Page 16 of The Huntmaster

"The Pulse is... quiet tonight," Toren murmured, his voice a hazy rasp.

It wasn't.

Underneath the false, shimmering calm of the herb, a spike of discordance tore through my senses. The Oru-Ka were connected to the tree, and the tree was connected to every living thing within its canopy. Something was wrong. The air felt heavy, tainted with a scent that didn't belong in the sacred, mineral mists of the springs. It was a vibration of violence, a fracture in the dominance I had established.

I stood up abruptly, the Zha-haze shattering like glass in my mind.

"She has been gone too long," I rumbled, my markings flickering a sharp, warning amber.

"The star-woman? She’s with Sora," Toren said, blinking up at me, trying to catch his bearings. "She’s fine, Kaelen. Relax your hearts. Even the Alu’un takes her time to wash."

I didn't answer. I was already moving. I dropped from the lookout, my descent a blur of controlled falling and frantic lunges through the branches. My internal compass was locked onto the mineral tang of the thermal grotto, but as I drew closer, the scent of ozone and honey was being drowned out by something foul—the thick, musk-heavy scent of males in a state of primitive, unchecked heat.

I reached the outer buttress of the springs and slowed, my movements becoming a ghost's whisper. I drifted into the shadows of the hanging moss, my amber eyes narrowing as I peered through the azure mist.

In the crimson water, the star-woman was backed against the stone wall. Two males—Vahn’s lackeys, bottom-feeders who lived on the scraps of his ambition—were closing in on her. She was small, pale, and entirely exposed, her silver-white suit a heap of discarded fabric on the stones. Yet as I watched, she didn't cower. She held her chin high, her blue eyes flashing with a desperate, iron-willed defiance that made her look like a cornered skyla cat—fragile, but ready to claw out eyes before she let herself be consumed.

I felt a surge of dark, possessive pride. Most creatures would have collapsed in terror.

I didn't rush in. I was a Huntmaster; I knew the value of a trap.

I let out a series of low clicks followed by a high-frequency trill—the tactical signal for a perimeter breach. It was a call to duty that no Oru-Ka warrior could ignore without revealing their own treachery.

The two males froze in the water.

"Did you hear that?" the scarred one hissed in our tongue. "The perimeter?"

"Check it," the leaner one barked, his eyes never leaving Lyra’s pale form. "I will stay with the prize and ensure she does not drown."

The scarred male climbed out of the pool, dripping red water as he moved toward the moss curtain. He never saw me. As he stepped into the deeper shadows, I moved with the silence of a falling leaf. I drove my elbow into the base of his skull with enough force to shatter stone. He crumpled without a sound. I dragged him into a hollowed root and bound his limbs with thick, thorny vines. One down.

I turned back to the grotto. The second male was now mere inches from Lyra, his hand reaching out to grab a fistful of her golden hair.

I didn't whistle this time—I roared.

I launched myself from the shadows, a streak of copper and fury. I hit the edge of the spring with a bone-shaking thud, my tail whipping out like a heavy cable. I caught the male around the throat, the thick muscle of my tail constricting until his gasps turned to wet gurgles as I hauled him backwards, dragging him out of the water and slamming him onto the hard stones of the grotto floor with a sickening crunch.

I stood over him, my chest heaving, my markings flaring a blinding, lethal red. My pupils had dilated until my eyes were voids of black, locked into a total predatory kill-state. I pinned him down, my foot crushing his windpipe just enough to keep him conscious.

"Huntmaster!" he wheezed, his eyes bulging with terror. "Vahn said... he said she was nothing! A sky-beast for the taking!"

"Vahn does not rule this nest," I snarled, my voice a vibrating floor-rumble. I bared my teeth, the serrated edges glinting in the blue moss-light.

"She is just meat, Kaelen-Thul," the male gasped, a deranged, desperate smirk crossing his face even as he choked. "You’ll tire of her soon. Let us have what’s left..."

The snap of his neck was the only sound in the grotto. I used the full force of my weight to crush the life from his throat, my jaw set in a grim, silent line. I wouldn't have the poison of his words lingering in the air.

I turned back to the pool, and that was when the air changed.

My nostrils flared as the kill-fury began to ebb, replaced by something sharper and more intimate. Underneath the mineral sulfur and the copper tang of the water, I caught it—the sharp, metallic scent of her fear hitting the humid air. But rising alongside it was something that made my blood run hot: a faint, lingering sweetness that spoke of a body’s involuntary response to extreme adrenaline. A scent of arousal born from the sheer, terrifying intensity of the moment.

The scent belonged to me. I was the one who had claimed the right to provoke those reactions from her frame.

"Did they touch you?" I demanded, my voice still rough and guttural. "Are you whole?"

She swallowed hard, her voice a small, shaky thing that barely carried over the bubbling water. "No. I... I'm okay. You killed him. You just... you killed him."

"He was a disharmony," I replied simply, stepping closer to the basin’s edge.