He could still hear her heartbeat, ticking a little too rapidly. She breathed easy, some of the bliss still set into her features. So, not dead. And while certain he hadn’t taken too much blood from her, apparently it had been more than her body could deal with.
Shit. He was an unthinking, unfeeling asshole. Hadn’t she said she lived a meager life, barely scraping by? If she was malnourished, which was most likely the case, feeding him twice in one night would have been a strain.
“Fuck,” he muttered. How long ago had it been that he vowed to protect her? Ten, maybe fifteen minutes ago.
Annoyed with himself, Bast hoisted her slight body into his arms, stood and then carried her toward the guest room. He toyed with the idea of removing her sweatpants but wrestled his libido into submission and decided to leave them on. Instead, he tucked her beneath the sheets, rolling back the comforter out of her way.
She was safe in his home—in one of his beds—where he could keep watch over her as the sun rose and the day lazily went by. His own eyelids were heavy, demanding sleep. His internal clock screamed at him to rest. Tonight had been trying, both physically and mentally. Time to refresh. The hunger had been sated.
As he partially draped his body over hers, he assured himself it was for the protection of both of them that he kept her so close.
Not because he wanted her to stay.
Chapter Eight
“If it breathes, it can bleed!” a human screamed. “If it can bleed, it can die!”
The lone steed dancing upon spindly legs, eyes wide with terror, paid little attention to its rider’s declaration. Glistening with sweat, its sides heaved as it darted between blazing bushes and trees dripping sparks and fire onto dried leaves below.
Aurak RithRagoth dove forward, dark wings folded back, streamlining a perfect body made for cutting through cross breezes, and ended up bypassing the horse and its quarry. Sparing them.
For the time being.
His clawed fingers hooked in, the rage of having witnessed the aftermath of destruction vibrating not just through his wings, but through the enormous bulk of muscle and sinew. It propelled him through the sky, urged him to take action. To give voice to the voiceless.
There had been voices, not so long ago. No more, though.
Quiet now. Destroyed without mercy or pity. Put to permanent night before a single sunrise had been glimpsed.
So many eggs smashed by the humans. Killed before they could grow fully into the powerful creatures they would be. How many hundreds? Their nests hunted systematically. Even the shells that hadn’t been brutally crushed had been cracked, their stone-hard casings displaying zig-zagging shadowed patterns.
Marbled fields of oceanic blues, honeycombed reds, kaleidoscope grays and the precious, rare blacks speckled with lethal spider web designs. All gone.
Their guardians had been lethargic in their duties. Complacent.
Danger hadn’t existed for their kind in so long. Not danger from other creatures with two legs, nor even four. Famine. Disease, maybe.
But now...
He blinked away the shimmering blur in his eyes, tears turning to ice as they dripped down scale-covered cheeks. So different from the curls of smoke drifting from his nostrils and the flames he called forth to set ablaze the frightened humans and their belongings.
For every one of his decimated kind, he planned on taking one of the evolved monkeys in the most vicious balance of justice he could deliver.
Did the humans have any idea—any idea at all—what they’d done?
His kind was mostly elderly now. So old, they’d forgotten what it had been like when they’d ruled the skies. When they’d lived as savages, killing indiscriminately. Fighting each other over the tiniest bauble in the name of greed.
Even the adolescents, those just emerging into adulthood, were a few hundred years old. For such a long time there had been no viable births. The ones which had managed to live through incubation sometimes hatched deformed. Oftentimes simply too weak to survive.
He’d come to the humans to learn of their ways. Their success at survival. He’d wanted to offer them secrets. Treasures. Anything at all to assure that another generation of his race would arise.
“They will disappoint you,” his closest friend, Murh ThraxJhar, had cautioned. “Go beyond them. To the others.”