The Dragon's Rogue

Chapter 16

Each of the arrows was tipped with black feathers, which wavered with the force of the impact. And they came from my left. My senses screamed at me to face this new danger, the lords did immediately, and the shifters that had been trailing us emerged from wherever they had been stalking, but I couldn't draw my eyes from the wounds. Not a single drop of blood welled up. A black substance thick and oily looking oozed around the arrow shafts, but even that was not enough to supply a body with its wants.

Perhaps that was why the poison was only partially successful, it congealed blood, but if the creature did not have blood...

Again I tried to wrap my mind around how that was possible.

"Come away from the body," a woman's voice commanded.

"Illaise," Cillumn muttered, and it sounded like a warning so I straightened from my inspection.

Shifters melted from the woods to the south their scent betraying them as a new pack. A dangerous pack. A woman strode in the lead, dressed in leathers and laden with weapons. A long bow lay across her back and a quiver with several arrows sticking up above her shoulders. Arrows with black feathered fletchings. Her stance, even while walking, was aggressive and intimidating. I immediately had to squash the urge to either run and escape or cower before her pitifully. I did neither, with great effort, but I could not meet her eyes. I tried to focus on the fact that she had murdered the creature before I had discovered the answer to my question. I still didn't know if they would recover from the poison I was to create.

This was the type of Alpha I was used to. Dominant. No room for questions or opinions.

"What are you doing here Illaise?" Cillumn demanded. Whatever my instincts were, it seemed he did not share them.

"I was summoned," the woman half-snarled, "like some pup on a leash."

I swallowed. This was the pack Alpha Gayriel had been talking about, the one that mothered Dynary's, half Dragon Lord and half Shifter. Looking at her I couldn't see how that had come to be. She was fierce looking, with a hardness in her expressions and postures that hinted at an underlying bitterness. And I was to convince her to help me.

Her eyes passed over the two Lords, and barely skimmed the Amber Aerie shifters that had approached protectively, then landed on me.

"Another rogue," she announced, sniffing audibly. "Check her."

Wait...what?

The Amber Aerie Shifters growled as two of the Alpha's pack jumped to do her bidding. There was a moment of standoff where the two sets didn't seem to know what to do with each other.

Illaise raised a hand, a dismissive gesture, though a flash of anger crossed her face. Frustration at having to explain herself?

"They will not harm her," the woman announced. "Unless she has been bitten, in which case you should thank me to end her life."

"Bitten? By what? Your teeth are the only ones that are bared hear Shifter?" Strale demanded.

Illaise stiffened and the rest of the Shifters hesitated, waiting to see the outcome of the stand off. As much as I wanted to rail against the woman, to oppose all the control it felt like she might suffocate me with, I remembered my sister, and the fact that this Alpha might well have information I needed to save her.

"It is alright," I told the Lords, and the Amber Aerie Shifters. I nodded to the two that approached at the Alpha's direction. "I will submit to their search."

Cillumn turned to me, his brows reaching for his hairline. "You will?"

I nodded again, and then turned to the Alpha. She had cocked a hip and was busy tapping the hilt of a sword at her side impatiently.