“That’s a good girl,” he crooned, using that famous, orcish baritone to praise her as she slowly, slowly unclenched her claws. Her face still hovered barely an inch from the shifter’s pounding jugular, but as her cousin’s words began to slip through the thicket of her rage, so too did a tiny amount of reason. “That’s it, sweet. It’s okay. We have him now. You don’t want to let him die, do you? We won’t be able to figure out who wants your consort dead if he doesn’t have a head.”
She blinked. Someone wants Viktor to die.
The thought was muddied, distorted. It rang with truth, but she had trouble coming to grips with what exactly it meant. The beast in her recognized only the immediate threat. It wanted her to finish what she’d started, to the Underworld with Kaz and his murmuring.
But the woman was stronger than the beast. It had to be, to survive as long as she had, denying what that miserable creature demanded was their due.
“Ah, good girl. Good, sweet girl. That’s it. Everything will be okay, I promise.” She didn’t even realize she’d begun to lean backward until Kaz motioned for the soldiers to take over her position, pinning the writhing, babbling shifter to the sandy ground. As soon as they had a pair of m-enhanced stun cuffs snapped around his wrists, Kaz looped an arm around her middle and hauled her off of him completely.
Immediately, warmth enveloped her, chasing out a cold so deep, it left her trembling. Kaz crushed her to his chest, one big green hand sliding over her cheek and down, searching for wounds. It was only then that she noticed the pain in her side.
“Oh,” she breathed, beginning to shake in earnest. “I didn’t realize he got me.”
She felt Kaz’s breath hitch when his fingertips grazed the jagged slice in her coat. Now that the adrenaline was beginning to wear off, she could feel a strange coolness there — the cold night air stealing the warmth from the blood soaked into the thick wool.
Agony bloomed in her side, as well as up and down her arms, where the shifter had clawed to be free. During the fight she didn’t notice even a hint of pain, but it rushed to the forefront of her mind now, alongside the crushing weight of worry.
“I’m going to pick you up,” he warned, crouching to slide one muscled arm behind her knees. The sudden change in position cruelly jostled the wound in her side. Black spots floated in front of her eyes and she let out a strangled cry.
Somewhere down on the beach, a haunting roar of rage went up. Viktor.
Camille curled her claws into Kaz’s leather covered shoulder. Cold sweat broke out across her chest and behind her knees. “Kaz— Viktor, is he—”
Her cousin was already walking, his long legs eating up the distance to what she knew was a narrow trail leading down the cliff with ease. “He’s okay. We’ve got a squad down there, and we called his second. Teddy’s there, too, and so is Margot.”
She might have felt relief, except she couldn’t quite believe it until she saw Viktor with her own two eyes. My consort was almost stolen from me.
Bile raced up the back of her throat with a violence that made her head swim. Camille pressed hard against Kaz’s shoulder. “Put me down! Put me down!”
“Cammie, wh—”
Ignoring the pain in her side, she thrashed until he was forced to ease her down onto the ground. She fell to her hands and knees. Sand and grit stung the shredded skin of her palms as she emptied her stomach into the thick greenery.
Gods, I almost lost him just when I’d begun to find him again.
Was it not enough that she’d lost her mother? That she’d never known her father? Did the gods need to take her consort from her, too? It was enough to make her wonder just what spectacular sin she had committed in a past life; what incredible blasphemy she must have offered to those capricious deities to warrant a punishment such as this.
Muscles of her throat and shoulders cramping, she looked up through the sweaty fringe of her hair to see the three Guards hauling the shifter to his feet. He slumped between two of them, the look on his face dazed. One leg was clearly broken, and nearly every exposed patch of skin was torn by her claws — including one of his eyes, which was little more than a socket covered in shredded flesh and stringy viscera.
And in that instant, Camille understood her mother as never before.
Rage as she’d never felt coalesced with a grief so sharp, so poisonous, it threatened to slice through whatever remained of her sense of self.
She needed to kill that man. She needed to gut him with her own hands. She needed to find out who he worked for and then do it all over again. Nothing, not even her own wounds, would stop her.
Camille’s body tensed, ready to pounce. He almost took Viktor from me!
“No, Cammie.” A heavy hand landed on her back, drawing soothing circles. “Not yet.”
Her voice was wrenched from her scalded throat, raw and agonized. “He tried to kill him!”
“Yes,” Kaz answered, “and your mate needs you now. Do you really want to waste time cutting that shifter up when you could be with him?” She stiffened, suddenly torn, and Kaz was quick to drill down on that sign of weakness. “He’s in pain, Cammie.”
Damn, ruthless orc.
Wiping her mouth with the back of one trembling hand, Camille forced her eyes away from her prey and nodded.
Wasting no time, her cousin swept her back up into his arms and hustled down the winding trail. It was a much longer trip than the one she’d taken to get up there. Every step hurt her side and every minute dragged by, increasing her anxiousness to see Viktor, to know that he was well.
In her mind, the image of how satisfying the shifter would look with his head removed was replaced with that of Viktor’s contorted expression, his ravaged shoulder.
All that beautiful golden skin burnt and blackened. The scent of blood and charred flesh. The sound of his labored breathing as he wrestled them back behind the boulder. Her empty stomach rolled again.
“Hurry, Kaz.”
“We’re almost there.” Her cousin tightened his arms around her. When she looked up at him, she found his beautiful face stark, each feature hewn with the jagged edge of fury. He looked as fierce as she’d ever seen him — which was saying something, since Kaz was one of the most handsome and terrifying people she’d ever met.
They rounded a bend and she felt his gate change, shifting to accommodate his stride in the sand. Ten more steps and they turned another corner. The beach opened up before them, once deserted, now swarming with glamoured Guards, shifters, and the unmistakable form of Theodore himself.
The bulk of people were clustered around one spot near the opening of the alcove. The faint glow of the fire gilded a woman’s back as she knelt beside a prone figure. Even in the dark, her red hair gleamed.
Margot. Relief swelled. She’s healing Viktor.
That was a good thing, but as her eyes darted around the beach, taking in all the shadowy figures, tension pulled her muscles into rigid readiness. Camille wanted to struggle, to fight to be let down so she could run to her consort and put herself between him and so many unknown people, but her limbs had turned to jelly as the adrenaline finally evaporated from her system. All she could do was manage a weak, keening sound of distress as she watched people move around Viktor, only granting her the smallest glimpses of him.