Page 12 of Vicious Kings
The trees open up to reveal a stream that belongs in a fairy tale. Which, considering where I am, makes perfect sense. Crystal clear water tumbles over smooth stones, creating tiny waterfalls and pools that catch the dying sunlight. Moss covers the banks in impossible shades of green, and flowers I can't identify bloom in clusters of silver and blue.
The air here vibrates with magic. I've always been able to feel it, even before my resonance was revealed. A thrumming inmy bones, a taste on the back of my tongue like electricity and honey mixed together. Here, it's so thick I could probably grab handfuls of it from the air.
Beautiful and unsettling. Like everything else about the Fae.
I drop to my knees at the water's edge, not caring that the damp seeps through my worn pants. My hands shake as I cup the water, bringing it to my cracked lips. It's cold enough to make my teeth ache and tastes like nothing I've ever drunk before. Clean in a way that makes every other water source seem polluted by comparison.
I drink until my stomach cramps, then splash the excess on my face and neck. The cool water on my injection site brings momentary relief from the burning.
Movement catches my eye. Across the stream, maybe twenty feet away, sits a fox.
But calling it just a fox would be like calling a tiger just a cat. This thing is massive, easily the size of a large dog, with fur that shifts between red and gold as it moves. Its eyes are too intelligent, too knowing, watching me with an intensity that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Fae familiar. Has to be. Normal foxes don't get that big, don't have eyes that seem to look through you rather than at you.
We stare at each other, predator recognizing predator. Part of me wants to look away, to pretend I didn't see it, to avoid whatever confrontation this might lead to.
But I'm a hunter.
Wasa hunter.
Either way, I don't back down from magical woodland creatures, no matter how unnaturally beautiful they are.
I pull out my knife, holding it loosely at my side. Not threatening, exactly, but making it clear I'm not prey. The fox tilts its head, almost like it's amused.
"Yeah, I know," I tell it, because talking to potentially magical animals seems reasonable at this point. "It's a shit knife. But it's what I've got to turn you into pretty little taxidermy, so unless you want to loan me something better, we're going to have to make do."
The fox blinks slowly, then stands. For a moment, I think it might actually respond. Then it turns and melts into the forest, moving like water in a way that makes me realize just how clumsy humans are in comparison.
"Right. Good talk," I mutter, getting to my feet.
The encounter leaves me on edge. If that was a familiar, its master can't be far. And while I'm supposed to be found by the Fae, I'd prefer it happened on my terms. Or at least when I'm not feeling like my skin might spontaneously combust.
I follow the stream, figuring water has to lead somewhere eventually. The heat in my belly grows worse with each step, spreading through my limbs like liquid fire. My clothes feel like sandpaper against my skin, and I have to resist the urge to strip them off. It feels dangerously close to the time I got trapped in a cave during a blizzard on a hunt gone wrong and almost died of hypothermia. My logical brain was telling me I was freezing to death, but it was all I could do to keep my hands from peeling my own clothes off.
Humans are strange, illogical creatures that way. The very instincts meant to keep us alive so often lead us right into the jaws of what wants to kill us. Nature. Monsters. Sometimes even ourselves.
The pain starts maybe an hour later. Low in my abdomen, cramping and twisting like someone's reached inside me and grabbed hold of my organs. I double over, barely catching myself on a tree before I face-plant in the dirt.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck." The words come out through gritted teeth.
I force myself to keep moving, one hand pressed against my stomach, the other using trees for support. The forest spins around me, colors too bright, sounds too sharp. Every step sends new waves of pain and heat through my body.
My legs give out near a cluster of boulders. I collapse against the largest one, curling into myself as shivers wrack my body despite the fever burning through me. Sweat soaks through my clothes, and I want nothing more than to tear them off, to press my bare skin against the cool stone.
No. Not just the clothes. I want to tear off my own skin, to escape this body that's betraying me in ways I don't understand.
Except I do understand. The realization is a knife twisting deep in my gut.
Heat. This is heat. The biological fuckery that makes omegas... available. Willing and desperate.
Those fucking bastards. They didn't just mark me for the Fae to find. They forced my body into the one state that would make me irresistible to them. A virgin omega in her first heat, alone in the woods. Might as well have tied a bow around my neck and stamped "free to a good home" on my forehead.
The forest has gone silent. Not the normal quiet of animals being cautious, but an absolute absence of sound. No birds, no insects, no wind through the leaves. It's like the entire forest is holding its breath.
Something moves in the undergrowth. The heavy, deliberate step of something that knows exactly where I am and doesn't care if I know it's coming.
Panic floods through me, mixing with the heat in a flurry that makes thinking nearly impossible. But underneath the civilized thoughts, something else stirs. Instincts I didn't know I had, old as humanity itself. Instincts that fly in the face of nearly two decades of training that taught me my own survival is always secondary to the death of my prey.
