Chapter 19

Swords clang around me. The training ground is half-full of Westshear guardians pushing themselves as hard as they can. We know all too well the threat of being unprepared. Sunlight glints off the metal blades, dust kicking up in brown puffs when someone hits the ground too hard. Sweat slicks down my back, and I jab right.

The captain of the Westshear guard bares his teeth at me, turning into the punch.

"Good," I tell him, feinting left before throwing another hook. This one lands, and he grunts at the impact.

He sweeps a leg out, but I dodge.

I frown, a discordant feeling rushing through me. Distracted, I miss an opening, and the captain hammers a punch against my ribs. Breath huffs out of me, and the captain grins, circling.

My thoughts turn to Mina, my focus slipping. I think of her often throughout the day, of her secret smiles, the way her cheeks heat with the promise of pleasure, of the way she works tirelessly to help our people. I love her. It's been weeks now since I scooped her up from the desert wastes, and the strength of my feelings for her has only grown.

I block an attack at the last minute, and the captain's eyes narrow, as though he notices I'm distracted.

Yes, I think of Mina so often I'm near obsessed with her, with her happiness here. I think she might love me as well, and this morning, over breakfast, I saw it shining in her eyes, in the way she held my hand, her fingers stroking along my skin.

But these thoughts are different. Worry gnaws at me, a mongrel with a bone.

I stiffen, pulled up short by another strange sensation. The sounds of the training grounds fall away, the sharp curses and grunts muted by a spearing buzz in my ears. My sparring partner hammers a punch into one side, then the other, before I stop him with a closed fist.

"Something's wrong." I exhale, all my internal alarms twanging.

The mate bond, my tenuous link to Mina, shivers along my brain. It's not strong enough for her to telegraph, and it will not ever be, unless she decides to take me as hers, but it grows stronger every day. Her trust in me, our time together in pleasure and in companionship, has started to spin it into a thin, glowing strand in my mind's eye.

And now, it sings the song of her fear, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth.

"Mina," I groan. A dull, foreign throb aches against my temples. Hers. She's in pain.

Panic wrings my heart, and I gasp, clutching my chest. My sparring partner stares at me, open-mouthed.

"Something is wrong with Mina. Find her." It comes out a roar, and then I'm setting off.

I focus on the thin strand twining me to her, her fear palpable. When it goes dark, I roar again, my muscles contracting in rage. Someone brings me my horse. I am beyond reason. My hands shake, and I ball them into fists.

"Hyadum," a voice calls, and when I look down, Arietis is there.

"Where is she?" It comes out a snarl, and his eyes widen. "Where is Mina?"

"I do not know," he says, and his words ring true.

My eyes close briefly, and I strain against the nascent panic, reasserting control.

"It is true, then," an incredibly deep voice grates out, and I turn my attention to the giant of a man standing behind Arietis. "You told us true, Arietis. The Starbound women have returned, and one is Hyadum's mate."

I stare. "Who is this?"

"They found me," Arietis says, a slightly annoyed expression on his face. "House Lupus, it seems, survived."

"I am the Alpha of Lupus pack," the newcomer all but growls. His eyes glow yellow, flaring in the sun. "I come to render aid, in the hopes aid will be returned, should Lupus pack need to call on you. Done are the days of solitude. Now is the time of war." He rolls his head on his shoulders, a gesture I'm all too familiar with.

Ras Elasad of House Leo used to do it, too, right before he'd transform into an enormous lion.

The Alpha is a shapeshifter. House Lupus was supposed to be a myth, lost to time and not heard of since before the blood drinkers came through the world gates a century ago.

And here he stands before me, clearly trained to fight with tooth and claw, like the legends told of House Lupus.

"Then we have an accord," I tell him, dipping my head.

That yellow glow rolls over his eyes again, and he, too, dips his head. "Let us find your mate."

A trio of guards rushes through the gates of the training grounds, carrying a still body with them. My blood runs cold.

Thom.

"We found him beyond the wall," one of the guards says. The other two lay the body on the ground. An arrow juts from Thom's chest. Blood stains his front, the arrowhead clean through the other side.

He's dead.

Why in the name of the stars was he outside the wall?

"That's not all," another pipes up. "There were more tracks. Maybe a dozen or so."

My nostrils flare, and I dismount, stalking towards the corpse.

"There were smaller footprints, too."

The guard clams up as I stare at him, wrath beginning to tighten my skin, the battle warp coming over me.

I lean into Thom. There it is. I inhale deeply. Mina. Her scent clings to him, one I know as well as my own, along with the astringent herbal fragrance of her medicinal concoctions.

"Fuck." I grit my teeth.

"Hyadum," Arietis says, a hand on my shoulder. "We will find her."

"I should have listened to him," I say, unable to even comprehend an option other than finding Mina. "Thom wanted to draw the blood drinkers out, using Mina to tempt them. As bait."

"No mate would allow that to happen," the Alpha says, and I realize I don't know his name. Nor do I care, at the moment.

"They brutalized the settlement at Sheerly. He was worried it would happen again. He was terrified for his family." Guilt weighs heavy on me, the mantle and curse of my father. "I should have known he would not listen."

"You cannot know the minds of all men, Hyadum," Arietis says gently, but there's steel in his voice. He knows all too well how I've blamed myself for my father's betrayal. How I've tortured myself with not knowing, with seeing the evidence and still refusing to see the truth.

"How far of a head start?" I say to one of the guards. I stand, wiping my hands on my pants. I've failed Mina. I've failed Thom. I have failed my people.

"The tracks were fresh, but they're moving quickly."

"Towards Avleim," another chimes in. "They left from the gate outside your estate."

"Fuck," I repeat, running a hand down one of my horns.

I know what they'll do to my Mina once she's there. They'll use her, try to breed her, take away her choice. They'll search for the kernel of power in her, and suck it clean out of her once they've had her.

It is why the women of our people fled many years ago, weakening the rest of us, bringing imbalance to the Starbound power in a desperate attempt to avoid the blood drinkers.

And my father gave them the ammunition for the blood curse that weakens the remaining Starbound.

I will not let them have Mina.

"I ride with you," Arietis says.

"And I," adds the Alpha. "We will not allow this to go unpunished."

I nod once, fixing my gaze on the captain of the Westshear guard. "Leave enough men to guard the city. Send word to Idiene, as quickly as possible. Send a contingent with provisions behind me. Send word to Ulson and Lesath, if at all possible."

"It will be done," the captain says, and begins barking orders.

"We ride to war," I snarl.

A ragged cheer goes up across the training yard. Arietis and the Alpha each snag a horse, and I mount up, tearing from the gates.

I will not allow them to harm my mate.