Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(66)

No. A thousand times, no.

He turned to her, meeting her gaze. "I was born a hundred years before the Sacrifice."

Ariana stared at the man beside her, the man she'd loved for an eternity, with surprise bordering on shock.

The Sacrifice was an old name given to that joining of forces between the Mage and the Therians, both races mortgaging the bulk of their power to defeat the Daemons.

Five thousand years ago.

Kougar stiffened, pacing away from her on the observatory balcony like a caged cat, while the music and laughter of her maidens lifted on the crystalline air from the garden below. She'd hurt him with her honesty, which hadn't been her intent. He was a good man. A strong, honorable warrior who'd probably loved her as much as he was able.

She turned and followed him back into the circular room, feeling the need to touch him, to soften the blow of her words; but his stiffness welcomed no such comfort.

"My father was chief of the cougar clan," he continued, standing before the wall mural as if seeking answers in the lush, painted jungle. "The world was different then--each of the shifter lines a separate community with alliances and enemies, territorial wars and rampant infighting. The cougars' closest allies in those days were the leopards and white wolves. Our biggest rivals were the tigers and the horses, whose chief was a dictator of the worst sort. And the vipers." He glanced at her over his shoulder. "No one allied themselves with the vipers."

He stepped away from the mural, his gaze dropping to the discarded pile of colorful silk cushions, his brows drawn as if he were deep in thought. "But even then, things were changing. Satanan had only recently come into his true power. The Daemons, who'd always kept to the highest elevations and only killed as necessary, were beginning to terrorize the populated regions. They were starting to kill for pleasure and power. Many of their earliest victims were immortals since we took so long to die."

He looked up, his gaze focusing on her briefly. "You know this, or will, when you get your memories from the old queens. The Ilinas had always had little involvement with the other immortal races before that time; but in the century that followed, it took all of us together to defeat Satanan."

As he began to pace again, Ariana clasped her hands together in front of her, awed that he was telling her this, holding her breath as she willed him to continue.

He walked slowly around the room, his unseeing gaze on the floor. "I was still short of my maturity when my mother and one of the other cougar females disappeared. Two years later we found them in a Daemon nest, along with the mutilated bodies of over forty human children. The shifters were still alive, their bodies covered in blood from the tortures they'd endured, but their eyes were empty. The other woman eventually recovered, but my mother never did. She sat in the corner, rocking herself, her mind destroyed. She never shifted again."

Ariana's fingers twisted together as she saw glimpses of the world he'd lived in, flashes of the horrors the Ilina queen had witnessed in that time. The suffering.

Her chest hurt from the pain she was causing Kougar by forcing him to go back there. To remember his own suffering. Part of her wanted to tell him to stop. That he didn't have to continue. But a wiser part of her knew he did. If he didn't want to speak of the past, there was a reason.

"Satanan's power was growing quickly, alarmingly so. Many of the Therian clans banded together and attempted to stop him, but we failed. Many died. The Mage fought their own war against the Daemons; but as Satanan's power grew, their magic was of less and less use. It all came to a head during the winter solstice when I was half a century old. During the week before the solstice, the Daemons captured dozens of shifters and Mage, and at least a thousand humans. We tried to find where they'd taken them; but the Daemons had magic and flight, and even the bird shifters among us couldn't follow.

"Finally, we learned what Satanan was up to--a powerful ritual to create more Daemons, tripling their numbers." He stopped, his gaze spearing her, going right through her. "For centuries afterward, that night was called the Night of Screams." Turning away in the next breath, he moved toward the balcony again, and she followed.

"The situation went from bad to desperate as the Daemon numbers trebled, and it became clear Satanan's goal wasn't survival but domination. Most agree the Daemon Wars started that night, the Night of Screams. And it took another fifty years for the immortal forces to finally band together into one cohesive unit to vanquish him. The Mage were the ones who came up with the ritual to lock Satanan and his horde in the Daemon blade, but the magical energy required was far more than they had, and Ilina energy was ill suited. The Therians had to come on board. All of them. And it was a hard sell. All knew draining their power was dangerous. If the ritual failed, Satanan would easily destroy us all."

Leaning forward, he rested his powerful forearms on the thick gold railing and stared out over the garden as if oblivious to the celebration taking place below. He was caught in another time, and all Ariana could do was stand beside him. And listen.

"What no one knew was that the vast majority of the magic that went into that ritual would never return. It's said that the Therians and Mage willingly mortgaged their power to defeat Satanan, but that's not entirely true. We gave of our power believing it would be replenished in short order. It wasn't.

"The ritual worked. Satanan and the souls of his horde were captured in the blade. But the Mage and Therian alliance severed almost immediately afterward as both claimed the right to guard the blade. Still, celebrations broke out in every corner of the immortal world, until the sun set, and we saw the draden for the first time. While we'd captured the souls of Satanan's horde, small, vicious remnants of them remained. Life-eating remnants that fed primarily on Therian energy. Hundreds of Therians died over the next weeks as we fought to find a way to protect ourselves against them. For nearly a week, no Therian shifted, but we still believed our power would return. The Radiants worked feverishly to pull the energy from the Earth--in those days, every clan had its own Radiant; but they, too, had lost their power and could do nothing. Finally, one of the lions shifted. I heard his roar that day, and it was a glorious sound. It was beginning, we thought. All would be back to normal soon."