A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(52)

“Lynks, when Inir told you what he wanted you to do, could you have said no? If you’d wanted to?”

He looked at her thoughtfully. “He promised me all the kids I want to f**k.” He shook his head sadly. “I’m not cut out to be a hero, Kara. I am what I am.”

When he’d left, Kara stared at that closed door, sick to her stomach, her mind whirling. Because of that ritual with her shoe, Lyon hadn’t been able to sense her leaving. And now? If he couldn’t sense her, he couldn’t find her. She might never be free.

No, she didn’t believe that. Lyon would find her. He wouldn’t stop looking for her until he did.

Of more concern was the fact that Inir clearly still had his claws in the new Ferals, even those that the good ones believed were free of the darkness.

And she had no way to warn them that they had traitors in their midst.

“We’ve got company.” Fox whirled, spying three males running toward them dressed in nothing but loincloths, their faces and bodies liberally painted in hues of blue and yellow, their hair matted and long, their swords gleaming in the sun.

Fox pulled his knife. Beside him, Melisande drew her short sword and threw him a savage grin. “I’m ready to spill some blood.”

He met her grin. Goddess help him, he could fall in love with this woman. “You’re good with that sword?”

“Damn good.”

He nodded. “All right, then. I don’t think they’re real. But we kill them, either way.”

“I’m right beside you.”

The painted trio were closing the distance fast, their swords raised. As one, Fox and Melisande surged forward. Melisande’s sword was small, but a deadly little thing. He himself had only a pair of knives. Long knives. Good knives. And his animal. He’d shift if the battle went poorly, but he was still far more comfortable fighting in his human form. He’d been doing it for three hundred years.

The savages came at them, two of the three diving for Melisande, which made little sense, given her size. Unless their goal was to kill her quickly, then turn their attention to him. Bloody hell. That was exactly what they intended.

“Mel, it’s you they want,” he said, parrying the first blow from the one who’d targeted him, probably intent on keeping him too busy to defend her. Screw this.

In a single furious pull of magic, he shifted into his fox and leaped at his opponent, tearing off his head with one bite. He turned to find Melisande holding her own, dodging and ducking, striking thighs and wrists and abdomens until the two men were ribboned in blood and wounds that weren’t healing. Were they human?

He snarled, but the sound did nothing to turn them from their attack. They were focused on Melisande and only her. And they weren’t getting her.

As he leaped, the male he’d targeted swung toward him, catching his front leg with his blade in a wash of pain a moment before Fox caught the painted bastard’s head between his jaws and bit down, hard.

Two down.

He was so tempted to leap in and kill the final savage, saving Melisande from any chance of injury. But she was no damsel in distress and would likely be furious if he tried. Instead, he shifted back to human, gripped his knives, and prepared to back her up.

His forearm burned and he glanced at the cut he’d taken to his fox’s front leg, a cut that had yet to entirely heal. And what in the hell did that mean?

Melisande and her opponent engaged, their swords clanging before she spun away to attack again, a fierce, determined light in her eyes. The male was a skilled fighter, but his strength appeared to be no greater than human. Could these three really be human?

He tensed as Melisande’s attacker lifted his sword as if he intended to cleave her in two. It was all he could do not to rush in. But he forced himself to stay where he was and not interfere. When the male brought that blade down only to strike air . . . and to find Melisande’s blade protruding from his chest, Fox began to breathe again. That a girl.

The male fell, dead, from that simple strike to the heart.

But as Melisande pulled her blade out, blood spraying, she stumbled back, her face going pale.

“Mel?”

“I’m fine.”

But she wasn’t. Something had happened as she’d fought, and he needed to understand. “Mel?”

She whirled on him, her mouth hard, her eyes snapping with temper. “I said, I’m fine. I killed him, didn’t I?”

Aye she had, but she was not fine and he wished to hell he knew what was going on in that lovely head of hers.

Melisande gasped, he gaped, as the three dead savages suddenly disappeared, leaving not so much as a trace of blood on the sand.

“They’re gone,” she murmured, staring at the sand where her opponent had fallen. “They weren’t real.”

No. He glanced at the wound on his forearm that still hadn’t healed. But their swords sure as hell were.

Chapter Twelve

“Keep your eyes open,” Fox said, as they started walking along the beach again. “Three attackers likely means more, especially since they failed.”

Melisande fell into step beside him, fine tremors passing through her limbs. For one harsh moment, as she’d pulled her blade from the dead savage, memories had reared up, ugly memories of horror, of death. And for the space of a few heartbeats, she’d heard the screams again, the screams she’d tried to box up and bury deep in her mind. They’d torn at her psyche, flaying her, before dying away and disappearing again.