Hunted (When Nightmares Reign Book 1) by Misu Loy

Author:Misu Loy [Loy, Misu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Misu Loy
Published: 2023-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Raine stalked lightly through the dusk-lit woods. Leaves rustled and twigs snapped as he picked a discreet path, occasionally startling a critter from the brush. Birds were active and everywhere. Finches and warblers, wrens and geese. They busily fueled themselves for their southern migration, where they would outwait Valdenia’s gelid winter in comfort.

This sprawling woodland butted against one of the forbidding walls of Chambrin Keep’s mesa. The very sheetrock cliff he’d dove from when fleeing home a month ago. A month. Each week had seemed a decade.

Six dragons and one mountain moose trailed his wake. They had entered the woods at dawn, miles away, where none of the keep's sentries would detect their approach.

The sentries loved moose. Thought it was the greatest thing since toffee pudding. Raine had taken advantage of that fact, combined with the convenient timing of the seasonal rut, when he evaded the sentries the night Eddic, Vanwert, and Tyrus came calling.

Although the sentries had already proven how derelict in their duties they could be at the prospect of a red, juicy steak, Raine didn’t trust they’d wander far enough from their posts with only the bellow of a mountain moose to draw them. Which was why Oka currently led a massive moose bull by a thick rope knotted into a harness. The beast was huge. It could rest its chin atop Raine’s head and possessed a broad-fanned rack as wide as he was tall. A veritable behemoth.

As far as bait went, the moose was supreme. It had taken Oka two days to find a specimen suitable for their purpose. Most of Raine’s plan was risky and had a low—all right, zero—percent chance of success. But when Oka had presented him with this moose, he had no doubts they’d pull off the first phase of his plan.

Unfortunately, the moose’s prize-worthy size made directing the creature through the woods markedly challenging. The beast did not fear dragons like traditional prey. It was aggressive and struggled, occasionally lowering its head to charge their backs.

Progress was further hindered as Oka picked a protracted path that didn’t get the moose’s antlers hung up. At least ten times, Oka had backtracked to maneuver the recalcitrant moose around a too-tight section of trunks and branches.

Thankfully, they’d begun early. Even with the moose slowing their advancement, they reached the cliff wall just as the last fingers of daylight gave a parting wave.

Hovering against the outermost canopy, Raine placed a palm flat against the forbidding sheetrock wall. This section of cliffside beveled out before receding in a lazy limestone wave that concealed the ground immediately below the keep's curtain.

It wasn’t impossible to scale. An astute selection of the right tools and rope could get the job done. But the addition of the defensive curtain, rimming the mesa and concealing the keep from view, had always struck Raine as absurdly redundant. If someone was going to climb a sheer, lethal cliff to reach Chambrin, what was a few more feet of stone?

Well, it all made sense now.

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