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“Yes, my lord,” melodious voices said in unison. “A boy left a few minutes ago to alert the Keep. We did not pursue.”
Chedra let out a sound of raw dread when one of the Darkans simply disappeared. She made to follow in his direction and was stopped with a brutal slam in her chest from the remaining elder. Saieke heard Chedra’s clavicle crack and the harsh sound of pain that she screamed was heart wrenching. Chedra was flung back by the force of the blow and she crumpled. Pain lined her features. It was more than pain, it was dread. Saieke spun to where she was looking and saw that the Darkan had appeared with Cullen dangling from his hand.
A wail of torment slipped from Chedra’s lips when the Darkan slashed his claws across Cullen’s throat and casually tossed his body aside. Disbelief and grief ripped through Saieke and she drew wind with strength and rage that whipped a deadly cyclone. The Darkan appeared in front of her. Saieke looked at him weakly as she felt a cold fire inside. Her wind crumpled as if it never was, and she looked down to see his claws buried deep inside her stomach up to his fingertips.
Drac. The dark abyss opened in her mind. She slid into the inky blackness of emotions that pulsed inside her mind. Darkness stretched and tunneled in her mind. And in the abyss of her mind, serpentine eyes sprang open and ensnared her.
Too late. The thought drifted in her mind to him as blackness hovered and death crept slowly to claim her.
Chapter Seventeen
The roar was one that screamed retribution. Tehdra flowed beside Tzar as they moved with unparalleled speed towards his mate and her sister. They had been nearing the king’s castle when he had stumbled, enraged. His mate had reached out to him and let him know that she was in danger.
They were thousands of miles away, but they would reach them in mere minutes. Tehdra knew they would still not be there in time. Grief gripped her heart. Today she would lose a beloved sister and nephew. She had to keep calm and focus as Tzar had ascended beyond rage.
Based on what she had gleaned from his garbled growls, Chedra was surrounded by two Mevians and two Darkans. One of the Darkans was elder Macklin, who sat on the warrior council. He was fully bonded, and Tehdra and Tzar together could not hope to defeat him. Macklin had access to all his beast rage and power, and he wielded it with utter control.
He was an elder she trusted and had worked with to develop strategies to protect their king. The elder must know that her sister would reach out to her mate and reveal his identity. Chedra and the princess would die once their betrayer deemed it so. The loss that Tzar faced losing his mate was infinitely greater than the loss she faced losing her sister and nephew. She swallowed the grief that stung so acridly at the back of her throat.
Please…live Chedra…Cullen. She even hoped for the princess, for she had felt her brother’s desire for her.
Chakra roiled black and menacing around Tzar, and he unleashed all of the beast power he had control. His speed climbed and he outdistanced Tehdra. His hair had grown into a length that stopped at his waist; his claws were fully extended and curved wickedly. Fangs, sharp and vicious, were out and his eyes had a deep glow of swirling amber and madness. The speed at which he lunged and travelled through the darkness was becoming hard for Tehdra to keep up.
She had to alert Drac alone. She would never have imagined that the elder Macklin was part of the plot to overthrow Gidon. She did not know which warrior she could now trust.
Fangs punched from her mouth as she lowered the psychic leash she had her beast under. Rage and blood lust unfurled and rushed through her like a potion. Chakra swirled around her and evil battered at her mind as her beast lunged for more freedom. She would divert to the castle and alert Drac. She drew on her strength and ran beside Tzar in their race to save those they loved.
***
Drac hunched over the stone table, thumbing through one of their books in the archive room with his most trusted elder. The archive had over three floors of books, scrolls and tablets of their history and beast origins. They were looking at their lexicon—the great book that had hundreds of traces origins of their beasts and how they mated.
“You are very sure that the princess is your mate?” the elder queried for the third time, as they both leaned over the pages.
He could not stop thinking about Saieke and his beast had constantly tried reaching out to her to find her mind closed.
He had forced himself to reign in his beast and prevent himself from constantly seeking the connection between them. His lips twisted in slight disdain, never would he think that he would have been so distracted by a female, mate or not. “I am sure,” he stated empathically.
“There is nothing recorded in our archives of a Darkan mating with a non Darkan. Where is the beast’s companion? How would the beast be soothed?” Eldrud murmured quietly.
“My beast is content whenever we connect with her psychically.”
“How is it possible that you do so and she is without a beast?” the elder asked.
Drac thought on how much to reveal. “I have fed from her several times, and I have also had her consume my blood.”
Eldrud arch his brows sharply and frowned in deep contemplation. “Mated Darkans do not consume each other’s blood. They feed on the beast chakra present in each other.”
“I am aware of that.”
“Our records of our kind on Earth and Serange speak of converting humans and Serangites through ingesting our blood. We do not understand the full of it or how accurate the records are. Much of it is stories made up of truths and half-truths with the intention of distorting knowledge about us.”
Drac teeth snapped together. “She is not turning into a Darkan.”
The elder prowled around the room, his flowing robes swishing at the ground with each movement.
“Have you claimed her?” he queried
“Yes…No.” Fuck.
