Mauled by Destiny [Tales of the Citadel 17] Read Online Free PDF Page B

experience.
    So, that first tussle?
    Was simply to get the unit in position. It is quite loud, and I thought it might throw you off. I was right.
    She reached out with her clawed hand and swung him lazily back and forth.
    You win. Let me down.
    As you like. She walked to the tree and climbed until she was even with his bound feet. Brace for landing.
    She sliced through the twisted saplings that were standing in for rope, and he dropped to the ground.
    He tucked and rolled to his feet rather gracefully. He bared his teeth at her before lowering his head. She took it as a sign of submission, but with the rest of his posture being tense, it was hard to tell.
    She sent him a final thought, Race you to the Citadel.
    He didn’t have a chance to respond, she was on her way through the woods, and the leaves and branches seemed to bend out of her way.
    Instead of getting dressed, she hooked her wrap on one finger and kept moving. She was on the flat of the plateau before she heard the steps of Rhanos behind her.
    She ran for the Citadel entrance with everything in her and quite a bit she didn’t know she had. She cleared the doorway and Zenina-Balen was standing inside with her eyes wide.
    “Hello, um…Priina?”
    Priina bowed low to the Avatar. With her gaze as enhanced as the rest of her, it was easy to see the tremendous power that the other woman was wielding. It radiated from her in heat-like waves.
    “Well, you had better get going if you are racing Rhanos to your chambers. He seems to have gotten the jump on you.” Zenina-Balen’s grin was encouraging.
    Priina bobbed her furred head once again and took off from ground level, skipping upward over several steps in huge bounds that she didn’t know she could manage until she drew even with Rhanos and finally passed him on their way to their quarters.
    Her momentum was her downfall, and she was forced to grip the doorway in an effort to stop.
    Claw marks gouged the wood, but she managed to haul herself into her rooms.
    She shifted to skin and dropped over the bed, lying on her belly. “I win again!” He entered the room a moment after her and froze at the edge of her bed, staring at her back.
    He shifted forms swiftly, and his expression showed his shock.
    “He clawed you as you were trying to get away. May I see all the injuries?” Rhanos knelt at the end of the bed.
    “I thought you saw them all when I stripped the first time.” There was something intense in his gaze that he hadn’t had before.
    He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t looking at your scars before. I want to see how bad it was.” She debated getting up or hiding in the sheets.
    With a grunt, she stood up and let him look. He moved over to where she stood and slowly ran his fingers over the gouges and raised skin.
    She knew exactly what he was seeing. Her attacker had been toying with her, trying to make her scream. Her hunting instinct had told her that much. If he had wanted to kill her, she would have been dead. One swipe of his claw across her throat and she would have been dead.
    “I will kill him.” The certainty in Rhanos’s tone was unmistakable as he took in the extent of the damage. “There is no way you should have survived this.”
    “They thought I was dead until I called for help.”
    “You remember it?”
    “Of course. I remember it all. I crawled out through the hole in the wall and went looking for my varek. I found their bodies and started to return home when I saw the red eyes. Pain followed in endless strikes until you arrived. I crawled back under the wall and sealed the hole before I set off my beacon. Help arrived, and they were staring at me until I asked them to help me.
    The rest is light and pain until they put me under.”
    She shivered as his fingers followed each gouge and slash.
    “How is it that the healers weren’t able to smooth out the marks?” The frown on his face was fearsome.
    “The Cial don’t have healers like the Citadel does, and by the time I was at