Page 62 of Renegade Kingdom
“You feel it too,” he said quietly. Not a question.
“My lion sensed it about an hour ago.” I kept my voice low, not wanting to alarm the others. Not yet. Though I suspected most of them already knew something was wrong. The tension in the group was palpable. “Since then, it’s grown. More creatures are being added to the pack. They’re surrounding us.”
Tank nodded, his expression grim. “The bear noticed around the same time. They’re not attacking yet. Just watching. Waiting for something.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. Maybe for us to run. Maybe for us to tire. Maybe for nightfall.” He glanced up at the canopy, though there was no way to see the sky through the dense leaves. “Could be any number of things. Predators are patient. They’ll wait for the perfect moment to strike. The moment when we’re weakest. The moment when they’re sure they can take us down without losing too many of their own.”
I absorbed that, letting it settle into my tactical mind. We were being hunted by something that thought strategically. Something that planned. That wasn’t the behavior of ordinary animals. That was the behavior of something intelligent.
I looked over my shoulder, my eyes finding Damon in the middle of the group. My brother was pale, his skin sheened with sweat despite the cool air. His eyes darted constantly between the trees, never resting, never settling. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead, and even from here I could see the tremor in his hands. The chains on his wrists clinked softly with each step, a constant reminder of what he carried inside him.
He was terrified. And not just the normal fear that came from walking through a dangerous forest with predators at your heels. This was something deeper. Something that had been carved into his psyche by trauma and blood and the screams of dying men.
This was too close to what had happened to him when he first arrived in Nymeria.
“Best course of action is to continue as we are,” Tank said, following my gaze to Damon. “Running could provoke whatever’s following us. Prey runs. Predators chase. Right now, they’re uncertain. Watching to see what we’ll do. We need to get to the Fifth Court, but we can’t afford to turn this whole journey into a fight. We’ll never survive.”
He was right. Of course he was right. Tank was always right about these things. But knowing the smart play and being able to execute it were two different things entirely, especially when every instinct I had was screaming at me to shift and face whatever was out there head-on.
“I’m going to speak with Dean,” Tank continued. “Make sure he’s in the picture. Can you talk to Alyssa? Let her know what we’re dealing with?”
“Of course.”
“And keep an eye on Damon.” Tank’s voice softened slightly. “If anyone’s going to freak out, it’s going to be him. This is too close to what happened before.”
I winced. We’d found the remnants of Damon’s squad in a forest like this one. What was left of them, anyway. The memory of that scene, the blood and the torn flesh and the expressions of terror frozen on dead faces, rose unbidden in my mind. It wasn’t something I was keen to experience firsthand.
But we had to still be at least six hours from the court, and with every passing minute, the confrontation that was building in the shadows seemed more inevitable than not.
Tank moved away, heading toward the front of the group where Dean was walking with his hand on his sword. I slowed my pace, letting Alyssa catch up to me. And as I did, Damon drifted over too.
This close, I could see the strain on his face even more clearly. The way his jaw was clenched so tight it had to be painful. The way his eyes couldn’t seem to focus on anything for more than a second before darting away to scan the shadows. The way his shoulders were hunched, his body curling in on itself like he was trying to make himself a smaller target.
“Something’s gathering in the trees,” I said quietly to Alyssa. “They’re stalking us. Have been for about an hour.”
Alyssa hummed in agreement, her eyes flickering to Damon and then back to the forest around us. When she spoke, her voice was barely a whisper, and the two words she said were the last ones I wanted to hear.
“Fae hounds.”
“Fuck.” The curse escaped me before I could stop it. Damon made a sound like he was going to be sick, his already pale face going grey.
I knew about fae hounds. Everyone in Nymeria knew about fae hounds. They were the stuff of nightmares, literally and figuratively. Creatures of pure predatory instinct, bred for hunting and killing. They’d been created by Nymeria herself in some ancient age, meant to be guardians of the wild places, but somewhere along the way, they’d become something else entirely. Something that hunted for sport. Something that killed for pleasure. Something that had torn Damon’s squad apart.
“What do we do?” Damon’s voice was strained, barely controlled. The question was directed at Alyssa, and I could see him fighting to hold himself together.
“Fizzle is scouting,” she said calmly. “Seeing if there’s anything nearby that we can count on for help. The wildlings helped usbefore. If we can find them again, if they’re willing to guide us, maybe we can stay ahead of the fae hounds long enough to take shelter in the Fifth Court.”
It was a thin hope, and we all knew it. We had no idea what the court would look like when we got there. No idea if it had anywhere we could take shelter, no idea if it even had walls or defenses of any kind. This was Nymeria’s seat of power, her most sacred place, but Nymeria was weakened and trapped and possibly losing control of her own realm. The Fifth Court might be exactly what we needed: a fortress, a sanctuary, a place where the fae hounds couldn’t reach us. Or it might be nothing but ruins. It might be completely crawling with fae hounds, or any number of things so much worse.
If we got there.
The uncertainty was the worst part. Not knowing what waited ahead. Not knowing if we were walking toward salvation or just another trap. The forest seemed to press closer with every step, the shadows deeper, the silence more absolute. Even the sound of our footsteps seemed muffled, swallowed by the endless trees.
I could feel the panic starting to build in my chest. It crept up from somewhere deep, tightening around my lungs, making each breath come a little harder than the last. My vision narrowed. My heart hammered against my ribs. The familiar spiral of anxiety that I’d learned to manage over the years was threatening to pull me under, and I couldn’t seem to stop it.
My lion felt it too, and instead of calming me, the beast was making it worse. He roared in the back of my mind, demanding to be released. The cage I kept him in rattled with every snarl. He wanted to hunt. To stalk through the shadows the way the fae hounds were stalking us. To feel the rip of flesh beneath his claws, to taste the blood of the creatures that dared to threaten the people he cared about. He wanted violence and blood and the primal satisfaction of protecting his pride.
