Page 72 of Renegade Kingdom
“You’re so fucking beautiful when you’re full of wrath,” he laughed, and there was joy in his voice. Real joy, uncomplicated by pain or fear or the shadow of the nightmare. This was what he’d been born for. This was whatwe’dbeen born for.
This was our bond. Wrath and destruction, chaos and power, two halves of the same devastating whole.
The fae hounds kept coming, and we kept killing them. My magic wrapped around me like armor, like a living thing thatanticipated my needs before I even knew I had them. Damon fought at my back, his borrowed sword singing through the air, his movements precise and deadly and utterly fearless.
And somewhere in the distance, I felt my other mates. Fighting their own battles. Surviving. Making their way toward us.
We just had to hold on until they arrived.
We just had to survive.
And looking at the carnage around us, at the bodies of the fae hounds that had thought we’d be easy prey, I didn’t think that was going to be a problem.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ryder
The fog swallowed us whole, and suddenly I couldn’t see anything but white.
One second we were walking through the forest, tense but together, the fae hounds circling in the shadows beyond our sight. I could feel Damon and Alyssa somewhere ahead of me, Maddox’s heat at my side, Tank’s solid presence bringing up the rear. We were a pack. We were together. We were going to make it through this forest, no matter what it threw at us.
The next second, none of that was true.
The wall of mist rolled over us like a living thing, so thick I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. It was cold, unnaturally so, and it seemed to muffle everything. Sound, light, even the bonds that tied me to my packmates. One moment I could feel Dean’s steady presence like a beacon in my mind. The next, he was just... gone. Faded to a distant whisper that I couldn’t quite grasp.
I reached out blindly, grasping for the person who’d been beside me a moment ago, and my fingers closed around fabric.
Maddox. I could tell by the heat radiating off him, his fire magic simmering just below the surface. The warmth was a comfort, a reminder that I wasn’t completely alone in this sudden, suffocating whiteness.
“Everyone stay close,” Fizzle’s voice cut through the muffled silence. “Do not separate. Whatever happens, do not let the fog split you apart.”
Easy for him to say. The fog was so dense it was like being wrapped in cotton. Like being buried alive in clouds. I couldn’t even tell which direction was up anymore. Every direction looked the same. Every direction felt the same.
“Where are the others?” Tank’s voice came from somewhere to my left. Close, thank the gods. His voice was strained in a way I rarely heard from him. “Dean? Alyssa?”
No answer. Not even an echo. The fog seemed to swallow sound as completely as it swallowed light. My heart clenched with sudden, terrible fear.
Then I heard it. Fighting. The clash of steel, the crack of magic, screams that were cut off too quickly. Somewhere out there in the fog, my pack was under attack, and I couldn’t see them. Couldn’t help them. Couldn’t do anything but stand here like an idiot while the people I loved were being torn apart.
“We need to find them,” I said, already starting to move toward the sounds.
Fizzle’s talons dug into my shoulder as he landed on me, as if he was trying to hold me in place. “No. We stay together. Separating is exactly what they want.”
“But Alyssa…”
“Is capable of handling herself. As is Dean.” Fizzle’s voice was firm, but I could hear the strain underneath. He was worried too. He just hid it better. “The best thing we can do for them is survive. If we scatter, if we let ourselves be picked off one by one, we help no one.”
I hated it. Hated every word of it. But I knew he was right.
We huddled together, the four of us, straining to see through the impenetrable white. The sounds of battle continued somewhere in the distance, muffled and distorted by the fog until I couldn’t tell if they were getting closer or further away. My wolf paced restlessly in my mind, desperate to run toward the danger, to find our packmates, to fight.
Then I saw the shadow.
It moved at the edge of my vision, a darker shape against the white. My first thought was fae hound, and I reached for my sword. But as it drew closer, as I could make out more of its form, I realised I was wrong.
It was too big. Far too big.
The shadow loomed at least twenty feet tall, its shape vaguely humanoid but wrong in ways I couldn’t articulate. Too many limbs, maybe. Or limbs that bent in the wrong directions. It moved with a ponderous, inevitable pace, like a glacier slowly grinding its way across a landscape.
