“You’re not worried about losing your independence?”
“What independence?” A harsh sound escapes him—almost a laugh. “The clan owned me since birth. The Matron saw everything I did, controlled everything I felt. This is different. You’re not trying to control me. You’re not using what you sense as leverage.” His thumb traces my lower lip. “You’re just… mine.”
Mine. The word sends a shiver down my spine.
“Give me time to think.” I sit up, put a little distance between us. My body protests the loss of contact. “I want this, but I want it chosen properly. Not grabbed at in a farmstead with hunters closing in.”
TWENTY-NINE
IMARA
The blood-wards flare.
Kharvek goes rigid beside me. His scars surge with crimson light—that bright warning I’ve come to recognize. I’m on my feet before conscious thought engages, reaching for power, reaching for him.
“Something’s wrong.” He crosses to the window. Peers through the gaps. “The ward network just?—”
I sense it then. In my own scarification, in the residual magic that permeates even this barren territory. A shift in the blood-ward matrix. A surge of power directed toward us.
Toward us specifically.
“She can sense the resonance.” The realization hits like ice water. “The Matron. She’s tracking us through our own blood.”
Kharvek’s jaw tightens. “Movement on the eastern ridge. Half a mile out, maybe less.”
The hunters. What remains of them, after the Sacrificial Pit, after Tomek’s diversion. They should have been hours away. Instead, they’re nearly on top of us.
Because the Matron guided them here. Because she sensed what hums between us and used it as a compass.
“How many?”
“Six. Maybe eight.” He turns back to me. “We can’t outrun them. Not if she’s tracking the resonance.”
“Then we fight.” I grab my knife. The small blade I’ve carried since my harvester days. “Here. Now.”
“Stay behind me.” He crosses to me. Cups my face. Kisses me hard—quick, urgent, a promise and a prayer. “Feed me what you can. And if I fall?—”
“You won’t fall.”
“If I fall,” he repeats, “you run.”
I kiss him back just as hard. “I’m not leaving you standing.”
Something stirs in his gaze—frustration, resignation, and beneath it all, something warmer. Something that might be love.
“Stubborn woman.”
“Stubborn man.”
He almost smiles. Then he steps out the door, and I follow, positioning myself behind him, reaching for the resonance that pulses between us.
The hunters see us. Spread into a formation designed to flank, to overwhelm, to capture rather than kill. The Matron still wants us alive. Still wants what our blood could create.
She won’t get it.
Kharvek’s scars flare. His channels open. I sense it as a surge in my own blood—that resonance amplifying his magic, feeding it, making it stronger than it was before.
He moves.
