Desire Untamed (Feral Warriors #1)(52)

"Lyon. Please."

His hand clamped around her wrist and he hauled her to her knees, pulling her around to face him. Anguish and fury riddled his eyes as he shoved his hand in front of her. In the curve of his palm lay a bloody mass, a woven metal circle. Copper, covered in blood and bits of flesh.

Bile rose and she swallowed it down. That thing had been inside her.

For how long? All her life? Would she have known?

A low rumble started deep in Lyon's chest rising to a full-scale roar. The dim light in the room grew as Lyon's eyes began to glow. Inhuman eyes. Lion eyes.

The glow reflected off the fangs now visible beneath his lips.

The blood rushed from her face. "Lyon," she gasped. "Don't."

She'd just begun to feel the scratch of his claws on her wrist when he threw the bloody copper ring against the wall and whirled away from her, leaping from the bed. In a haze of tears and bitter pain, she scrambled off the bed, backing toward the wall, shaking. A shadow sailed across the room ending with the sound or crunching wood and breaking glass. The scrape of wood on wood told her he was lifting the chest from the end of the bed, A moment later, the dresser disintegrated in a burst of raw destruction.

Kara pressed back against the wall, easing toward the door, the terror pounding in her chest for once all too real.

She was Mage. And Lyon was going to kill her.

The door flew open, flooding the destroyed room with light. Paenther and Tighe stood silhouetted in the entrance for an instant before Paenther lunged toward Lyon and Tighe held out his hand to her.

"Get out the room, Kara." He ushered her into the empty hallway and closed the door against the rage of the lion.

Tears blinded her as she ran down the stairs, her hip bleeding and burning, her heart shattered. On a broken sob, Kara wrenched open the front door, and fled into the night.

"Roar. Roar!"

The feral haze slowly began to clear as Lyon stared up into the bloody and fanged faces of Paenther and Tighe. He was flat on his back on the hard floor, destruction all around him. Kara's room.

Kara.

He struggled for control, feeling his claws retract. "Let me up!" The pair released him, and he leaped to his feet. "Where is she?"

"I got her out of here before you hurt her," Tighe told him.

Lyon's gaze spotted the damning piece of bloody copper lying on the floor beside the crushed bed. He scooped it up and tossed it to Paenther.

The panther snarled. "A cantric." His black gaze looked up in surprise. "Kara?"

"Yes." Lyon closed his eyes, searching for her with his senses.

"Are you going to destroy her yourself, or can I?" Violence laced the panther's words.

Lyon's claws sprang and he lunged until he was in Paenther's face. "You won't touch her. She's mine."

Suddenly, his finder's senses caught her. Outside. Away from the house. Hell.

Lyon ran for the door, heedless of the blood coating his quickly mending flesh. He leaped down the stairs in two strides and tore through the front door, taking a second to secure it behind him before he raced into the night.

She's Mage, his logical mind cried. Let the draden take her. But the draden rarely bothered with Mage. They wouldn't take her. And he needed to know how she'd fooled them into thinking she was their Radiant.

He had to know!

Deep inside, his beast growled at him. She was Kara. Kara.

But he knew better. She was Mage.

His enemy.

Branches whipped across Kara's cheeks and tangled in her hair as she followed the sound of the river, but she kept running. Away from Lyon's knife. Away from the terrible pain of having the only man she'd ever loved, a man who'd promised to protect her, turn on her.

Damn him. Damn him.

All she could see as she ran was the fury in his eyes.

The wound oh her hip hurt, the air tearing at her lungs, as she ran into the night. With no destination. No plan. Nowhere to go.

In a bloody nightgown. Now wouldn't that be a sight any homeowner would love to see on her doorstep in the middle of the night? Not likely.

It didn't matter. There was nowhere she could run that Lyon wouldn't find her. She'd learned that over and over again. She was fooling herself to think she could get away. He always knew where she was, and he'd come for her again. With his knife, ready to cut out her heart.

No, not that. He'd already done that.

The sky was clear, the moon full, lighting her way through the trees as she followed the rumble of the falls. A hard breeze blew, freezing the sweat on her skin, chilling her to the marrow of her bones, but still she ran. Because she didn't know what else to do. She couldn't go back.

She didn't know how long she'd run, or how far, when she finally pulled up at the edge of the trees and sank back against the rough bark of one, her arm tight across her middle as she fought for breath. Her lungs ached and her bare feet felt torn and shredded from the branches and rocks as she stared out at the glistening Potomac River.

She pressed her palm to her forehead. What was she going to do? Did she dare try to get help? Human help? What would Lyon do if someone tried to protect her?

Her heart clenched with pain. She'd thought she'd known him. But she hadn't. She hadn't known him at all.

No, she did know him. She knew one thing for certain.

He'd never let her go.