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Once the clans learned, they would stop coming for my throne.
They would come for her.
Scarn watched the realization settle across my face and smiled wider. “Now you see the problem.”
“I see a dead man talking too much.”
His hand lowered.
“Take her alive,” he ordered. “Don’t let her touch you.”
She lifted her chin. “Good thing men are predictable.”
“Capture her!” Scarn yelled.
Sam’s fire hit first. Orange-white light ripped across the floor while Mandi hurled what remained of the vase into a guard’s face. Someone screamed. Another soldier turned his weapon on his own man after Mandi spat something into his ear. Behind me, Kalon’s pick dug hard inside the final pin.
The collar clicked. Oh, Scarn had fucked up. The silver fell from my throat, and I breathed nightmares into existence. They poured from the walls, floor, ceiling, every seam where fear had collected beneath my tower for years. They struck with the force of a second body, wrapping around my shoulders, spine, arms, and jaw. The cuffs shattered behind me.
I rose to my feet as my form expanded.
Darkness swallowed the cell, and the Hound came out. Shadow rolled over my skin until my human outline disappeared into the silhouette of a massive black dog with red eyes. Its shoulders scraped the ceiling. Smoke lifted in wisps from its spine. Jaws opened around my head. It moved when I moved and spoke when I spoke but had urges and instincts of its own.
One enormous paw struck the floor and cracked the stone.
Liv stood beside me in a wash of pink, breathing hard, her knife held wrong and her courage held strong as her sharpest weapon. Then she reached up and rubbed the Hound’s ear under her thumb.
My eyes closed for half a second before I could stop them. Of course she feared the silver more than my worst form. Of course I had spent weeks fighting a bond with the one woman who treated a Nightmare Hound as an oversized dog whose only problem was finding a collar and bowl big enough.
“Is this a bad time to say your dog form is bigger than expected?” she asked.
The Hound’s ears flattened, and its eyes darted sideways. Dog? Seriously . . . dog?
Mandi ducked behind a broken table. “Oh my gods, she offended the murder puppy.”
A gun fired.
The Hound moved before the thought even formed for me. Shadow swallowed the bullet inches from Liv’s face, and one strike sent the shooter across the room into the wall.
Liv placed her palm against my back leg.
Power flashed through the bond, and her senses bled into mine. Desire bent toward her. Scarn’s focus broke around fear. Every aura crowded the room in colors and pressure I had never known.
Sam melted a gun barrel. Mandi whispered into a soldier’s ear and sent him crashing into his own men, screaming about the ceiling falling. Kalon fought at the doorway with efficient violence, baton breaking wrists and knees.
A guard lunged toward Liv’s side.
I turned too late.
Her palm slammed into his chest. “Stop.”
Compulsion cracked through the room. The guard’s arm locked halfway toward her, but he wasn’t the only one. Kalon’s baton halted midair. Sam’s fire stalled above her palms. Even the Hound went rigid around my body, its jaws frozen open over my head.
Liv’s expression went from furious to horrified. “Oh, fuck. I meant only him.”
Panic shot through the bond, and whatever grip she had on us shattered. Everyone moved at once.
“You stupid girl,” Scarn shouted while retreating. “Every lord in Valkyrie will know what you are by morning.”
