Page 50 of The Huntmaster

"Come out, Lyra."

My voice was a low, vibrating friction that seemed to rattle the iron-wood bars of the cage. I didn't turn to look at the massive, pillar-like root to my left; I didn't need to. I could hear the sharp hitch in her breathing, a jagged rhythm that sent a jolt of pure, predatory electricity straight to my gut.

She stepped out of the shadows, her golden hair reflecting the room’s sickly fungal light. She looked small against the backdrop of the massive tree, yet her eyes flashed with a defiance that made my fingers curl into the dirt.

"This is a restricted level," I said, my words coming out in a clipped, dangerous hiss. I finally turned my head, my gaze locking onto hers. My pupils had swallowed nearly all the gold, leaving only a thin, vibrating ring of light. "You are violating the safety of this Nest by being here."

"I’m violating the safety of a cage?" she snapped back, her voice echoing off the damp walls. She gestured toward the shivering Vakra behind me. "He’s a child, Kaelen. Look at him. He’s mutilated and shaking, and you’re standing over him like he’s a war general. Is this what you do? You hunt down the weakest things you can find because you can't handle the pressure up there?"

"He is Vakra," I growled, taking a step toward her. The distance between us was too short, the air between us too thin. "He belongs to a clan that sees your kind as nothing more than scrap to be harvested. You speak of things you do not comprehend."

Behind me, the Vakra shrank further into the corner, eyes darting between us like prey caught between two predators.

"I comprehend that you're hiding!" she shouted, her stubbornness flaring like a localised sun. "You avoid your people, you ignore the hunters I spent the night saving, and you treat me like I’m some kind of hazard you can’t look at. You’re the Huntmaster, but you’re running from your own fucking⁠—"

I moved before she could finish the sentence—a blur of motion that ended with my hand slamming against the wood inches from her ear. I didn't touch her, but the heat radiating from my body was enough to make her gasp. I pinned her into the narrow space, my shadow swallowing her completely.

"I am not running from shadows," I snarled through gritted teeth, my face so close to hers I could see the flecks of amber in her eyes. "I am avoiding you."

The admission felt like a physical weight dropping into the space between us. Her breath hitched, her chest rising and falling in shallow, frantic movements. Her scent—jasmine and raw, human heat—assaulted my remaining logic.

"Let me help him," she whispered, her voice losing its edge, turning into something soft and pleading. "His leg is weeping black fluid, Kaelen. If you want him to talk, he needs to be coherent. Let me at least clean the wound."

"No," I rasped. My senses were heightened to a point of agony. I could hear the blood rushing through her veins, could feel the pulse in her neck thrumming against the air. "I will not have you touching that filth. You have done enough."

"Kaelen," she breathed, her gaze searching mine, her eyes travelling over the gold markings that were pulsing in an erratic rhythm across my skin. "I know the moons are changing things. I can feel the tension in you. But if you keep trying to turn everything into a fight, you’ll break. Is anger really all you have left?"

I let out a harsh, dry sound that wasn't quite a laugh. My forehead dropped, nearly touching hers, my mind a chaotic storm of instinct and duty. "In this moment? Yes. Anger is the only thing keeping me from doing what the fever demands."

What I want…

"And what is that?" she whispered, her voice barely a thread of sound. She looked up at me, her lips parted, her expression a mix of terror and a curiosity that mirrored my own. "What is it you want so badly that you have to drown yourself in rage?"

I leaned in, the tip of my nose brushing the sensitive skin of her jawline. I took a deep, shuddering draw of her scent, my chest vibrating with a growl so low it was felt rather than heard. Every fibre of my being was screaming for the contact I was denying myself.

"You," I whispered.

Her breath stuttered—sharp, disbelieving.

The word was a vow and a curse. I didn't wait to see the impact. I pushed away from the wall, my markings flaring a blinding, desperate gold as I turned and disappeared into the dark of the tunnel, leaving her alone with the silence and the shivering boy in the cage.

Chapter 34

Lyra

"You."

The word hung in the humid, stagnant air of the root-chamber long after the soft, leathery slap of Kaelen's bare feet had faded into the shadows of the tunnel. I stood pinned against the cold wood of the pillar, my ribcage vibrating with a frantic, uneven percussion. It felt as though a bird was trapped in my chest, its wings beating against my lungs until I could barely draw a full breath. The lingering wake of his scent—wood-smoke, crushed spice, and that sharp, terrifying ozone—clung to my senses long after he had moved away .

He hadn't just admitted to wanting me. He had admitted that I was the catalyst for his unravelling.

A bitter, confusing heat rose in my neck. All this time, ever since that night—the night he had marked me, the night he had tasted me—I had been convinced he was repulsed. I thought the way he looked at me was a display of pure, unadulterated disgust for what we had shared. I thought he stayed away because he couldn't stand the sight of the "alien" he had momentarily lost control to.

But it wasn't disgust. It was a hunger so violent he was literally tearing himself apart to keep it at bay.

I shoved the revelation into a dark corner of my mind, forcing my focus back to the present. I couldn't afford to analyse the predatory heat in his eyes while a child sat bleeding in a cage behind me. I turned toward the iron-wood bars. Sky was huddled in the far corner, his milk-white eyes unblinking, his skin a translucent, sickly grey in the fungal light.

"Star-woman," he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "The Golden One... the Great Huntmaster of the Oru-ka. I have never heard of his clan's leader walking away from a hunt. Or a choice. He is... unravelling."