Page 127 of Renegade Kingdom
We didn’t say goodbye as we parted ways outside of the palace doors. There were too many of us for us to shelter inside the palace now and with the villages destroyed by the forest the only choice had been to build a temporary camp outside the palace doors. And yet even though it should have just been an overflow, almost everyone had migrated out here. Seeking comfort in the presence of each other. .
Dean sharpened his blades in silence. Maddox sat with Rhidian by one of the fires, their conversation low and private. Ryder made someone laugh on the other side of the camp, the sound carrying through the quiet like a bell. Damon stood at the edge of the tree line, his shadows pooling around his feet, the wolf he’d not even met yet a steady presence at the borders of his mind.
Alyssa moved between us like the thread that held us all together. A hand on Dean’s shoulder. A kiss pressed to Maddox’s temple. A murmured word to Ryder that made his smile turn real instead of performed. A long moment standing besideDamon in silence, her light touching his shadows, the two merging at the edges like dawn meeting dusk.
I watched from my usual place. A little apart, seeing the whole picture. The way I always had.
The sun set. The fires burned low. The camp settled into something that wasn’t quite sleep and wasn’t quite wakefulness. The final peaceful night before we marched to war.
I should have closed my eyes. I should have rested while I could.
Instead I sat at the edge of camp with my hand on the ground and listened to the land whisper.
It was trying to tell me something.
The bear was trying to tell me something.
I was too focused on tomorrow to hear what they were saying about tonight.
The ground shook at the first touch of grey in the eastern sky.
Not an earthquake. Not the slow, grinding shift of tectonic plates or the settling of old foundations. This was violent. Sudden. The earth lurching beneath my feet like a living thing recoiling from a wound.
I was on my feet before the tremor finished, every sense sharpening to a point. The bear surged forward, slamming against the walls of my control, and for the first time in years I let it push further than I usually allowed.
Because I could feel it. Through the Spring Court bond, through the magic that tied me to this land as surely as roots tied a tree to soil. I could feel the violation. Something was tearing through the wards. Something massive and wrong and hungry, ripping through the protections Alyssa had woven like paper through flame.
The ground shook again. Harder.
Screams erupted across the camp. The sound of tents collapsing, metal clanging, people scrambling for weapons they hadn’t expected to need.
I turned north. The sky above the tree line was wrong. The grey of predawn had curdled into something darker, a bruised and sickly purple that spread across the horizon like infection through a wound. And beneath that poisoned sky, moving through the forest with the sound of ten thousand trees breaking at once, something was coming.
Not tomorrow.
Now.
The land screamed through my bond and I screamed with it.
“UP!” I roared, and the word tore out of me with enough force to shake the nearest tents. “EVERYONE UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”
Arik wasn’t waiting for us to come to him.
He was already here.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Alyssa
Our fragile moments of peace and naivety ended at dawn.
One moment I was asleep, curled between Dean’s cold stillness and Maddox’s warmth, the bond humming its steady five-note chord beneath my ribs. The next, the earth bucked beneath me like a horse throwing its rider and every ward I’d woven into the Spring Court’s perimeter shattered at once. The sensation was physical. Hooks ripped from my skin, threads of magic snapping back with enough force to leave welts on my consciousness. I gasped, choking on the sudden absence of protection, and before I could draw a full breath, Tank’s roar split the pre-dawn quiet like a crack of thunder.
“UP! EVERYONE UP! WE’RE UNDER ATTACK!”
This shouldn’t be possible.
I was moving before my mind caught up with my body. Muscle memory from a dozen fights and a hundred nightmares that had trained me to run before I could think. Dean was already on his feet, ice crackling along his forearms, his eyes flat and focused. Maddox had his fire in his palms, the orange glow painting harsh shadows across his face. Somewhere to my left, Ryder’s voicewas cutting through the chaos, barking orders at a cluster of fighters who were stumbling from their tents with their weapons half-drawn.
