They’re not testing anymore.
They’re finishing this.
I move faster.
Faster when she’s exposed.
More brutal when they target her specifically.
The first hunter dies with my claws in its throat. The second loses its head before it completes its lunge. The third—larger than the others, armor plating thicker than standard—catches my strike on its shoulder guard and presses forward.
I adjust mid-motion. Pivot around its guard. Find the gap in its armor where the spine meets skull.
It drops.
I tear through the formation like a force of nature—not fighting, slaughtering. Making them pay for every inch they try to close. Making them understand that the distance between them and her is the distance between them and oblivion.
She plants her feet and raises her hands and reaches for magic she can barely access.
I intercept before she has to use it.
I don’t stop at neutralization—I destroy the creature, tearing it apart until there’s nothing left to regenerate. Until the divine spark gutters and fades. Until I’m standing in a ruin of flesh and armor and ichor.
Breathing hard. Blood-soaked. Fire burning in my veins with an intensity that scares me.
She’s staring at me.
Not with fear. Not with disgust. Not with the revulsion most creatures show when they see what I’m capable of.
Her eyes are wide. Her lips slightly parted. Her magic reaching toward me unbidden, pulsing weakly in my awareness like a second heartbeat.
She’s looking at me like I’m the answer to a question she didn’t know she was asking.
The pressure builds behind my eyes, in my spine, in every nerve ending that screams at me to close the distance between us and claim the thing I’ve been guarding.
“Move.” Rough. Animal. “Now.”
She nods once.
She doesn’t look away.
I turn and walk east, filing the heat roaring through me as a battle response. Combat adrenaline. Instinct doing what instinct does.
I don’t turn around. Don’t let myself see her face in the dying light. Don’t find out what expression she’s wearing now that she’s seen what I become when her life is threatened.
The rationalizations stack up like bodies.
I almost believe some of them.
NINE
SOREIA
We try to separate. Twice.
Not because the arrangement has run its course—because splitting our pursuit profile might reduce the target we present. A tactical test, nothing more. The gods answer the question for us.
The first time, I veer south while he continues east. A reasonable strategy—split the pursuit, reduce the target profile, give him room to hunt without an anchor slowing him down. I make it half a mile before three hunters materialize from the tall grass, cutting off my retreat with coordinated precision.
