Captive of the Horde King (Horde Kings Of Dakkar #1) - Zoey Draven

Prologue

It all began with a burning field.

Black plumes of thick smoke rose high above our village, cries of horror lifting with it. Higher and higher, black against the backdrop of the grey sky. A dreaded beacon. A mistake. Because no one in their right mind would ever willingly signal the Dakkari, to bring their wrath on us all.

Bile filled my throat and I dropped my basket and ran to the fields, as others did. Because somehow I knew. I knew who was responsible.

When I reached the fields, a group had formed. Water was rushed out in steel buckets to suffocate the blaze that had spread wildly. It was hot. So hot, but it didn’t stop me from running towards it, from forming into the line as water passed from villager to villager.

I watched my younger brother at the end of the line, watched him desperately throw the much-needed resource onto the flames. A waste, but a necessary one. In between bucket passes, I saw the way his face was drawn tight. And I knew.

Fury and fear filled me.

It squeezed my chest, making it hard to breathe. My hands trembled as I passed more buckets down the line.

When the fire had finally been extinguished, silence filled the air, thick and heavy, like smoke that still lingered. There were at least twenty villagers in the line, with at least twenty more watching in horror from the edge of the dead, now burned, field. The intelligent ones were probably already preparing to hide because they knew what would happen next.

They’d all heard the stories, the rumors. It was only a matter of time, only a matter of which Dakkari horde was closest to them.

I broke the silence with that fury and I rounded on my younger brother, stalking towards him.

“You fool!” I hissed, useless tears filling my eyes before I blinked them away. I was five years older than Kivan, but he still towered over me. I pushed at his broad shoulders. His cheeks were blackened with ash, from his latest ‘experiment.’ “What have you done?”

“I—I,” he stuttered, his gaze darting from me, to the villagers watching, to the blackened field, a field which hadn’t produced crops in at least five moon cycles. “I was just trying to…to…”

He was always just trying to.

My gaze flashed to the sky, seeing the smoke. It could probably be seen from the Dakkari capital. I looked at the field, at the darkened, destroyed earth, my throat tightening.

“They’ll kill you for this,” I whispered to him, to myself, filled with fear so potent it made saliva pool in my mouth, made nausea churn in my belly. I had heard they’d killed humans for less.

Because they would come.

The Dakkari would come…

They would demand retribution.

Chapter One

I’d seen the Dakkari twice before in my lifetime.

The first time, I’d been a child, no older than six or seven. Our mother had still been alive then.

A horde had passed directly next to our village, but didn’t step foot inside. The memory of them, though I’d been young, was forever imprinted on my mind. From afar, the Dakkari horde had seemed like a black cloud passing over the land. As they’d grown closer, I’d discovered that they were similar to men, to us, though so very dissimilar at the same time.

I remembered the black-scaled beasts they rode, gold paint glittering in the sunlight across their flanks, beasts that sometimes traveled on two legs, or sometimes utilized all four. Beasts that looked like monsters to my young self, that gave me nightmares until I woke screaming.

My mother had dragged me away from my spying place before I could take a closer look at the Dakkari males riding those beasts. We’d hidden in a corner, wrapped in fur blankets—my nervous mother, a crying Kivan, and I—until the horde passed without incident.

However, my curiosity about the Dakkari’s appearance would be assuaged years later when they came to our village for another purpose.

I’d been fourteen at the time. Part of the horde had broken off and walked through, leaving their black-scaled beasts at the single entrance to our walled village, while the rest waited on the peak of a nearby hill. They’d come upon us so suddenly that for most, there had been no time to hide.

It was then I’d gotten my first real look at a Dakkari.

Up close, they were massive beings. When one passed me, I’d only come up to the center of his bared waist. They wore hides and furs to cover their bottom halves, some