And then Deep and Lock barreled into the massive guard, knocking him to the ground. The knife flew out of his hand. Kat tried to see where it went but then she was knocked over too, her legs pinned under the tangle of bodies.
She hit the ground hard, knocking all the wind out of her and a sharp stone sliced into her cheek. Ouch! Can’t…breathe… Gasping for air, she blacked out for a minute.
When she came to, Deep and Lock were kneeling over her, worried expressions on both their faces. Behind them, the body of the massive Alpha guard was lying completely still. Vaguely, Kat could see the handle of the black blade she’d been carrying since she pulled it out of Deep protruding from its chest. Was it finally dead? God, I hope so! She struggled to sit up but four large hands pressed her back down gently.
“Are you all right, my lady?” Lock asked anxiously.
“Did it touch you? Did the blade of the kusax scratch you?” Deep demanded at the same time.
“I…I’m fine, you guys. Let…let me up,” she demanded breathlessly. She rolled onto her side with some help from Lock and propped herself up on one elbow, still trying to catch her breath.
Deep, one hand still pressed to his wounded side, scanned the area alertly. “Where did the kusax go?”
“I don’t know. I saw it fly out of the guard’s hand—I don’t know where it landed. Ouch!” Kat winced at the stinging in her cheek. She put a hand to her face and her fingertips came away bloody. “Damn, that was one sharp rock.”
“What’s wrong?” Deep was by her side at once.
“Nothing.” Kat shook her head, brushing her long hair, still matted with the AllFather’s slime, out of the way. “I just got cut with a rock when I fell. I’m okay though, it’s just a scrape.”
“A rock, you say?” Lock sounded so grim that she sat up and looked at him.
“I guess so, why?”
“Because.” Reaching down, he grabbed something off the ground that she hadn’t seen earlier—something which must have been covered by her hair.
“No,” Deep whispered and there was real horror in his voice. “Oh please, Goddess…no.”
Kat already knew what she was going to see, but she couldn’t help looking anyway. Gripped in Lock’s big fist was the tiny, sharp dagger the Alpha Guard had been aiming at her. On its poisonous, bright green tip was a single ruby droplet of blood—her blood.
She was going to die.
* * * * *
“What are they doing? What’s wrong?” Lauren strained to see what was going on with Kat and her two Kindred warriors, but they had gone out of sight and there were several abandoned ships in the way of her line of vision.
“I don’t know,” Xairn said grimly. “But you must go with them.”
Lauren looked at him uneasily. Both of them were covered in the slimy gook from the AllFather’s bubble but aside from that, he looked…different somehow. His red-on-black eyes were blazing—it was as though someone had lit a fire within him and it was consuming him from the inside out. No, not just a fire, she thought in alarm. An inferno. God, he looks like he’s about to explode. “Xairn,” she said tentatively. “Are you all right?”
“No,” he said shortly. He shifted and she could feel his hard muscles bunching with tension.
Lauren wasn’t sure what to say. “Am I too heavy? Do you need me to get down? I can walk now.”
“Of course not—you’re very light.” For the first time he seemed to focus on her totally. “And this is the last time I’ll ever get to hold you,” he added in a low voice. “I would rather not put you down until I have to.”
“All right then,” Lauren said softly. “I don’t mind. I’m just worried about you.”
He shook his head and the distance returned to his eyes. “I’ll be fine. I just need to be certain you’re safe before I leave.”
“But I don’t want you to leave,” Lauren protested. “I…I don’t like the idea of never seeing you again.”
“It’s for the best.” Xairn began walking rapidly in the direction they’d last seen Kat and her Kindred warriors. “It is better if I don’t see you—safer.”
“How could it be safer for us to be apart? I don’t understand.”
He closed his eyes briefly, a look of almost agony passing over his strong features. “I would rather not explain. I don’t want your memory of me to be…tainted.”
“If you’re thinking I’ll hold your father against you, you’re wrong,” she said quietly. “People don’t choose their parents. You can’t help what he’s like or what he did.”