❝NOW THE DARK BEGINS TO RISE❞

The phrase “lost time” sounded so innocuous when Kershov thought about it. As if time were a frivolous thing one could misplace with an embarrassed smile, shrugging his shoulders when he realized his mistake. Must have dropped a minute there. Can’t remember where I put that last hour. Where on earth did all those days go? One lost their prey during a hunt . . . they lost their way in an unfamiliar territory . . . they might lose loved ones, or blood, or their place in the hierarchy. But all of those lost things carried their own weight, their impressions emblazoned upon one’s mind like a tattoo—so that the very moment of “loss” was explicitly marked. He could look back over his shoulders at more concrete things that had slipped through his talons. Once upon a time, he’d lost a war. Lost his gang and all the territory they’d ruled. Little Gwyn had been lost, and with the help of Briseis, Kershov had found her. The pup’s absence was realized, logged, remedied. Panic and fury had ruptured his sanity when he realized a vampire had stolen Gwyneira, yet the entire time Kershov tracked her path, he knew what he was doing.

Except . . . suddenly a gap appeared in his brain, an absence of sentience that stretched out before his horrified awareness like a cliff opening up before his paws where he’d been certain there flowed a path. His stomach dropped out from under him, guts wrenched into a bottomless void. His breath snagged in his throat, vocal chords as taut as violin strings. Too tight to scream. Not enough air in his abruptly crushed lungs to draw breath. He suffocated, gaping blindly at the moonlit expanse of Uyaraut before him—rippling silver grass broken by jagged black rocks—and could not recall how he’d gotten here, or why he stood in this exact place. The dens of his packmates were nowhere within sight, nor could he smell any recent scents that might suggest someone had passed by.

The rapid slamming of his heart pushed blood so ruthlessly through is veins that Kershov had to bow his head under the agonizing pressure of a headache. Each squeeze of his cardiac muscle had some artery throbbing harshly at the back of his skull, driving red hot nails behind his now tightly shut eyes. I don’t remember what I was doing. This felt like waking up—everything rocketing into his conscious perception so quickly that nausea upended his stomach. Except when Kershov awoke from his rare dreams, he knew that he’d just been sleeping. No such knowledge buffered his suffering now. Frantic, the massive dragga stared up at the night sky, trying to recall what the moon had looked like when he’d last been sentient. A waxing crescent? Full? Had there even been a moon when he’d gone to bring Gwyn home? The dangerous growl of a cornered beast rumbled to life in his chest, an oddly thin and brittle noise given how forcefully coiled his insides felt.

Kershov had lost time before. It was the reason he’d abandoned Abendrot years ago, desperate to protect his army from himself. Piecing together evidence scattered around him had woven a revolting story Kershov could not ignore for the safety of his pack. During that mental blank, he’d committed unforgiveable atrocities . . . indulged in slavering, mindless violence . . . Kershov had murdered before, but always with purpose and direction. He prided himself on his incredible self-mastery. To find that this control had crumbled like the shell of an egg terrified him. Terror was not an emotion Ker allowed himself to feel.

Choking back bile, the ivory ghost forced himself to take a few steps forward, hoping that a short patrol would clear his tumultuous thoughts and ground him back in reality. The night air wafted crisp and cold against his muzzle; he tasted the promise of snow and the chilled mist of the ocean rising over the cliffs. A shudder that had nothing to do with the winter temperatures crawled up his broad back. He remembered one thing: it had been autumn when he went searching for his daughter. An entire season, devoured by the clandestine monster he kept thinking he’d properly imprisoned . . .

“Briseis?” The name tripped from his clenched teeth, and Kershov pulled up short, stopping just before the border. An unfamiliar perfume brushed his nares—and in the next instant, he recognized it. Or rather, his beast recognized it, and fed the filmy information to Ker as if passing over a faded photograph. Restless claws gauged the dirt. There is a female named Briseis living in Uyaraut. I brought her here. She helped me find Gwyneira in Caidir Olc. I remember that encounter: saving her from the vampire, traveling to the pack, meeting Gwyn . . . It was the journey back to Uyaraut that evaded his grasp. Obviously he’d taken her here, either to provide her a safe haven or because his monster was sickly possessive of any living creature it stumbled across. Regardless, she was a packmember. He had to treat her as such when he saw her. Shaking his cranium as if to jostle his intelligence back in order, Kershov began stalking along the trail Bri’s signature wrote. Perhaps this girl might inform me of all the things I’ve “missed.”

How had he treated his pack in the time his madness ruled him? What had he done? Said? Ordered? Hopefully the salt-and-pepper lass held the answers . . . because if she didn’t, Kershov recoiled at the shameful prospect of asking anyone else and betraying his own insanity. Soon, as his gigantic paws thudded against the terrain, the cloying smell of blood hit the back of his tongue. Instinctively the Czar launched into a full sprint—lost time momentarily pushed to the back burner in favor of assisting a subaltern in need. She’s bleeding? Did I make her bleed? No, please, no—

Briseis lay sprawled on the ground, weeping, clearly in pain. A laceration split her shoulder and poured crimson down her fur. Kershov stood at her side in a blink, leaning down to lap at the wound before asking permission. At the last second he reined himself in, wondering if the taste of forbidden blood would set him off . . . but if the scent hadn’t tipped him over the edge, surely this was fine. The Alpha silently cleaned Bri up with quick, efficient strokes, not pausing until the worst of her bleeding subsided. Then he turned thoughtful, unreadable obsidian portals to her gems of soft lavender. “What happened?”

❝NOW THE DARK IS TAKING OVER❞

♛〖 King of Uyaraut ✦ bonded to Athene ✦ father of many ✦ xathira 〗♛