Warm blood oozed from his throat and soaked her outer gear. Gently, she moved the head off her thighs, careful to avoid his antlers, as the band of southern hunters rushed toward the macabre scene on horseback. Never before had Luscia seen anyone ride as the Darakaians did. Bows drawn, they stood in the saddle as their stallions galloped underneath, like a tidal wave of menacing, monochromatic towers charging in unison.

“Get away from my kill!” the al’Haidren to Darakai barked as he leapt from his stunning, if erratic, Andwele stallion. “Tell me what you did! Did you curse it? Or is bathing in its blood just another filthy y’siti custom?”

Luscia studied Kasim’s bright eyes. A genuine accusation of sorcery boiled behind them. Ire settled in her belly at his routine use of the derogatory term. His lip curled into a fleeting snarl, twisting his usually appealing features. A slim yet powerfully built woman came to stand at his side, though she lingered a foot behind. By her tattooed cheek, shaved head and the whittled bone sheathing both ears, Luscia quickly recognized her as the female who’d guarded Dmitri’s apartment the night she arrived in Bastiion. The confidence the woman projected suggested she was either Kasim’s mate or held a high ranking within his pryde.

“I saved him from the misery of a poor shot,” Luscia squarely replied as she wiped Ferocity clean with the edge of her surcoat. She pushed a few stray hairs out of her face, untroubled by the trace of crimson her fingers left along her jaw.

“This is a hunt! Your kind have no authority here. How dare you mark what is mine!” Kasim pointed to the carcass and back at Luscia.

Luscia’s eyes charted the jerky motion of his hand. A series of newly healed hatch marks decorated his knuckles.

Violent, this one.

“This is a life, Lord Darakai. One given for your enjoyment,” she added when he started up again, refusing to be bated by his outbursts. “Make use of it all. Don’t you dare waste him.”

Luscia strode back to her mare, feeling no obligation to continue the exchange. She’d come on this excursion for one purpose, and it was not to be disrespected by the al’Haidren to Darakai. She heard him shout his displeasure from where they huddled over the dead buck, but Luscia ignored his remarks. If one indulged the tantrums of a child, one encouraged them—a principle she likewise applied to Zaethan Kasim.

By the time she resettled in her saddle, Marek’s scarlet head had emerged through the foliage as he led Dmitri to find the rest of the group. Aksel trotted between their mounts, the white fur of his muzzle bloodstained by a recent meal. Eager to roam freely, the restless lycran had disappeared an hour earlier. Luscia knew he’d find her once finished. She whistled for him to come near, as the presence of her northern predator wouldn’t help to calm the already edgy band of Darakaians.

“Ana’Sere,” Marek murmured through tight lips, though he was still yards away. “Did anyone touch you?”

She knew he really asked if the al’Haidren to Darakai had overstepped his bounds again. Ever since Kasim’s intrusion in her common room, the Boreali captaen remained watchful for any excuse to retaliate. Even though the prince had ordered his hound out of her apartment shortly after, her men would not forget Kasim’s impudence so easily. In Boreal, protocol required she be spoken to with dignity and respect. It was understandable that anything less would enrage the men who’d sworn to protect her until their final breath.

“Niit,” Luscia answered the captaen.

When he tilted his head in question, perplexed by her earlier departure, she jerked her chin toward the deer carcass being tied onto the back of a Darakaian’s horse and the wound she’d made along its neck. Turning back to Marek, she watched him close his eyes and smile. He understood. As his lips stirred, she knew the captaen offered thanks to the High One for the animal’s sacrifice as well.

Unaware of their silent dialogue, Dmitri urged his horse forward until parallel with Luscia. His was a beautiful steed, she had to admit. During their travel to the southeastern border of the outer Proper, the prince had shared how his mare was twin to the headstrong stallion ridden by his oldest friend. Even beyond their dispositions, his Harmonia appeared to be the exact inverse of her sibling. Where Hellion’s black hide shone beneath his cotton white mane, her grey body gleamed under a mane that spilt across her neck like ink on a page.

“Ah, Zaeth! Good aim, my friend!” Dmitri cupped his hands and called to the other al’Haidren, then turned to address Luscia. “You took off so fast, I’d hardly enough time to realize what happened! Your man Bailefore insisted we’d find you all by following your wolx here.”

“To Aksel, I am pack.” Luscia shrugged. “He could pick up my scent a mile away, even in a snowstorm. When he was no longer a pup, we tried to introduce him to another lycran pack, but to no avail. The brute kept returning home to me.”

“It’s amazing, is it not? If not for the diluted war-taint in his veins, this fox-wolf hybrid could not exist,” Dmitri said admiringly. “How’d you come to find him in the first place? My maps suggest a fair distance between Clan Roüwen and the Orallach Mountains.”

Luscia grinned at the prince’s earnest attempt to study every aspect of his realm, even the most remote corners.

“When I was fifteen, my father journeyed to Clan Ciann to convene with their elders. On his journey back, he heard the cries of a lycran pup, either lost or abandoned. Winter was in the wind, and he couldn’t bring himself to leave it out there alone.” She chuckled, reminiscing on her father’s sentimentality. “The mighty Clann Darragh carried Aksel inside his bear-pelt coat the entire trek home.”

Bearing the name of Boreal’s second forefather, Aksel had undoubtedly fulfilled his calling. Meaning Champion of Peace, he was gifted to her more out of necessity than affection. Orien Darragh had sensed that, like the frightened, traumatized pup in hand, adolescent Luscia might find peace in the lycran’s companionship. That perhaps Aksel’s deep, untroubled breaths could lull her to sleep and help her heal the wounds beneath those marring her neck, after the initial months of turmoil three years ago.

Most nights, Luscia still needed him.

“When you meet those who offer such unwavering loyalty, it is difficult to leave them.” Dmitri sighed, his melancholy dragging Luscia’s mind back to the present.

She paused. Her hand rose to lift her collar out of habit, where it shielded the ugly evidence of those memories. Quickly, she dropped it to pick up the reins instead. Luscia directed the mare to follow Kasim’s men, who led them out of the wood back into the plains. Time was dwindling, and despite Alora’s warning to avoid the topic, Luscia was determined to take advantage of the prince’s cheery frame of mind. Soundless to most, she instructed Marek to fall back and allow them privacy.

“Your Highness—”

“Dmitri.”