A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(35)

The white tiger shifter, Witt, cut his chest, the last of the four to do so, and handed the knife back to Polaris.

Polaris turned to her. “Call the radiance,” he commanded. Locked away deep inside him was a good man. Ewan, he’d been called before he was marked by the infected polar bear spirit. He’d been a friend of Olivia’s, one of her soldiers, for decades. But he was captive of the darkness. A good man no longer. And she would not do as he demanded.

“I can’t.” She lifted her chin. “I can only go radiant near Feral House, where the earth’s energies are the strongest.” It was a lie, and they all knew it. She’d already gone radiant once here, attacking one of her captors.

Unable to hold his gaze, she looked up at the sky, wishing with all her heart she’d see a hawk or falcon, that they might be shifters who would lead Lyon and the others to her. Why couldn’t they find her? It had been two days since she’d been taken. Two days. But looking to the skies, all she saw were crows.

“Do it, Radiant.” Inir’s voice was soft and chilling.

Kara set her jaw. “No.” Her gaze found the newly marked Feral, her gaze catching his. “I won’t help you turn this man evil.”

The new Feral’s face paled, glistening with sweat, as he looked from her to the bloody warriors, to Inir, and back again. “Yeah, I . . . don’t think this is such a good idea.”

Inir ignored him, his copper gaze focused solely on her. “Hurt her.”

Kara gasped, then clamped her jaw shut as terror bolted through her. But she made no sound as Croc stepped forward, a gleam of pleasure in his eyes as he balled his fist and plowed it into her cheekbone. Pain exploded as she flew, landing on the rough stone.

“Go radiant, and he won’t do it again,” Inir said evenly.

Oh, God. “No.” Thankfully, she was immortal and could already feel her injuries knitting. As the pain began to recede in her face and hands, Croc brought his boot down hard on her leg, snapping her femur in two. Agony turned her vision white, and she screamed, unable to hold back the cry. Turning watery, furious eyes on the evil Mage who commanded them all she snarled between clenched teeth, “Kill me if you want to. I’m not helping you build your evil army.”

As her leg, too, healed, she tensed for the next blow, but it didn’t come. When the pain was gone, she warily pushed herself to her feet, wondering what torture he’d devise for her next.

A moment later, she knew, as one of the sentinels led a little girl with flyaway hair and missing front teeth to Inir. The child, no more than six years old, looked at the bloody warriors with wide, terrified eyes.

Inir took her hand and she allowed it . . . until he pulled a knife and cut a gash across her palm. The child screamed and screamed, trying to tug her injured hand away from him, but he held it fast, and open, facing it toward Kara.

“She’s mortal,” he said without emotion.

Kara’s head began to pound. “Leave her alone, you bastard.” With righteous fury, she lunged forward, but Croc grabbed her arm and held her back.

Inir smiled, and she realized she’d given him exactly what he wanted. A way to get to her. She felt the blood drain from her face. For most of her adult life, until Lyon found her and the Ferals ascended her to Radiant, she’d been a preschool teacher. Children, human children, had been her life. And the thought of standing coldly by while one was hurt . . .

Inir yanked the girl’s dress up and over her head, stripping her of everything but a pair of cotton panties with blue butterflies on them. Inir hooked one arm around the tiny girl, pinning her arms to her sides as she cried and struggled to get away. His tanned and hairy arm looked obscene across the child’s pale, skinny belly.

Kara shook, torn as she didn’t think she’d ever been before. Giving in to Inir, bringing one more evil Feral into his animal, could cost the lives of the men she loved. Yet how could she allow this child to suffer?

Inir began cutting a shallow furrow across that pale belly. Blood welled and ran, turning blue butterflies purple, as the child screamed, slicing Kara’s heart into a million pieces. “Stop!”

Inir lifted his knife, glanced at her, then began a second cut parallel to the first. “Go radiant.”

Closing tear-filled eyes, Kara pulled the power from the earth. In an instant, she felt the warmth slide through her flesh as she went radiant. The four Ferals closed in on her, clamping rough, punishing hands around her wrists and arms, drawing from her power.

Blinking hard against the moisture, Kara opened her eyes, found Inir, and shot daggers into his chest. If only she could kill him for real.

The villain dumped the bleeding, screaming child onto the stone and motioned to one of his sentinels. “Get her out of here.”

Polaris released Kara and turned toward the new Feral. “Hold him,” he told the sentinels.

The male blanched. “What are you going to do?”

Polaris lifted his knife and cut a shallow furrow across the man’s chest, then grabbed one of his hands and forced him to slap his palm against his own bleeding chest. “Make a fist.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

When the man had, Polaris opened his own bloodied fist and placed his palm on top of the new Feral’s. The other three stepped forward and did the same, one atop the other.

Polaris resumed the chant, and the others slowly followed. “Spirits rise and join. Empower the beast beneath this sun. Goddess, reveal your warrior!”