Oath of the Alpha - Eva Dresden Page 0,26

at the rough limb while Kal carried them past. The Phylix heard it, too. Head swinging around with ears pricked forward, he sniffed at the breeze, though he didn’t find what he searched for.

“How many women could be running around these woods?” Er’it asked in a hoarse whisper. They drank their fill of sweet water from a brook in the clearing before they left it behind, but that had been some time ago. Throat tight and parched, he grew more impatient than ever to find Aida and return to his men and the comforts they provided. Chief among them was food, water, and privacy to do as he wished to his Omega, though perhaps not in that order.

The scream that split the forest open was at once familiar and foreign. Filled with terror, Er’it had pulled that sound from her dozens of times over in the short time they’d had together. Yet the lusty rage beneath it was new, a defiance he never thought her capable of.

There was no time to think further on it as Kal raced toward the sound. Bent low over the Phylix’s neck and hanging on for dear life, Er’it squinted to protect his eyes from the thrashing boughs, determined to catch sight of his Omega as soon as she materialized from the trees.

What he found, instead, was a ragged group of men scattered over the ground, faces twisted with far more than pain and thick scars puckering their flesh. Magical wounds that would never heal scored their skin with black marks. Er’it had seen it less than a handful of times in all his journeys. To see so many at once was surprise enough, but to see them all shrieking and clawing themselves bloody was another shock altogether.

Aida did this, too. Wondering what they had done to incite such rage from his docile Omega, the memory of Otaso drained dry and ragged snapped to the forefront of his thoughts. She’d done that to the Black Mage after he’d tried to take what was fated to be Er’it’s, no matter that he hadn’t known she even existed yet.

Roaring as he vaulted down from Kal’s back, Er’it rolled when he struck the ground. Coming up with sword held high, he knew death would be too good a thing for these men, not if they’d tried to touch what was his. Stabbing his dulled blade deep into the belly of the one nearest, he reveled in the thick gurgle bubbling from the man’s throat.

Betas, all of them, they’d been weak mages at best in their prime before they’d allowed themselves to be twisted into this mockery of humanity. Hacking away the legs below the knee of the next, Er’it let out a whoop of victory. One after the other, he dismantled them to their basest forms, their black blood flowing sludge thick and soaking deep into the earth.

Wild gaze sweeping over the small clearing, he looked for Kal. Not finding him, Er’it charged through a splintered gap where saplings and shrubs were crushed to little more than kindling. Leaving the males howling in their death throes, refusing to waste the time to gather what energy he could skim from their stained souls, Er’it ran on the jumbled path Kal had left in his wake.

Finding the Phylix stalled, Er’it rushed ahead. Sword screaming through the air as he cut through what he could, Er’it used what magic he had left to him to weaken the barrier enough for them to plow their way through. Stumbling out onto the same overgrown road they had found in the beginning, Er’it vaulted up onto Kal’s back, pointing and yelling a wordless command as he spotted a flash of pale fawn and rich sable running in the distance, then roaring as he saw a large, dark form following close on its heels.

The arrow caught him in the same shoulder Kal had bitten. Another sank deep into his thigh, burrowing its way through to dig into Kal’s side. Kal’s resonating challenge boomed, leaves fluttering down around them as the very air trembled. A woman’s shriek was followed by the hoarse shouts of men behind them, the hard smack of bodies hitting the ground coming from ahead.

Racing past, he found the archers groaning and holding broken limbs from their falls but did not stop, not while Aida ran from something so much bigger than her. Voicing another challenge, Kal doubled his speed, his hooves glowing silver as he applied his own magic to fly over