The loud shrieking came in the night, tearing through the silence like a blade through flesh. It was a sound unlike anything I had heard before, raw and animal and filled with such desperate anguish that it bypassed my ears and went straight to my bones, raising every hair on my body in primal response.
The loud noise woke everyone up.
I sat bolt upright in the furs, my heart hammering against my ribs, my mind still fogged with sleep but my body already recognizing danger. Around me, my mates stirred, six warriors moving from rest to readiness in the span of a single breath. Leon was on his feet first, his hand finding the spear he kept always within reach, his dark eyes scanning the darkness for threats. The cubs whimpered in their sleep, disturbed by the noise, and I saw Leon’s jaw tighten with the conflict between his duty to protect them and his need to face whatever threat had come to our door.
The anguished cry tore through the sky again, closer now, carrying on it the unmistakable scent of blood and fear.
"We need to see what is happening," Veylan said, his voice calm but his hands already moving to dress.
"Leon, stay back with the cubs," I said quickly, swinging my legs out of bed and grabbing for my tunic. "And Aureon, stay as well. We cannot leave them unprotected if this is an attack."
Aureon nodded, moving immediately to stand guard near the sleeping children, his hand on his weapon. Leon looked like he wanted to argue, his protective instincts warring with his obedience, but he knew I was right. He settled back onto his heels, positioning himself between the door and the cubs, his body coiled and ready.
While Ravin, Soryn, Veylan, and Caelion and I went to see what was going on, I finished dressing, my fingers fumbling with the laces in my haste. The shrieking had stopped, but in its absence, I could hear other sounds, shouting, the pounding of feet, the clash of metal on metal as guards mobilized. Something terrible had come to our village.
I rushed outside, the night air cold against my flushed skin, the stars overhead indifferent witnesses to whatever horror unfolded below. At the entrance to the tribe, into the village, lights from the torches cast flickering shadows that danced like ghosts against the walls. I squinted into the darkness, my eyes adjusting slowly, and then I saw her.
A hawk beast, her wings crumpled beneath her, her body curled around something she protected with her last strength. Even in the dim light, even with her face turned away, I knew that silhouette, knew the particular shade of her feathers, the way she held herself.
And my heart stopped.
It cannot be.
She fell to the ground as we approached, her strength finally giving out, clutching her injured mate to her chest with desperate, blood-slicked hands. Her mate bore the worst of it; a long gash that tore through his side, grotesque and bleeding, his wing hanging at a wrong angle, his breathing shallow and wet. Alara herself had a slash mark on her arm, bleeding steadily, her face a mask of pain and terror as she tried to shield him with her own body.
"Who are you!" the guard asked firmly, his hand on the spear pointing at her, his voice hard with suspicion and fear. "Identify yourself or face the consequences!"
I rushed to meet her, pushing past the guard, past my own mates who tried to restrain me, past the caution that should have made me hesitate. I knew that voice, knew that face, knew the desperation in those eyes.
"Alara!" I cried, dropping to my knees beside her, my hands hovering over her mate’s wounds, afraid to touch, afraid not to.
She looked at me, panicked, her eyes wild and unfocused with pain and shock. "Please," she gasped, her voice barely a whisper, raw from screaming. "Krys, save my mate. He is in bad shape, please. Please, I could not lose him too. Please, Krys."
I did not ask questions. There would be time for that later, time for explanations and stories and understanding. Now there was only blood and pain and the desperate need to act.
I had Ravin take him to our home, directing the others with sharp commands that brooked no argument. They moved as a team, lifting Alara’s mate with gentle efficiency, supporting his limp body between them as they carried him through the village. Alara tried to follow, tried to stand, but her legs gave out beneath her, and she collapsed, weeping, into my arms.
When we got there, we looked at the damage.
Alara was inconsolable, reaching for her mate, her hands grasping at empty air, her sobs tearing at her throat until she could barely breathe. I held her back, gentle but firm, knowing that her touch would not help him now, that she would only interfere with what needed to be done.
Ravin pulled Alara’s mate’s clothing off, the clothes parting to reveal the horror beneath. The long gash that tore through his side was grotesque, a canyon of red and white and black, his breathing shallow and wet, the sound of a man drowning on dry land. He is going to die, I realized with cold certainty. I cannot help him, at least not just with wiping and stitching. He was bleeding profusely, the dark red spreading too fast, too much, meaning an artery must have been cut.
I gave Ravin the signal, a small nod that we had established for moments exactly like this, and he did his best to keep Alara occupied, turning her face away, speaking soft words of comfort that she could not hear through her grief, while I examined the gash on her mate side; deep and ugly, It looked fatal.
I pulled forth the blue binds, calling the power that lived in my blood, feeling it rush to my fingertips like water through a breached dam. The blue light came alive at my fingertips, but I kept it dim, barely a whisper of color in the darkness, just enough to knit flesh and seal wounds without drawing the eye. I cupped my hands around the glow, shielding it from view, keeping my secret safe as the power flowed from me into Alara’s mate. No one would notice unless they were looking directly, and even then they might mistake it for a trick of the firelight, a reflection, nothing more. I started to heal her mate, not fully, that would be too much, too fast, too impossible to explain, but just mending the real damage, knitting the artery, sealing the worst of the wound, but still keeping him injured enough to make it not suspicious.
After wiping him down and stitching him, the careful work of closing what remained of the wound, giving him broth that Veylan heated over the fire, he was out of the danger zone. He will survive. The color was returning to his face, his breathing deepening, his pulse steadying beneath my fingers.
And I will continue to put the blue binding day by day to heal him, but not so quickly where beasts would get alarmed. Slow and steady, the way healing should be, the way nature intended, even if nature had not been enough this time.
I went to Alara, cleaning the slash mark on her arm with gentle hands, stitching what needed stitching, checking her wing which was bruised but whole. She bore it all in silence, her eyes fixed on her mate, her face pale and drawn.
"What happened, Alara," I asked softly, when the worst of the work was done.
She turned to look at me then, and I saw something break behind her eyes, some final wall crumbling to reveal the devastation beneath.
"Krys," she whispered, her voice hollow, "she killed my father. He found out what she planned. Krys, she plans to take over, make it their place, their new home, and we were to be made slaves. My father, they were not going to ask for a bond, they wanted to take us against our will, go against the beast gods’ will. Krys, they are heretics, sinners." Alara’s voice broke, tears streaming down her face. "My father came to warn me, oh Krys, they killed Aleric. Her cheetah mate is now the chief. We were able to escape thanks to my father, but Krys..." She sobbed, her body shaking with the force of her grief. "They cut my tribe’s wings. My mate and I are the only ones left with our wings intact. My tribe cannot fly anymore."
Alara started crying in earnest then, great heaving sobs that shook her whole frame, her hands clutching at my arms with desperate strength. "She is evil. The beast god will punish her! They will all be punished!"
I held her as she wept, my eyes finding my mates across the room, each of them understanding the weight of what we had just learned. War was coming. Not the distant threat we had guarded against, but something immediate and terrible and real.
And we were not ready.
The silence that followed Alara’s words was heavy, suffocating, filled with the weight of implications too horrible to voice. Ravin stood first, moving to the doorway to speak with the guards who had gathered outside, his voice low and urgent as he gave orders for increased patrols, for messengers to be sent to allied tribes, for the village to be secured against whatever might come. Soryn’s eyes had gone distant, his serpent mind already calculating escape routes, defensive positions, the thousand variables of battle. Veylan’s hand found my shoulder, his grip tight with unspoken fear, while Caelion simply stared at Alara with an expression of dawning horror, his usual good humor stripped away by the magnitude of her suffering.
"They cut their wings," Caelion repeated, his voice barely audible, as if saying it again might make it less real. "They crippled them. Took their flight."
"It is worse than death for a hawk," Veylan said quietly, his eyes holding knowledge of similar atrocities from ages past. "To ground them, to take the sky from them... it is an abomination. A crime against the beast gods themselves."
Alara’s sobbing had quieted to hiccupping gasps, her body spent, her eyes glazed with shock and exhaustion. I held her still, rocking her slightly as I would one of my own children, feeling her tremble against me like a leaf in a storm.
"Rest now," I murmured against her hair, smelling the blood and fear and smoke that clung to her. "Your mate is safe. You are safe here. We will figure out what comes next."
But even as I spoke the words, I knew they were hollow comfort. Nowhere was safe, not anymore. If Rina and her followers were willing to commit such atrocities, to murder their own chief, to cripple an entire tribe, then there was no limit to what they might do. And we were directly in their path.
"Krys." Leon’s voice came from the doorway, and I looked up to find him standing there, his face hardening in the torchlight, his hands shaking where they gripped the doorframe. He had heard. Of course he had heard. The cubs were awake now, huddled behind him, their young faces confused and frightened by the commotion, by the smell of blood, by the sound of a stranger’s grief.
"Take them," I said softly, gesturing to Alara’s sleeping form, to her mate who breathed easier now on his pallet of furs. "Take them to the back room. Keep them warm. Keep them safe."
Leon nodded, moving forward with the efficiency of a warrior who had seen too much death and knew the value of small kindnesses. He lifted Alara as if she weighed nothing, cradling her against his chest with a gentleness that made my throat tight, while Aureon moved to help Alara’s mate, supporting him as they made their way to the small storage room we would convert into a healing space.
After we gathered in the main room, the fire burning low, the night still dark outside though dawn could not be far away. We sat in a circle, six mates and myself, and the weight of what we faced pressed down upon us like a physical force.
"She is building an army," Soryn said finally, breaking the silence with his characteristic directness. "Taking Alara’s territory was not random conquest. It was to establish a stronghold, a base from which to launch her battle. And we are her true target. She wants vengeance on you, Krys. On all of us."
"Then we make it so she cannot defeat us," Ravin said, his jaw set with determination. "We fortify. We train. We call upon every alliance we have forged."
"And we hide Alara," I added, my voice firm despite my fear. "If Rina knows she survived, knows she came here, she will come faster. We cannot let her find them."
"They are refugees," Veylan said, his silver hair catching the firelight as he nodded.
"Rina does not care about divine retribution," I said, remembering the woman I had known, the hatred that had burned in her eyes when she looked at me, at my mates. "She has been building her warriors, training them for this exact moment. She wants vengeance for her exile, for her humiliation. Taking Alara’s territory gives her the foothold she needs, the resources to sustain her army. And once she is entrenched, she will come for us. Not for conquest. For revenge."
We talked through the night, planning, preparing, steeling ourselves for what was to come. The dawn found us still awake, still strategizing, our faces drawn with exhaustion and worry. When the first light finally crept through the gaps in the window, painting the room in shades of gray and gold, I went to check on Alara.
She slept, finally, her face still tracked with tears, her breathing even and deep. Her mate stirred beside her, his eyes opening to meet mine, confused and pain filled but alive. He tried to speak, but I pressed a finger to my lips, shaking my head.
"Rest," I whispered. "You are safe. Both of you. Rest now."
I stepped back into the main room to find my mates waiting, their eyes on me, their expressions a mixture of love and fear and determination. We would face this together, as we had faced everything else. We would protect our own. And we would make Rina pay for what she had done. But first, we had to survive.
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