*Isaac*
Blood drips down from my temple where a gash runs from my forehead to my chin, right over the bridge of my nose. It’s not healing with the usual speed my powers award me. I’m not like my mother. I can’t heal others. But my body rapidly heals itself…. At least, it should have by now.
The young warrior, Emmet, one of the six survivors I found after the battle in the plains, crouches beside me while we watch an enemy encampment from a large, jagged rock on the base of the mountains.
Both of us are drenched in blood–most of it belonging to others–and sweat, filth, and dirt from the forest. It’s impossible to keep track of time when the whole forest is under a spell of pure darkness, but I’d guess we’d been out here for days now, watching, waiting to strike.
Emmet, a boy of fifteen, had snuck out of his home and joined the cause illegally. Too young to shift, some would have thought he’d been helpless during the battle.
But when I found him, he’d been wielding his great-grandfather’s sword and cutting through our enemies before they were able to turn to mist, leaving a trail of blood in his wake over a mile long. Dozens of bodies laid out around him, headless, dead before his sword finished swinging.
Now, he crouches only a few feet from me, his eyes narrowed on the camp below us.
The other survivors linger lower, waiting for my command.
Everyone who’d survived that battle follows me into what I can only describe as certain death, but they’ve proven themself as the best of the best of my warriors, everyone from a different pack, a different territory. One of them, an older warrior, is from Celestoria, and pledged his life to my mate as his reason to fight and keep fighting.
I chew my lower lip as the shadowy figures below us mingle around a small warming fire, their shadows dancing on the jagged cliff behind them, and directly below us.
They have no idea we’re here, not when the stench and blood and death chokes the forest and covers our own scents. Emmet rustles beside me as he lifts his arm, pointing to a new group of enemies coming through the trees.
Their language is rough and hard to understand. I pick up a few words that sound similar to some of our own, but it’s pointless. Whatever they’re planning has nothing to do with invasion of my lands. No, that’ll come later, once they have my head on a stake.
I have no intentions of letting that happen.
I nod slowly at Emmet, who slips down the rocks, landing in a crouched position on the forest floor only a few yards from the edge of their camp.
‘There’s twenty-eight of them,’ came a voice through the mind-link. Linc, a warrior from Maatua, part of Anthony’s army, is several yards away up a tree.
I squint into the darkness and see the glare of his bow against the fire burning below it, an arrow primed and ready.
The enemy hasn’t seen us. We’re close enough to breathe down their necks, but they haven’t even noticed. We creep forward, encircling the camp over the course of several hours until we have them totally surrounded, no room for escape.
This will be the fifth group of enemies we’ve taken out in the last day, I think. Time doesn’t matter right now.
‘That’s nothing compared to the last one,’ says Julius, a warrior from the Windsong Gorge pack.
‘What’s twenty-eight compared to three hundred?’ Oliver, a warrior from my own royal army, chuckles down the mindlink.
Now, that had been a sight to behold. Six warriors and their Alpha King taking out three hundred enemies. It had only taken thirty minutes, and none of them had even needed to shift. The reason these men had survived the battle on the plains is because of their other skill sets–swords, archery, the use of fire and rope–and explosives.
‘That was the last of them returning from patrol,’ Cesare, another underage warrior says from a whole mile away where he’s keeping watch.
‘Bows,’ I command, and below me, several of the men lift their bows with their arrows already primed. ‘Linc, fire!’
Linc shoots six arrows at once, each of them hitting their targets in total silence. Grunts of surprise ripple through the camp, then chaos erupts, but the enemy warriors can’t shift in time to meet the tidal wave of arrows rushing toward them now.
Some would say it isn’t fair of us to use weapons, that it goes against our nature, but turning into mist and disappearing doesn’t quite follow our code of ethics either.
Emmet leaps from his position, his sword singing as he unsheaths it and cuts through four enemies with the grace of a ballet dancer.
I jump off the rock, my twin daggers slicing through an enemy’s neck, who slumps into his surprised companion. The other warrior has no time to process what is happening until my knives rip through his chest.
“Leave one alive!” I shout over the fray.
Linc jumps down from his tree on top of a warrior and wrestles him to the ground. He pulls off his collar, that thing they’re using to shift into mist and ether.
The battle is over in seconds.
I wipe my bloody knives on my pants and walk toward Linc while my other warriors scavenge the dead for supplies and clues to where the rest of their comrades are camped.
I crouch in front of the wide-eyed warrior who Linc has in a headlock. Pressing a dagger tip into the man’s thigh, I fix him with a glare. “If you shift, I’ll cut off each of your legs before the transformation is complete.”
The man spits in my face.
I ignore it, for now. “Where is your king?”
“Not here.”
That’s what they all say. Not here. Not in these lands at all, which doesn’t make any sense.
“Why would he send warriors to battle and not follow his armies?”
“He sits on his iron throne,” the man growls hoarsely, “while his son does his bidding.”
Well, this is new. “His son?”
The man just grins, blood dripping from his teeth.
“You’re a little late now, King,” he mocks, spitting out the word king like it’s an insult. “This war is over.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can keep cutting down our camps but he has already won.”
I shove Linc away and press our prisoner to the ground, holding my knife against his neck. “What the fuck are saying?”
“Are you missing something?” he hisses. “Something special to you? Something you’d give up your kingdom for?”
My blood begins to chill. “I don’t have time for games.” I press the knife into his neck until it draws blood, and he hisses in pain.
“We have your queen.”
My world tilts on its axis. “You’re lying.”
“She’s a real beauty. Red hair, blue eyes. I heard from some other scouts she’s been put to good use, keeping bedrolls warm and–”
“You’re lying.”
“Check my breast pocket.” A cruel smile twists over his mouth. Linc gives me a worried look as I tear open the man’s pocket.
My locket. The one Mystica gave me.
“WHERE IS SHE?” I shout in his face.
He spits at me again, and I waste no time slitting his throat.
My warriors gather around me, looking down at the locket in my hand.
“They have the Luna Queen.” My words hold no emotion. I feel empty inside, numb to feeling.
“There’s another camp twenty miles from here,” Cesare says quietly. “We will look there, see what they know.”
I grind my teeth as the numbness is replaced by fury–white hot, deadly fury.
I call to her through the mindlink, but there’s nothing but static. No trace of her on the wind, no sense that she's nearby. Her mark on my shoulder doesn’t feel like anything but a scar.
I walk out of the semicircle of warriors around me to the fire. I open the locket, watching the flames dance in the little mirrors on each side. “Show me my mate.”
Darkness swirls in the mirrors, replaced by shadowed figures and torchlight. A cave. On the ground is a bundle of furs and linen, soft red hair splayed out on a rough, dirt floor. A sheet covers her face, and blood tinges the white linen red.
‘I’m coming,’ I say through the mind-link.
I turn to my men, clutching the locket, cursing Maddy’s name for being dumb enough to do this, the one thing I made her promise not to do.
“There will be no more survivors. Every camp we come across, we decimate. I don’t care how it’s done, but we are going to burn this forest to ashes,and bring these mountains down at our feet, for our queen.”
* * *
*Maddy*
Mystica lays her hand over my forehead. I can feel her touch, warm and kind. “Sleep now,” she whispers. “Just rest. A woman in your condition shouldn’t be straining herself so thoroughly.”
My mouth is too dry to speak. Heat snakes through my body from a nearby fire, but it does nothing against the chill racking my body.
“Help me,” I whisper, but Mystica isn’t the one who answers. She’s gone, another fever dream.
The hand resting on my forehead isn’t hers.
Kane’s hand lifts from my forehead, and he sighs heavily before rising to his feet.
“Another camp was just torn apart sixty miles south,” an unfamiliar voice says nearby, muffled by the crackling fire.
“Good,” Kane replies in a voice full of gravel and what I can only describe as exhaustion. “This is nearly over then, and we can go home.”
“And what happens then, Ryatt?” the other asks in a clipped tone dripping with frustration. “The mess we’ve made here…. We underestimated them.”
“We underestimated her, Granger. This ends with her, and we must find her. I need the Alpha King to do so.”
What’s happening? None of this makes sense, but I’m also not sure I’m even awake.
“And the Luna Queen? What do we do with her?”
“She stays alive,” Kane snaps with incredible force. “If anyone so much as looks in her direction, they’re dead. Tell the men. I’m not fucking around.” The anger in his voice is palpable. “Where the fuck is the healer I called for two days ago?”
“Probably dead along with whatever encampment he was coming from,” Granger snaps back.
“Find someone who can tend to her. I’m not handing back her dead body to her people. We’re running out of time. If the king doesn’t come on his own accord, bring him to me, alive. I warned that stupid, thick-headed bastard this was going to happen.”
My vision starts to blur around the edges as another chill soaks into my bones.
“Isaac?” I say out loud.
Dirt crunches as Kane comes into view again, his iron colored eyes looking down into mine. “He’s coming. I promise. Just hold on a little longer.”
“Who are you? Are you the s-second beast?”
A soft, knowing smile touches his lips, but his eyes are sad and withdrawn. He doesn’t answer, and one moment he’s there, and the next second my vision dissolves into total, inky darkness.