Page 104 of The Huntmaster

A soft, tearful smile touched my lips. "I just want to have a proper look at this transmitter device before we leave," I said, turning my attention toward the ancient, humming interface. "If we can disable it completely from here, we might stop this from ever happening again, and keep anyone else from getting their hands on it."

Kaelen squeezed my hip one last time. "Do not be long," he murmured, his voice laced with protective caution. He turned and walked a few paces away, gesturing for Toren to join him as they began to speak in hushed, urgent tones about securing our exit path. Tyler stood a few feet back near the edge of the stairs, keeping a wary eye on the dark corridors.

I stepped closer to the console, my eyes scanning the ancient, glowing glyphs. I reached out, my gaze drifting down to the grated floor.

That wasn't right. Sila should have been lying exactly where Mara's arrow had dropped her.

Instead… Only a dark smear stained the grated floor. The arrow was gone. My eyes followed a thin trail of fresh blood disappearing beneath the console.

Cold spread through my stomach.

No.

No, no⁠—

The realisation hit me, and I frantically began to turn, my mouth opening to scream Kaelen's name⁠—

Before a single sound could escape my lips, a cold, clawed hand clamped violently over my mouth, dragging me backwards into the dark recess of the console.

The sharp, stinging edge of a blade pressed flush against my raw throat, and a hot, bubbling, wheezing breath filled my ear.

"Shhh, star-meat," Sila’s voice gargled, dripping with venom and wet blood. "Not a sound."

Chapter 67

Kaelen-Thul

The air in my lungs froze.

The mate bond violently ruptured with a cold, paralysing terror that made the blood in my veins turn to ice. My heart hammered against my cracked ribs as I spun on my heel, my eyes cutting through the green-lit gloom of the platform.

My breath caught in a vicious, guttural hitch.

Lyra was gone from the centre of the deck. She was pulled back into the dark recess of the ancient console, her small frame pinned against Sila’s battered, blood-soaked body. Sila looked like a corpse dragged from a shallow grave—the skymetal arrow was gone from her neck, leaving a bubbling hole that wept dark fluid down her chest, and her face was masked in soot and a manic, terrifying grin.

Her clawed hand was clamped over Lyra's mouth. The silver edge of a rusted blade was pressed so deeply flush against my mate’s raw throat that a single drop of crimson blood was already tracking down Lyra's skin.

"Let her go," I growled, the sound vibrating from the deepest, darkest well of my chest—a low, demonic rumble that rattled the loose gravel around my feet. Toren shifted a half-step behind me, his heavy hand dropping to the hilt of his skymetal blade, his massive form tensing like a coiled spring.

"Step back, tree-prince," Sila gargled, her voice a wet, wheezing rasp through her ruined throat. She let out a sharp, mocking hiss. "Or I'll open her from ear to ear before your boots can even graze this grating."

"It is over, Sila," I barked, forcing my voice into a cold, lethal cadence despite the roaring panic in my blood. I took a slow, calculated step forward. "Geth is dead. Your empire is ashes. Look around you—your warriors ran away like cowards, and the dregs have finally stood up to face you. You have no army. You have nothing."

Sila tutted, a sickening, wet click of her tongue as she deliberately dug the edge of the blade deeper into Lyra's flesh. Lyra whimpered through her nose, her eyes wide, capturing mine.

I dropped my chin, my posture going utterly still as I spoke in our old tongue, the guttural, heavy syllables dripping like liquid venom.

"You have tasted her blood before, worm, and I let you live," I hissed, the ancient words vibrating with a dark, suffocating brutality that made the very air of the cavern turn to ice. "But if you slide that metal a fraction of a millimetre deeper, I will not just end you. I will peel the skin from your meat while you breathe. I will break every bone until you are a screaming pile of pulp, and I will drag your shivering soul into the deepest, rot-filled wells of the world to burn for eternity. Look into my eyes and know your death."

Sila didn't flinch. Instead, she threw her head back and let out a sharp, manic shriek that sounded less like speech and more like a dying predator. "Geth?" she spat, her scarlet eyes burning with a terrifying, unhinged ambition. "You speak of that mindless ox? A brute. A low-born taker of dirt. He wished only to crawl upon a few miserable leagues of soil and call himself a king. But I—I am the blood that thinks. I am the shadow that shapes the knife. He was the heavy stone we throw at enemies, huntmaster, but I am the hand that aims it."

She leaned closer to Lyra’s ear, her hot, bloody breath rustling my mate's hair. "I do not seek only your pathetic canopy, prince. I want the vastness. I want a sky of cages, filled with the soft, weeping things of her world. A never-ending slaughterhouse of compliant flesh. And this little star-meat is the key to the lock."

Kaelen.

Lyra’s voice brushed against the walls of my mind, trembling but fierce, the mate bond pulsing between us like a frantic lifeline. Don't let her do this. We can't let her activate it. No matter what.

Be still, little star, I projected back, pouring every ounce of my love, my strength, and my absolute protection into the bond, trying to anchor her through the terror. Do not move. I am going to tear her away from you.