Page 99 of The Huntmaster

Bruised, bloodied, and terrified, but she was breathing. The impossible pressure that had been crushing my chest since the horrific moment she was stolen fractured all at once, giving way to something far more dangerous. Relief flooded my veins, followed instantly by a fury so pure and absolute it made my vision blur into a dark crimson haze.

They had touched her. They had made her bleed.

Deep within my chest, the mating bond flared, roaring against the heavy, toxic atmosphere of the deep crust. Behind my ribs, the connection felt fuzzy and muffled, strained to its absolute limits by the Vakra machinery and the depth of the earth separating us—but it was there. It was a dying ember fiercely fighting through the dark, pulsing with a desperate, frantic need to bridge the gap between us. I could feel her heartbeat, erratic and terrified, pulling at the fraying edges of my sanity.

"Lyra!" I roared, the sound tearing from my throat, raw and desperate as the bond thrashed against its chains. "Hold on! Look at me, Lyra!"

Her eyes locked onto mine through the gloom, a flicker of fierce, unbroken recognition cutting through her pain.

My gaze tore through the rest of the chamber. We weren't alone. Dozens of Vakra warriors stood in a wide perimeter, their skymetal pikes raised. Yet, as I stood there, my alpha aura flaring into a suffocating, lethal pressure that vibrated through the raw earth, I could see the tremor in their lines. Several of the guards stepped back, their chest plates heaving with a visible, unmistakable terror at the sheer sight of the great vanguard huntmaster standing in their territory. They knew what I was. They knew what I did to parasites.

Then, a heavy shadow shifted above.

From a high, iron-reinforced platform overlooking the console, a massive, towering figure launched itself into the air. Geth hit the dirt floor with a violent, bone-rattling impact, the dust swirling around his heavy, scarred legs.

He straightened up to his full, monstrous height, his thick tail whipping the ground as his red eyes locked onto mine. A sneering smile stretched across his face, his chest rumbling with a dark, mocking amusement.

"I have been waiting for this day, many, many moons to gut you, tree-prince," Geth boomed, his voice echoing off the rock walls as the pikes closed in around me.

Chapter 64

Lyra

The rusted blade against my throat vibrated with the terrifying thrum of the ancient console, but my eyes never left Kaelen. Sila’s fingers dug deeper into my scalp, forcing my head back, her chest heaving with a sick, eager anticipation. "Watch closely, star-meat," she hissed in my ear. "Watch how easily your prince bleeds in the dark."

Geth didn't wait. With a deafening, guttural roar that rattled the stone beneath my bare feet, the High Scavenger lunged across the dirt floor. He moved with a heavy, brutal speed that defied his massive size, his skymetal-reinforced gauntlets swinging in a savage arc meant to take Kaelen's head off at the shoulders.

Kaelen dropped low, the calloused soles of his bare feet skidding through the loose grit as he slipped entirely beneath Geth’s guard. His twin daggers flashed like lightning in the sickly green light, slicing deep, clean lines through the heavy leather of Geth’s armour and drawing thick, dark Vakra blood from his ribs.

Geth snarled, his heavy tail whipping horizontally to clear the space, but Kaelen leapt over it with a fluid, terrifying grace, his golden alpha eyes burning through the gloom.

Seeing their leader take damage, three heavily armoured Vakra guards broke formation. They lunged forward, their long skymetal pikes levelled at Kaelen’s exposed back.

"Kaelen, behind you!" I screamed, the blade nicking my skin as I thrashed against Sila’s hold.

But it wasn't Kaelen who stopped them.

With a roar of pure, possessive madness, Geth spun around. Before the guards could even register the shift, Geth’s massive hand clamped onto the throat of the foremost warrior. With a sickening crunch, he crushed the guard's windpipe and hurled the limp body violently into the stone wall. The remaining two guards scrambled backwards in terror, their pikes trembling.

"Back!" Geth boomed, his scarlet eyes flashing with genocidal fury as he licked a streak of dark blood from his lip, his gaze snapping back to Kaelen. "The tree-prince is mine to kill! Anyone else who touches him will have their limbs fed to the vertical wells!"

The fight devolved into a raw, primal display of butchery. It wasn't a duel of honour; it was a collision of monsters. Geth used his monstrous weight and iron gauntlets like battering rams, shattering the stone pillars whenever Kaelen dodged, while Kaelen fought like a gale of wind and razor blades, carving piece after piece of grey flesh from Geth’s frame. Every strike echoed through the cavern like a thunderclap, a brutal symphony of tearing leather, cracking bone, and the heavy, ragged panting of two apex predators refusing to break.

In the chaos, Kaelen's golden eyes briefly tracked past Geth’s massive shoulder and locked directly onto me. The bond behind my ribs throbbed, hot and desperate, carrying a sudden, fierce calculation that defied the frenzy in his blood.

He parried a crushing downward strike from Geth, the skymetal sparks illuminating the raw fury on his face. Using the momentum of the blow, Kaelen spun on his heel and, with a violent, whipping motion, hurled his left dagger straight across the cavern.

The blade didn't fly toward Geth. It arced high into the shadows, cutting through the thick sulfurous smoke before striking with a sharp, metallic twang.

It embedded itself perfectly into the heavy skymetal mechanism and the braided root-rope holding the massive bone gate down. The tension snapped instantly. The heavy rope frayed and burst, and with a grinding shriek of rusted iron, the massive bone gate violently jolted a few feet upward.

"Now!" a voice roared through the gap.

Toren didn't hesitate. Leaving a gasping Tyler behind the threshold, the massive vanguard warrior slid under the rising bone bars, his heavy skymetal sword already unsheathed. He burst into the cavern like a breaking storm, instantly throwing his weight into the perimeter of Vakra guards.

"Stay back, human!" Toren bellowed over his shoulder, his blade cleaving through a Vakra pike before driving into the warrior's chest plate. "Do not move from the archway!"

My eyes frantically tracked the violence, the noise, the spray of dark blood—and then, a subtle shift in the high shadows above caught my attention.