Chapter 17

She’s gone. She’s gone.

I’m frantic, searching the water for her, for any sign of the massive beast that took her. The branch I tore off in a panicked frenzy is in my hand, and I salivate at the thought of driving into the reptile that stole my mate from me.

A splash sounds behind me.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, shit, fuck,” a female voice says, and I turn to find Piper there, her eyes huge, the color gone from her skin.

“Piper, how bad is it?” I swim toward her as fast as I can. “How bad are you hurt?”

“I think it broke a rib,” she wheezes. “It’s not great. I’m bleeding. I don’t know how bad. Too much adrenaline. Just hurts.”

My skin crawls, the fire inside my veins looking for a way out, for a way to save her, save us both. It never should have come to this.

“Can you feel it?” she asks, her voice hoarse, her breath stuttering.

I nod. It’s here. It’s waiting. It’s enjoying this.

The sensation of being watched intensifies. I spin, and the water behind me ripples with the wake of something big moving beneath it. Moving fast.

“I’m going to fuck it sideways and call it Captain Hook,” I snarl.

“That’s the spirit,” Piper grinds out. “Make that bitch into a handbag.”

I feel it then, the current it’s creating cresting beneath me, and I twirl, because I know what the wretched beast wants. It wants to hurt Piper. It wants me to watch.

This thing is no normal animal. The aliens here have done something to it, twisted it, made it evil. Tortured it into behaving like this.

“Cleanse it. Purify.” A voice unlike anything I’ve ever heard erupts from Piper’s mouth, and I know what it means.

I know what it is.

The goddess. She has, indeed, chosen Piper as her vessel.

“I can’t,” I mutter, because that power, the energy manipulation my royal line is known for, can’t be accessed with this wretched band on.

“Use her. Fight it. Or she dies, and the hopes of the Roth and humans with her.” Piper’s eyes have rolled back, the blue gone completely, only white showing. And yet, something within her looks out at me.

I don’t have time to think. The reptile is surging toward her, and I can feel its dark intention crawling over my skin.

I swim as fast as I can, closing the distance in the water between Piper and me. I hold her in my arms, her body limp, even as her face smiles up at me, only the whites of her eyes visible, and I sink into myself, into her, searching for that fiery coal the collar seemed to extinguish.

“Now,” the voice commands from Piper’s mouth.

Daggers of pain drive through my legs, and I do as the goddess says.

I cleanse. I purify. I focus all my hatred, all my hope, on the beast who would take my mate from me.

When I’m done, the water around us boils.

The body of the beast floats to the surface, belly up.

I haul Piper’s limp body over my shoulder and drive the sharp end of the branch through the throat of the monster.

The crowd’s gone silent, and in the next instant, they’re chanting again, the water slowly draining from the arena.

The beast remains still, and even as the water completely disappears, leaving more corpses behind on the wet dirt and sand, I keep my hand clenched around the branch, still forcing it through the thick hide and sinew.

Steam rises from its burnt body, but when I reach for more power, intent on burning this entire arena down, I find nothing.

The coal of power is extinguished.