Page 85 of The Huntmaster

"I... I heard a commotion," Sora whispered, clutching Toren's arm for support. "I went to help... but someone struck me from behind. I didn't see who it was. The dark... it just took me before I could even draw my blade." She looked around the ruined clearing, her eyes filling with a profound grief for her home. "The Nest... our people... what have they done to us? And Lyra... Kaelen, where is Lyra?!"

The question hung in the air like a death sentence. Mara stepped closer, her expression tight with a dark, calculated urgency.

"Kaelen, you cannot leave the mountain," Mara said, her voice rising to cut through the crackle of the flames. She stepped directly into my path, her hands extended as if to hold back a storm. "The situation is dire. The lower gates are compromised, the western terraces are burning, and the outer clans are watching. The Nest needs its leader now more than ever. You must stay and guide us, help us rebuild the defences, or we will lose everything we have built. You cannot abandon your people for a human."

A low, vibrating growl ripped from my chest, a sound so primal and laden with absolute malice that Mara actually flinched, taking a sharp step back. The grey on my skin twitched violently, tiny, volatile sparks of white-gold fracturing against my forearms like cracking glass.

"Do not speak to me of what the Nest needs," I hissed, stepping into her space, my towering frame casting a massive, lethal shadow over her. "She is my mate. She is mine. I have already made that mistake once—leaving her side, turning my back, thinking she would be safe within these walls. I refused to do it then, and I refuse to do it now. If I have to burn this entire mountain to ashes to tear her back from them, I will. She is the only thing that belongs to me, and I am going."

"Kaelen, stop!"

Toren stepped forward, placing himself firmly between me and the edge of the canyon. He didn't draw his weapon, but his posture was unyielding, the solid, grounding presence of an honest brother. He placed a heavy, clawed hand against my chest, feeling the frantic, possessive thud of my heart.

"Listen to me," Toren said, his voice calm, steady, and entirely devoid of fear. "You are blind with rage, and that is exactly what they want. You cannot just leap into the dark alone. If you charge down that canyon without a plan, you will run straight into an ambush. That is exactly what the Vakras expect you to do. They want the Huntmaster desperate. They want you sloppy. You need a plan, brother."

I bared my teeth, my fingers twitching against the hilts of my bone-blades. "I don't have time for a plan, Toren."

"Then we make one fast," Toren countered sharply. He didn't drop his hand. "But you are not going in alone. I am putting myself forward. I will track them with you to the ends of the wastes."

"And me," Mara chimed in quickly. She looked at me, her eyes reflecting the fire’s dying embers. "Let me hunt them. Let me help you bring her back and slaughter the scavengers who did this to our home."

Sora staggered forward, pulling away from Toren’s side despite her trembling legs. "I want in too. I can fight, Kaelen, I can⁠—"

"No," Toren interrupted, his voice dropping into a stern, protective growl as he grabbed his sister’s shoulder and forced her back. "You are injured, Sora. Your head is split open, and you can barely stand. You will do a better job helping the elders and the younglings here. You stay in the upper sanctuaries."

Before Sora could protest, the heavy sound of bare feet slapping against the dirt echoed from the main pathway. A crowd of clan members—warriors from the lower gate, bloodied and exhausted, alongside frightened elders—began to pour into the training circle. They looked at the shattered cage, at the blood on the ground, and then their wide, desperate eyes locked onto me. They were looking for answers. They were looking for orders from the alpha who kept them alive in a brutal world.

I stood at the edge of the cliff, the silver thread of the Alu'un-ka still a cold, dead pull in my gut, pointing straight into the dark valley. I looked at Toren, then at the gathered warriors. The possessive frenzy in my blood didn't quiet down, but the calculating mind of the Huntmaster slowly locked into place.

I drew myself up to my full height, the white-gold markings along my chest flaring with a sudden, authoritative brilliance as I opened my mouth to speak.

Chapter 55

Lyra

Swaying. Left, then right. A sickening lurching that made my stomach heave every time my eyes fluttered open.

Blackness would swallow me, cold and absolute, only to crack apart for a few terrifying seconds as the dampening field pulsed against my temples. I wasn’t on the mountain anymore. The crisp, pine-scented air of the Nest’s upper terraces was completely gone, replaced by a suffocating, stagnant warmth that tasted heavily of sulfur, dust, and old grease.

Every time I managed to lift my heavy eyelids, the world looked entirely lifeless. This wasn’t the vibrant, bioluminescent wilderness Kaelen had shown me. No glowing mosses here, no ancient roots twisting through the stone. Only dead basalt and deep, cavernous crusts of rock passing over my head in a blur. It was a world entirely forgotten by the sun, stripped of anything beautiful, leaving only the raw, bleeding underbelly of a hostile planet.

And then there were the voices.

A constant, wet chorus of clicks and shrills echoed all around me. It was nothing like the deep, resonant, guttural language of the Oru-ka. This tongue was vile—a gargled, clicking dialect that sounded like insects drowning in mud, or teeth scraping against bone. They were arguing fiercely, their harsh syllables bouncing off the narrow stone walls of whatever tunnel we were traversing, but my fractured mind couldn't piece the words together. I was being carried like a sack of dead weight, dragged down into a subterranean maze where the air grew heavier and more starved of oxygen with every passing meter.

How long had it been? Hours? Days?

Without the Alu'un-ka humming in my chest, I had no anchor. I was completely adrift in the dark, entirely blind to Kaelen, reduced to nothing more than a fragile piece of human cargo. The absolute void where his mind usually anchored mine was a physical ache, a hollow crater that made me feel entirely naked against the dark.

The answer came with a brutal jolt.

The hands gripping my arms suddenly released me, and I was thrown ruthlessly to the ground. My knees and elbows slammed into the hard, uneven rock, sending a sharp shockwave of pain straight up my spine. The violent impact cracked the last of the fog from my brain, forcing me to gasp for breath as the sheer rush of adrenaline finally pulled me fully into consciousness.

I scrambled backwards on my hands and knees, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I forced my blurry vision to focus, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

I was at the edge of a massive, subterranean abyss. We had emerged from the narrow tunnels into a deep, dark cavern that seemed to stretch on forever, its ceiling lost entirely to the shadows above, while the floor sloped down into a yawning, pitch-black void that felt bottomless. The only illumination came from the sickly green chemical torches the raiders carried, casting long, monstrous shadows against the weeping stone walls. The air here was old, smelling of rot and the heavy, metallic tang of the scrap heaps.

"Stand!" a massive Vakra raider barked, his voice a wet snarl as he pointed an iron pike directly at my chest. "Stand and walk, star-meat! The path down does not walk itself!"