Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(58)

"Whatever . . . he did . . . was real."

The pounding of his heart deepened into a sickening thud. "He has you. He's locked onto you with his magic. Can you break it?"

"No."

Dammit. He needed to break out of the lower chambers and go after the damned sorcerer. But Ariana came first.

He shot to his feet, lifting her into his arms. "Then we're getting out of here."

How? He set her back on the floor. "Go, Ariana. Transport yourself back to the Crystal Realm. Once you're there, I can follow."

She met his gaze, then nodded, her hand sliding over the moonstones as she choked out the magic that would carry her to the Crystal Realm without turning to mist. A moment later, she was gone.

Focusing on her through the mating bond, Kougar curled his hand around his Feral armband and whispered the same incantation. Moments later, he was sitting in the Grand Corridor of the palace in the clouds, Ariana seated on the floor beside him.

Unlike a moment ago, she no longer gasped for air.

"Are you okay?"

"Yes." She took a deep unsteady breath. "He must have known we weren't part of his dream."

"He knew."

Kougar rose to his feet and pulled Ariana up beside him just as Brielle came rushing into the pine-scented corridor.

"Did you reclaim the memories?" Brielle asked, her face radiating a desperate hope he was certain every Ilina shared.

Ariana glanced at him, the truth thick between them that she hadn't gotten them all. And now, probably never would. A truth they would keep to themselves for the time being.

"Yes," Ariana said, glancing at him, then back at Brielle. "Yes, I reclaimed the memories. I'm sorting through them now."

A smile bloomed on Brielle's delicate face. "Wonderful." She clapped her hands together. "We must celebrate, Ariana. We've not had a true celebration in far too long."

Ariana dipped her head, a small gesture that was all Brielle needed. She hurried away, shouting out names, a four-star general calling her troops.

Ariana turned to him, her eyes at once hard and haunted. "Hookeye has to die."

"And he's going to. Right now. Gather your maidens, six of them, and meet me at Feral House. We're going to need transportation back down to the temple."

Ariana frowned. "What? Wait. You can't kill him. Not until we know whether killing him will help or hurt our ability to destroy the poison." She took his hand. "Wait, please? I may have the answers we need once I sort through this mess in my head."

"He's there, Ariana. In the temple. We can't afford to let him get away."

"Where's he going to go? He's on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas." She gripped his arm. "We can't attack him. Not yet. I know that."

"How?"

"I'm not sure, I just know it's true, and it has something to do with my memories. Give me another day to sort through what's in my head. If I haven't come up with the answer we need, I'll order my warriors to transport yours to the temple."

Kougar's teeth ground together beneath the force of his impatience.

"One day, Kougar. I feel like I'm on the edge of something vast. Like the veil is about to be lifted, and I'm going to see what I've been missing all this time. It's going to happen. Tonight." She squeezed his hand. "It's going to make the difference between success and failure, it's that big."

He pulled her into his arms. "Twelve hours. That's all."

"Deal. Then we'll reassess."

Twelve hours. His fingertips itched with the need to draw claws and rip out that bastard's throat, now. But Ariana was right. If there was a chance she held the key to the battle in that head of hers, not giving her a chance to find it was a rash, foolish move.

Too many lives hung in the balance.

Fury roared up out of nowhere, ripping through Hawke's mind, white-hot. A vicious rage.

The hawk's anger had become his own.

How long he roared and thrashed, he didn't know. Time held no meaning. But as quickly as the fury rose, it abated, leaving his mind throbbing with pain and the echoes of his hawk's pulsing anger.

He'd never had the relationship with the hawk spirit that his father, the Wind, had claimed to have. Then again, his father had been the hawk shifter for nearly three thousand years until a Confederate mortar explosion ripped his heart out of his chest a century and a half ago. The hawk spirit had flown to the son, but Hawke had never possessed the faith in the wildness that his father had.

The Wind used to tell him that once a man was marked, the animal spirit shared the man's body. It was only fair to give him his head from time to time. And his father had, disappearing sometimes for hours, even days, on a wild flight.

For years after he was marked, the hawk had demanded more freedom, but Hawke refused. The hawk spirit had never entirely forgiven him. But he wasn't giving rein to that kind of wildness again. Not after what happened to Aren.

The last echoes of the fury slipped away, leaving him with nothing but thoughts. And regrets. There were so many things he'd hoped to do with his life. Things lost to him now.

He'd been born with an insatiable thirst for knowledge and had studied the natural world extensively, but there was so much more to learn. So much more to know. The humans were discovering things every year, every day, and he wanted to know them all.