“Thrall?” I call to him through the Link, but he doesn’t respond.

I reach across the Web, but the unknown attacker outside is resistant to my influence. An unmedicated beast-eater.

Dragging myself up and out of my fetal curl, I toss aside the tent flap. A spray of blood spatters across my face from the tangle of limbs, fur and spiny protrusions thrashing before me.

“Get back,” Thrall snarls into my mind. “Protect yourself!”

His sword—another gift of the VyoSkura—lays in the dirt not far from my feet, wrested away in battle. He’s not totally unarmed, though. A dagger flashes in his hand as he brings it down again and again into his assailant’s back, even as his teeth bury themselves deeper into the thing’s throat.

Bloody froth streams from the beast-eater’s mouth as it roars its pain, but they only fight back harder, claws ripping into the flesh of Thrall’s side and back, tearing him open.

I have no idea what happens to a beast-eater that consumes the flesh of another beast-eater. He doesn’t look changed, but in their bleeding tangle of limbs and fangs, it’s hard to tell.

Dropping to my knees, I haul up the sword—more to keep it away from our enemy than anything else. With as much pain as I’m in and moving as fast as they are, I stand more risk of hurting Thrall or getting myself killed if I try to use it. Instead I force my focus to the Web, reaching out for something strong and distracting enough to put an end to this.

It’s far away, but it’s fast. Eight-limbed and enormous. A mirebeast.

In an explosion of broken branches it bursts from the thick woods at the far end of the gorge, the water of the stream splashing and flying in its path as it hurtles towards us. A boar-like creature four times my height and more, with clusters of blue eyes and tusks as long as my arm. The wind blows its scent our way, and for one heartbeat the beast-eaters freeze. Then with a horrible, gut-curdling roar, the spiny stranger rips away from Thrall, charging straight for the incoming behemoth with froth trailing in streams from their jaws.

And Thrall, wounded and bleeding though he is, moves to follow.

Fuck. Clutching one hand to my abdomen and the other around the hilt of the sword, I lurch after him.

“Thrall!” I shriek into the Link, taking no care to direct it specifically to him. The others’ voices rise up in the darkness, worried, questioning—all save Oz of course, who’s been silent since we left him behind. But I ignore them all, stumbling forward as quickly as I can to catch hold of his arm. He turns on me, snarling, eyes wild as I press the sword into his hand.

“Remember yourself!” I shout at him, struggling to be heard over the roar of the creature I’ve drawn into the fray and the frenzied beast-eater. Somehow, it feels important to say the words out loud.

He begins to wrench his arm away, but then the wind turns, and his pupils and nostrils flare as he takes in a new scent—mine. His lips pull back to bare his wolfish teeth. Behind us, an agonized shriek is suddenly cut off. His fur raises on end, and he draws in a deep, rattling breath.

My veins run with ice. I reach for him across the Web, knowing I may have no choice but to take control…but his Ember repels it. The effects of the medicine have worn off. “You’re my khaj, Thrall,” I choke out as he lets both his sword and dagger fall to the ground and his great clawed hands come up to catch my shoulders. “My guardian.” But his jaws part and his muscles tense. I reach back out to the boar-beast, pulling it from its feast to come to my aid. Its scent engulfs us and Thrall releases me, turning to the creature.

At my command, it opens its bloodied maw and unleashes an otherworldly, incomprehensible bellow—a sound that makes my bones quake and my insides twist. A sound that sets every hair on my body on-end. Primal terror more absolute than any moonless midnight sweeps over me in an instant, and in that moment, even knowing I’m in control, it’s absolutely everything I can do not to run.

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I drop to my knees as Thrall tears off in the opposite direction. The beast looms overhead, viscera still dripping from its mouth as it stares down at me, every one of its many sapphire eyes fixed on my face. I don’t know why. I’m not making it stay. Not making it stand there, placid and transfixed.

Pain throbs at my core, confusion, shock and terror numb my mind. I do the first thing it occurs to me to do. I compel the boar to kneel and then climb onto its back, clinging by tufts of its coarse fur as it raises once more to its full height. Then we chase after the one person I have left to me, lost here in the fatherland I barely know.

~*~

We follow at a distance and mostly downwind. My hope is that if I give Thrall time and enough space, he’ll overcome the craving and calm himself. It occurs to me shortly after the pursuit begins that I should be on foot, that I should drive the boar away. That I couldn’t possibly have chosen a more conspicuous way to move by day. That I shouldn’t have left all our supplies behind us.

But the pain is tearing me up, and there’s no way I could have kept up with him on foot. I can’t risk losing him, and right now I can’t bring myself to let the boar go, either. Whether it chose to or not, it saved me…and without it, I’d be truly alone.

Long after my own mind clears and the raw terror drains away, Thrall still hasn’t shown any signs of slowing. I call after him through the Link again and again, but he’s either oblivious to it or ignoring me. He ignores the others, too, as I fill them in on what’s happened and their worried questions spill into the fathomless darkness that connects us.

“You have to stop him and get to cover immediately,” orders Rhetrien, their tone appalled.

“I know, but it’s not that easy. He—“

“Do what you have to.” Rhetrien cuts over me. “Get out of sight until nightfall.”

I grit my teeth. “Alright.”

Then I let the Link fade to the background of my awareness. Let the rest of their queries and commands go unanswered. I stop pushing the boar forward and it draws to a gradual stop. I slide off its back as it begins to root around amongst the tangled trees behind me, the gorge left long behind.

“Thrall,” I call weakly after him as I hobble through the undergrowth, using my true voice this time. Even as far ahead of me as he is, almost out of sight in the trees ahead, I know he can hear me. He falters, but carries on. I feel for his Ember, read its pulses and vibrations. It’s not terror I feel there, but shame.

“Please, Thrall. Please stop. I need you. We need you.”

“Stay away,” he calls back through the piece of the Link shared only between us. “I can’t go with you. I’ll hurt you.”

“But you never have. In spite of everything, you never have. I won’t make it through this without you. Please,” my Link-voice falters, choking up as my real one would.

“You won’t make it through this with me.”

Tears streak down my cheeks. “You’re the one who’s hurt. You have to stop. We need to take cover.”

It’s amazing that his wounds haven’t forced him to stop—but he’s strong, frenzied in his own way. And though he’s done an admirable job of containing it, he’s left a trail of blood behind him nonetheless. Between that and the scent of my own, It’s been all I can do to keep away the things drawn to us while holding the boar to its coarse. I waver on the spot, my legs failing. The ground rushes up to catch me, thorns and branches scratching my face and arms as I crash into it.

There’s a series of rapid, crunching footsteps. I feel something change in Thrall’s Ember, some core part of himself taking over as his bloodied arms wrap around me, lifting me up. He takes a deep, rattling breath as he cradles me to his chest in a way that’s becoming comfortingly familiar, breathes my scent in deep. His Ember spikes and flares cold and then hot, then settles into a spiny thrum—his craving quelled for now, if not extinguished.

Slowly, doggedly, he starts back with me the way we came. I want to tell him to stop, to just get to someplace hidden, and perhaps he’s got somewhere in mind. But I’m too weak to say anything. Too weak to watch the Web or exert my ability. In spite of that, the boar trails behind us, slow but ever-following.

I drift in and out. He weaves through the shadows of the canopy. I catch glimpses of upthrust rock and guess that we’re drawing near the gorge we’d left behind.

“Stop where you are,” says a deep, rough-edged voice from somewhere out of sight. “And put the girl down.” Thrall freezes on the spot, chest rising and falling heavily where it presses to my side, hackles raised. But he doesn’t put me down.

Twenty or so figures emerge from the broken towers of greenery-covered stone to either side of us, no two of them alike aside from the fact that all are beast-eaters.