Page 47 of The Huntmaster

Lyra

The adrenaline that had sustained me through the long, silver-drenched night was beginning to curdle into a heavy, bone-deep exhaustion. My hands were stained with a gruesome mosaic of iridescent silver blood and the stubborn blue residue of the medicinal pastes, but for the first time since my ship had streaked across this sky, I didn't feel like a specimen under a microscope. The soft, respectful nods—the Ma-una—from the warriors I’d helped had created a fragile, aching sense of belonging.

Then, the air changed.

It wasn't a sound, but a shift in the atmospheric pressure, a sudden thickening of the "Pulse" that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. I looked up, my gaze drifting past the flickering resin torches of the Healers' Hut toward the main vine-bridge.

Kaelen was there.

My heart performed a violent, erratic somersault in my chest, slamming against my ribs with a force that made me lightheaded. He looked feral. He was covered in the fine, pale dust of the southern wastes and smeared with patches of that foul, black ichor. His gold markings weren't just glowing; they were screaming, an aggressive radiance that seemed to physically push back the shadows.

He began to stride toward me, his pace predatory and focused, every muscle in his thighs and shoulders rippling under his dark skin. For a second, my breath hitched, and that treacherous, honeyed heat from my dream flared up in my gut, reminding me of how he had felt—how he had smelled—in the dark of my mind. I expected him to storm over, to demand to know why I was out of the hut, or perhaps—in some delirious, hopeful part of my brain—to check if I was alright after the attack.

Our eyes locked across the crowded platform.

The impact was physical, like a blow to the solar plexus. His pupils were blown so wide that the gold of his irises was reduced to a thin, shimmering ring around a terrifying void of black. It was the look of a hunter who had found his mark, but as he drew closer, something in his expression fractured. The worry I thought I saw vanished, replaced by an intense, raw hunger mixed with a simmering, possessive rage that made me stumble back a step.

His fists clenched at his sides, the sound of his knuckles cracking audible even over the village hum. I watched in a trance of terror and fascination as his claws elongated, glinting like obsidian needles in the torchlight. He looked like he was fighting the urge to lunge—not to attack, but to claim. To tear me away from the eyes of his tribe.

Then, he stopped.

He came to a dead halt ten feet away, his chest heaving as if he’d run across the entire continent without stopping. The heat radiating off him was palpable, a wall of wood-smoke, salt, and ozone. He didn't say a word. He didn't even acknowledge the hunters I had spent the last four hours stitching back together.

Instead, he snapped his head toward Toren, who had been standing just a few feet behind me. Kaelen leaned in, his voice a low, guttural vibration that bypassed my ears and rattled my bones. I couldn't hear the words, but the tone was ragged—a command wrapped in a snarl, something sharp and final.

Toren listened, his own expression growing sombre as he absorbed the weight of whatever Kaelen was saying. He gave a slow, measured nod of understanding, his blue markings pulsing in a steady, calming counterpoint to Kaelen’s erratic gold.

Without a single glance back at me—without even a flicker of recognition that I was a living, breathing person and not just a ghost—Kaelen spun on his heel and vanished into the upper canopy with a violent, soaring leap, his powerful legs propelling him into the dark foliage as if the very sight of me was a burn he could no longer endure.

I stood there, frozen, my hand still clutching a blood-stained cloth. A hot flush of humiliation and anger rose in my neck.

What the fuck was that?

"He is... struggling with the Alignment," a voice said softly, breaking the silence that had fallen over the immediate area.

I turned to see Toren watching me. He didn't look angry or suspicious; he gave me an almost sympathetic look, his blue markings pulsing with a quiet, steady rhythm.

"Is that it?" I snapped, my voice trembling with an agitation I couldn't suppress. "He leaves, his village gets attacked, his people are bleeding out on the platforms, and he can't even be bothered to check on them? He just stares at me like I’m a plague and runs away? Some leader he is. He’s a coward."

I felt a surge of genuine spite. I had worked through the night until my vision blurred, I had used the last scraps of my Earth tech to save his kin, and he couldn't even manage a 'thank you' or a 'good job.' He’d looked at me like I was an infection he couldn't wait to cut out.

But beneath the anger, a confusing, hollow ache lingered. My skin felt suddenly, miserably cold where the phantom heat of his gaze had just been. Despite my logic, despite the fact that he was an arrogant, overbearing alien who treated me like a high-risk prisoner, I found myself staring up at the branch where he’d disappeared.

I was furious, yes. I was agitated beyond belief. But I was also, god help me, strangely longing for the very presence I claimed to hate. I wanted his touch. I wanted to know why he looked at me like he wanted to devour me and kill me at the same time. I felt like a wire stripped of its insulation—raw, buzzing, and dangerously close to snapping.

"He has gone to the High Roost," Toren said, stepping closer to guide me back toward the safety of the main walkway. "To settle the fever in his blood. Do not take his silence for coldness, Ly-ra. He sees more than you realise."

"He sees a problem," I muttered, turning back toward the hut, my eyes stinging with a mix of exhaustion and frustration. "That’s all I’ve ever been to him. A problem to be solved or a threat to be managed."

But as I walked away, my hand drifted unconsciously to my neck, to the spot where I could still feel the ghost of his teeth from the dream. I was a mess of contradictions, hating him for leaving and hating myself for wanting him to stay.

Toren walked me toward the secondary bridge, his movements seemed heavy. In the low, silver-green light of the canopy, I could see the sweat beading on his brow despite the biting chill of the night air.

"He’s a disaster," I muttered, my voice echoing off the damp, ancient wood. My anger was a shield, but it was starting to feel paper-thin. "How can he call himself a leader when he can’t even look at his own people without losing his mind? You’re here. Sora is here. The other hunters were literally bleeding out on the platforms, and they’re more functional than he is. Why is he the only one acting like a live wire?"

Toren stopped abruptly, leaning his weight against the woven railing of the vine-bridge. He looked out into the shifting, bioluminescent shadows of the deep forest, his blue markings pulsing with a visible, erratic strain that mirrored the frantic beating of my own heart.

"It is not that we are not feeling it, Lyra," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly, exhausted rasp. "The Alignment... it is not a thought. It is a physical weight. It pulls at the blood, demanding we hunt, demanding we... connect. It is an instinct older than our language."