Page 189 of Moon Chosen

Dove woke him with three words that changed everything. “Something is happening.”

Dead Eye was instantly alert. “What is it?”

“I’m not sure. I sense a change. Can you smell that? The air has an odd quality to it. My Champion, we must go to the balcony. You must be my eyes.”

“That I will always be,” he said. Taking her hand they left their sleeping pallet and walked quickly through the chamber to the God’s balcony. He helped her step up on the ledge with him as he gazed out at the morning, instinctively turning to the northwest.

At first it seemed something was wrong with the clouds—that they were being formed in the distant forest ridge instead of the sky and rising from it. Dead Eye stared, baffled. The wind shifted, allowing him to see a black column of smoke with an orange glow in the center of the billowing white. Thick and ominous, it spread, staining the perfect cerulean sky with darkness. Dead Eye was filled with excitement.

“What is it, my Champion? What do you see?”

“Our future. I see our future!”

With the grace and strength of a stag, he lifted Dove off her feet, pressing her naked body against his, twirling her round and round as the two of them laughed with delight while the Reaper God loomed silently behind them. Her copper eyes stared out at the distant forest as if she, too, was gazing at their future. In her frozen expression there was no delight, no anger, there was only a waiting, watching stillness frightening to behold.

The End. For Now.

EPILOGUE

Bast was the only reason Antreas didn’t get trapped in the inferno. His Lynx saved him. Again. The big feline had pawed and pawed at him with her huge pads so insistently that she’d frightened the curvy Tribeswoman he had finally managed to convince to join him in the visitors’ nest for a private drink. Antreas had been so irritated by Bast that he’d slipped into normal, denlike behavior and had hissed at the Lynx, which was when the girl had fled the visitors’ nest, sending him and his feline horrified looks over her shoulder as she disappeared into the night.

“I suppose you’re going to be smug about that,” he’d muttered at Bast. “Because if she’s scared away by a little pawing and hissing she’s definitely not mate material.”

Bast had rubbed against him then, twining around and through his legs, and purring mightily before padding to the door and looking back at her Companion expectantly.

Antreas sighed. “All right. Might as well hunt with you since my chances of any other kind of sport are over for the night. Truthfully, Bast, after that one spreads the word, we’ll be lucky if any of the Tribeswomen agree to be alone with me.”

Bast had simply pawed at the doorway and made the unique, almost owl-like cough that signaled her impatience.

Sighing heavily, Antreas followed his feline.

It had been late, and the two of them, Lynx and Companion, hadn’t seen anyone until they’d come to the main lift.

Antreas hadn’t had to knock on the nest’s doorway to get the lift sentry’s attention. The low, warning growl that came from the Shepherd within had already alerted him.

“Oh. It’s you,” the man stepped from the doorway of the nest to frown with disdain at Antreas and Bast.

The Mercenary kept his expression placid, though the arrogance of the dog men was beginning to grate on his nerves. “Bast needs to hunt. I’d appreciate it if you lowered us to the forest floor.”

“It may be different in the mountains, and by different I mean easier, but here it’s not a good idea to spend time on the forest floor after dark.”

“I’m aware of that. Bast and I can take care of ourselves,” Antreas said.

Instead of moving to the lift controls, the man tilted his head, studying Antreas. “Is it true you can scale trees?”

“It is,” Antreas said.

The man’s smile was mocking. “Then why do you need the lift to get down? Or can you just scale up?”

At his side, Bast hissed. Antreas watched the dog man’s eyes widen as his gaze went from him to the big feline and then back to him again. Antreas knew what he was seeing, and that knowledge had a slow, satisfied smile lifting the corner of his lips.

In the old language, Lynx meant light. The big cats had thus been named for the reflective power of their preternaturally sharp eyes—a power that passed to the human chosen by a Lynx—a power that outsiders said made the bonded Lynx and human look equally otherworldly, equally demonic.

“We can scale upanddown trees. We can do many things your Tribe speaks of—and does not speak of—but in my home, my den, such questions posed to a guest are considered rude. Is that not so among the dog people of the Tribe of the Trees?”

The sentry blinked. His shocked expressed shifted back to one of forced disinterest. “Get in the lift. Wave the torch when you want to return.”

Antreas and Bast entered the lift and closed the door. His smile was mocking, though his tone remained carefully neutral. “Thank you for your hospitality.”