Her fingers tightened until they dug painfully into her palms. When her father first built the tunnels, Sahira cast a spell to keep them hidden. These men were lycans, but they shouldn’t be able to detect the aroma of those refugees.
Even knowing this, a clammy sweat broke out on her body. She tried not to let her rising panic show, but she suddenly felt like the wordguiltywas stamped across her forehead in vivid red letters.
“Is this going to create an issue?” the lycan asked.
“Of course not,” Lexi said and hoped her voice didn’t sound as strained as it felt. “We have nothing to hide here.”
They hadeverythingto hide here, but she couldn’t stop them from doing this. If she tried, then she really would have guilty stamped all over her.
Theywon’t find the tunnels.
Her father carefully crafted each entrance, so it was impossible to detect even if you knew it was there. However, she couldn’t stop her rising terror over the possibility they would somehow uncover them.
And if they discovered them, then everyone inside was as good as dead. She compelled herself not to look at Brokk again. Would the Lord kill him too if they discovered Orin here?
No, she wouldn’t let that happen. She would gladly throw herself on that sword before she let Brokk and Sahira pay the price for her choices.
“Right this way,” she said to the lead lycan.
The others dismounted before following her inside.
Chapter Thirty-One
Only five feetof rocky land separated the lake from the fire beyond it. Cole almost reeled backward when the fire hit him. For a second, the idea of the acid water was far more pleasing than the flames jumping and snapping all around him.
Then he realized that if he kept running, the fire burned but didn’t devour him. He sprinted forward as the flames rolled over the top of him, beat against his sides, and roared so loud he couldn’t hear his rapid breathing.
And then, just when he believed the fire was going to devour him, it eased up. Smoke and heat didn’t blast his lungs as he inhaled crisp, fresher air into their brutalized depths.
The blisters covering his freshly grown skin from head to toe popped. Their ooze sizzled against his red flesh. The bottoms of his feet, already burned from the wet rocks, were nothing more than tendons and bone again.
Exhaustion and hunger had become heavy, draining weights, but he pushed onward. He’d made it this far; he wouldnotstop now.
Flames crackled around him as the towering volcanoes spewed black smoke into the air. The red lava sliding toward him bubbled and popped as it consumed everything in its path.
Was he supposed to climb up through those volcanoes? He studied the rocky terrain and oozing lava as he tried to figure out where to go from here.
From the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement a second before a creature rushed out of the flames. Cole danced back from the lumbering monster and ducked the massive, rocky arm it swung at him.
It’s a cherufe!
He’d never thought to see one of the hideous, man-eating creatures in his lifetime. He’d believed they were all extinct, but the eight-foot-tall monster was very real and made up entirely of rocks and magma. Flames encompassed its colossal frame and rolled from its eye sockets.
When it opened its gnarled mouth, it bellowed smoke and ran toward him with the wide step of a charging gorilla. It would have been comical if it wasn’t for the monster’s determination to bash him to pieces.
Cole ducked when it swung a fist the size of a wheelbarrow at his head. If one of this thing’s punches connected with him, it would flatten his skull.
Despite its size, the cherufe was fast as it spun toward him. Cole darted to the side as its rocky fingers gouged his back.
He ducked as its arms came down like it was trying to embrace him in a giant bear hug. Except this bear hug would crack his spine and tear him in two.
He danced back from the creature as he tried to figure out how to defeat it. He was no match for its strength, and with the flames enveloping its body, it would engulf him in fire if he launched himself at it. He also couldn’t use those flames against the monster as it was part of the fire surrounding them.
The best he could do was stay free of its grasp, but he couldn’t do that forever. This thing consisted of rocks and was in its element. If it tired, it wouldn’t be for a while, and he was already exhausted and battered.
The ground shook as the thing ran at him with more speed than something that easily weighed a ton should exhibit. The impact of its steps caused rocks to break away from the side of a volcano. They clattered down the side and bounced across the ground.
Fresh smoke belched into the air from one of the volcanoes. A whistling sound followed a couple of seconds later. Cole chanced a glance at the sky as a black, flaming pile of debris soared toward him.
