Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(3)

"Good. Let's get--"

"Kougar!" The shout came from the other side of the battlefield, a shout of warning, not jubilation.

Kougar met the questioning gazes of his friends, then shifted into his cat, running on all fours back to the site of the battle before shifting back. He found his warriors gathered warily around something . . . or someone. When they parted to let him through, he found a woman lying on the ground in obvious pain. Another of Ariana's mist warriors, though she'd turned corporeal. Only corporeal could they be injured or killed.

"Not again," Kougar muttered. His gaze pinned the polar bear shifter who'd called to him. If he'd attacked her, there would be hell to pay.

The Feral shook his head, hearing his chief's unspoken question. "She appeared before me moments ago, Kougar, her sword drawn. But she fell almost as soon as she appeared. None of us touched her."

"What's going on?" Horse asked, as he and the Wind joined them.

Kougar shook his head as the Ilina looked up at him with eyes that should have been filled with pain, but instead gleamed with an evil joy.

"Death is upon us," she cried. "The Ilina race is no more. The darkness . . . consumes us all!"

With her mouth still forming the last word, she froze, her flesh turning gray as the winter sky.

"She's dead." The disbelief in the Wind's voice pounded inside Kougar's skull, along with the mist warrior's last words.

The Ilina race is no more.

She was crazed, of course. But a shaft of unreasoning concern bolted through his chest.

He needed to see his mate.

Slamming his hand atop his Feral armband, he thought of the Crystal Realm and whispered the words of enchantment that would take him to Ariana. If she was there. Of all non-Ilinas, he alone had access to the Ilina stronghold through the magic woven into his armband, an ability to follow her to the Crystal Realm because of their mating bond.

He felt the magic sweep over him and steeled himself for the dizzying ride. A moment later, the magic disappeared as if it had never been, leaving him where he'd started, on the field of battle, surrounded by his men.

He scowled, but the beat of his heart grew to a thud as the certainty that something was wrong, very wrong, swept over him.

As he pressed his hand over the armband, whispering the chant a second time, pain hit him like a battle-axe. The force of it drove him to his knees, slicing through his chest, nearly cleaving him in two.

"Kougar!" The Wind gripped one of his arms as Horse grabbed the other.

Goddess, goddess, goddess.

His mind imploded. His heart tore beneath the assault.

The mating bond, that bright crystalline cord that had joined him to Ariana, heart to heart, soul to soul, shattered. The brilliant glow inside snuffed out as if it had never been.

"No!" He roared the word, the blast of sound echoing over and over in his head. "She's gone. Ariana is gone. Dead."

He couldn't breathe. Pain consumed him, burning, searing pain. His claws and fangs erupted as the need to rip someone . . . anyone . . . to bloody shreds roared through his body on a tide of grief-driven rage.

"Stay in your skin!" Horse's voice drove a spike through his head, slashing through the wildness building inside him.

"Ease down, my friend," the Wind urged. "Ease down. This isn't the place to let it out. Let's get you home."

Kougar's senses began to shut down. Colors faded to gray before his eyes, smells all but disappeared. The severing of the mating bond created havoc within him. All he could feel was the burning, searing pain that consumed him, heart and mind.

His body would continue to live, for he was all but immortal.

But his life was over.

Chapter One

Present day

Kougar prowled on four paws through the streets of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, sliding in and out of the night shadows of the nineteenth-century buildings that rose against the moonlit sky on steps as silent as the pre-Civil War human dead that filled the cemetery on the hill. He'd wandered this town alone since the battle four days ago--a battle between the Ferals and Mage and three wraith Daemons the Mage had managed to release.

The Ferals had won, of course, but the victory had been devastatingly hollow. Two Ferals, Hawke and Tighe, had disappeared into the Mages' spinning vortex, a spirit trap that would separate men from animals, killing both in a matter of days. Seven, now. That's all they had left unless the Ferals saved them.

And there was only one way to do that.

One person alone had ever been able to breach a Daemon spirit trap and come out alive. A woman who could turn to mist at will. The Queen of the Ilinas.

Kougar growled low in his cat's throat, hatred burning through his mind.

Only one woman could save his Feral brothers and their animals.

Ariana, his soulless bitch of a mate.

He'd thought she was dead. For a thousand years, he'd grieved for her until twenty-one years ago when he'd learned the truth--that Ariana and her race had faked their extinction after being infected by dark spirit. The knowledge had slain him until he'd remembered that the woman he'd once loved was long gone, lost to the dark spirit that had consumed her soul.

His beloved Ariana would never have betrayed him like that.

When he'd learned she was still alive, he'd refused to seek her out. The last thing he'd wished to see were soulless eyes peering out of his beloved's face. But four days ago, everything changed with Hawke and Tighe's capture. He had to find her, to force her to breach the spirit trap and free them.