Hunger Untamed (Feral Warriors #5)(7)

That alone wouldn't kill her. Ilinas, like all immortals, healed almost any wound within minutes. Only if he took her heart would she die. But if she died, so too would her maidens. Her life force would dissipate, spreading to the other Ilinas. And with it, the poison she'd protected them against for a thousand years.

As badly as she wanted to protect Kougar, her first responsibility must be to her maidens.

"Kougar." Her voice gurgled with the blood in her ruptured windpipe.

He flinched, his gaze dropping to her neck, to where the blood ran in rivulets, soaking her top. Almost as quickly as he'd attacked, his claws and fangs retracted, but he didn't pull away. His large hand remained closed around her throat as her pulse beat against his palm.

His gaze locked on hers and held as her wounds healed, as the pain in her throat died a quick death. And still he watched her, pale eyes probing, digging too deep. She tried to look away and couldn't, her parched heart drinking in the sight of the man she'd longed for, whom she'd missed, and loved, for a thousand years.

In so many ways, he hadn't changed. His hair was much shorter than he'd worn it in those days, his beard trimmed to encompass only his mouth and chin. But he'd always exuded a powerful pull on her physically, nearly overwhelming in its intensity, and that hadn't changed. For a thousand years, she'd blamed herself for giving in to her feelings for him. But standing within the heat of his body, enveloped by his raw, masculine scent, snared by the power of his eyes, she remembered all over again how impossible he'd been to resist.

But she must resist him now. His life absolutely depended on it.

He released her neck but continued to crowd her, forcing her to meet his glittering diamond-hard gaze. "You're going into that spirit trap, Ariana. You're going to get them out."

She swallowed the words of regret. The soulless regretted nothing, and he must believe her soulless. "No. I'm not."

He growled low in his throat, the sound of an animal, his hand tightening around her throat. "Seventeen Ferals died in one of those traps six hundred years ago."

Seventeen. Her mind reeled.

"Horse died. You could have saved him. You could have saved them all."

Sweet goddess, Horse had been one of his oldest and closest friends. What must it have done to him to have lost so many in a single blow?

"Now the Ferals number only nine, or will once the new fox comes forth. The Mage have acquired dark power and are coming too damn close to freeing the Daemons. We cannot lose two more."

Her heart ached, her fingers clenching at her sides as she fought to hide the sorrow fisting in her chest and present a callous front.

She swallowed, clearing the blood and emotion from her throat, layering her voice with ice. "I couldn't have helped them, Kougar, even if I'd known. Even if I'd wanted to. And I can't help the ones in there now. You're mistaken if you believe I can breach a spirit trap."

Only by turning to mist could she possibly get into the trap and out again. And if she did, her maidens would die.

She could see Kougar's anger mounting. She could feel the pulse of it battering her through the mating bond. "The Ilina queens possess that ability, Ariana. You know it as well as I."

"Queens of old, perhaps, but not I." She needed to get away from him. Even if she hadn't seen him in centuries, she knew this man. No one had ever lived who was more tenacious.

With his friends in trouble, there was no way he'd simply turn his back on her and leave. No way. He'd hound her and threaten her, demanding she help him until he finally broke through her facade and discovered the truth.

That she still loved him. That she'd always loved him.

A truth that would, quite literally, kill him.

Chapter Two

"I'm not the woman you knew, Kougar," Ariana snapped. Even through the contacts, her eyes stabbed at him. She'd never been one to give up or give in.

Kougar crowded her against the wall. Though their bodies didn't quite touch, her body heat permeated his clothing, sinking into his skin. His hands fisted, slick with her blood as his gaze fell again to the red smear that had soaked into the neck of her shirt. Never had he expected to actually touch her, let alone hurt her. Ilinas were notoriously quick to turn to mist when threatened. Yet she hadn't. And despite his fury, drawing her blood had shaken him.

"You ask the impossible, Kougar." She slid her hands between their bodies, grasping her wrists as she murmured something beneath her breath.

Too late, he recognized the chant he himself used to travel back and forth to the Crystal Realm.

An instant later, she was gone, and he stood alone in the Grand Corridor.

"Ariana!" His angry shout hit the walls, echoing back on him over and over. He couldn't follow her. And his awareness of her through the mating bond told him that she was no longer in the Crystal Realm.

Four days he'd waited to catch her. Four f**king days!

Fury detonated within him, and he slammed his fist into the nearest wall, shattering no fewer than half a dozen bones in his hand. With a roar of pain and frustration, he held the hand still for the long seconds it took to heal, as the emotion swirled, then drained away.

She'd claimed she couldn't help him. Which wasn't all that surprising since he could hardly expect the soulless to possess compassion.

But nothing about that confrontation had gone as expected.