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“I will always find you,” I vowed. The sweet scent of her plum soap drifted through the air as I spoke against her hair, flooding my senses. My sweet, perfect mate.
“We have to face these things together,” she said softly. “If we are going to protect Annwyn from the nightwalkers… if we are going to truly be mates… we have to trust each other enough to share the things that scare us most.”
She was baring her soul.
I understood the implication. We would show one another our broken, twisted souls.
In their entirety.
And we would not walk away.
It was more than I could have ever hoped for—everything I hadn’t even known to hope for in my first three hundred years of life.
But I’d never been a patient male. And I couldn’t resist.
“Since I answered your question, does that mean you must answer mine?”
The soft rumble of her laugh filled any rough edges left inside of me. “I suppose you’ve earned it.”
My stomach turned over in fear—anticipation.
“Veyka, do you—”
But the words died on my lips. I didn’t get to ask my mate if she loved me.
Death had found us.
58
ARRAN
We moved in tandem—fast, sure, the language of battle and blood that both of us spoke so well. The words that came easily even when no others did.
One slash and Veyka had sliced open the tent, emerging like a fearsome beast from its shell, ready to conquer and kill.
The scent hit me even before my eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness.
Nightwalkers.
That noxious smell of death that had spilled from the human in Baylaur. It had been missing in the village—cleansed by the flames? It didn’t matter. They were here. And those were Lyrena’s screams.
We should have been safe in the thick ring of trees. The jungle was dense—too dense for them to move with any speed. And it was thicker still around the edges of the clearing, where I’d turned the branches and vines outward.
But they came.
Unhindered by the twisted branches—they contorted their bodies sideways, legs and arms sticking out at all angles as they forced themselves through with no regard for sharp thorns or splinters.
They felt no pain.
But they knew how to hunt their prey—and we were it.
I didn’t even have time to drag my mate against me, to kiss her one last time, before we met the darkness. I shifted—my beast was better for ripping off heads than any weapon. Veyka was already running to Lyrena’s aide.
She could manage. I didn’t let myself run after her.
All of the others were focused on a dense pack of nightwalkers on the other side of the clearing. I headed for the tree line instead.
* * *
