Hunted(33)

Her entourage hadn’t made it far enough away from the arena to satisfy her. They’d taken shelter deep in the woods. This had been part of her original plan. The other little thing, not so much.

Of course, it wasn’t a little thing at all, but quite a big problem.

Penelope Farris, that stupid ballet dancer, lie unconscious on the ground. Her dress was filthy from being dragged through mud and grass and over sharp rocks—none too gently either. She’d have a few bruises on top of the purple and black one already forming below her right eye from where Lazgul had hit her.

Lazgul. Another idiot she had to deal with. Her plan had been complex but simple enough. Yet, trust the Avagarians to ruin things for her. The situation was risky enough as it was without this added complication.

“All you had to do was knock her out at the arena and leave her. Not bring her with you!” She seethed with white-hot fury, breaths panting. Her hands were squeezed into sweaty fists, aching to hit something and relieve the pent-up steam ready to burst inside her. “This wasn’t the plan.”

Lazgul. Hovering at nearly 7’ tall, the hairy creature was built of sinew, with leathery ebony skin covered in short, crisp hairs which tickled to the touch. His black snout snorted at the air, sweat droplets sliding off as he snarled and shook his head like a dog, his long red tongue lolling out of his mouth from between sharp canine teeth.

An Avagarian in the flesh. The beastly creature that made up half of what lie deep inside her. Lysse had never had an easy life. She’d had to fight, steal, and sneak for every scrap of ground she’d ever earned. And earned she did.

Her mother was the by-product of a rape of an Avagarian beast with a human woman. It happened years before the stone wall was erected to divide the Tarlèans and Avagarians. The woman, her mother, a mere seamstress, gave birth to her in the decrepit shed she’d called a home. Soon after the birth, her mother swiftly ended her own life with a gunshot blast to the head. Lysse had been three hours old.

She’d been left there alone for days before anyone noticed. Lysse liked to think that it was during those long hours as a hungry, screaming infant, that she’d grown an iron wall around her heart. She needed to in order to survive. She couldn’t afford empathy. Empathy, she learned, got her nothing but pain in return for her sacrifices. It took thinking differently, it meant being selfish, but Lysse enjoyed her risky life and the rewards it reaped.

She was going to be queen one day.

The ultimate reward for her struggles. For her years of hard work.

Except—Lysse stared down at the prone female—and her jaw ground in irritation.

“Worthless, Ava.”

Lazgul growled, his great, muscular chest heaving at the insult. With each breath the hulking monstrosity took, she could see its incredible pectoral muscles bunching and flexing. So much strength, so deadly.

“Do close your mouth when you’re breathing,” she snapped. “I don’t need to smell your heinous breath from here.”

The beast, a greatly feared soldier for the Avagarians, didn’t back down at her insults, but rather stepped close enough to tower above her. Lysse looked quite petite compared to the beast. She might not be as strong as they were, even in her Avagarian form, but she wasn’t a weak human either.

She was a half-breed. Which placed her somewhere special in between the two powers.

“Why on Earth did you bring her with you? We don’t need her. If anything, you’ve made things worse. The general will want to find her. He’s good at his job, you imbecile. You could lead him right to us.”

With dark spiked hair sticking up from his forehead, Lazgul shook his heavy head side to side, much as a dog did in the rain. His mouth moved as he spoke at length. He struggled to form the words while transformed as a beast. Avagarians were different from humans, though they could transform into a human-like state. They may resemble humans, but they clearly were very different.

And the sound Lazgul made was different from a human’s voice, coming from the back of the throat; the words were muffled, unclear.

“Want pretty female. I take,” Lazgul said at length.

“Very succinct,” Lysse replied.

She pondered the situation as she liked to do. She didn’t enjoy making rash decisions, instead preferring to take her time thinking, planning. That’s how she outsmarted people; that’s how she played the game, and thus, played people.

“And what of the duke?”

Two other Avagarians walking on all fours, sniffed the ground near the dancer. The creatures were deadly strong compared to their human counterparts. They could easily pick up a two-hundred-pound man and throw him one-armed with little effort. It was one of the reasons why they were so dangerous. Their venom, if bitten into a human, would turn the human into one of them—if they survived at all. All the more reason the human Tarlèans had built the great wall to separate them. Not that it could keep them out completely.