Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112500 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 563(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Groans echoed outside the cave. “Get ready, wolf.” She flexed her hands, her palms superheating for hexshots. The smell of brimstone filled the air.
A dozen ghouls swarmed the cave mouth. Their green skin was luminous, their claws dripping contagion. They crowded the landing, eyes burning yellow with rabid instinct: infect and multiply.
Their moans deepened into a chorus as they charged.
Thane met them head-on, roaring, sword flashing. Ghoul blood sprayed. Ditch joined him, unleashing volleys of molten sorcery that seared faces.
“Blinding them with lava?” he said. “You fight dirty.”
“Filthy. Like sex. Like my slate.”
He decapitated another with a snarl. “They’ll keep coming till their heads are off. I’ll clean up after you.”
“No one cleans up after me.” Her magic flared brighter. The lava and acid grew, scalding away flesh until heads tumbled off in spurting fountains of green gore. “Hell spreads,” she said simply. Her worldview.
“What else are you packing?” His sword never slowed.
Her horns flared forward, and she rammed them into a ghoul’s face. “Horn kisses,” she crowed, delighting in the kill.
When the creature clutched its throat and staggered, Thane said, “Poison?”
“Yes. My tail too.”
Even as he beheaded a trio, she caught the flicker of his thoughts—where that tail had been, where it might go again.
Straightening, he repeated his earlier words: “We’ll discuss later.” Then he cleaved another.
She found herself laughing. Fighting beside him was fun.
They moved well together, his skill and might intertwining with her well-aimed chaos. Corpses piled high, green blood sloshing around their boots until the floor was slicked like swamp water.
Too soon, the ghoul numbers thinned. Thane allowed her to burn the last one—chivalrous—and then quiet fell over the area.
They stood facing each other, breaths ragged, boots calf-deep in steaming gore.
Immortal bodies were slow to give up life, and all around them, green corpses writhed, claws blindly puncturing each other in a last hope of infection…
Thane wiped his blade and sheathed it. “Why didn’t your appearance mesmerize the ghouls?”
Ditch’s fire dimmed, and her tail cooled to its spry loveliness. “It only works on certain species, usually fully sentient beings.” She canted her head. “You might be disgusted with my powers, but you appreciated them.”
“No’ disgusted, lass. Just surprised.”
“I thought you were turned off that I’m a witch, but your expression when you saw my demonic visage was priceless.” Maybe that was why she’d shown off—because he was the first male who’d found her lacking.
“I’m no’ turned off. It was just…”
Before he could finish his answer, Pemphre’s singsong voice slithered from the shadows. “You earned your answer, wolf.”
Ditch stepped over a corpse, careful not to get a scratch. She smiled when she realized Thane no longer worried about her leading. I might be light on morals, she thought, but I make up for that in lethality.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s hear this answer—the one you won’t welcome.”
***
Thane
On edge from his mate’s transformation, Thane accompanied Ditch back into the cave. She still sizzled with power, had demonstrated at least three new caste abilities tonight.
The enchantress with her demonic face. The warrioress hurling hellfire. The conjurer who stole magic.
A blessed witch, dangerous and dazzling. And yet even that might not save her in the Witchwood. Her coven had other talented practitioners, working in tandem. If the Riders alone targeted her…
He and Ditch returned to find the three sisters standing in the same places, unmoved, as if they hadn’t just dodged a ghoul attack on their home.
By way of greeting, Deina said, “This furious mother seeks her spawn, turning darkest night to brightly dawn.”
Pemphre sighed behind her mask, then said, “We enjoyed your bout, wolf. Ask. Receive.” The dead glow in her pupilless eyes brightened.
Thane didn’t bother circling. “Ditch and I have many obstacles between us. How can we be together as mates?”
Pemphre’s eyes flared even more. “You cannot.”
His gut clenched. Beside him, Ditch gazed on as if watching a play that didn’t really move her.
“No bond will quicken here in the Skein,” Pemphre went on. “Not as our world is now. The House of Witches intends to take this realm, making you and all Lykae into their subjects, something you will never allow.”
He glanced at Ditch and back. “I can convince her not to go through with that.”
“You cannot change her mind on this. Or anything. If you want to be with her, you must leave this realm.”
Abandon his pack and gift Straegan the throne? “Where—how?”
“A door.” Pemphre’s voice steadied, as if she channeled a more coherent speaker. “Old prophesies told of a portal to the mortal dimension—that heaven realm of ease and plenty—appearing every third Accession. At midnight on the night of the Hunter’s Moon, a threshold will open atop Mount Nothrior for a brief window. Beyond the Skein, King Thane and his mate will inherit no war between their kinds.”
A way to be with Ditch? Spiriting her away from the danger of her coven? His beast roiled inside him, all but saying, I will take her through that portal if you don’t.