Deimos was a sachem?
The moment of hesitation almost cost him.
Deimos lunged, his claws bared, and aimed for his jugular.
Mak ducked as Deimos’ creature’s talons sliced through the air where his windpipe had been.
Vale’s foiled attack knocked him off balance, and he staggered, scrambling to regain his footing.
‘We are many,Šar!’ thesachemsnarled. ‘Kill me, and there’ll be more in my stead.’
Mak narrowed his eyes, sizing up the monstrosity. ‘You will die for insulting my woman, theŠarim, and for conspiring against the Sauvage and Signet holdings.’
With a snarl of his own, Mak lunged forward, sinking his fangs into Deimos’s neck just as his claws grazed his shoulder.
The moment he bit down, the soul-sucking began, and it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced.
Deimos’s spirit was thicker and heavier than any sachem’s he’d consumed before.
It surged into him like a torrent of molten tar, suffocating and burning all at once.
His vision blurred as waves of Deimos’s memories and twisted desires crashed into his mind.
Images of cruelty, manipulation, and unrelenting hunger flooded his senses, threatening to drown him in their intensity.
It wasn’t just dominance, it was corruption, pure and unfiltered.
The flavor was bitter and acrid, a searing poison that made his stomach churn even as it fueled his body with raw energy.
Deimos’s spirit clawed at him, trying to latch onto his thoughts, taint him, and pull him into his darkness.
Mak gritted his teeth, forcing the miasma of it back, bending it to his will.
The power was wild and chaotic, a storm threatening to consume him from within. He held firm, channeling the torrent into controlled strength.
Deimos’s form convulsed beneath him, his claws scrabbling weakly at his chest.
His glowing eyes dimmed, the violet fury fading as his essence drained.
When Mak finally released him, he stumbled back, gasping for breath.
Deimos collapsed to the ground, his body crumpling in on itself as the last remnants of his soul disintegrated into ash.
The rear hold was silent, the air still heavy with the lingering echoes of his darkness. Mak wiped the blood from his mouth, his mind racing.
Fokk.
Mak stared at the pile of cinders where Deimos had fallen, his hands still trembling from the encounter.
Whatever this was, it was far more dangerous than he realized.
‘This war just got a lot darker,’ he muttered darkly. ‘We’re nowhere near ready for it.’
He spotted a comm tab open on the skiff’s backseat and reached for it.
With a twist of his lips, Mak retreated to his skiff, thundered through its hatch, and leaped into the front passenger seat beside his woman.
SABA
