Someone is still shooting at us.
Bolts of superheated plasma whizzed over their heads and into the sand around them, making it pop and crackle as it instantly turned to jagged glass.
Viktor’s senses returned to him, vicious and wild. “Fuck!”
Ignoring the pain, he slung his good arm around Camille’s svelte waist and flipped them over. Using his wider frame, he guarded her from the onslaught as best he could, cursing himself for his lack of caution.
They were in perhaps the worst possible place to be caught by a damn sniper. The only cover the alcove offered was a sandstone boulder a few yards away from their fire, but it was in no way big enough to provide any real protection for long. Other than that, they were completely exposed.
Fear was a cold drip down his spine, numbing the sharpest edge of his pain. Camille was in danger. His mate was in danger.
Never, in all his life, had he felt such visceral, stomach churning terror.
Not when he thought Valen would kill him for breaking into the Solbourne apartments. Not when he watched his mother wither away under his father’s cold cruelty. Not when he ripped the old bastard’s throat out.
Nothing compared to the feeling that he might lose his mate moments after getting her back.
Viktor took advantage of a brief lull in bolt fire — about the time it took for a power cell to be changed out — to haul them both toward the boulder. The agony in the torn and cauterized wound that once was his shoulder and upper chest made movement seem impossible, but he gritted his teeth and did it anyway. Sweating profusely and using his one good arm, he managed to get them both at least somewhat covered by the sandstone seconds before the bolts started up again, this time aiming for the space around the rock.
Whoever it was behind the gun wasn’t the best marksperson, but what they lacked in skill, they made up for in quantity.
“Vik.” His name was a harsh breath against his cheek. Her voice was raw when she said, “Vik, you’re hurt.”
He turned his head, desperately trying to get a good look at her, but they were plastered so close together that he didn’t see much beyond the side of her face. “Were you shot?”
She shook her head. He felt the prick of her claws somewhere around his waist and realized, with an awful jolt, what he’d done.
“Gods,” he choked out, wishing he could push her away and yet entirely unable to do so. Guilt stole the air from what was left of his lungs. It was worse than the pain, worse than the fear. I stole her choice.
“Gods, Cam, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t be touching me—”
She drew back just enough to look him in the eye. Away from the fire and tucked into the shadows between the boulder and the sandstone wall of the cliff, her beautiful face was wrought in deep blues and violets. He had no trouble seeing her clearly in the dark, and didn’t miss the way her pupils had expanded to nearly eclipse her irises, nor the deep flush that settled into her cheeks.
Camille might have looked dazed, even a little drunk, if she wasn’t also wearing a wild-eyed scowl. “Shut up! We are being shot at! Do you think I care?” A bolt whistled overhead and slammed into the cliff wall, sending chunks of red hot sandstone raining down around them, but she didn’t seem to notice. A snarl curled her plump upper lip over her fangs when she brought her face close to his. “After I rip the head off of the man who shot you, I’m going to bite every inch of you. Got that?”
Viktor blinked. The pain made thinking difficult, and although he was pretty sure he wasn’t losing any blood, his mind felt sluggish, uncoordinated. A cold sweat drenched his skin as his body began to slide into shock. That had to be why he thought he heard her say she wanted to bite him. Certainly, if he’d been in his right mind, he would have heard her scathing condemnation for stealing her choice from her.
“Cam,” he rasped, “what are you—”
A gloved hand curled around the back of his neck. Claws tickled the skin of his jugular as she yanked his head down for a kiss that turned his world upside down.
Camille tasted like wild honey — sweet, with a tart, earthy bite. It was a taste he remembered with perfect clarity from the single kiss they’d shared just moments before she asked him to run away with her.
The taste of that kiss had haunted him for twenty years.
Her lips were smooth and plush, her tongue sleek and hot as it slid hungrily against his own. Viktor sucked in a shuddering breath through his nose and took in the wildflower scent of her overlaid with the delicious warmth of her desire.
For a single, breathless moment, he felt no pain, heard no shots, knew no fear. There was only Camille and the howl of victory that rose up from his very soul.
My mate, his coyote howled. My mate!
Just as he was lifting his hand to bury it in her hair, determined to bring her closer, she pulled away with a low, terrifying growl. “Don’t you fucking die on me while I’m gone,” she hissed, pressing another hard, fast kiss to his lips.
Fear returned, bigger and colder than before. The coyote went perfectly still inside him before, with a yowl of outrage, he lunged against the cage of his mind. “Cam, no!”
It was too late. Camille was as sleek and graceful as a cat. His only chance of holding her in one place involved two arms and brute strength. Injured and taken by surprise, he didn’t stand a chance of pinning her down.
He lurched forward, but his good arm only caught cold air and sand. In one graceful roll, she was out from behind the boulder and sprinting toward the opposite cliff wall — toward the shooter.
Camille didn’t think. She didn’t doubt. She was an elf, and that meant she acted.
In the moment between watching Viktor fly back into the sand, his shoulder and upper chest obliterated by a plasma bolt, and her next breath, Camille decided that there was no going back.
Presented with the possibility that Viktor may simply cease to exist in the world, every fiber of her being balked.
That was not right. That was not possible. He was hers. When he left Burden’s Earth for the Underworld, it would be in lockstep with her. No other outcome was acceptable.
He was her consort. His life, his future, belonged to her.
And someone tried to take him from me.
Camille was familiar with anger. Elves tended to run hot, and she could nurse a grudge better than anyone she knew, but this— this was a fury she had never felt before. It was all-consuming. It was bigger than her, wilder and smarter than her.
It was so, so cold.
Alongside the flood of endorphins that came with touching Viktor, tasting him, a deadly, adrenaline-laced calm settled over her. Every sense sharpened, and every thought was clear, precise. Camille had never been a particularly violent person, but she was an elf.
And all elves were predators.
They were fast, graceful, and almost impossible to kill. Taught from childhood to manage their immense strength through intensive martial training, there was not a single elf who could not kill if necessary.
It’s really fucking necessary now, she thought, darting across the narrow gap between one wall of the alcove to the other. The sandstone was craggy and uneven, jutting out around her in places to provide partial cover from the bolts that sporadically aimed her way.
That alone told her everything she needed to know.
The shooter was not even really aiming for her. Almost all of his focus, even when she made herself a clear target, was on her consort.