A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(67)

His brothers wouldn’t be happy that he’d taken matters into his own hands. They’d just have to get over it.

The more immediate concern was that they were, for all practical purposes, trapped in this cave. He was torn between staying where they were, letting the fight come to them, and leaving the cave come sunup. If he could figure out when the sun was up. If they could even dig their way out through the snow.

It was cold out there, and while he could shift into his fox and probably be fine, Melisande would be miserable. The worst of it was, there was no place to go. Unless he was mistaken, the labyrinth would not spit them out of this world until they’d sprung whatever trap it had set for them. Would walking away be the equivalent of springing it? Or would it only delay the inevitable while Melisande froze?

He glanced at her, the firelight dancing over her soft, sleeping features. His heart tightened, so full that he thought it might burst. On some level, he’d known she was meant to be his the very first time he saw her standing beside Ariana at Feral House. She’d been so full of spit and anger, but some part of him had recognized her as his mate. He knew that now. Even if he didn’t want a mate. Even if she needed to get away from him for her own survival.

When she was gone from his life, he was going to suffer.

As he gazed at her, she began to move fitfully, her head shaking back and forth.

“No!” The word tore from her lungs, low and tormented. “So many dead. So many dead.”

The anguish in her words clawed at him, drawing blood. He’d thought he’d heard misery in her tone as she’d told him about the brutality of the cheetahs, but she’d not told him everything, he knew that now. So many dead? Who? Her sisters? She’d said seven. Or the cheetahs she’d killed in vengeance. He’d sensed no great guilt in her over that.

As he watched, she curled into herself as if the pain were too great to bear, and he couldn’t stand it any longer. He reached for her and stroked her head with a featherlight touch. “Angel, it’s over. It’s just a dream.”

She calmed slowly, her eyes trying to flutter open and failing. “Fox?”

“Go back to sleep, pet.” He stroked her arm, all the way to her hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m here.”

She nodded ever so slightly and settled back into sleep, but he remained at her side, stroking her hair for a long, long time.

Until the flashback hit him with all the delicacy of a cleaver to the skull. He doubled over, gripping his head as his vision turned black, then bright with lamplight, revealing a room he didn’t recognize. A room in bright color, not sepia tones. The Cub’s flashback, then, not Sly’s.

The vision flickered and disappeared, then returned only to flicker out again. Deep inside, he felt the desperation of his animal, as if it tried to reach him. As if it were trying to show him something. The flashback? Was it his animal who’d been sending them to him?

A snarling sounded in his mind. Two snarlings. As if there were two fox spirits in his head about to duke it out. What the feck?

Was this the reason he sometimes thought his fox hated Melisande and other times adored her? Two animal spirits. Or perhaps not. He’d seen people infected with dark spirit before. Both Grizz and Lepard had struggled to fight past the darkness, to act as they willed, not as the darkness wanted. What if this was the result of whatever Inir did to his fox spirit after he separated it from Sly? What if this darkness was trying to subjugate the good animal spirit?

The vision reappeared, solid this time, and he saw a woman, a pretty redhead in a slinky green dress, cruelty in her copper-ringed Mage eyes.

“Why, Zaphene?” the Cub asked, his youthful voice rich with betrayal.

The woman moved to him, sliding her hand up his chest. Fox sensed the Cub’s muscles bunching in a desire to push the bitch away, but he couldn’t move. Mage enchantment?

“Because the trigger Inir placed within your animal spirit didn’t work,” the Mage witch said.

“What trigger?”

The woman smiled, pure evil. “Inir separated your predecessor from his animal, then attached a dark enchantment to the animal that should have controlled you both. But it didn’t work. It’s lain dormant for two years while every attempt Inir has made to trigger it has failed. So I came to trigger it for him.”

“I thought you loved me,” the youth said.

The witch laughed at him silently. “You’re too young to recognize true love.” She shrugged. “The enchantment didn’t work even when triggered. All it’s been able to do is affect your natural gift, sending you false intuition.”

“False? But . . .” The Cub tensed. “The shivers. My intuitions never made me shiver before.” He looked at her with disbelief and rising fury. “My animal spirit’s working against me?”

“Not enough. The spirit fights the darkness. Which is why Inir decided more drastic action had to be taken.”

The Cub scowled. “What action?”

“Inir is going to cut out your soul, young Feral. Once he’s done so, the dark enchantment will have full control of both you and your animal. The beauty is, you won’t know it. You’ll be the boy you’ve always been.”

“I’m not a boy,” he growled.

The witch ignored him. “The darkness will control your actions now, leading you to compromise the Ferals and free the Daemons.”