he might figure out what I planned next. And he might try to stop me, especially since he was so damned determined to have me as his Morakkari.

“Nothing,” I whispered, shaking my head. “I—my dreams were strange.”

At least that wasn’t a lie.

The mention of my dreams didn’t make his tension ease.

“I didn’t dream your memories,” I assured him. “Don’t worry.”

He relaxed slightly at that, seeming to shake himself. There was still something he didn’t want me to know. Something worse than Mala.

Turning forward, I looked over the dark landscape before us. I knew where we were. Lokkaru’s memories ensured that.

Keeping my head still, I turned my gaze west. Though I couldn’t see it, I knew the ancient groves lay hidden there, not far from the lake where Lokkaru was buried, perhaps a full day’s ride from the horde’s encampment. From there, it was another day’s travel to the Dead Mountain.

And that was only if I could secure a pyroki for the journey.

My icy skin and lingering exhaustion told me I had two or three days until the symptoms from the vovic would become more severe. Perhaps another two days after that before I would be completely incapacitated.

I have to leave, I knew. Soon.

When we returned to the horde, I would need to sneak away because I was beginning to suspect that Davik had never intended to let me go. Maybe in the beginning he did…but not now.

I was out of time. Closing my eyes, I found I couldn’t even drum up anger at myself, or even at Davik right then. I was still so numb.

This was my fault. I’d wasted so much time.

And I’d trusted someone I shouldn’t have.

Chapter Forty

Davik was sleeping next to me.

I knew dawn was only an hour or two away. I knew that red and orange light would softly break over Dakkar and my chance would be gone.

And yet, I couldn’t stop looking up at Davik.

My cheek was resting on his bare chest. Finally, I was beginning to feel some of the numbness I’d experienced fading. In its place was a sense of loss—this deep sense of loss that made me want to scream.

I didn’t cry. I swore I got out all the tears I had left in me in my dream, if that was possible. Nothing was as it seemed anymore, so I didn’t know what was possible and what wasn’t. And so, I didn’t question it.

Davik’s chest rose and fell steadily, his brow furrowed, his lips downturned—broody and intimidating even in his sleep. My eyes traced the deep, jagged lines of the scar across his cheek. He’d never told me how he’d received it—though I strongly suspected it was related to whatever happened to his sister.

Who he also never told me about, I thought. Even the voice in my mind sounded sad.

There was so much I didn’t know about him. So much he refused to tell me. I kept secrets from him as well…so was there ever any hope for us anyways?

No, I knew.

Slowly, I lifted my cheek from his chest, my heart beginning to pound in my chest with nerves and fear. One of his arms was wrapped around me but I prayed he was tired enough from the journey to bury Lokkaru’s body that he was deep in sleep.

When I slipped from his arms and stood next to his bed of furs, I watched him carefully for a moment but he never stirred.

My heart felt swollen and heavy behind the brittle bones in my chest as I quickly dressed—stealing a clean pair of pants, a heavy tunic, and a fur shawl from his chests. I pushed my feet into the oversized boots I’d been wearing. I took a pouch of dried travel rations and a full skin of water as well, looping them into the belt of my pants, which I’d tied tight around my waist.

At the last moment, after a brief hesitation, I also stole one of his daggers. His swords were too heavy for me to lift, so the smaller blade would have to do. Carefully, I slipped that into my belt as well.

When I was finished preparing, I stepped up to the bed, closest to where he slept.

My throat felt tight when I looked down at him, everything rebelling in me, screaming at me, tearing at me.

I wanted to stay. I wanted nothing more than to stay in those strong, warm arms and never leave. He made me feel safe. He made me feel seen, heard. He’d touched me like no other had touched me before and it had been with him that I’d felt like…like I was not a slave. That I was not to be so easily discarded, so easily overlooked.

He’d seen me, even in Dothik.

Remember his betrayal, Vienne, I told myself. A small sound escaped my throat, a small, desperate little ache that had wound its way from my heart and out from between my lips.

He’d never intended to help me find the heartstone.

I needed to remember that because that was the only thing that would make it easier to leave. Because I had to leave. There was no other choice.

And I needed to leave before he woke up. I needed to leave before the horde began to rouse, or else I would have to use my gift and I didn’t need the pain that would follow. The pain would come soon, no doubt, but I needed to be clear-headed for my journey.

I need to be brave, I told myself.

My breath hitched when I felt something familiar spreading across my skin, a brief prickling that made me regard the shadows carefully, though I knew I would not see her.

Tentatively, I reached out with my gift, seeking in the darkness. Biting my lip to suppress my gasp when I found it, I felt that bright, warm energy spreading through my limbs.

I’m sorry I can’t help you, I told it, I told her. Devina’s soul was lingering in this world. That was what I believed. Because her brother would not let her go, for whatever reason.

It shamed me that I hadn’t even tried to help her. Every time I’d wanted to bring up Devina’s request, my throat had closed tight and I couldn’t force the words out.

It was reckless but I leaned down over Davik and brushed my lips across his. A whisper of a kiss, barely there. A goodbye.

Before I could second-guess myself, without looking at Davik again, I treaded softly to the entrance of the voliki, ducking under the flap and out into the darkness of early morning.

The horde was quiet. They were all tired and asleep after the long journey west. A blessing, perhaps, because it meant that I could roam through the horde unseen, my boots crunching over earth silently as I wound my way towards the pyroki pen.

I knew the ones that were unbonded to Dakkari. I wouldn’t dare try to steal a bonded pyroki, so I’d paid careful attention to the enclosure upon our return a couple hours earlier. The ones unmarked with golden paint were not bonded. And thus, fair game.

Most pyroki were lying on the ground, their four long limbs tucked underneath them carefully, some huddled together in groups, while some preferred to sleep alone.

I spied Nillima, who slept apart from the rest. Her head rose when she saw me and even in my state of grief and despair and anxiousness, a small, sad smile pulled at my lips when she sharply turned her head away, as if pretending she didn’t see me.

“Take care of him,” I whispered to her as I passed, running my fingers across her scaled neck, though she made a sound of protest.

The mrikro, the pyroki master, was nowhere to be seen and so I set my eyes on an unmarked pyroki, sleeping towards the fence of the enclosure. It lifted its head to regard me as I approached. I felt no fear as I ran my palm over its snout, though it chuffed in confusion.

It stood, towering over me on four legs, stamping its clawed feet into the ground, tossing its neck.

I stroked its snout, determination rising.

“I need your help,” I whispered. “Will you help me?”

There was something to be said about the intelligence of pyrokis…and I knew the Dakkari revered them for a reason.

I could understand it now. I even swore the pyroki understood me, or understood my desperate plea. Because in the next moment, it bowed its front legs forward, allowing me to scramble over its back before it rose to full height again.

“Thank you,” I whispered to the pyroki, setting my sights on the gate that separated the encampment from the plains.

I took a deep breath in. A part of me had expected to feel like I had while staring at the glittering turrets in Dothik weeks ago. Frightened beyond belief so that I physically trembled with it.

I felt fear, no doubt, but it wasn’t the same. It was…inevitable fear, but I would not let it deter me.

“Vir drak,” I whispered to the pyroki.

Chapter Forty-One

“Davik!”

I jerked from sleep, hearing my name echo from my sister’s lips, my breath heaving and a cold sweat pouring from me as I sat up in the furs.

But my mind was playing tricks on me. Again. Because it hadn’t been my sister’s voice, it had been Hedna’s, my pujerak, who had ducked his head inside my voliki and was regarding me from the entrance.

“Drokka,” he was saying. “Another thesper arrived.”

My heart slowed in my chest and immediately, I looked over to my left. I stilled, seeing Vienne was not in the furs with me, a frown pulling at my scar.

“Lysi, I will come now,” I told him, wondering what I had dreamed and why I felt such dread inside me. “Have you seen my kalles?”

Hedna’s shook his head. “Nik. Is she your kalles now?”

I knew what he asked. “Lysi,” I murmured, rising from my furs, pulling up my trews.

“So you will finally take a Morakkari?” Hedna asked quietly. “Another vekkiri Morakkari, at that,” he commented, knowing two other Vorakkars had also taken them as their queens. “Perhaps I should find a vekkiri for myself.”

“The thesper just arrived?” I asked, not wanting to speak of this now. It would be announced to the horde soon regardless. I kept my gaze on his as I strapped the holster, which contained my daggers, across my chest before shrugging on a fur cloak. The mornings were still crisp, though the cold season was long behind us. “From Dothik or one of the hordes?”

Looking back at the empty bed, I couldn’t help the frown that pulled at my lips but I stepped outside with my pujerak, my gaze scanning the encampment, looking for signs of a small, white-haired female.

I realized…I didn’t like waking up without her beside me. It made me restless, like my blood was buzzing under my skin again. She was like a drug, one I needed every morning, every afternoon, every night…and possibly all the other moments in between.

“The thesper is from the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala,” Hedna told me.

That made me glance sharply over at him. “Rath Kitala?”

“Lysi. I have not read it yet.”

That could not be good. The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala had made it no secret that he disliked me.

Quickly, we made our way to the council’s voliki, though only Hedna and I were present as I unwrapped the thin parchment the thesper had brought.

My lips thinned, anger rising when I read the words.

“Well?”

“He will be here by tonight. He sent the thesper as a courtesy,” I said, balling up the parchment and throwing it across the table. “He fears for my kalles’ wellbeing under my protection.”

That insult burned, stoking my temper, but I knew he had reason to be wary. He’d walked in on us in my private rooms in Dothik, after all, with her straddling my lap as I bit at her neck. She’d been afraid of me then.

My cock thickened with the memory—as I knew it would, considering I was so fucked in the head. But Vienne made me burn in an entirely different way. Back in Dothik, she’d been fearful of me, lysi. I’d ensured that.

But she’d also been curious about me. Now I knew how deep that curiosity ran and all the things she did to me with that curiosity and that was what aroused me.

My claws scraped into the wood of the council’s table as Hedna regarded me.

“Shall I have volikis prepared?”

“Nik,” I said. “Rath Kitala can sleep on his pyroki for all I care.”

Hedna shook his head but he was all too used to the feuds of Vorakkars. Very few of us actually liked one another. All of us were too busy pissing over our respective territories for the season. All of us were so accustomed to being in charge of our own hordes, to leading in our own ways, that it was a wonder there hadn’t been more bloody battles between us all over the years.

“And what would your intended queen say about that?” Hedna asked, hitching a brow, smirking.

I stiffened, though the thought sent a strange, foreign thrill through me. Something that felt strangely like anticipation.

Vienne would frown at me if she knew I’d made the Vorakkar sleep outside my horde, especially Rath Kitala, who had come to her aid in Dothik. She wouldn’t have to say a word to show her disapproval. I would feel it, just as I would feel her soft heart, whereas mine was made of unyielding Dakkari steel.

I growled. “Prepare five volikis for the Vorakkar and the darukkars who travel with him but no more.”

My heart felt warm again and I scratched at my chest, not sure I liked the feeling, though I knew Vienne had given it to me. She’d placed it there like a gift but sometimes it felt more like a curse. It felt like my heart had been locked away and only she would be able to access it.

“They will not be here long anyways,” I found myself needing to add.

Hedna held his hands up, though his smirk never left. “I did not say a word, Vorakkar.”

I growled again, already turning towards the entrance, intent on finding my kalles. I thought she must be walking around the horde. She’d liked to do that with Lokkaru. I’d seen them multiple times together in the past week.

Just thinking about Lokkaru and my leikavi sent a pang shooting through my chest. I thumped it with my fist to make it disappear faster.

“Should I send a reply?” Hedna asked before I left. “Or will you?”

I paused, knowing I should. “Vok,” I murmured under my breath, my hand already reaching behind me for my dagger so I could cut a strip of parchment to return with the thesper.

When my hand grasped at air, where I knew with certainty that one of my daggers should be, I froze.

Nik, impossible. I would not have misplaced it. Every day, I wore them. Every night, I carefully ensured they were sheathed when I removed them. They’d been a gift from my sister, after all. I remembered her giving them to me. She thought they would make me feel better after our horde had fallen, after we’d been forced to return to Dothik. Her eyes had been sad but hopeful as she’d watched me unsheath them.

I’d hated them on sight because they reminded me that we were not in the wild lands any longer. I’d remembered that she’d wanted to return to Dothik, that she was happy to be in the capital city, among the bustling and excitement and luxuries.

A part of me had hated her when she’d given them to me, had hated the hope in her eyes because she’d wanted me to like them, she’d wanted me to like Dothik, our new life.

I’d hated the daggers then. Now, they were what I cherished most.

I would not have been careless with them.

My mind stumbled on another possibility and my heart stopped with cold, cold dread.

“What is it?” Hedna asked.

“You have not seen her at all this morning?” I asked carefully. Something was wrong. I could feel it.

“Nik,” he replied instantly. My pujerak straightened, hearing something in my tone that only he would recognize. “What is wrong, Drokka? Where is she?”

But I was already storming from the voliki, tossing the flaps back with a violent shove.

“Look for her!” I commanded my pujerak, gesturing at him to take the south side of the encampment while I headed north.

Nik, she is here. She has to be, I told myself, even as I raced through my horde, my eyes scanning every inch of it that was visible.

Every moment I didn’t see her, didn’t sense her, I grew more and more panicked. Rage and fear were beginning to blacken my mind, those familiar emotions that had protected it from fracturing all these years.

My eyes alighted on Lokkaru’s voliki, which had not been broken down yet, which would stand for the rest of the season in memory of her. A tendril of hope passed through my chest and I reached it quickly, ducking my head inside.

“Vienne—”

It was empty. Dark. Cold. The columns of the blue-colored candles they’d made together sat discarded on Lokkaru’s workbench. It smelled of kuveri but I scented the lingering of death and it made bile rise in my throat.

Hedna found me when I stumbled back from the empty voliki.

His brows were furrowed, his features concerned. “I did not see her anywhere.”

“Vok,” I said, trying to think. I stood still, closing my eyes, trying to regulate my breath and the frantic beating of my heart.

Then her words came to me. Words she’d whispered last night as she emerged from sleep.

You’ve known. You’ve known this entire time.

Unease slid down my chest, settling in my belly.

“The mrikro,” I rasped, already turning to the pyroki enclosure. Hedna was fast on my heels and we found the mrikro mucking out the enclosure. He straightened when he saw me, alarm entering his gaze. I wondered what I looked like to cause him such immediate wariness. “Are there any pyroki missing?”

The mrikro immediately swung his gaze to the enclosure.

Surely, she wouldn’t try to venture into the wild lands on foot. Surely, she knew she wouldn’t get far.

I waited impatiently, pacing alongside the fence like a beast. Even the pyrokis closest to me began to back away, as if they sensed something dangerous and feral in me as I waited for the mrikro to do his counts.

“One is gone, Vorakkar,” the mrikro said, his voice soft. Shocked. His eyes were wide as he turned to me. “A young, unbonded pyroki. A female. They were all here when we returned from the burial. On Kakkari, I swear it.”

Hedna clasped the mrikro’s shoulder, smoothing over the older Dakkari’s distress because I was in no state to do it.

“Why would she leave?” Hedna asked, still hovering beside the mrikro, who wouldn’t quite meet my gaze.

Because she felt like she had no choice, I knew. Because I’d given her none.

Vok!

My mind was on the verge of splitting and I needed to be present. I couldn’t dwell on the fact that she’d somehow figured out my betrayal, or that she was alone in the wild lands with only my dagger for protection, or that she’d knowingly left me, perhaps with the knowledge that I would never see her again.

She was unprotected. In danger. I knew that Ghertun still lurked. I knew that she would not abandon her family to the Dead Mountain and yet, I had done nothing to help her, to assuage her fears that all would be well.

Vienne was seeking the heartstone blindly on the back of an untrained pyroki, in the dangerous wild lands of the east.

She couldn’t know the direction of the ancient groves. Or could she? Had Lokkaru said something to her in her last days, something that Vienne had pieced together?

Or…had she dreamed the memory of when Lokkaru had told me the heartstone’s location?

“Send darukkars in all directions,” I told Hedna, already striding into the pyroki enclosure. “Have them ride out for a full day looking for her.”

“I will. And you?” Hedna asked, his jaw tight.

Nillima came to me and I swung up on her back. I didn’t even have my sword with me but there was no time to spare and I couldn’t waste another moment. Every second she was in the wild lands alone risked her life and that knowledge filled me with cold, icy fear. Fear I hadn’t felt since I’d watched my sister die.

“I will find her,” I said quietly but my words were meant as a reassurance for myself.

Nillima bolted forward on my command and she sprinted through the gates until we were out on the plains.

I set my gaze west, towards where Lokkaru was buried, the direction we’d just come from in the early hours of morning. Vienne couldn’t be that far ahead of me and Nillima was one of the fastest pyrokis in the horde.

“I will find her,” I said again.

Then I couldn’t help but think: What if she doesn’t want to be found?

Chapter Forty-Two

The ancient groves were darkly beautiful. Eerie. Quiet. Yet, there was a calmness, a sense of peace that weaved around the towering black trees, that threaded through the black vines hanging down from their branches, and gave that seemingly endless place a strange warmth that was entirely unexpected.

Only, it was warmth I couldn’t quite feel as I urged my pyroki into the ancient groves’ depths and darkness. I had been riding since the early hours of morning and now the moon was hanging overhead, a constant reminder that I was dangerously close to failure. To death. Death that I had felt begin to creep up on me as the day dragged, as my furious heart seemed to pump and thicken the poison running through my veins even faster.

The pain had started, a couple days earlier than I had anticipated. Though it was night now and I could barely see a few feet in front of the pyroki guiding me through the groves, I knew that the veins in my right arm were completely blackened and were steadily trailing up to my shoulder, across my neck.

As I’d always known, the symptoms of the vovic would come on fast. It had been weeks since my last dose. So, in reality, the pain was right on time. It was me that was late.

I trailed my fingers over the pyroki’s scaled neck, feeling the muscles underneath shift with its gentle but hesitant trots.

“There is nothing to fear here,” I whispered down to the creature. I didn’t know how I knew that but I did. Perhaps it was Lokkaru’s own knowledge. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the heartstone kept this land cleared of threat, of danger.

It was not the groves I feared.

My body was aching all over. I had pyroki burn between my thighs where I straddled its back. My back was tight and sore. My arms shook from holding onto the pyroki’s thick neck.

The burning in my arm had started, making the muscles seize tight, a hotness that scalded me, though I shivered from cold. The vovic was trailing across my neck and soon it would lodge in my chest, in my belly, my womb, my legs. I would feel it in the strands of my hair, in the tips of my toes. It was merciless and unyielding.

“Draki,” I urged the pyroki, repeating words I’d heard Davik speak, and the beast’s trots quickened, weaving around trees that I only saw as they passed us by.

I steered the pyroki by nudging its neck and I guided it in the direction I knew the heartstone lay. I knew these groves like the back of my hand. Lokkaru had to have spent an ample amount of time here to give me such a map. I wished that I had asked her about her life more, about why she’d lived in the wild lands, alone, for so long. If she’d ever been scared. If that fear was perhaps why she’d chosen to journey to Dothik, to steal fruits from the Dothikkar’s garden to sell on the streets…which was how she’d inevitably met Davik.

I wondered if she’d ever been in love but then I pushed that thought away with force when it brought another prickling of pain to my chest.

My pyroki and I traveled through the ancient groves for most of the night and I knew that we were drawing near when I heard the familiar trickling of a small stream. A stream that we followed, a stream that my exhausted pyroki drank from, a stream that I wanted to drink from but feared I was too weak to climb onto her back again once I finished.

Pain spasmed in my wrist and arm, making me bite my lip, making my eyes water. It was a throbbing kind of pain, but it was manageable. Soon, it would come in waves, each more intense than the last, until those waves would end and then it would be constant…building, building, building until my heart gave out.

The closer we came to the tree, the more the ground seemed to hum underneath us. My pyroki paused every now and again until I urged her back into motion, as if uncertain what we were about the stumble upon, as if her instincts warned her away.

But my instincts pushed us forward and soon, I felt relief pierce me when I saw blue light glowing in the distance. Soft at first, just a hint that there was something hidden there. As we drew closer and closer, it grew brighter and brighter, until I could actually see the trees around us, massive trunks so wide I was surprised I could see around them, their skin black with age.

There was only one tree I was seeking, however, and a few moments later, as my pyroki passed underneath a heavy curtain of vines hanging down from branches…I found it.

A sob tore from my throat, relief so potent and bright that it briefly banished the pain.

It was just like in my dream. Just like in Lokkaru’s memory. It had changed, however. It was wider, taller, its branches fuller and laden with white leaves whose veins glowed blue. That was where the blue light was coming from. Its leaves. Thousands of them, spread across its black, strong branches. The stream ended at its trunk.

Nourishing it. Feeding it until it grew strong.

I patted the pyroki’s neck as we stopped in front of it. With great effort, I managed to swing my leg over its back and slide to the ground, though I fell to my knees on the moss-covered earth. It was soft and cushioned my fall. I had the stray thought that I could just curl up in the moss and sleep forever, that I could die in this place and no one would ever find me.

A sense of loneliness hit me, so hard that I almost gasped as my eyes filled with tears. I didn’t think it was all my own. This clearing, as beautiful and safe as it felt, cut off from the outside world, felt sad.

Had Lokkaru’s emotions lingered in this place? Had her mother’s? Or perhaps they were her father’s?

On shaking legs, I walked forward, sensing that my pyroki lay down on the moss to rest behind me. I craned my neck up but the tree was so large that it blocked the night sky and any hint of the moon I’d come to hate.

The bark looked like skin, papery and thin, but dark and weathered with age. And beneath that skin, the trunk seemed to glow not only blue, but gold. I swore I could see the individual layers of the bark underneath, each as thin as the last.

When I pressed my hand to the trunk, it felt warm. It throbbed like a heartbeat as I snatched my hand away, surprised, disturbed.

The heartstone was inside, or so I assumed. I could see its glow, its beckoning, its taunting. An unseen wind picked up in the clearing, rustling through my hair and chilling me to the bone, though my skin felt clammy and hot. I grappled for the dagger I’d stolen from Davik, peering down at it in the blue light that glowed from the leaves.

Its handle was made of black bone, intricately carved in swirling words of Dakkari that I couldn’t read, but I swore that those same words were tattooed into Davik’s skin. Longing made my heart squeeze tight. I smoothed my fingertips over the words, just as I had over Davik’s flesh, tracing those tattoos though I hadn’t known what they meant.

He would know I was gone by now. Night had fallen long ago. He would come after me if he hadn’t already. And I needed to be long gone from this place by the time he did. If he found me again, he wouldn’t let me go. I wouldn’t have the willpower, or the mental strength, to leave him again if I felt those arms around me.

With that thought in mind, though every part of me wanted to wait for him here, I wedged the dagger into the tree, grunting with the effort. The trunk was sturdy and hard, despite its appearance, and I felt my strike reverberate up my arm and ring in my brittle bones until I thought they might shatter.

My grip wasn’t strong enough, however. My arm was weakened from the vovic and my long ride on the pyroki. The dagger fell to the ground. That small action had winded me and I gasped for breath as I stooped to pick it up.

When I raised my arm to strike again, I paused, my lips parting as I saw liquid began to drip down the wound in the tree.

Blood.

Golden, shimmering blood that ran down its papery thin skin like a caress.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, my mind yelled.

Frozen, I could only stare as more dripped from it, weeping down that old tree in that ancient place.

A thought came to me and slowly I lowered the dagger. My gift hadn’t worked on Nillima, Davik’s pyroki, but I needed to understand this.

Gathering the energy of my power before me, I slowly pressed it forward, reaching out my hand towards the blood to ground it. It was hot, seeping over my hand, and I wanted to recoil in horror but I held my palm firm.

As always, my gift felt like dipping my hand into a cool stream. There was slight resistance and underneath the surface, it always felt a little strange, hushed and quiet and hazy.

I imagined doing that now as I closed my eyes. I pushed forward, seeking, scared but determined to find something.

My gift touched on something.

Something powerful, something ancient.

Oh gods!

Intense pain made my body contort as that connection sizzled in my mind. I might have screamed but I heard no sound, only the beating of a heart that I knew came from this tree, this creature. But that beating heart suddenly turned into thousands, no millions, billions of heartbeats, and I heard every single one pound in my veins, filling them, heating them until I thought I would die from this and not from the vovic after all.

Lokkaru had said the heartstone was dangerous. Now, I knew why. It was because Kakkari was alive in it. It was her pain, billions and billions of pains from billions and billions of souls, that I felt.

Then, all at once, that pain left me.

That connection softened. For a moment, I couldn’t remember anything at all. Who I was. What I was. Why I was here. As if it had been seared from my mind.

When that knowledge returned to me in a rush, I saw everything. I saw my family, our old home in our village, I saw the canopy of trees of the forest behind our village, light dappling between the leaves. I saw my father, my mother, my grandmother, my siblings. Strong Maxen, kind Eli, and beautiful Viola. I saw my life as it had been and then I saw my life as it had become. The Ghertun, the darkness of the Dead Mountain, the bitter taste of the vovic as it slid down my throat, coating it thickly, my sister’s haunted, sightless gaze, my mother’s desperation, and my brothers’ anger.

Then I saw Davik. His red eyes burning, that dark grin curling, those wicked hands touching me and making me feel too many things. I saw him watching me as I slept. I saw him frowning, looking at me like I was this thing he couldn’t figure out. He touched his chest, rubbing it as if it pained him, and then he pulled me closer to him as I slept.

Then I saw Devina, forever tied to him, watching us both from a place that we could not journey to. Not yet. A place in between, neither here nor there. I felt her sorrow, felt it choke me until I couldn’t breathe. Then, underneath, I felt her love and it helped pull me away. It was that love that pierced the veil that I had somehow found myself wrapped within, like the veil that had covered Lokkaru’s face in death.

With a choked cry, I wrenched my hand from the tree. The world around me seemed to whoosh against me, enclosing me. I heard the trickle of the stream. I heard the pyroki’s calm breaths as she slept. My fingers shimmered gold, the blood of the tree trailing down my palm.

That was the last thing I remembered seeing before blackness, like a curtain closing, shrouded my vision.

I collapsed against the tree, the heartbeat of the heartstone throbbing in my ears.

Chapter Forty-Three

I woke to a nudge.

My eyes opened slowly to hot pain pinning me to the ground. A cold snout was brushing against my arm and I saw the pyroki standing above me, nosing the rations of dried meat in a pouch attached to my belt. Rations I hadn’t eaten on the journey to the ancient groves because I simply hadn’t been hungry.

I tensed against the pain, which only made it worse. It felt like I was being branded by the Ghertun all over again except that hot poker was pressed against every inch of my flesh.

I willed my arm to move and tears leaked down my face as I detached the pouch, opening it and spreading the rations on the moss-covered ground beside me.

The pyroki ate immediately, gobbling up the small amount, as I looked above me. I was lying on my back at the base of the tree. It was night but I knew it wasn’t the same night. I’d been asleep again. Lost.

My mouth was dry, my lips cracked. Nausea built in my belly and now that I was awake, the bile rose and burned in my throat. Above me, the spot where I had dug Davik’s dagger into the tree was closed and healed…as if it had never been. As if what had happened when I’d used my gift on the tree had never been. As if Devina’s interference had never been.

I didn’t understand it. I didn’t understand anything—I was slowly beginning to recognize that. Lokkaru had been right. There were things in this universe that were beyond explanation and logic. Things that lurked and things that ached, like a festering wound.

I thought of Maman right then.

I thought of the way she had sometimes looked at me when she thought I couldn’t see. The fear in her eyes. Frightened of my gift, frightened of what it meant that she’d given life to me. Yet, she loved me. Deeply. Always.

The vovic was thickening. My limbs felt swollen with it. The fatigue was setting in. Another night had fallen. I’d slept the day away.

I had the familiar sense that I’d dreamed Davik’s memories again. Only whatever I’d dreamed had been…

Whatever I had dreamed made my mind feel numb. An ache had built in my breast. I swore I could still hear his cries, his choked, labored breathing. I knew it had something to do with Devina, with her death, perhaps.

Vomit rose in my throat and I managed to turn over, emptying bile onto the moss. My stomach cramped as tears streaked my face.

The only sounds in the clearing were the humming of the tree and the pyroki nibbling at the moss, searching for the last remnants of rations.

Then something pierced that quiet hush. Echoing towards me, though it still sounded far away.

“Vienne!”

I would recognize that voice anywhere.

“Vienne!”

I wondered how long he’d been searching for me.

Then Devina’s voice whispered in my mind, Perhaps his entire life.

I didn’t even tense when I felt her presence nearby. I didn’t even question it that I could hear her, that she could speak to me now, unbound by dreams. After everything I’d felt and experienced during my lifetime—and especially in the last month—how could I think anything was beyond the realm of possibility?

Because nothing was.

Hold on, Vienne, Devina whispered as I closed my eyes. Hold on and I will bring him to you.

Chapter Forty-Four

It had been nearly two days since Vienne left my horde and I was no closer to finding her.

The constant panic and worry made me want to bellow with rage. I felt like a feral beast, pacing in its cage, as I pushed Nillima harder, guiding her through the ancient groves that I had been searching endlessly since last night.

Nillima was reaching her breaking point. I knew that. I’d pushed her hard.

“Please,” I begged her, my rough voice filling the glen. Black trees surrounded us like guardians to this place. “Please, Nillima, we need to find her.”

Nillima’s pace quickened, as if she heard the desperation in my voice.

But another stretch of time passed and there was only more forest. Even with Lokkaru’s words ringing in my mind, even with what she’d told me about how to find the heartstone, we were lost. Completely lost.

It was as if the forest shifted around us, creating a new path for us to journey down, as if to lead us away. We went in circles and yet, no place seemed familiar. It was an eerie, spine-chilling place, an ever-changing place, and I’d purposefully not peered into the shadows too closely as we passed them because I knew what I would find.

Agony burst in my chest when we circled around again. The moon peeked through the canopy of vines and branches and silver light exploded in the clearing.

“Help me!” I roared. “Kakkari, help me!”

But Kakkari had no reason to help me.

Though I was a Vorakkar, a horde king of Dakkar, Kakkari had not listened to my prayers for some time.

Nillima’s breaths were ragged. My heart felt like it was close to bursting. I stilled Nillima and she took her brief reprieve gladly. Closing my eyes, I pieced back the fractured edges of my mind that had wandered as we had roved. I needed to be whole right now. I would never find Vienne if I wasn’t.

“Help me find her,” I whispered and then I felt the familiar prickling on the back of my neck. Something that had always happened when my sister was near. Once, it had been a comfort. Then it had become a fear.

But now?

I opened my gaze, seeking hers in the shadows once the moonlight disappeared.

“Devina,” I rasped, my heartbeat thudding in my throat. “Help me.”

I would try anything. Before, I had feared this. But now I needed to give into that fear, to accept what a part of me had perhaps always known, if I was to find Vienne again. If I was to ever see her again, hold her again.

“I have only ever wanted to help you, brother,” Devina’s voice came.

I saw her eyes glowing in the darkness. My own. Her mouth moved but I heard her words as if they had been whispered right into my ear.

As always, seeing her felt like a dagger plunged into my chest. That ache that would always be there throbbed like an open wound, one that had not closed with time, one that had rotted with time.

She was standing at the base of a tree. Nillima’s neck had raised, her head turning towards my sister, as if she sensed a presence there too.

Seeing Devina was a reminder that I had failed her. That I had not protected her. That I had not been there for my family as they were slaughtered in the darkness of the night while I’d been…elsewhere.

“The veil is thin now,” Devina said. “I do not have much time this night. Come. Hurry.”

The veil?

I didn’t hesitate. Devina didn’t walk or run. Her face and body flickered here and there, appearing again when I thought I’d lost her, turning me this way and that way through the endless forest.

“Through here,” she whispered, standing next to a stream that I had never heard nor remembered seeing before. Devina vanished and I urged Nillima to follow the stream down, scanning the darkness in front of us for a sign of my sister.

That was when I saw it. Up ahead, a steady blue glow had begun to lighten the trees.

“Vienne!” I bellowed.

My breathing went even more ragged. Nillima seemed to realize what I did and her pace sped.

The glow grew brighter and brighter the closer we came. And then we were there, bursting through a dark curtain of vines that shielded whatever lay beyond it and I held my hand up to block the flooding of light that made my eyes burn after I had been in darkness for so long.

“Vienne!”

I saw her lying at the base of a weathered tree, its leaves glowing blue. The pyroki that she had taken from the horde was lying at her side and its head popped up to regard us suspiciously when we entered the clearing.

Devina was standing over Vienne but her face seemed blurred. Unfocused. Her mouth moved but I heard no words. Her gaze was frustrated, sad. She touched her heart with two fingers, held them out towards me—a gesture that I knew conveyed her love, one she’d often done—and then she was gone.

“Vienne,” I rasped, jumping down off Nillima and running towards her. “Nik, nik, nik.”

When I dropped to my knees beside her, my heart simply froze in my chest. It went dead cold because my first thought was that I was too late.

But when I saw her eyes flicker behind her closed lids, relief swarmed me so heavily that I got dizzy with it.

“Leikavi,” I said, pressing my forehead to hers. “Wake up. Please. Let me see your eyes. I need to see them.”

Pulling away, I looked down at her. Her veins were darkened and black, making my brows draw together in panicked confusion. I remembered seeing the ones on her wrist, but I’d believed her when she told me they were an after-effect of her gift.

But this?

They traveled up her arms, over her neck, and were slowly building up over her face. When I pulled back her cloak, when I lifted her tunic, I saw they were trailing over her breasts, her abdomen, creeping downwards. I lifted one leg of the trews she’d stolen from my chest and saw those veins circling her ankles like shackles.

“What is this?” I growled to myself, my lungs tight, the air thin. This couldn’t be from her gift alone.

My gaze went to the tree. The tree that Lokkaru had told me grew from her father’s body. The tree that had a heartstone nourishing it, feeding it, making it more and more powerful. More and more dangerous too, I knew.

It couldn’t have done this. Her veins had begun to blacken long before this moment.

“Everything will be all right, leikavi,” I told her, though it also sounded like a reassurance to myself. “I will fix this. I swear it to you.”

I needed to get her back to my horde. And soon. The healer…he could help her. He would know what this was, though I had never seen anything like it. I had to believe—

The Ghertun.

I froze.

The Ghertun scout, from the pack we’d tracked and killed close to the horde, had said, “It will take her quickly once it sets in. You will watch her die.”

He’d died from his own wounds before he’d said anything more.

This…this was the Ghertun’s doing?

Everything suddenly pieced together in my mind. Vienne’s fear, her continued urgency in returning to the Dead Mountain before the black moon—a short amount of time that all the Vorakkars had thought strange. I had thought it was her family that she’d worried for. While that was certainly true—for I knew how deeply she loved and cared for them—perhaps what she had feared most was death taking her before she could help them.

Vok, I thought, disbelief and guilt and sorrow swarming me.

By keeping her away from the heartstone, by selfishly dragging out my time with her, I had unknowingly been pushing her closer and closer to this.

An anguished bellow tore from my throat, leaving my breath ragged and my voice hoarse. I heard that bellow echo around the clearing. I heard it boom up the trunk of the tree, thread through the glowing leaves, and drift up to the dark night sky.

“I am sorry, leikavi,” I whispered, pressing the words into her flesh, as if they would heal this. “I am so sorry. Forgive me.”

I would do whatever it took to fix this. I would do whatever it took to save her.

She stirred in my arms, waking with tears in her eyes as she blinked up at me.

“D-Davik?” she whispered, her voice strained and hoarse. Her lips were dry. Her face was so pale that it was almost translucent, all of her rosy color leeched from her cheeks.

“I’m here, Vienne,” I rasped quietly.

“Devina,” she whispered and I swallowed at the sound of my sister’s name on her lips. “Devina was here. She—”

Her words cut off when her eyes squeezed shut and her back bowed slightly. All the muscles in her body went tense in my arms as more tears leaked down her temples.

“Leikavi,” I growled. “Tell me how to help you!”

When her breath seemed to return to her, her words sounded rushed. “S-she wants you to let her go, Davik. Let her go.”

My brows drew together, her words striking something deep within me, something unyielding.

“We will speak of this later, rei kassiri,” I told her. “I promise. I will tell you everything. But I will see you well first.”

I lifted her into my arms and she let out a small, sobbing cry, telling me she was in deep, deep pain. It made me want to kill something. It made that dangerous thing rise in my chest. That rage, that anger. Yet, I pushed it down. I let it burn and sizzle in my belly but I did not let it take control of me. I would be strong. I would be strong and present for her.

Because right now, she was all that mattered.

“It’s starting,” she whispered when she caught her breath. “Davik—”

Her muscles tensed in my arms again but then she went limp. I could only breathe again when I felt her heartbeat thud against me. She was alive. For now. But she was weak and in extreme pain.

What was starting, exactly?

Looking up at the tree, I hesitated. Then I laid her gently back down on the moss, grateful that she was sleeping.

Something glinted in the blue light and I saw my dagger lying at the base of the trunk. I scooped it up, weighing it in my palm, and then with a grunt I plunged it into the tree.

Forgive me, Lokkaru, but I will do whatever it takes to save her, I thought, tearing through the bark, peeling back the layers of it until my claws were bloodied. I didn’t feel the pain, however. I felt determination rising.

Nothing would stop me from seeing her well. And as I dug into the tree, as I tore at the grave of Lokkaru’s father, as I desecrated this living thing that Kakkari herself had blessed, I knew that if Vienne died…I might not be able to survive it. The loss of her.

I saw the glow of the heartstone before my fingers found it. I touched it and it was searing hot, pulsing in my hand, smaller than I’d anticipated. I tore it from the tree, my jaw gritted. I barely even looked at it before I shoved it into the waistband of my trews, securing it tightly in the pouch that rested against my skin…because it might be the only thing that could save her now.

My blood smeared her skin when I scooped her up carefully and led her over to Nillima. Her pyroki followed, staying close to her side. The heartstone burned into me, a constant reminder.

I needed it.

Because if all else failed, just like Lokkaru’s father had done, I would use it to save Vienne.

“I will see you well, leikavi,” I vowed to her quietly, in that sacred, frightening place. “I swear it.”

Chapter Forty-Five

As the sun sank into the sky the following evening, I finally caught sight of my horde.

But what I found did nothing to release the tension inside me. It only added to it.

Rath Kitala had arrived. His darukkars and their pyrokis were camped outside the walls, most standing around fire basins as some of the bikku from my horde wove in and around, offering platters of food for their evening meals.

Not only that…but I saw the Killup had arrived as well. A smaller group than Rath Kitala’s, they were led by the same male I’d encountered with Vienne after I’d slaughtered his pack of jrikkia. The same male I’d bargained with, who was here to hold up his end of that bargain. The Killup didn’t eat meat so the bikku that were trying to feed them seemed flustered and unsure when they approached them with separate platters.

“Vok,” I cursed but I couldn’t worry about either group right now.

Vienne had been in my arms through the night and all through the day. It had been the longest day of my entire life, no doubt. When she woke, it had only been for brief moments. I would trickle water between her dry lips and she would try to speak…saying more about Devina, murmuring something about the heartstone, before she passed out from the waves of pain that were becoming more and more frequent.

The black veins had nearly spread over her entire body. I feared whatever the Ghertun had been giving her would consume her soon.

With that thought in mind, I turned towards the Killup, Nillima grunting and huffing with her sustained effort, the pyroki that Vienne had taken close behind us. The mrikro would feed them and care for them well tonight. They both deserved a much-needed rest.

The leader of the Killup stood when he saw me approach, his face impassive, his movements graceful and fluid. I didn’t bother with pleasantries. The Killup’s gaze went to Vienne as I passed him and I rasped, “She needs help.”

I didn’t bother to wait. I raced through the gates of my horde, which had already been alerted to my arrival. The tension was high. I could feel it. My horde was confused and wary of another Vorakkar so close—of Rath Kitala and his warriors—and of the foreign group of Killup, especially when I had disappeared for days after sending a search party out for Vienne.

I heard the gasps of the horde when they saw Vienne, clutched in my arms. Hedna darted out from the council voliki, followed by Rath Kitala, who looked on with bewildered confusion that morphed to concern when he saw the vekkiri in my arms.

“Bring me the healer,” I ordered to Hedna, who immediately inclined his head in a nod and raced towards Betrika’s—the healer’s—voliki towards the middle of the horde. I guided Nillima towards my own voliki before sliding down her side, Vienne firmly clutched in my arms.

“Thank you, Nillima,” I rasped to my pyroki. My most loyal friend, who would have my eternal gratitude.

Vienne woke with a cry when we hit the ground, the impact jarring her bones, which she’d said felt like they were breaking when she woke once on our return home. I growled, that same feeling of helplessness tearing at my chest. I wanted to take this pain from her. I never wanted her to feel a single slice of pain again. I never wanted her to fear anything again. I wanted to take it all for her. I wanted to protect her, to keep her safe…to love her.

“We are here, leikavi,” I murmured, seeing the mrikro out of the corner of my eye running towards Nillima and Vienne’s pyroki. I nodded at him. “Care for them well, mrikro.”

“Lysi, Vorakkar,” he replied but I was already turning away, my legs eating up the distance to my voliki.

Once inside, I carefully laid Vienne down on the bed of furs and even that pained her. Now that she was awake, her lips were parted, her eyes glassy. She caught my hand when I pulled away.

“Lysi, leikavi?” I rasped, hovering over her, smoothing back the strands of her white hair, which were beginning to cling to her forehead with her sweat.

“D-Dead Mountain,” she hissed, teeth gritted with pain. “Vovic.”

“Vovic?” I repeated, frowning.

Just then, the flaps at the entrance of my voliki pushed open, slapping against the hide. When I turned, I saw the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala entering, his golden eyes surveying Vienne carefully, his brows furrowing in disturbed astonishment.

Hedna entered next, coming to my side. “What happened?”

“Where’s the healer?” I rasped, pinching my temples when they throbbed.

“Coming.”

Sure enough, a few moments later, Betrika pushed into my voliki, scrambling inside without his boots on, looking at if he’d just awoken. He stilled when he saw Vienne, sprawled and writhing on the bed with black veins protruding from her skin.

His lips parted and his eyes flashed to me. My belly sank when I recognized the look in his eyes because it was no doubt what was mirrored in mine. He had no idea what this could be but he strode forward nonetheless.

I was trembling, I realized, and I began pacing as Betrika knelt at her side. Rath Kitala came to stand next to Hedna. Perhaps the Vorakkar had had every right to fear leaving Vienne in my possession.

Because now I was watching her die.

I bellowed my anguish to the domed ceiling, making Rath Kitala’s gaze cut sharply to mine, though Hedna and Betrika didn’t react. I felt that prickle at the back of my neck and immediately, my eyes swung to the shadows, searching, seeking.

They call me the Mad Horde King? I thought derisively. They have seen nothing yet.

“Where are you?” I asked. “Please.”

“Drokka,” Hedna said and I felt his hand on my arm. “Come, my friend, you need—”

I shook him off, wrenching my arm from his grip. Devina’s shadowed face flickered, her eyes glowing before they settled into the familiar red.

“How do I help her?” I asked my sister. The vision of her had to be real. How else would I have ever found Vienne? All this time, I had believed the shadows to be a fragment of my fractured mind. The descending madness that had plagued me my entire life.

But now…perhaps it wasn’t madness at all.

“I do not know,” Devina replied, those sad eyes seeming to cut right through my soul. “But your pain brought me here. I can feel it.”

“Tell me how to save her.”

“I do not know everything, Davik,” Devina replied. The blood began to bloom over her abdomen and her features drew together, as if she could feel it.

“You are dead,” I yelled, the ragged words torn from my throat, leaving cuts like blades, as my chest heaved. “You should know everything.”

“Drokka,” Hedna growled, stepping between Devina and myself. I knew he couldn’t see her. Only I could. Only I could see what lurked and haunted the shadows.

My eyes never left Devina but once again her words dropped away. Her mouth moved but I could no longer hear her.

“Nik, stay here!”

When she vanished again, I clutched my head in my hands, feeling my claws prick into my scalp.

“Vorakkar,” came Betrika’s voice. When I swung around to face him, I saw all eyes on me. Rath Kitala, Hedna, the healer, and Vienne’s. At the entrance of the voliki, the Killup leader had slipped inside. He was regarding me as well, his hands clasped tight behind his back, his face still stoic and impassive. Unreadable.

I went to Vienne, dropping on my knees beside the healer. Tears pooled in her gaze. “She left again, leikavi,” I told Vienne.

“I-I know,” she whispered. She flinched when I touched her skin and I snatched my hand back.

“Vorakkar,” Betrika said quietly, drawing my attention to him. “I do not know what this is.”

“Nik,” I said. “You must.”

Betrika swallowed, the sound audible. His eyes flickered to Rath Kitala, looming just behind me, and then to Hedna.

“I have never seen this before,” the healer told me carefully. “Perhaps it is a vekkiri disease, one—”

“It is vovic.”

The Killup’s quiet but stern voice cut through whatever the healer was going to say and then all eyes turned to him, standing alone at the entrance.

I rose as he approached. His gills flared when he saw Vienne. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rath Kitala tense, his hand straying to his sword at his side. The Killup had the ability to emit poison through their gills. No doubt that was what Rath Kitala feared.

“What is it?” I asked. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Vienne’s eyes had closed again, her back bowing. Cursing, I dropped beside her again, my hands hovering because I knew that it pained her when I touched her. “Vok!”

“It is a plant the Ghertun use to control their slaves,” the Killup said.

“A plant?” Rath Kitala asked, incredulous.

“A poison,” the Killup corrected, eyeing the other Vorakkar curiously, cocking his head to the side. When he saw the Vorakkar still had a hand on his sword, the Killup’s lips pressed together but he didn’t say anything about it.

“How do you know about this?” I rasped.

“Some time ago, one of our own escaped from the Dead Mountain, one that had been taken by the Ghertun, and returned to us,” the Killup said. “The first two weeks, they were well. Healthy. Relieved to be home, among their own.”

I counted the weeks in my head but the days blurred together. Vok, how long had it been since I’d been in Dothik? Since I’d first stumbled upon her late that one night?

“Then they started getting tired. Cold. The blood began to darken in their veins. Then came the pain. For many, many days.”

When I connected eyes with the Killup, I saw within him what I feared.

“How long does she have?” I grated.

“Without a dose?” the Killup asked. “At this stage, a few days. Maybe four. Then again, that is what happened to a Killup. She is human. It may be different.”

“How long have you known about this?” I growled, glaring at the Killup as Hedna subtly shifted between us. “You didn’t think to tell us about the vovic before this?”

My rage was misplaced. Even I knew that but it felt good coursing through me. An old friend.

The Killup never even blinked. With a calmness that I knew I would never possess, he pointed out, “Killup and Dakkari are not allies.” His gaze shifted to the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala briefly. “Nor are we enemies. We have an arrangement, one befitting both of us. Nothing more. Nothing less.”

“We have a common enemy,” Rath Kitala reminded him, his tone gruff.

“That is true,” the Killup amended, tilting his chin down. “Which is why I am here.”

That was when I remembered. Our agreement. The one I’d made with him in that dark forest after they’d ambushed Vienne and me on my return to the horde from Dothik.

The Killup had their own poison. One that paralyzed the Ghertun the moment it entered their bloodstream and prevented their wounds from clotting. The Killup had used it on me after all, though I’d responded to it differently than a Ghertun would.

The Killup sought a new home, far from the eastlands. In exchange for passage and protection, they would supply us with this poison to help in fighting the Ghertun if and when war came between us.

“If you have a poison that affects the Ghertun, perhaps you have a cure for this,” I rasped. “Or know of one.”

The Killup’s gaze flickered to my female. He’d been curious about her in the forest that night. It was perhaps why he’d called off his warriors…because of her.

“If we had a cure, we would have used it to save our own,” he said quietly. For the first time, I heard an emotion enter into his voice. Regret? “She died.”

My throat closed up, my nostrils flaring.

“What do you want from me?” I asked quietly. I saw Rath Kitala’s gaze cut to mine in surprise, a frown turning down his lips as he studied me. “I will give anything to save her.”

Rath Kitala stilled as the Killup’s head cocked and he regarded me carefully.

“You want my advice, Dakkari?” the Killup asked softly, stepping towards me. Dropping his voice, he murmured, “End her suffering now before it becomes too great.”

Rage whipped inside me like a lash across my insides. I’d been whipped and tortured and used before but I would gladly experience those things again if it meant never hearing those words from the Killup again.

“Step away from me before I kill you where you stand,” I hissed.

The Killup did as I asked, the tension spiking high in my voliki.

“The female who escaped the Dead Mountain,” the Killup said, “was my mate, Dakkari. I watched her die a painful death because I was too much of a coward to give her mercy. I could have eased her suffering,” his voice changed, going gruffer, his gills flaring, “had I been stronger.”

I stilled.

Everyone in the voliki did.

“We have something to ease her pain,” the Killup said after a long moment, his face unreadable once more, his voice evening out. “But there is only so much pain it can mask.”

I met his eyes.

I inclined my head.

“Thank you,” I rasped.

“If you will not take my advice, Dakkari,” the Killup said after another pause, “then you only have one option left.”

I knew what it was before he spoke.

“The Ghertun created the poison. Only they will have the cure. If one even exists.”

Chapter Forty-Six

When I woke next, I saw Davik dressing in front of his chests. My body felt strangely numb, my limbs tingling and heavy, but there was very little pain. A welcome relief, one I didn’t understand.

I watched him for a few moments in quiet, feeling my chest ache at the sight. His jaw was tight, his lips downturned into his familiar scowl. He was securing….armor? Hardened straps of leather that covered the entirety of his broad arms wrapped around them like the cuffs around his wrists. Over his chest, he wore a black tunic made of the same material that molded to him like a second skin.

His hair was tied back, exposing the sharpness of his features. After he secured the leather to his forearms, he bent, hurriedly pulling on his boots.

“Davik,” I whispered.

His head jerked towards me. We were alone. The voliki was quiet. The only sound was him dressing and the gentle, occasional crackles from the fire basin. I was warm, I realized, not freezing. I felt a sheen of sweat across my forehead, felt my hair sticking to the back of my neck underneath me.

Anything was better than that icy chill, however. That icy chill that seemed to scrape away at my bones from the inside out.

He approached me quickly, dropping down to his knees beside the bed of furs. The bed he had once called ‘ours.’

“Leikavi,” he rasped, reaching out to touch me before he hesitated. I remembered the pain of being touched as the vovic coursed in my veins but the pain was dampened now, a dull ache and nothing more.

My hand lifted and caught his wrist, my fingers sliding up until I could feel his calloused, rough palm, made from years and years with a sword in his grip, no doubt.

His forehead dropped to mine though he was careful with his weight. His lips brushed my nose, then my cheek, before he kissed my mouth and I sighed against him.

My voice was hoarse and scratchy as I asked, “What happened?”

I remembered the tree. I almost shuddered with that memory because it would forever be seared into my mind. I remembered…Devina? I remembered Davik, though only briefly. I didn’t remember how we’d returned to the horde.

“I found you,” he said. He paused. Then he said, “Nik. Actually, Devina led me to you. In the ancient groves.”

I stilled. He pulled back slightly so he could look down at my face. His palm smoothed back my hair, his touch so gentle that it made me want to cry. The expression in his eyes…that also made me want to cry.

“And how do you feel about that?” I whispered.

“I do not know,” he admitted gruffly. His eyes tracked over my face. “How long have you known?”

“That night…when you saw her in here.”

The night we’d first had sex. He remembered it.

“I felt something too, though I don’t see her the way you do,” I murmured, a million words bubbling up in my throat, words that I hadn’t been able to voice before. “She’s come to me though. She’s come to me in dreams. The shadows that you see, they are real. The shadows you have seen your entire life are not a result of madness. You have a gift. Just like I do. And you should not fear it. I think she wants you to understand that.”

He’d worked that out for himself, I saw. Though he didn’t quite see it as a gift. It was more like a curse to him, especially since his sister came to him the most.

I feared I didn’t have much time left and I wanted him to understand this before…whatever came next.

“Devina asked me to help her. To help you,” I whispered, my vision blurring with tears. “I just—I don’t know how.”

“What did she ask of you?” he rasped.

“Nothing,” I told him. “She just said that the both of you can never be whole unless you let go of her.”

His brows drew together, pained.

“She said she wants you to free her. That she thought I could help you do that, but I have no idea how. And I want to help…I want to help before it’s too late.”

“Pevkell,” he murmured. His fingers brushed my cheek, so gentle. “Enough, leikavi. Do not say that.”

“I want to help you, Davik,” I whispered, pleading with him through my tears. He wiped them away.

“You can help me when you are well again, Vienne,” he said quietly.

“I need vovic,” I told him. I tried to smile, but it was sad. “And the Ghertun will never give it to you.”

“You are right,” Davik said. “Lozza will not give me vovic. Instead, he will give me the cure, to free you from this forever. He will give me your family. He will give me you. Until the end of our days, leikavi.”

His tone was so confident that I almost felt hope within my breast. “Davik…”

“I am sorry, Vienne,” he continued, a startling warmth in his gaze, one I’d only ever caught hints of during our time together, “but you will be stuck with the Mad Horde King for good after this. You will have to live out your life at his side and him at yours. You will have to warm his bed on the coldest of nights. You will have to be patient with him because his temper runs hot and despite what you believe, he is a little insane.”

The sound that came from me was almost a laugh. “And what do I get in return?”

His voice dropped, deepening. “You will have his love.”

My breath hitched.

“He will give you everything you ever wanted. He would lay the world at your feet if he could. Because you deserve that and more.”

The words he spoke would’ve been cruel if they hadn’t been so beautiful.

Because he was detailing a life that I wanted with him but might not get the chance to have.

I knew where he was going. And as certainly as I knew that, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to stop him.

“When do you leave?” I said, looking down at the Dakkari armor covering his chest.

“Soon,” he murmured. “The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala will accompany me.”

“Please tell me you will not go to war for this.”

“There is not enough time for that now, leikavi. War will wait. But it will come for the Ghertun in time,” he said. “My priority is you. I will return in two days, lysi?”

“Let me go with you,” I pleaded. “I can sway Lozza’s mind.”

Maybe I can see my family too, I thought quietly. One last time.

“Leikavi,” he rasped. “You are in no state to travel. Believe me, I have thought about it. About having you near once I got the cure. But we will ride hard. The Killup gave you a tonic for the pain but they do not know how long it will last. It will be quicker if I leave you here. A cart to carry you will only slow us down.”

I shook my head, but I knew he was right. I was a burden in this state. I could barely feel my limbs and my head felt heavy. And once the tonic wore off and the pain returned…my screams would echo around the eastlands. I would be a distraction.

Grief and panic struck my chest, more painful than the vovic. Would this be the last time that I saw him?

“Have faith, Vienne,” he whispered to me, leaning forward to brush his lips across mine. “For the first time in a long time, I do.”

* * *

Not long after Davik left, I felt something wake me. I jerked out of the dream I’d been having, though I couldn’t remember it.

Blinking my eyes open, I felt my stomach was cramped up, nausea building, the icy tendrils of pain beginning to return to me.

No.

“Kalles,” came a voice and when I flicked my eyes to the entrance, I saw Davik’s pujerak standing there. “I promised him I would check in on you often.”

He came inside. The healer had been here not too long ago to give me another dose of the Killup’s tonic but it was obvious that the pain was mounting.

“I—I thought you’d be with him,” I murmured.

“Nik,” he said, coming to my side. He lifted the cool cloth that the healer had left on my forehead and refreshed it in cool water before replacing it. “He left me in charge of the horde in his absence in case of…”

He trailed off but I knew what he meant.

“You think the Ghertun would attack while he is gone?”

“The horde is always weaker when its Vorakkar is gone,” the pujerak replied. “And the Ghertun have eyes everywhere, it seems.”

“A part of me wishes they would come,” I told him, my voice sounding weak even to my own ears. “Maybe it would buy me more time.”

I wanted that time. To see him again. To see my family.

“Neffar? Time?”

“Nothing,” I whispered. My belly began to churn but I knew I had nothing to throw up. I closed my eyes, though even the darkness swam behind my lids. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Of course I hope they do not come.”

“Nik, what did you mean?”

There was an edge in his tone, one that made me open my eyes to look at him.

“Ghertun sometimes have vovic on them,” I told him. “If not the extracted poison, then the herb that they use to make it.”

The pujerak stilled and I could see the way his eyes flickered, as if he was deep in thought.

“Why would they carry that on them?” he rasped.

“The Ghertun smoke it. It’s a drug to them. It relaxes them. But when it is crushed, and heated, and the oil is pressed from it, that is vovic. Some Ghertun carry a vial, if they have slaves.”

The pujerak stood from the edge of the bed suddenly. “Vok.”

My lips parted. I whispered, “What?”

“The…the scouting party. The ones we hunted down and killed. Not far from here. There were five of them. One of them might’ve had it.”

I blew out a breath, shaking my head. “Yes, but the Vorakkar said he burned their bodies. It wouldn’t have survived fire.”

The pujerak’s breaths came fast.

“He ordered me to burn them, kalles.”

I frowned at his tone, something about it making me try to push up from the furs. “What are you saying?”

“The Vorakkar was angry when he ordered me to do that. I—I did not burn them. Kakkari would’ve been angered if we had,” he told me, his gaze finding mine.

“Then what did you do with the bodies?” I gasped out, hope beginning to rise in my breast.

“I buried them.”

I swallowed, feeling a wave of pain rise steadily with my increased heartbeat. I needed to calm down.

“They might’ve had a dose on them,” I hissed, realization striking me.

The pujerak looked at me with a widened gaze.

“Vok.”

“Where are they buried?”

* * *

Davik’s pujerak returned to the hushed quiet of the voliki not an hour later.

A thin sheen of sweat dotted his face and his exposed arms. Streaks of dirt and earth covered his chest and hands. His breathing was rough and rapid, as if he hadn’t had a moment of rest since he’d sprinted from the voliki.

My jaw was gritted with pain when he arrived, my abdomen burning, my belly churning with acid. I swore that I felt Devina’s presence in the room but when I tried to use my power to seek her out, I found that I couldn’t focus enough to gather the energy.

The hope I felt when the pujerak strode to my side had the ability to break me. It was a sharp prick in my chest that could turn into a blade sinking deep if he hadn’t found a drop of vovic.

He held something up in front of me.

It was a vial, covered in dirt and dried Ghertun blood...and other things I didn’t want to identify.

The sob that tore from my throat filled the voliki. The pujerak’s lips pressed tight, he inclined his head, and then unstoppered the vial.

All this time, I thought, incredulous, scarcely able to believe it.

It was a tiny amount but it was all I would need to buy time. The pujerak helped lift my head though his touch on my flesh made me want to scream.

I felt the cool touch of the vial on my lips. I smelled that bitter, familiar liquid, pungent and stinging in my nostrils.

The vovic coated my tongue, making me want to gag, but I swallowed it all, knowing that the more I consumed, the faster it would work.

I felt the poison slide down my throat and into my belly where it burned. I held my breath and saw the pujerak step away from the furs, watching me almost warily.

It took almost another hour but slowly, I felt the pain begin to leak away. Something was unknotting within me, loosening and unraveling. I felt it leave my limbs, that aching tightness. I felt a pressure ease off my lungs and I gasped, inhaling a deep, full breath for the first time in days. Even my bones seemed to strengthen, no longer feeling like they were on the verge of snapping at the slightest touch.

“Is it working?” the pujerak asked quietly.

“Yes,” I murmured.

I held my breath, a part of me fearing that it was too late. That the pain would return tenfold or that this was just a dream, that I would wake soon from this hopeful state.

But this was real.

As my strength began to return to me, I felt something rise with it. Something that I’d felt…at the tree of the heartstone. Something that hadn’t been within me before.

I felt emotions rise, emotions that I knew stemmed from the pujerak. His profound relief to see me well, his anticipation of Davik’s return, his inner turmoil over desecrating the graves of the Ghertun.

For a moment, I was paralyzed with disbelief because I knew I hadn’t used my gift. I hadn’t built up the energy between us, nor had I actively tried to delve into his mind.

Just then, the healer walked into the voliki and froze when he saw me sitting up in the bed. His emotions hit me like a wall, his baffled confusion at first followed by his tentative hope.

And I knew…I knew that this was Kakkari’s doing. Something had happened to me at the grave of Lokkaru’s father. Something had happened to me when I’d connected my mind with the mind of a goddess…or at least a remnant of her.

As a test, I looked at the healer and pushed the command into his mind without resistance.

Leave.

Immediately, he turned his back and walked from the voliki. The pujerak frowned after him, his lips parted in confusion.

I waited for the pain to slice through me but it never came. If anything, I felt stronger. There was no dizziness, no nausea, no pounding headache.

Davik.

My breath left me in a rush. He was hours ahead of me now.

“Will you take me to him?” I asked the pujerak, feeling my throat close tight. Lozza’s army was great. I didn’t know what Davik planned but I worried what the Ghertun king would do…or what Davik would give up to help me.

The pujerak frowned. “Kalles, you know I cannot do that. He would want you to stay here, safe, and to rest.”

I didn’t have time to argue. My power was already threading through his mind as I rose from the bed.

Take me to the Dead Mountain.

The pujerak inclined his head though he didn’t seem to know why.

“Lysi, I will.”

It should have frightened me…this new, horrible, powerful thing I possessed.

Yet all I thought was that I would use it to protect those that I loved.

Nothing would stop me.

I turned to Davik’s chests and opened one, dressing quickly. At the bottom, however, I felt something within, hidden, and when I rummaged through it, my hand grew hotter and hotter.

I knew what it was.

The heartstone. It was tucked within a pouch and it burned in my hand when it tumbled forward. It was smooth and small. It fit within my palm perfectly. The inside swirled, glowing gold and blue, the color mingling and floating within.

Davik must’ve taken it from the tree without my knowing.

He had hidden it here, kept it away from the Ghertun. I frowned.

Why?

But I knew.

He’d meant to use it…for me.

If he couldn’t get the cure from Lozza, he was planning to use the heartstone’s power to heal me…just like Lokkaru’s father had done, sacrificing his life in the process.

He would never give it to the Ghertun, so he’d hidden it here to protect it. Its power was too great and he knew just how dangerous it would be in the Ghertun’s possession.

I shuddered, remembering the remnants of that power. I shuddered, remembering that up until a few days ago, I had been hell-bent on delivering it to Lozza.

My palm clenched around it. I tucked it into my trews, finishing dressing quickly. When I turned around to face the pujerak, he was still frowning, confused.

“Will you tell me your name?” I asked quietly, keeping the command from my voice. This was his choice.

He stared at me, as if I was a strange thing.

“Hedna.”

I nodded.

“Hedna, take me to him. Please.”

Chapter Forty-Seven

The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala was looking at me…well, like I was mad.

“You will never make it out,” he rasped after I told him what I planned to do.

“You do not think I know what is at stake?” I growled. We were standing on a cliff overlooking the Dead Valley. The sun was high in the sky, though a thick covering of grey clouds were blocking out any of the warmth. There was a chill in the air, which the Ghertun detested. “My female’s life is at stake if I fail.”

I had left Hedna back at the horde in my absence and my darukkars were camped not too far away, waiting. The Ghertun knew we had arrived. I had seen a few of their scouts spying on us from the shadows of the mountain, looking up at us on the cliffs.

The mountain sat within a valley. A deep valley that had long been depleted of life. It was barren and empty, as if Kakkari herself had abandoned it.

This was where my female had lived up until recently. Trapped in the darkness. Tied to a poison that kept her leashed and chained.

My hands curled but I was careful not to prick myself with my claws. The undersides of them had been coated in enuwip, courtesy of the Killup.

“What would you do if it was your Morakkari?” I rasped, glancing over at Rath Kitala.

A sharp breath huffed from his nostrils. I’d already known his answer.

“I have to go in alone. This Ghertun king is a coward,” I told him. “He will never meet us away from his mountain. He thinks he has power there. But the Killup have exposed a dangerous weakness and that is what I will exploit. When I return, be ready.”

“And if it does not work?” Rath Kitala rasped. “If you cannot get close to him? What will you do then?”

I thought of the heartstone, tucked into my chests at the horde. Nothing would keep me from it if I failed here. It was the last resort but an option, a dangerous one that required a price. A price I would pay gladly.

“There is no outcome in which she does not live,” I told him. “Be ready.”

Rath Kitala inclined his head, hearing my grim determination. “I do not like this, Drokka. If only we can wait for the others to arrive. We can take the mountain—”

“There is no time,” I growled.

Suddenly, a horn sounded, loud and deep, booming across the Dead Valley. The gate to the mountain, one made of bones and stones, began to rise, revealing a blackened tunnel that resembled a mouth. The entrance.

“I will try to find as many of their slaves as I can,” I said, eyeing the entrance. “But time is already short.”

We only had a fraction of our darukkars gathered. In order to free all the slaves under the Dead Mountain and bring Lozza to his knees, we would need more. Time was not on our side—and I was honest enough with myself to know that I would prioritize Vienne and her family over anyone else. I was a selfish bastard but I wouldn’t rest until they were all free of the Dead Mountain and the vovic in their veins.

Armed Ghertun had begun to filter out from the mountain. A surprising number. There were rumors that Lozza had a great army hidden within, one he planned to overthrow Dothik with.

“We are Vorakkars for a reason,” I murmured. I felt a dark grin slide over my face. “We are all a little mad. Even you, Rath Kitala. We have to be.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

“I know who you are.”

The Ghertun that stepped down from his throne of bones was younger than I had expected. He was tall and broad, his black eyes regarding me carefully, his head cocking to the side, a motion that reminded me of the Killup.

I suppressed the growl rising in my chest.

Blood was dripping from my temple and into my eye, coloring my vision. The guards watching me had enjoyed beating me because they thought I was powerless to stop them when in reality, I was biding my time.

Something frantic was clawing against my chest. Time, I knew. I was running out of it. Already, I’d been within the Dead Mountain—in that dark, festering place—for too long. The Ghertun had kept me chained for hours before they’d brought me into the presence of Lozza, their king. I had left my daggers back at the horde but they had taken my sword, as I’d known they would.

The chains shackling my wrists were easily breakable. The Ghertun didn’t have access to Dakkari steel or the stronger metals that ran deep within our planet. They didn’t have the technology or the means to extract it, that we knew of. They either vastly underestimated the strength of an enraged and determined Dakkari male…or they had simply never had one in their possession before.

Or both.

I gave Lozza a grin, more like a feral baring of my teeth, which made his expression falter for a moment before it smoothed away.

“And who exactly do you think I am?” I murmured quietly, never breaking his stare.

We were in a great hall carved from stone, deep within the mountain, where no light from the surface reached. The air was pungent and almost acidic. It coated my tongue and I had the strangest sense that I could suffocate from it.

How many times had I watched Vienne look up at the sky, or the moon, or the stars? How many times had I watched her lift her face back and feel the sun beam down on her skin…or close her eyes as she felt a soft breeze float across her cheeks?

I understood now why she’d found those sights and sensations so pleasurable. Because she’d been deprived of them here.

Many Ghertun were gathered, as if Lozza had called most of his people to the hall to witness whatever he had planned for me. My gaze tracked around slowly but I saw no vekkiri. I saw no Killup or Nrunteng. Mercifully, I saw no Dakkari either.

Their slaves were not present. Only a select number of the Ghertun population were because I was not so foolish as to believe that this was all that lived under the Dead Mountain.

Still, there were at least a hundred Ghertun gathered in this small space. The great hall was not so grand as the Dothikkar’s in Dothik, which could easily fill with five times as many beings.

“You are the horde king that laughs as you kill,” Lozza said as he stepped towards me, circling. “The one they say has a broken mind. The one they say wanders into the wild lands and bellows into the darkness.”

They have been watching me, I realized.

As if Lozza’s words summoned her, the shadowed form of my sister appeared next to the Ghertun king’s throne.

“She is here, Davik,” my sister whispered into my mind as she took a seat there.

I shook my head, my brows drawing together. My gaze refocused on the Ghertun king. He was staying just out of arm’s reach and there were four armed Ghertun guards close to me, their spears pointed at my throat.

My enuwip-dipped claws curled.

“I take it you received my message for your king?” Lozza asked.

“I am not here on behalf of the Dothikkar, Ghertun,” I rasped, never breaking his stare.

That startled him. Briefly. His eyes blinked twice and then he asked, “Then why have you come, horde king?”

“I have come for the cure to vovic. And I have come for the beings that you have enslaved with it,” I stated, the chains rattling at my wrists, clinking against my Vorakkar cuffs.

A murmur went through the Ghertun present. Their language sounded like hisses and lisps and rolling trills to my ears. I knew no words in Ghertun except vovic.

Lozza was no fool. He turned to a male standing near the throne—near the shadowed form of my sister. They spoke, briefly, but the older male rattled his head and then Lozza turned his gaze back towards me.

“I assume you seek a cure for the vekkiri messenger since none of our slaves are missing,” Lozza said easily. “I had wondered if the Dothikkar would take an interest in her. She was my gift to him, however fleeting her life is…and vekkiri die so easily. They are almost impossible to keep alive for very long.”

I was surprised that I didn’t lunge and rip out his throat right then and there. That rage snapped within me. If Vienne’s life wasn’t on the line…I probably would have given in to that temptation. Lozza’s blood would’ve splattered all over the dark floor of his throne room and I’d have marked myself with it after my kill.

Perhaps the bloodlust glowed in my gaze too brightly because Lozza took a step back—just a small one—before he remembered himself.

“There is no cure,” Lozza said.

“There is,” I rasped. “But I know as a supposed ‘king’ to your people, who keep slaves, it is in your interest to pretend as if there is none. Why give them ideas and hope, after all, when they are destined to die in this dark hell?”

When I looked back to the throne, my sister had disappeared again.

“The cure and the enslaved, Lozza,” I grated. “Or blood will run through the Dead Valley.”

“You will be the only one who dies here this day, horde king,” Lozza hissed, for the first time showing his temper, and the mask of impassive amusement melted away, leaving fury and fear in its wake.

I grinned.

“The Dothikkar readies his army,” I bluffed. “The outposts ready their armies. The hordes ready their armies. You will never have access to the Teru gulch, nor passage across Drukkar’s Sea. And you certainly will never possess a heartstone of Kakkari. Your mountain will crumble and your people will die before that happens.”

“You lie,” he spit. “You have no army here. You bring a handful of warriors camped outside the valley and you think that is an army? I have an army, one bred for a specific purpose and soon, it is you that will fear us. I will not rest until I am sitting on top of the Dothikkar’s throne and he is lying dead at my feet. Until the open streets of Dothik are running rivers of blackened blood. Until the outposts and hordes are burned to the ground. It is you who will serve us.”

The Ghertun shifted throughout the throne room, the energy rising from Lozza’s words.

“Then we will go to war,” I rasped.

“Then we start now. And you will die first, horde king. I will send your head to the Dothikkar,” Lozza hissed. His eyes went to one of the four guards surrounding me. “Sebrissa.”

I lunged, snapping through the chains that encircled my wrists.

Deep, aching pain burned into my chest. One of the guards’ spears stabbed me, hitting bone, a necessary wound so that I could reach Lozza before he scurried away.

I bled on the Ghertun king, coating his shoulder, as I got behind him, whirling him around so that we faced the guards, my arm wrapped around his neck.

Lozza screamed when I plunged my hand into his side, my claws curling deep into his flesh.

Shrieking cries rose from the Ghertun present in the great hall. There was a brief moment of panic, of fluttered movement, before the room seemed to still again. I backed up, walking to the throne so that I could see the whole room.

Lozza was already limp in my arms, his limbs heavy as I dragged him. His taloned feet scraped across the stone, an unpleasant grating sound.

“Wh-what did you do?” he rasped, the words sounding garbled.

“I made friends,” I hissed, flexing my claws deep in his side, making an anguished groan tumble from his lips.

The guards were frozen in the center of the throne room and I saw more had poured in at the entrance from the brief commotion. It told me everything I needed to know about Lozza’s army. That he might be right about having large numbers but that they were not trained. This never would have happened in Dothik with Dakkari warriors at the Dothikkar’s side.

“Do you know what enuwip is?” I asked him.

A garbled sound rose from Lozza’s throat and when I looked down at him, even though his limbs were limp, his eyes were panicked and rolling.

“The Killup are a good ally to have,” I told him. “Now that I have your undivided attention, let us make a bargain. Your cure for mine. Unless you wish to bleed out on your throne.”

The Ghertun in the great hall were beginning to get restless, an anger rising, palpable and strong after the shock had worn off. Because even though Lozza was no king, they still remained loyal to him. And I wasn’t so much of a fool as not to know that if they swarmed me, I would be dead. There were too many of them.

“Tell them to stand back or I will tear my claws from your flesh,” I rasped in his ear. “And you know what will happen when I do that.”

“We have survived enuwip before,” Lozza rasped, his words slurred. “I will take my chances. Sebrissa!”

Vok.

My jaw tightened and I tore Lozza’s dull sword from his waist, tearing my claws from his body and throwing his limp form towards the throne, hearing his pained groan as he began to bleed out.

All at once the Ghertun in the room began to rush towards me. Most were unarmed but their numbers were great.

Closer and closer.

I growled, striking at the nearest male, slashing across his belly, and he fell. I switched my sword hand when Lozza’s blood made my grip slip, raking out with my claws, catching two Ghertun by surprise and cutting them. I hoped there was enough enuwip underneath my claws still to paralyze them, at least briefly.

My attacks only seemed to enrage the group of Ghertun more. All I heard was hissing and bones crunching as their legs propelled them closer.

One Ghertun launched at me. With a growl, I ducked, pivoted, and struck them down.

Then another came.

And another.

The wound in my chest seeped blood, pouring to my abdomen. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure launch at me. I turned, my sword raised, only to see it was a Ghertun child, its black eyes pinned on me, its lips pulled back into a snarl.

A child.

Horror filled me and I hesitated too long. I felt dozens of claws curl into my flesh, scrabbling, raking.

The mass of Ghertun hit me like a wall and an enraged bellow tore from my throat at the impact.

Nik, need to save her, need to get back to her, I thought, more blood dripping into my eyes, making them sting and blurring my vision.

The thought filled me with purpose—she filled me with purpose—and my muscles strained and pulled as I held my ground against the dozens and dozens of Ghertun out for my blood. If they got me down, it would be the end. I needed to push them back, to keep my footing, no matter what happened.

Suddenly, a strange hum filled the room, one that made my skin tingle because it was familiar. Then there was a flash of blinding blue light, one that made the Ghertun screech.

In the light, I saw the hall had been flooded with Ghertun, more than I could ever take on by myself. Dark squirming bodies that had begun to race towards me before the light had stopped them all in their tracks.

That was when I saw the source of it.

“Nik,” I rasped.

Horror and disbelief filled me. For a moment, I couldn’t trust what I was seeing.

Vienne was standing at the entrance of the great hall. Her eyes were glowing blue, her hair floating around her as if she were underwater, her mouth open in a soundless scream.

“Nik!” I roared. “Vienne!”

In her palm was the glowing heartstone.

Chapter Forty-Nine

There were many entrances to the Dead Mountain. Hidden ones throughout the eastlands, tunneled from the Dead Mountain directly, ending in forests or deserted valleys. It was how the Ghertun could move so easily without being seen.

I didn’t use any of them. Instead, I used the main entrance at the face of the Dead Mountain, though it was guarded by at least a dozen Ghertun warriors.

Hedna was on his pyroki at my pyroki’s heels. We’d passed the darukkars—both Davik’s and the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala’s—camped close by. They had been waiting for something but when Rath Kitala had seen me, alive, I heard his curse as I stormed passed.

“Kalles, stop!” he’d bellowed after me but I paid him no mind, my heartbeat thrumming in my ears after the long journey. Physically, I was exhausted—hungry, tired, aching. But mentally, I could take on anything. We weren’t that far behind Davik but I wondered how long he’d already been inside the Dead Mountain. There was no sign of him among the small encampment, which only made me fear the worst.

Hedna followed and then I heard the Vorakkar’s orders. I didn’t look behind me—my eyes were only for the Dead Mountain—but I heard the rumble of dozens of pyrokis and their riders as they pursued me.

The entrance was up ahead and we wound down the valley with astonishing speed, the pyrokis’ clawed talons made for rocky terrain like this.

When the Ghertun guards saw us, they were already prepared, standing in a line at the entrance, their spears raised towards us. I felt their hesitation, their fear. I didn’t know the boundaries of this new power but once I could see the glittering of their eyes, I spread that power over them like a blanket, imagining that it wrapped them tight like a cord.

Let us pass, I pushed into their minds. Though there were a dozen guards, each of them lowered their spears...

And they let us pass.

At the gates of the Dead Mountain, I pulled my pyroki to a stop and slid off her side. I felt the heartstone, hot and burning in the pockets of my trews. I gritted my teeth because I had to focus on keeping that command pressed within the Ghertun’s minds like a brand. A dozen at once was staggering but manageable. I only feared that I would reach my limits soon without finding my family or Davik first.

The Vorakkar of Rath Kitala and the darukkars kicked up a cloud of dirt behind me, the evening sun beginning to redden the sky above us.

“What…what is this, kalles?” Rath Kitala rasped, eyeing the Ghertun, who were standing close to me.

“Restrain them,” I said. “Please.”

Hedna was already off his pyroki, casting me an unreadable look as he passed to take the Ghertun’s weapons. He knew something about me was different now. He’d realized that the moment the Dead Mountain had come into view and I’d dropped my previous command from his mind.

But he also knew that I would do anything to help Davik and so, he did as I asked.

Another darukkar came forward with rope and only once the Ghertun were tied did I release the command with a shuddered breath. Immediately, the Ghertun were hissing and struggling against their binds but they stilled when a group of warriors surrounded them, their swords pointed at their throats.

I didn’t waste another moment and I strode inside the Dead Mountain, taking the darkened stairwell down to the depths, where most of the Ghertun lived. Already, that musty, moldy, cloying scent filled my lungs, making me want to retch. Behind me, I heard the remainder of the warriors follow, including Hedna and Rath Kitala, their swords hissing from their sheaths.

Once we reached the main landing, I pointed down the darkened hallway to our left. “The sibi who own slaves live down there,” I told Hedna, connecting eyes with him. “Find them all. My family is among them.”

Hedna jerked his head and a group of Davik’s warriors followed him. I had faith that they’d be able to handle the Ghertun they encountered, since most of the sibi would be in the great hall with Lozza, especially if they had Davik as their entertainment.

The thought made my gut churn as Rath Kitala’s eyes found mine.

“I hope you know what you are doing, kalles,” he murmured.

“I haven’t a clue,” I confessed, reaching into my pocket, my palm squeezing around the heartstone, clutching it to me. I needed to be brave. For my family. For Davik. “This way.”

The pathway to the great hall was long and narrow, winding in a seemingly endless circle to the very center of the mountain.

Then we heard screams, hissing shrieks of horror and surprise, echo from the hall up ahead. My stomach dropped, my blood freezing to ice, as the whole mountain seemed to awaken.

“Vok,” Rath Kitala cursed as we, and the handful of darukkars that accompanied us, pressed close to the walls.

Most of the population of Ghertun lived on the level where the great hall was and soon, I heard hordes of them begin to approach from all directions.

We slipped into a shadowed alcove, my nails piercing half-moons into my palm around the heartstone. A moment later, there was a rush of dark bodies, the walls vibrating as more and more Ghertun streamed into the hall, all heading towards the awing blackness at the end of it.

Davik was in there.

I knew it. I could feel him.

And I couldn’t afford to wait until the hallway was cleared because Ghertun would pour from every dark crevice of the mountain until we were swarmed and unable to move.

“Kalles,” Rath Kitala bit out when I stepped out from the safety of the alcove. A Ghertun ran into me, making the breath whoosh from my lungs, but I felt the heartstone burn even hotter in my hand. The Ghertun wouldn’t think anything of a human—one who wore the slave mark—so I ran with them towards the great hall, getting lost in the crush of their bodies, the acrid and bitter scent of their flesh, until I reached the entrance and peered within.

What I saw made panic claw at my throat.

The Ghertun king was bleeding and slumped near his throne. And Davik was near him, a deep wound in his chest, blood dripping down his face, fighting off a legion of Ghertun that had begun to swarm, no doubt at Lozza’s command.

“No,” I whispered, throat tightening with fear and panic. There were too many.

My power rose.

My first instinct was to help Davik, though I didn’t know how. My only thought was of saving him because he wouldn’t be able to fight off the hundreds of Ghertun that were pouring into the great hall alone. And more would come. They wouldn’t be satisfied until he was dead on the floor.

No.

If he were gone from this world…I didn’t think I’d be able to bear it.

Kakkari, help me, I pleaded, panicked, pressing my palm around the heartstone tighter and tighter until I thought it would burrow into my hand. Help me save him.

That burning heat sank into me and filled the cavern of my chest. Just like at the tree in the ancient groves, that heat began to sear me from the inside, painful and scraping, a silent scream lodged in my throat as it rose and rose. The pain from the vovic was nothing compared to this.

My vision went dark. My skin prickled like a thousand needles were piercing me at once. But despite the pain, I felt my gift building inside me, the energy that I could conjure at will becoming something far more powerful, roving and roiling inside me, desperately seeking an escape.

Through a thick haze, I heard him.

“Nik! Vienne!” Davik roared.

But it was too late.

That power flooded out of me as I screamed. As it left me, my lungs filled and I felt like I could breathe again.

Directing that power, I felt it travel through the great hall like a wave, stopping all the Ghertun in their tracks, freezing them into place. When the power hit the walls, it delved inside the stone and I directed it to encase the entirety of the Dead Mountain. I could see it rushing through the tunnels, filling and filling them all, stopping all the Ghertun in their tracks.

In my mind, I felt thousands of souls. I was in them all.

Unfathomable power…

I could have killed them all. In a single moment.

And for a moment, I was tempted to. I was tempted to bring the Dead Mountain down, once and for all. I was tempted to end thousands of lives in a single moment.

Because I could.

“Vienne!” Davik bellowed across the still, quiet place.

When I locked eyes with Davik, I felt my chest fill with something else. I felt suspended in time as he pulled himself from the bodies of the Ghertun around him, who made no move to stop him as he sprinted towards me, pushing and weaving.

When he reached me, I felt his touch on my cheek.

“Nik, leikavi, what have you done?” he rasped, his voice anguished, his mind on the verge of breaking.

I had used the heartstone. That same power had meant death for Lokkaru’s father…would it mean the same for me?

A price has to be paid.

Acceptance settled in my chest. At least Davik would be safe.

“It’s done now,” I murmured to him, my eyes filling with tears though I blinked them away. “Bring me Lozza.”

There must’ve been darukkars behind me because Davik bit out an order to them. They streamed into the great hall and, a mere moment later, dragged the Ghertun king to my feet before they scurried away, as if afraid of me. Lozza’s side was bleeding in a steady flow, pooling on the floor. He would bleed out soon. He would die.

He was as frozen as the rest but I found his life source in my mind and I gave back his will.

“You will give me the cure for vovic,” I told him. “You will release your enslaved under the Dead Mountain and vow to me that you will never take another.”

He was staring up at me in fear, in bewilderment, and in pain.

As I looked down at him, I realized it would be so easy to end his life. Davik would do it for me gladly. This male had been the cause of so much pain and suffering within my own family, within many.

But as I looked at him, I also realized that if he died…another would take his place. Perhaps another even more terrible than him. The hatred in the Ghertun’s minds, after centuries of Dakkari oppression and rule, ran like vovic in their veins, poisonous and bitter. It would never end.

“Or else I will bring the Dead Mountain down on top of you,” I whispered. Light was coming from somewhere, blue light that illuminated Lozza’s face. Was it coming from me?

Davik had spoken of a white-haired sorceress that had destroyed an entire horde?

Well, I would destroy an entire mountain if necessary.

The Dothikkar had had every right to fear me when I turned up in Dothik, I realized.

But my newfound power was already beginning to wane. I could feel its reaches begin to contract and pull back. We didn’t have much time.

Lozza stuttered, “In the cellars. The cure is there with the doses. I swear it. Take it. Take it all.”

Rath Kitala’s voice cut in, from somewhere behind me, words in Dakkari to the darukkars, who sprinted from the great hall—no doubt to take every last item in the cellars.

“How do I know you speak the truth?” I asked, even as I delved deeper into his mind. This part of my gift felt familiar to me.

I was relieved when I found no deception, a weight seeming to lift off my shoulders.

“I swear it. T-take the slaves,” Lozza rasped. “Take them but spare me. Spare my kingdom. I will do whatever you wish.”

“Of course I will spare you,” I told him. Davik started at my side, a growl tearing from his throat. When I looked at my Vorakkar, I nodded. He procured a silver disk from his pocket and I took it, flipping it open to see a dark blue salve inside.

“Kalles,” Rath Kitala cut in. “We should discuss this.”

“He lives,” I decided, leaning over the Ghertun king and applying the salve to his wound, since his limbs were still heavy. Relief relaxed his features. He looked up at me almost gratefully and I felt a sting of anger rise in my chest. It was a similar expression, no doubt, to how I’d looked at my sibi when they’d finally given me a dose of vovic. “How else will he hold his promise to me?”

That grateful relief gave way to shuddered fear.

I wiped my fingers on his clothes and rose. As I did, my head was beginning to split and throb.

This is done.

I turned from Lozza, my legs feeling heavy and sluggish, like I was wading through water. Davik caught me in his arms, swooping me up against his chest.

“Hedna is here,” I whispered to Davik, starting to feel the strain of holding a thousand minds within my own. Davik was already running down the hallway leading from the great hall, back towards the main level and the staircase that led up to the entrance. Rath Kitala was at his heels. “I—I don’t think I can hold it for much longer, Davik.”

“Stay with me, leikavi,” he rasped, his chest heaving, keeping me tight in his arms. I was convinced the blue light was coming from me now because it shone over Davik’s face, highlighting the deepness of his scar, his scowl, the black threads of his red eyes. “Please. We are almost there.”

Then the light over his face began to fade and I felt Kakkari’s power beginning to drain with it.

My eyes closed.

“Vienne!” Davik grated. “Look at me.”

I heard heavy, booted footsteps. Not Davik’s or Rath Kitala’s. I heard the whisper of bare feet too on the stone, of shivering gasps and sobs. I felt the hard press of hundreds of emotions fill my mind. Relief, fear, confusion, sadness. I felt the presence of dozens...of the enslaved?

Were my family among them?

“Davik, my family,” I told him.

“Hedna will find them,” Davik assured me. “If they are not outside already. Hold on, rei kassiri. I beg you.”

We were ascending stairs now. I gritted my teeth, my eyelids fluttering open to see the blackened stone of the mountain. We were still deep inside.

Just a little longer, I told myself. Hang onto it a little longer.

The power was flickering. Fading. How long did we have until the Ghertun would move freely again? Had the darukkars reached the cellars? Had they found the cure?

“Look at me,” Davik growled.

My eyes found him.

His eyes were panicked and wild as he peered down at me. A wave of affection, of grief went through me, tears beginning to flow freely from my eyes.

“Do not do this, leikavi,” he rasped. “Hanniva, do not do this.”

I wanted to tell him at least once. I did not know what would come next. I did not know what price Kakkari would ask of me for the use of her power…but I wanted to tell him at least once.

“You did a terrible thing, you know,” I told him.

“What is that, leikavi?” he asked quietly. “Keep speaking. Tell me.”

“You made me love you.”

“Nik, Vienne,” he growled. “It was the best thing I have ever done.”

A sound tore from my throat.

“Drokka, she’s fading,” I heard, the voice sounding like Rath Kitala’s. “The heartstone—”

“I know,” Davik growled, just as we reached the top of the stairs.

The hallway to the gates of the Dead Mountain was short but just as we crossed the threshold, I felt Kakkari’s power give way, releasing, a tight tension from the mind unravelling and unravelling until I thought I might unravel with it.

A hum seemed to rise up from within the mountain, growing louder and louder as we burst from the gates, into open, cool air.

I heard crying. I heard human voices—I heard Killup, and Nrunteng, and Dakkari. A loud murmur that seemed to rise.

Then I heard, “Vienne!”

My eyes opened and I could recognize that voice anywhere.

And there, huddled together in the darkness in the open air of the Dead Valley, was my family. Maxen and Eli, thin and bleary-eyed, and Viola, whose tear-streaked face hit me like a punch.

The woman running towards me was older than I remembered, with lines across her forehead that hadn’t been there before, streaks of white in her hair that hadn’t been there before.

Relief pierced me, bright and perfect.

“Maman.”

The last of Kakkari’s power left me like a whisper, leaving me empty and ravaged, scraped clean from the inside with nothing left to give.

“Vienne, nik,” Davik growled.

I felt my mother’s hand touch my face just before the world went dark.

Chapter Fifty

“You need to wake now, Vienne,” Devina told me, her voice soft. “You have been asleep for a very long time. They are waiting for you.”

I felt her touch in my hair though I could not see her.

“He is waiting for you.”

“What about you?” I struggled to ask her.

“Once you wake, my brother will be whole. You are tied to him now. Always,” Devina told me. “He will always see me. You will always feel me. But I am no longer trapped in this place. I feel untethered. Unchained. I feel the veil closing. Soon, it will be harder to return to this place. And I long to see what happens next.”

I felt a stirring. Something beginning to awaken in my mind.

“Go, Vienne,” came Devina’s whisper, her hand in my hair. “They are waiting for you.”

Chapter Fifty-One

When I opened my eyes, I saw Maman.

“Mon coeur,” she whispered when she saw me awake. I had only seen my mother cry after my father died, but now, her eyes filled with tears. “I—I feared that…oh, Vienne.”

She was sitting on the plush floor of Davik’s voliki, her legs curled underneath her, her hand stroking through my hair. We were alone in the voliki, the fire crackling.

“Maman,” I said, my voice cracking. My throat was dry, my body aching.

She simply stared at me, crying, her hands stroking through my hair. I studied her face, memorizing the changes in her features. Her nose was crooked now—as if it had been broken. Her forehead was creased with worry lines, lines she had always fretted over as she’d aged, though my father had always kissed her fears away. Her hair was long, trailing to her lower back, streaked with grey and white.

It looked as if she’d aged ten years under the Dead Mountain. I wondered if I looked much older to her too.

“Viola?” I whispered. “Maxen, Eli? Are they all right?”

“Yes,” she told me, pressing kisses to my cheeks, her voice soft. Her tears dripped onto my face. “They are here. In…in the horde.”

There was hesitation in her voice. An unspoken question.

“Where is he?” I asked, trying to push up from the bed, though Maman pushed me back down.

“He will be here soon, I am sure. He has scarcely left your side,” she murmured.

I blew out a long breath.

“You have been asleep for a week, Vienne,” Maman whispered. “Your…your horde king has brought in every healer that he could find across Dakkar. But none knew why you did not wake.”

But I knew why.

I felt it.

The loss of something that was not there anymore, like a deep, cratered ache.

Looking at Maman, I tried to gather the energy in my mind, imagining it filling the space between us, like it had hundreds of times before. I was a voyeur of emotions…I always had been.

Only, I felt nothing. There was nothing there. No sizzling energy or the familiar feel of my power.

My gift had left me.

It had been Kakkari’s price, the price I’d needed to pay to access the heartstone’s power.

And I would pay it a thousand times over if I had the choice. I was grateful the goddess hadn’t asked for my life instead.

Even still, the loss of my gift felt like the loss of a limb. I didn’t know how to live without it because it had always been there before…but I would learn.

I reached out my hand, to touch Maman’s cheek.

“I’m so happy to see you again,” I whispered.

“You saved us, mon coeur,” she told me, giving me a wavering smile. “You saved us all.”

The entrance to the voliki pushed open and I saw Maxen duck his head inside. My brother’s gaze widened when he saw me awake and my smile wobbled as I grinned at him. He called something over his shoulder, shouting towards the encampment, before he rushed inside.

He caught my hand in his, pressing a kiss to my palm. Strong, handsome Maxen with his light blue eyes and wide smile…he looked changed too. I was certain that we all were.

“Maybe now it is you who is the bravest of us all,” he told me, his voice thick with relief. Ever since we were younger, he always said he was the bravest of us all, that he could face down an entire horde of Dakkari warriors and live to tell the tale.

My laugh was husky and dry.

“Hi, Maxen,” I said, uncaring that I was crying, since he’d always teased me for it anyways.

Eli appeared, his mop of dark hair glittering from the firelight, followed closely by Viola. My breath left me, seeing them both. Eli was thinner than he’d been before, his face pale. And Viola…my beautiful sister, who I had spent most of my youth envious of. She was still beautiful, of course, but some of the light in her eyes, which had always glittered with warmth, had been extinguished. I wondered if it would ever return.

But she burst into tears when she saw me awake, deep shoulder-shaking sobs, and my last two siblings joined us, huddled close, and I embraced all of them in turn, squeezing tight, never wanting to let go again, until we were all a mess of tears and relief. I breathed in their familiar scents and heard the rhythm and cadence of their voices, which I had drifted off to sleep to for so many years. And I felt so much love fill me that it was difficult to breathe.

How many times had I envisioned just this? How many times had I envisioned us together again and safe?

My breath hitched, my eyes going to Maman. “The vovic?”

“There was a cure. Lozza hadn’t lied about that,” she told me, wiping her cheeks. “All of us have taken it. You still need to take yours.”

I didn’t think I did. I thought that Kakkari’s power had seared whatever had remained within me.

“And the others? Are they all right?”

“Yes,” Eli said. “Most of the Killup and Nrunteng returned to their homes earlier in the week, led by Dakkari guards.”

“And the humans?”

Maxen hesitated. “A couple died from vovic after you left. But the ones that lived…they have no villages to return to. Most came from a single village that the Ghertun destroyed three years ago. The horde king...your horde king offered them a home here, as did the other Vorakkar. Rath Kitala, I think. Some went with him. Some remain here.”

Relief threaded through me, so powerful that it left me drained.

And Davik…just like I’d known, he was a good male. The best of them, as Lokkaru had once said. Giving lost souls a home, a place to belong. Like Lokkaru herself, like Bissa, like Nillima…like me.

Just then, as if my thoughts had summoned him, Davik entered the voliki, trailed by Hedna.

With my family around me, with my heart full to bursting, I locked my gaze with the Vorakkar who had captured me utterly and completely.

His chest was heaving as he regarded me. There was a strain and a darkness in his gaze that lifted and brightened when he saw me awake. He looked as if he hadn’t slept and I just knew that when I’d been asleep, he’d watched over me and held me close at night, worrying all the while.

My love for him was a quiet thing, deep within me, etched into my bones and infused through my veins.

I didn’t need my gift to know he felt the same.

I didn’t need my gift to know that love would be there always. That this was permanent.

There was much that needed to be said between us. But in that wonderful moment, I simply looked at him and I knew that everything would fall into place. He’d told me to have faith.

Now I finally did.

* * *

The rest of the afternoon was spent in my bed. Though I’d been eager to rise, to get some fresh air, my mother fretted over me, feeding me until I was full, and keeping me to my bed to regain my strength. She’d nearly fallen into hysterics when I’d risen to bathe and my knees had buckled briefly.

My family remained there with me for the entirety of the day. And Davik as well, though he kept out of the way, his nearly silent presence in the voliki as he watched me making my family a little wary and nervous. Davik was intimidating. There was no doubt about it. But my brothers, as overprotective as they’d always been, had seemed to come to terms with him being there…or perhaps they were just frightened of his constant scowl, or the scars lining his flesh, or the fact he was almost twice their size.

By the end of the evening, I was itching with restlessness and I wanted—and needed—to be alone with Davik. We hadn’t been alone since I’d woken. We hadn’t been alone since before he’d left for the Dead Mountain.

“Has a voliki been prepared for you?” I asked them.

Maman hesitated and then said, “Yes. We are staying in one together for now.”

I nodded, my gaze straying to Davik again. He was standing, his arms crossed over his chest, near the entrance of the voliki, where he’d been nearly all day, as if he knew how much I needed my family close to me. He didn’t want to interfere, though I wanted him next to me.

“Will you…” Maman asked before starting again, “Will you be staying with us there?”

I looked at her, noticing that Davik seemed to tense at her words, noticing that Maxen, Eli, and Viola’s eyes were on me, anticipating my answer. I felt a little guilty at the question. I had just been reunited with my family—the one thing I’d wanted and craved and thought about since we’d been separated by the Ghertun. I should want to spend every last moment I could with them.

But I had a male now too. A horde king with red eyes and a deep scar down his cheek that he still hadn’t told me about. A horde king who loved me, as I loved him.

“No, my place is with him,” I told her, catching my siblings’ eyes too. Something like…understanding seemed to dawn in my mother’s gaze. “But I’ll see you in the morning. Bright and early.”

Maman’s lips lifted slightly, just a small curl at the corner.

“Are—are you sure, Vienne?” Viola asked quietly. She had barely looked at Davik, had actively tried not to. My gut churned, thinking about everything she’d experienced under the Dead Mountain, and I knew where her hesitation, her fear for me, lay.

“Yes,” I said, catching Davik’s gaze, reaching out to squeeze Viola’s hand. “I am certain. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Maman reached out to cup my face, brushing her thumb over my cheek. “All right, mon coeur. Sleep well.”

We said our goodbyes for the night. Maxen and Eli left first, inclining their heads at Davik, who regarded them silently as they left. Viola exited next, though she kept her head down, her pace seeming to quicken as she passed him. As for my mother, she stopped briefly when she reached him, reaching out her hand to place it on his forearm.

“Thank you,” was what she told him, a brief silence stretching between them as they regarded one another.

Finally, Davik inclined his head to her. This was uncharted territory for him but he was trying.

Maman patted his arm, looking over her shoulder at me one last time…then she smiled and left the voliki. Outside, I heard them all, speaking quietly, their footsteps retreating, no doubt heading to their own home for the night.

Then my gaze went to Davik, saw that his was already on me.

We were finally alone.

Chapter Fifty-Two

“Get me out of this bed please,” my leikavi pleaded softly.

“If your strength was returned to you, rei kassiri,” I rasped, uncurling myself from my place at the entrance, “then I would not allow you to leave it.”

Her cheeks flushed at my words, her gaze almost shy as she watched me stalk towards her.

Thousands of emotions welled up within me. For so long, I had only kept rage and anger close to me, fueling me through this life. Now, I didn’t know what to do with the others. I didn’t know how to handle them barricading themselves in my chest.

“Are you…are you all right?” Vienne whispered to me when I knelt at the side of the bed.

I leaned forward, capturing her lips with my own, threading my palm around the nape of her neck. The kiss was a desperate, frantic thing…my own way of ensuring that she was all right. That Kakkari had spared her life, that she was pink-cheeked and wide-eyed, warm and alive and here against me.

“Not yet,” I murmured against her lips, my voice ragged with the truth of it.

The past week had been hell. One I never wanted to revisit. As Vorakkar, I always had to be strong. My horde could never see weakness. But this week…I was certain Vienne saw the strain of it in my eyes. Up until today, I wasn’t certain I’d ever be able to look into her eyes again…and now that I could, I found myself never wanting to look away.

“I’m here, Davik,” she whispered, pressing her forehead against me. “And I can barely believe that I am.”

That was her truth.

She pulled back. Her eyes were glassy with tears. She held her arms out and I helped her from the bed, holding onto her waist as she got her footing. She’d bathed earlier—her mother and sister had been alone with her then—but she was still weakened.

She wore a simple shift and I bundled her in furs so she wouldn’t chill. Once I’d laced her boots, I guided her from the tent and out into the open night air.

Vienne’s face was one of relief as she stepped outside, her face immediately tilting back to look at the moon, only to blink in surprise.

It was the black moon tonight.

“Is it really over?” she whispered, staying close to my side. Her hand was warm against my forearm.

“With the Ghertun?” I asked, leading her towards the pyroki enclosure. It was a short distance away so it wouldn’t exert her too much and I knew she enjoyed watching them. She’d watched them with Lokkaru for hours. “For now.”

“You don’t expect peace?”

“Nik,” I told her. The encampment was quiet. Vienne’s family were nowhere in sight. I figured they were already settled into their voliki for the night. They’d chosen to stay in one, though I’d offered for all of them to have their own. “For a short while, perhaps. Maybe even years. But war always comes. If I have learned anything as Vorakkar, it is that.”

There was a large part of me—a part I wouldn’t tell her about—that craved returning to the Dead Mountain. That craved slaughtering all that had harmed her and her family. The sibi, the Ghertun who had burned the brand into their flesh, the Ghertun who had given them the first dose of vovic, and Lozza most of all. That bloodlust might never leave me.

“But for now,” I said quietly, as we stopped in front of the enclosure, “there is peace. And because of you, there are no more slaves under the Dead Mountain. Because of you, Lozza knows fear, knows that you alone spared his life though you wielded the heartstone’s power.”

She glanced up at me, leaning against the enclosure. I noticed the short walk had exhausted her.

“Are you angry with me for that?” she whispered, her eyes luminous, even in darkness. Under the Dead Mountain, they’d glowed blue, eerie and beautiful. I would never be able to forget that.

“Lysi,” I told her, my tone bordering on anguished. “I was vokking furious with you. And scared. So scared. Frightened out of my mind!”

“Davik…” she said, her expression softening, her brows furrowing.

“If you—” I cut myself off, feeling that familiar panic rise in my chest. I thought the last week might have taken years off my life, years I’d wanted to spend happily with her.

My fists clenched at my sides.

“If you had died because of it…” I continued. “I—I cannot bear to think of losing you, Vienne. When I saw you wielding the heartstone’s power…I did not think I would survive if you were gone from this world.”

She leaned into me, burrowing her face into the furs that draped over my chest.

I wrapped my arms around her, wanting to squeeze her as tightly as possible to me, but I didn’t want to hurt her while she still recovered.

“You have my heart, Vienne,” I rasped down to her, tilting her chin up so I had her gaze. “You know that. And it is terrifying to know that I am no longer my own.”

Her eyes softened though her features were serious, almost somber.

“And I know that I have very little right to be furious with you,” I added softly, stroking my hand through her hair. “I lied to you about the heartstone. Deceived you knowingly. It was I that was pushing you towards that decision to leave…because I had given you no other choice. You’d been right to not make that promise to me…to never alter my mind again. Because if you had stayed, I might have forced you to. I would’ve given you no other choice.”

“Why did you lie about the heartstone?” she asked.

My jaw tightened, shame lingering in my mind.

“At first, it was because I needed you close,” I said. “After you delivered your message in Dothik, the Vorakkars had decided that the Ghertun needed to be restrained. For years, they have been pushing their borders, attacking and raiding more settlements. We did not know they took slaves. Not until you.”

“You needed me close because I could give you information about the Ghertun,” she finished for me. “Because I had lived under the Dead Mountain and I might know their weaknesses.”

“Lysi,” I said. “I needed your trust. But no one except Lokkaru and I knew about the heartstone. I kept that information from the Vorakkars even because I never intended for it to be found. And the last thing we needed, on the verge of battle with the Ghertun, was for their king to be in possession of a heartstone.”

Vienne’s lips pressed together.

“You know how dangerous it is now,” I said, my throat tight. “You are the only being alive that knows how dangerous—and powerful—it is.”

She swallowed, her eyes flickering in memory of it.

“And then, I did not tell you about the heartstone because I selfishly wanted to keep you near,” I admitted. “I wanted you as my own. I knew that I could protect you. I knew that I would never let you return to the Dead Mountain. I knew that I would bring you your family, so that you would stay.”

Her vision went glassy again.

“But I did not know about the vovic running through your veins,” I finished, my voice roughening. “I did not know that every moment I kept you here, it sickened you further. I did not know that lying to you about the heartstone was inadvertently harming you more.”

“Because I never told you about the vovic,” she whispered. “I lied to you too.”

“We have both kept secrets from one another,” I said, my claw brushing the softness and warmth of her cheek, “for reasons that were our own. But I do not want that anymore. I don’t want anything unspoken between us. From this moment forward.”

“I don’t either.”

My heart began to pump in my chest, nerves coiling in my belly. Because if there were to be no more secrets between us, I knew what I needed to do. And I had never talked about that night, or the ones that followed, to anyone before. I wasn’t even certain I would be able to put it into words.

Nillima approached us at the enclosure fence and when I raised my head to look at my bonded pyroki, my eyes caught on the darkness of the enclosure behind her, searching the shadows.

But my sister had not appeared to me since the Dead Mountain. I had seen others…faces I didn’t recognize. They spoke to me sometimes but never anything I could remember. Devina never came, however.

Nillima nudged my arm with her snout, though she ignored Vienne completely, something that brought a wry smile to my female’s face.

“You want to tell me now?” Vienne whispered. There was no one around. We were alone in the fresh, crisp air of the dark night. “Or later?”

This had been long overdue and I wanted her to know. I was ready to tell her what I’d done. I wanted to, so there would be no more barriers between us. After tonight, we would start anew.

“Once, you asked me to tell you the worst thing I have ever done,” I started. “The worst thing I have ever done was watch Devina die. And be powerless to stop it.”

Her hands settled on my chest.

“It is not a long story,” I said, my throat feeling like it was on the verge of closing up entirely. “There was a male. From our horde. His name was Jarun.”

“Jarun,” Vienne repeated, recognition flashing in her gaze.

I frowned. “You know his name?”

“The memory…the dream,” she said. “The one when you and Devina talked about her wanting to leave the horde, wanting to find a husband, and settle in Dothik or an outpost. She talked of Jarun in that dream. She said she liked him. But you didn’t.”

“Truthfully, I would not have liked any male for my sister. No male would have ever been good enough for her,” I admitted gruffly. I had always been overprotective of her, an instinct I sensed and even admired in Vienne’s own brothers. “But Jarun had held her interest for a long while.

“I told you once about my horde failing when I was younger. Because of overhunting, we would have been hungry for the season and the other Vorakkars had already claimed their land. The horde fell and we had to return to Dothik, to await the next season before we could venture to the wild lands again.”

“Yes, I remember,” Vienne said.

“Devina got her wish, for Jarun never had any intention of rejoining a horde or living in the wild lands. He was a few years older than her, than us. He wanted to stay within the city, the city she had always been so curious about. He had his eyes on a position in the Dothikkar’s private council. He had always been ambitious, with a taste for power,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue. “To him, serving at the Dothikkar’s side was his ultimate prize. And Devina loved him, or at least believed she did. He had promised to make her his wife. They were going to marry before the end of the season, though she was young still and my father did not approve. Nor did I. But Devina had always had a will of her own. She made her choice and it was Jarun.”

Vienne remained silent, as if she sensed I needed to get this out quickly. I still remembered the day she had stood up to our father about the matter. I had never seen our father so angry, but she would not be swayed.

“My sister was beautiful. She possessed the kind of beauty that drew people in, even the worst of them,” I told her, fighting to keep the rage and grief contained within me. “There was a member of the Dothikkar’s council. Ollisan. One day, he saw Jarun with Devina in Dothik and from that moment on, he coveted her. He wanted to possess her as his. He grew obsessed with her. From that day on, he grew closer with Jarun. He offered to mentor him, to whisper in the Dothikkar’s ear to give him a place at his table, in his great hall, but Ollisan had a price. A single price for everything that Jarun ever wanted, an answer to his ambitions and security for his future.”

Horror was laced within Vienne’s tone. “He wanted Devina?”

“Lysi. If Jarun would give him Devina—like she was a possession, something to be traded—then Ollisan would pave the road for him to the Dothikkar’s council, which was the only thing he ever truly wanted. But Ollisan was cruel. Twisted. He was no better than a monster. And so one night, after Jarun agreed to Ollisan’s terms, Jarun led him to our home. I think Jarun believed that if Devina loved him as much as she claimed, she would do this for him. She would make this sacrifice for his dreams.”

My jaw tightened. My gaze flicked to the shadows behind her but they were still empty.

“Devina was alone that night. My mother was working to provide us with gold, so we could eat. My father was drinking that gold away, unhappy and restless away from the wild lands. And I…” I growled, my hands tightening around her. “I was wandering the city. I had seen more and more shadows since we came to Dothik. In my own way, I was trying to escape them.”

“Davik,” Vienne whispered, her eyes glassy with whatever she heard in my tone.

I could almost smell the filth of the capital, the raucous laughter and sharp scent of vomit in the air. I tried to shake it from my mind, focusing on Vienne’s alluring and comforting scent instead. She still smelled of kuveri, as if the scent was forever in her skin.

“That night, Ollisan and Jarun went to our home,” I said slowly. “It was there that Ollisan raped her…while—while Jarun watched. He told me later that he didn’t know that was what Ollisan intended. That everything that happened that night was unintended, out of control, and a product of fear. He swore it on Kakkari. But his word meant nothing to me.”

The tears began to drip from Vienne’s eyes and she held still, absorbing my words into her, as ugly and horrifying as they were.

“The events that happened next are still unclear to me,” I said, my nostrils flaring. “And I will only ever know a fraction of the fear that Devina felt that night. I felt something was wrong. I felt her inside me, this frantic thing scratching within my heart. We had always been connected. We always will be. So when I felt that…I began to return home. But I was too late.”

“What—what happened?”

“I think...I think that my parents returned home, though I am not sure if they returned together or separately. They saw Devina, Ollisan, and Jarun. My father was drunk. He had long hung up his darukkar sword and so he had no weapon. All Jarun would tell me was that he didn’t even realize Ollisan had killed them until it was too late.”

“Oh gods,” Vienne whispered.

“Ollisan told him that if my parents lived after what they had witnessed, then the both of them would be cast out of Dothik, that Jarun would never be allowed within the capital again. They would be as good as dead. So Ollisan killed them both…my mother, my father. Quickly and efficiently. Devina was still alive then. I heard her screams as I ran up the alleyway.”

Her screams that would forever haunt me. I still heard them at night, in my sleep, though I realized those nightmares had been less frequent with Vienne sleeping at my side.

“She was fighting Ollisan when I returned, scratching and clawing at him. Jarun was trying to restrain her. I saw my parents bleeding on the floor, their eyes open but lifeless,” I said, familiar nausea beginning to rise in my belly. “Then I saw Ollisan plunge the dagger inside Devina in his panic.”

I felt Vienne’s hands come to my face and I blinked, pinning my attention on her, feeling the world begin to come into focus again.

“I’m here. Always,” she whispered and it was exactly what I’d needed to hear. Because I could feel myself beginning to drift and I needed her to anchor me to this place, to this time, to her.

“The moment Jarun saw me, he fled,” I told her. “He left her, the female he had promised his life to, lying there in her own blood, her dress ripped, her body battered, her parents dead next to her. And Ollisan…I had never known hatred could run that deep. I had never known hatred could be that overwhelming. Truthfully, after that moment, I—I don’t quite remember what…”

I felt a familiar chill at the back of my neck. My breath hitched and when I looked towards the shadows…Devina was coming into view. She was threading around pyrokis, coming towards us.

Had this memory called her to me?

“What do you remember?” Vienne whispered, still crying. For me, for Devina, for the tragic events that had brought the end of her life.

“Ollisan’s blood all over me,” I rasped, my gaze on my sister. When I pressed my fingers against my scar, I found my hands were shaking. I had never spoken of this before. “When…when I think back to that moment, what I regret is knowing that my sister must’ve seen that as she died. I should have been at her side as she left this world, for her wound was mortal, but at least I would have been there. Instead, I had butchered Ollisan until his blood coated every inch of my flesh. That was her last image of this world. It was horrifying and monstrous, filled with death and hatred.”

“Oh, Davik,” Vienne murmured, watching me trace the scar on my face. “Did…did he give you the scar?”

“Lysi. With the same dagger that killed my parents and my sister. A reminder of that night. Always.”

Vienne looked anguished at my words, while my sister was watching me carefully from the shadows.

“I am sorry for that. I should have been at your side,” I murmured. “I—I never should have left you in the first place.”

Vienne saw where my gaze was pointed. She knew that Devina had appeared, for the first time all week, and I felt her wrap her arms around me, holding me tight.

Devina was within arm’s reach now. She reached out to touch me, which she had never done before. I didn’t feel it, as I’d expected to. It felt more like the prickling at the back of my neck whenever she appeared, an energy that I sensed.

“After that night, I buried Devina and my parents in the forest outside the city, as close to the wild lands as I could reach. I tossed Ollisan’s body—what remained of it—into the forest next to the Dothikkar’s road. As for Jarun…”

Vienne tensed in my arms.

“I tracked him down. For weeks after what happened, he had been hiding within the capital. I took him out into the forest, near where I’d thrown Ollisan’s body. He told me what had happened that night and the circumstances leading up to it. Confessed it all to me,” I said, my gaze meeting Devina’s. “I did not feel anything when I killed him.”

Vienne looked up at me, her eyes sad but knowing.

“I did not feel relief. Or even anger. I did not feel disgust or hatred, not like I did before. I simply felt empty as his blood drenched the earth. And then I saw him rise up in his shadowed form afterwards. That was when the reality of it hit me…that Devina was gone. That my parents were gone. That I had lost everyone that I loved in a single moment. That not even killing the ones responsible could fill that ache inside me.”

Then Mala had appeared in my life, filling that void with something else entirely—with self-hatred and disgust and rage and grief and sex. Judging by the look that crossed Vienne’s face, I knew she’d pieced together that information herself.

“I’m so sorry, Davik,” Vienne said, her voice husky from her tears. “I’m so sorry.”

I locked eyes with Devina, but saw she was already fading. Her appearances were becoming shorter and shorter. She hadn’t spoken this time. Wherever it was that was beginning to pull at her, to take her away…I wanted her to go. Even if it meant losing her all over again. I wanted her to find peace. Finally. After so many years.

“My sister had a pure soul,” I said. “She was the best of us. She always teased me about that. I hated it then but I always knew she spoke the truth. And…and I know she will always be with me. Even if it is not in the shadows. She will find peace. I can already feel it within me…and we were always tied to one another.”

Devina’s lips curled, her eyes glowing.

“Remember her as she was, Davik,” Vienne whispered to me. “Not that night. But every day and night that had come before it.”

“Lysi,” I rasped, watching as Devina faded…

I inhaled a quick breath when she disappeared again.

Gone.

Something told me that I would never see her in the shadows again. I would only see her in memories…or in dreams.

The grief would come at that realization. However, mostly I felt relief. There was a special bond, a special kind of magic, in twins. It was that bond that had tied us to one another, that had kept Devina close to me even in death.

Now maybe we could both heal that wound that had festered for too long. It had been like vovic in our veins, poisoning us both, keeping us prisoners and trapped, so we could not move on from that night.

When Vienne’s eyes found mine, she whispered, “Thank you for telling me.”

Pressing my forehead to hers, I let out a shuddering breath between us, closing my eyes. In the quiet, I could hear the thumping of her heartbeat, strong and certain.

One day, I would see Devina again. I would see my mother and my father again. Vienne would see her father and grandmother again. See Lokkaru again. I took comfort in that.

But we were in this world now. Together.

The sounds of my horde began to pierce the haziness in my mind. The memories of Dothik, of that night, gave way to the feel of Vienne in my arms, her warmth against me, the gentle scraping of pyroki claws into the earth, the scent of which floated up to me, fragrant and rich. Overhead, the stars shone bright, ancient constellations illuminating the sky.

The air was fresh and crisp. Vienne’s heart beat steadily against me.

And when she looked up at me, her gaze more luminous than the stars?

This was what peace felt like.

Chapter Fifty-Three

“What are you thinking of, leikavi?”

Davik’s quiet voice pierced the silence that had built between us.

After he’d told me of his sister, we’d returned to the voliki. Davik had held me against him in the washing tub, though I’d already bathed earlier, and though my arms had shook with the effort, I’d helped him wash his hair and scrub his skin clean. His eyes had been on me the entire time, careful and observant.

Now, we lay in our bed of furs, my cheek pressed to his chest. I listened to the solid thump of his heartbeat as his clawed fingers trailed down my naked back. I’d lost a lot of weight during the week. I felt my raised bones meeting his touch.

We had hardly spoken in the bath. I was still struggling to process the horrific tragedy that had fallen upon Devina—and his mother and father—that had fallen upon him.

As he asked the question, I heard the hesitation in his voice.

It only occurred to me then that my silence might have been misinterpreted as discomfort or wariness.

“Davik,” I breathed, knowing what he thought. As if on instinct, I tried to gather the energy of my gift in front of me, only to feel my heart throb in memory that it was gone.

“I had wondered if it would change the way you saw me,” he murmured. “Knowing what I did to them.”

“Well, it doesn’t,” I rasped, sitting up in bed, clutching the furs to my naked breasts. “How could you think it would?”

Davik sat up too, his golden tattoos swirling in the firelight that filled the voliki.

“You have known death. You have seen violence,” Davik told me. “What I did went beyond that though. That night, the ones that came after, Mala—”

“Don’t say her name here,” I whispered.

He blew out a breath, but continued, “Those nights were the ugliest, most monstrous part of me.”

“I think you think that,” I told him, reaching out to take his hand. “But I don’t. Maybe that is wrong of me but you rid this world of two terrible beings, in a way they deserved. Does a part of me wish that they were rotting away in the Dothikkar’s dungeons right now? Thinking about the horrific things they did to an innocent female and her family? Knowing they would die in darkness and filth? Yes. But I don’t think you could move on, knowing they breathed, knowing they still lived. I would never think less of you for that, Davik. Their lives were yours, to do with as you pleased, the moment they took your family from you.”

Davik was staring at me in surprise.

I licked my lips. “Whatever happened to her? Is she gone too?”

“I do not know, nor have I ever tried to find out,” Davik said quietly. “If she lives, she would never dare to show her face to me now. Undoubtedly, she heard that I am a Vorakkar now.”

“Is it terrible of me to wish she is dead?” I whispered. “Is it terrible for me to wish that, knowing what she did to you? And if she is not, then I wish I could wield the heartstone’s power all over again to end her life.”

We had barely spoken of Mala. After he’d told me of her, the Ghertun had been near the encampment and Lokkaru had died that same night.

His forehead touched mine.

“My female is perhaps as bloodthirsty as I am,” he murmured.

“Then maybe we are perfect for one another,” I told him.

I let out a shuddering breath against him, feeling his warmth against me deflating some of the sudden rage burning hot in my breast.

“I love even the ugly parts of you,” I whispered. His eyes flicked to mine. “Don’t doubt that, Davik. Promise me.”

“I promise, leikavi,” he murmured, touching his lips to mine, and my eyelids fluttered closed with that sweet kiss, so at odds with what we’d just been discussing. I clutched at his shoulders as his tongue stroked mine. Despite my exhaustion, I felt my blood begin to heat. I pressed closer.

He growled, pulling away, running a hand over his face. “Nik, not for some time, Vienne.”

I knew he was right. My body was in no state to take him, to take his strength.

Still, I sighed when he pulled me close again, my skin humming.

A thought occurred to me then—making me tense—brought forward by our conversation.

“Where is the heartstone, Davik?”

“Here,” he murmured.

I assumed he meant in the voliki, likely hidden away where I’d stolen it from in the first place.

“You took it from the tree,” I murmured. “Why?”

“Wasn’t it obvious?” he rasped. “When I found you at the tree…you were writhing in pain, black veins all over you. I was terrified that you were dying and I was very determined that that would not happen. I was always going to use it, if I found Lozza had no cure for the vovic.”

My hands trembled, remembering that dangerous power. “I am thankful that you didn’t.”

He hesitated.

“Davik?” I whispered, feeling his hesitation prickle at the base of my neck.

“I did try,” he admitted.

I froze, tensed, my heart skipping several beats.

“What?”

I struggled to face him again, my gaze darting between his eyes.

“Two days ago. You were not waking. I feared…I feared you never would. So I tried to use it,” he murmured. Dread pooled in my belly and I was only marginally relieved when he said, “It did not work. I think the power was still depleted. It barely glowed.”

“Why would you do that?” I cried softly. Suddenly, I felt that anger that he’d told me about. He had tried to use the heartstone for me…but if I had woken up only to find he was gone from this world, it would have destroyed me. Now, I finally understood the magnitude of the fear and fury Davik had felt when he’d seen me under the Dead Mountain. “Gods, Davik. Why?”

“Because I love you, Vienne,” he rasped, as if it wasn’t obvious to me already. His hands were shaking when he took my face in them, holding me still. “I would have done anything to help you. Your family…they need you. I watched your mother cry over you for days. I thought that as long as you had them—”

“I need you,” I cried. I was so grateful that it hadn’t worked, that maybe the heartstone’s power was depleted or needed significant time to recharge. “Let’s make a deal, Davik.”

I cupped his hand, which was on my cheek.

“When I am stronger again, let’s return the heartstone to the ancient groves,” I said, my voice trembling. “We are the only ones alive that know where it is. Let’s keep it that way.”

“There are those that know of its existence now, leikavi. Rath Kitala. His darukkars. My darukkars. We cannot keep the heartstone a secret any longer. Word will reach the Dothikkar eventually.”

“I don’t believe that,” I murmured. “I think Rath Kitala saw how dangerous it was. I don’t believe your hordesmen would betray you, just as I don’t believe Rath Kitala’s would either.”

Davik took in a deep breath, thinking over my words.

“Let’s return it to the tree,” I whispered. “And never speak of it again. We will never tell a soul about it, just as you’d always intended. Let’s make it lost again.”

His red eyes glowed in the darkness.

He inclined his head.

“Lysi. When you are stronger, we will go.”

Relief threaded through me. My eyes couldn’t help but stray towards the chest where I believed he’d hidden it again.

He turned me so I looked at him. He must’ve seen something in my expression because he rasped, “What is it, leikavi?”

“I’m alive,” I whispered.

His gaze shuddered. “Kakkari spared you though you used her power. I feared that she would ask a price.”

“She did,” I told him quietly, saying the words that had been building up since I’d woken. Davik had been the first I’d thought of telling. Because he would understand. Even my family wouldn’t understand like he would.

His brow furrowed. “Neffar?”

“My gift is gone,” I said. His pupils dilated, his frown deepening. “That was Kakkari’s price. That is why I’m still alive.”

“Completely?” he rasped.

I nodded.

“Leikavi…”

“I don’t know how to be without it, Davik. My gift was like a flame. Once it was sparked when I was young, it continued to grow more and more powerful until it burned bright and raged inside me,” I whispered.

I’d always felt it evolving over the years. But the last month…that had been its most powerful.

Perhaps for a reason, I realized suddenly. Perhaps because I was meant to help those under the Dead Mountain. Maybe Kakkari had always meant for me to use her heartstone. Maybe everything had worked out as it was meant to.

Like…like my fate had already been written.

“Now it’s been extinguished. It’s empty inside me, I can feel it. And I don’t know if it will spark again or if it’s gone forever…but either way,” I whispered, looking at him, giving him a soft, wobbly smile, “I’m all right with this. You cannot receive something without giving something in return. There has to be balance. Lokkaru’s father understood that. And he paid a much steeper price than I had to, so I am grateful that this was all Kakkari asked of me. Because it means I get to be with you. With my family.”

I had wielded the ultimate power and then all my power had left me. A balancing to the universe. It had been necessary. It had been inevitable.

Something settled within me.

It was acceptance.

There were things beyond us all, things we would never understand, and this was one of them.

Davik was still frowning at me, concerned, but I gave him a smile, which softened his severe features.

“Everything worked out the way it was meant to,” I told him, pressing my hands to his chest, cuddling into his warmth. He made me feel safe and protected. He made me feel cherished. “Now, I’m excited to look forward, not back.”

The past would forever remain unchanged. In all of its ugliness, in all of its sweetness, it did not matter. But this was now.

Things were changing and shifting. They always would. And I wanted to be at Davik’s side as they did.

He tipped my face up to kiss me. Soft and slow. A kiss that made my skin tingle and my belly warm with happiness.

“I did not ask before,” he murmured against me, pulling away so he could look into my eyes. “I simply demanded.”

“About what?” I whispered, confused.

“I told you once that I never intended to take a Morakkari,” he continued and realization made my lips part. “I did not think myself worthy of one.”

My heart squeezed in my chest because I knew he spoke what he believed to be the truth, even though it was the furthest thing from it.

“And I know that I do not deserve you, Vienne,” he rasped, “but when I saw you in Dothik, you called to me. This small, beautiful creature had suddenly come into my life and I think even then I knew that something was changing. That something was being set into motion and I was helpless to stop it.”

He stroked my face, the expression in his eyes one of awe…and if I’d ever doubted what he felt for me before, I only needed to look at him now to know the unparalleled truth.

Because the Mad Horde King had fallen in love with a white-haired human slave turned sorceress.

“I will spend the rest of our lives proving to you that I am worthy of your love, leikavi,” he promised. “So I will ask you now…will you be my Morakkari? My mate, my queen to the horde, my wife?”

I’d cried more times than I could count in my life, so it was no surprise when the tears fell down my cheeks now.

“You have nothing to prove to me, Davik,” I told him. “I will love you regardless. And I will love you as your Morakkari. Until the end of our days.”

His voice was gruff when he asked, “Promise?”

I didn’t need my gift to feel his relief, his happiness, his love.

“I promise.”

Epilogue

Two moon cycles later…

“Leikavi,” Davik hissed, his tone warning.

I smiled, kneeling between his legs in the washing tub. My hand was already curled around his cock, which jutted from the water, throbbing and hot. I leaned forward, lapping at the head as my horde king’s groan reverberated around our voliki.

I had been teasing him for the last few moments, alternating between stroking him and suckling him. Our nightly bathing sessions always ended the same way…with me on my back or on my knees or straddling his hips.

But I enjoyed teasing him. Pleasing him. When I’d regained my strength after the Dead Mountain, we had been ravenous for one another…and that drive and need had not diminished in the weeks afterwards. It had only seemed to grow.

The thick column of his throat strained when he tilted it back. I licked his cock and I felt some of his seed land on my tongue, just a taste, just the beginning of what was to come. Some nights, he would let me suckle and kiss his cock until he released into my mouth. Other nights, he would spend the entirety of the evening with his head between my thighs until I had to beg him for mercy, for reprieve. And other nights, like this night, I knew my horde king was already on edge and wouldn’t allow me to tease him much longer.

And just as I knew, when I lapped at the slit of his cock, eager for more seed, he growled, leaping from the bath with me in his arms.

He didn’t bother to dry us off. He brought us close to the fire basin instead, dropping us both down onto the rugs lining our voliki, spreading my legs wide...

A shuddered moan tore from my throat when he thrust inside me. It was powerful and impatient and intense. I had teased my husband too long, it seemed.

My arms went overhead and his head dropped, tonguing my bared breasts, lapping at the water to dry them. A smile crossed my features when he pulled back to look at my face, his hips pumping ferociously between my thighs.

His eyes heated when he saw my grin. He kissed me, stroking his tongue against mine as a shuddered sigh escaped me, as he clasped my hands in his, bringing our bodies closer together until his chest was plastered to mine, until I could feel his heartbeat strumming across my sensitive skin, until I could feel his dakke humming against my clit.

“You like your pleasure, rei Morakkari?” he rasped against me, squeezing my hands in his. “You like when I slide my cock deep inside you, when I suckle on your breasts, and make you come for me?”

“Yes,” I whispered, my back arching. “You feel so good.”

His rough groan lit me up from the inside.

I heard every sound—every shuddering gasp, every slap of our flesh as he drove inside me harder and deeper, every whispered word he murmured in my ear, alternating between sweet words that made my heart throb and words that made my blood burn with desire.

Gods, I loved him.

His Vorakkar cuffs pressed into the golden markings around my wrist, the markings I’d received after our tassimara, after I’d become Morakkari to his horde and tied myself to him for the rest of our lives—after he’d become my husband and tied himself to me for the rest of our lives.

And I swore, as our hands were connected, as he looked deep into my eyes, and he slid deep inside me…I swore I felt something familiar, sparked by the love and awe I felt with every part of my being.

I swore I felt a sparking of energy, that familiar warmth tingling through my mind.

My lips parted but then it was gone. But I’d felt it return to me, albeit briefly.

Maybe it hadn’t been extinguished forever.

My orgasm caught me by surprise when I felt Davik’s pace quicken. His cock was beginning to thicken inside me as I squeezed around him. A guttural cry tore from my throat but I never looked away from him. I wanted him to see what he did to me. I wanted him to know.

My body pulsed, the intense pleasure coming in waves. My lips curled with it.

“Lo kassiri tei,” he rasped in my ear. “Vok! Take it from me, leikavi!”

He continued to piston his hips between my legs, elongating my own pleasure…and then he was bellowing with his release, a rough cry filling the voliki, as I felt jets of his seed fill me, mark me.

It felt sublime. As it always did with him.

Afterwards, he made certain not to collapse on top of me, ever worried about the life that was beginning to grow within my womb. I’d discovered I was pregnant shortly after our tassimara and though my belly was only just beginning to round, Davik already fussed over me like I would give birth any moment.

I knew his question would come before he asked.

“Did I hurt you?” he murmured, pulling me into his arms, our skin warming from the fire basin, drying up the last of our bath water.

“No. Never,” I told him, giving him a small, happy, exhausted smile. No matter how many times I’d told him that, he always asked. He seemed to fear his own strength, whereas I barely gave it a second thought.

We rested in silence as I cuddled into his chest, our legs intertwining, his tail wrapping around my ankle, keeping me anchored to him. One of his hands came to rest on my growing belly…and it was only in these moments, when we were together, lying peacefully, that Davik ever seemed to truly relax.

He always had a million things on his mind. He was Vorakkar to a Dakkari horde, after all, and it was almost time to leave the eastlands. The seasons were changing again, as they always would, and truthfully, I was eager to see more of my home planet, beyond the eastlands, beyond the shadow of the Dead Mountain. Davik had promised me he would lead his horde south, so that I could see the Trikki and the glorious waterfalls and lush valleys that dotted the region.

Now that I was pregnant, he worried even more. A part of me wondered if he regretted replacing the heartstone in the ancient groves—which we’d done before our tassimara, together—because to him, the heartstone represented safety for me and for the life growing inside me, just in case anything happened.

But that was my horde king. He had experienced tragedy and loss in his life that no being should have to experience…and it had marked him and would always mark him in some way. Now that I was pregnant, his fear and worry that I too would be taken from him had doubled because now he fretted over the life inside me, the life we’d created together, the life he already loved so dearly that sometimes it brought tears to my eyes just thinking about it.

I did my best to reassure him but I knew that it would take time. I had faith that we would live out a very long life with one another, that we would watch our children grow—because there would be many—and that his fears were unwarranted.

I pressed a kiss to the scar on his cheek, pressing closer, holding him tighter. He was at peace now, that was what mattered.

“I saw Hedna with your sister today,” Davik murmured after a brief, comfortable silence had passed.

“Mmm, he is hopelessly in love with her, isn’t he?” I murmured, though I felt a little solemn at the thought.

And though I thought my sister returned Hedna’s feelings to some extent, it would be quite some time before she would trust the pujerak fully. If she ever could.

Hedna was a good male. He was everything I wanted for my sister—loyal, kind, hardworking. Sometimes, he even made her laugh, a sound I hadn’t heard for over a year. He would worship the ground Viola walked on if he could. But my sister’s abuse under the Dead Mountain had changed her. There was a hardened glint in her gaze that had never been there before, though I’d been pleased to see her smiling more in the last month she’d been at the horde.

My whole family had been doing that, as if they were finally beginning to realize that this was home now. That they were safe here. They were all finding a place within the horde in their own way. My mother worked with the bikku, cooking for the horde, something that kept her away for long hours but something she enjoyed doing. Maxen worked with the weapons master, the mitri, learning how to forge Dakkari steel. Eli worked with crops and the harvesting of them.

It was Viola that had surprised us all because she’d expressed her interest in working with the pyroki. She spent her days in the enclosure with them, helping the mrikro clean and feed and train the young pyroki. It was hard, grueling work most days. I would watch her work in the enclosure and admire her determination, seeing sweat dot her brow and her arms shake as she mucked out the pen. But it was with the pyroki that I had first seen her smile and I understood why she’d chosen them.

“And maybe one day, she will decide that Hedna makes her happy. Maybe one day, she will decide to take that chance on him, to trust him,” I whispered to Davik.

“He would be good to her.”

“I think Viola knows that,” I murmured. “Deep down.”

Davik pulled me closer, pressing a kiss to my hair. The memory of my dream from last night returned to me. And I knew that it would be a good time to tell him…when he was at peace and settled against me because I wasn’t certain how he would take it.

“Davik?”

“Lysi?”

I lifted my gaze to meet his.

“I—I had a dream last night.”

He blinked at my words, his muscles tightening against me ever so slightly. It would’ve been barely noticeable had I not been pressed so close to him.

“What was it?” he asked slowly.

“I’m not entirely certain,” I said truthfully. “It was jumbled but it felt calm. I didn’t see anything. It was more like I felt the dream, like how I used to feel others’ emotions.”

“And what did you feel?”

I took a small breath in and said, “I think it was Devina.”

Davik didn’t say anything, though I knew he was holding himself very still. He still saw the shadows of beings long dead. He always had and he always would. But ever since that night after I’d woken, that night he’d told me about what happened to his twin, he had never seen Devina appear to him again. Not in shadowed form, at least.

He knew that Lokkaru had come to me in a dream. I’d told him that was how I’d known where to find the heartstone. He knew that I’d dreamed memories of his and that Devina had given me her own memories as well.

Last night had been similar and yet different. Given that I’d sworn I felt my gift sparking inside me again, I wondered if the dream was another sign that my power was beginning to flicker to life.

“I felt her, the way I had when she’d appeared here, inside the voliki. Her energy was warm and loving. Happy,” I whispered, giving him a small smile. I was nervous, I realized, telling him this.

“Did…did she say anything?”

“Not directly. I didn’t hear her voice. But when I woke…”

“Lysi?”

My eyes had already begun to shimmer with tears. “When I woke, I knew. I knew what she had told me in the dream though she hadn’t spoken a single word.”

My hand settled over his, pressing it closer to my belly.

“There isn’t just one child,” I told him. “I know that there are two. A boy and a girl. To be born together.”

His pupils dilated at my words, his breath hitching in his voice.

“Twins?” he rasped.

“Yes,” I whispered, giving him a wobbly smile. Being pregnant meant I was an endless waterfall of tears and almost all of them were happy ones. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”

He’d lost his twin after all and it had nearly destroyed him. I couldn’t imagine how strong that bond must be. There was a magic in twins, a special bond that couldn’t be explained.

And our children would share that bond. Even now, they shared it.

Davik kissed me, hard and thoroughly, making relief thread through me as I clutched him closer. He tasted my tears before he kissed them away.

“I cannot wait for them to come, leikavi,” he rasped, his voice shaking from deep emotion I felt even in me. “Though I enjoy having you all to myself too.”

I grinned.

“You will be a wonderful father,” I told him. I knew that as certainly as I knew there were two lives growing inside me. I kissed him again. My tone turned teasing when I whispered, “Think of all the stories we can tell them.”

He groaned.

“The story of a Vorakkar who stole a heartstone from an ancient tree,” I whispered.

“The story of a white-haired sorceress who brought a Ghertun king to his knees,” he rasped, quirking a brow. I chuckled.

“Or my favorite one,” I said.

“Mm, which one is that?” Davik asked, his eyes bright as he looked at me.

Leaning up, I pressed a kiss to his lips, feeling his grip tighten on my hips.

Against him, I whispered, “The story of a human girl who fell in love with a Vorakkar.”

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WANT MORE SEXY, ALPHA ALIENS FROM ZOEY DRAVEN?

Warriors of Luxiria:

The Alien’s Prize

The Alien’s Mate

The Alien’s Lover

The Alien’s Touch

The Alien’s Dream

The Alien’s Obsession

The Alien’s Seduction

The Alien’s Claim

Warrior of Rozun:

Wicked Captor

Wicked Mate

The Krave of Everton:

Kraving Khiva

Prince of Firestones

Horde Kings of Dakkar:

Captive of the Horde King

Claimed by the Horde King

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Love,

Zoey

About the Author

Zoey Draven has been writing stories for as long as she can remember. Her love affair with the romance genre started with her grandmother's old Harlequin paperbacks and has continued ever since.  As a Top 100 Amazon bestselling author, now she gets to write the happily-ever-afters—with a cosmic, otherworldly twist, of course! She is the author of steamy Science Fiction Romance books, such as the Warriors of Luxiria and the Horde Kings of Dakkar series.

When she's not writing about alpha alien warriors and the strong human women that bring them to their knees, she's probably drinking one too many cups of coffee, hiking in the redwoods, or spending time with her family.

Visit her at www.ZoeyDraven.com.

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