When Dominic became aware again, he knew two things even before he opened his eyes: that he felt worlds better than when he had closed his eyes…and that it had been a lot longer than the moment he’d promised Leo. Still, he was alive which, as the returning memory of the last moment before he’d fallen asleep told him, hadn’t been guaranteed.

  ‘Nice you’ve finally woken up to join the rest of us,’ the lion told him sarcastically, his willingness to joke making Dominic relax a little – if they were at dire risk, Leo wouldn’t be so casual.

  ‘Wait. What do you mean ‘the rest of us’? Did you take control of our body while I slept?’ Dominic asked. It was something he’d wondered whether it was possible to do, but not something they’d actually tested. The fact was that usually when he took the time to sleep, either Leo was perfectly happy to take a nap too, or their body needed the rest as much as their minds did.

  ‘No. I tried to but our body was too exhausted to move and wouldn’t respond even when the females managed to stabilise our health. I was able to communicate with our Pride, though – fortunate, as your favourite female was panicking that we were about to die.’

  ‘Sekhmet was panicking?’ Dominic asked incredulously. ‘I can’t imagine that.’

  ‘Well, her panicking was shown through increasingly concerned demands for us to wake up and respond to her, and a killing rate that mounted with her anxiety,’ Leo admitted. That sounded far more like her.

  ‘So how long have we been asleep?’

  ‘You’ve been, you mean? And not that long, really. Long enough to clear up the rest of the beasts which dared to fight us and for everyone to recuperate after the battle. We’re the last to recover – you really did a number on our body. We had shards of bone and metal popping out of our butt as those wounds healed! Even our health being filled to full wasn’t enough to wake you or allow me to move our body. It’s fortunate that the combined healing of the two females was enough to keep our health above zero. After getting us out of the danger zone, they moved to work on other Pride members and we’ve been recovering ever since. Our stamina refilled a little while before you woke.’

  ‘Something to bear in mind for later reference,’ Dominic sighed. ‘Just like how we need sleep from time to time, heavy depletion of resources apparently needs extended rest.’

  ‘It seems so,’ Leo agreed. Then an accusing feeling came from his side of their mind. ‘Do you realise how close we came to dying there? We were seconds away from it – several times! I saw our health drop down to a single point twice and it bobbed above that for long enough that the females were still concentrating on us when the rest of the fight finished. You drove our body to its limits, Dominic! And you didn’t even realise it!’

  ‘And what was I supposed to do about that, Leo? I was just trying to survive!’

  ‘You were the one in control of our body. You were the one who chose to use Rage for the first time in a difficult battle like that! Flash Step was bad enough, but at least we had already used that once before and had more of an idea of what to expect and, frankly, there weren’t any better choices. Rage was a whole new waterhole!’

  ‘There weren’t any better choices here either! We were stuck in the middle of enemies in close quarters with a broken wing, a damaged tail, and the ticking time-bomb of Second Wind waiting to grab its chunk of our health and stamina. We needed to get to the Pride!’

  ‘Then why didn’t you stay with the Pride when we got to them?’ Leo demanded. ‘Why did you turn around and charge at the clump of beasts attacking the elves?’

  Dominic was silent. He didn’t have a good answer for that

  ‘You got taken over by Rage, didn’t you?’ Leo continued. ‘You stopped thinking. You just wanted to kill more and more and more.’

  ‘Yes, damn you, yes!’ erupted Dominic. ‘I got overtaken by the desire for blood and revenge. I….’ Running out of steam, Dominic trailed off. ‘I suppose I got tunnel-vision,’ he admitted. ‘I just wanted to kill all of those creatures and I wanted to do it as quickly as possible.’

  ‘At the cost of almost losing our life,’ Leo reminded him.

  ‘If it was such a bad idea, why didn’t you stop me?’ Dominic demanded, his temper flaring up at Leo’s continued recrimination of his actions when he hadn’t been the one in charge.

  ‘I couldn’t!’

  ‘What, you couldn’t have just dropped me a word saying, ‘Hey, Dominic, I don’t think this is a good idea’?’

  ‘Like you gave me much chance?’ Leo demanded. ‘I was distracted – monitoring the Pride chat and paying attention to our surroundings with Spatial Awareness. I didn’t realise what you were planning until it was too late. And then….’ His voice gained a seriousness to it that pulled Dominic from his angry indignation at Leo’s criticism. ‘When you activated that Ability…it was like you fell into a pool of water and I was trapped above it – able to see everything you did and why you did it, but unable to stop you from drowning.’

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  Dominic was taken aback by the vulnerability that Leo was showing him. So much of the lion seemed to be bluster, bloodlust, and lecherousness; having him speak so openly about his feelings was definitely out of the ordinary. And the truth was that he had come far closer to death than he’d been in a while and this time he had far more to lose: what would happen to the Pride if he died?

  ‘I take it that you weren’t affected by Rage then?’

  ‘No. I could feel traces of its effects on you but my mind stayed my own. I tried to stop you. I even tried to forcibly take control over our body when you refused to see reason. Nothing worked. It felt…it felt like I was back to being a mere observer in my own body, watching someone else move it without any input from me.’

  The raw emotion with which the lion spoke the words made Dominic’s heart clench. And in that moment he could completely empathise with his leonine companion. He’d been stuck, like in a car which someone else was driving, watching it careen towards a cliff and being unable to do anything to stop it.

  ‘Look, Leo, I won’t use Rage again,’ he promised. ‘When we get back to the forest, I’ll put it into the Ability Forge. Maybe one day we’ll be able to strip out the mind-altering component and just keep the boost.’

  ‘I’m not saying we should do that,’ Leo responded to Dominic’s surprise.

  ‘Why not? It almost killed us.’

  ‘No, what almost killed us was using it when we were already injured and without a plan for after it wore off. We need to practise, to learn how it works so we can properly use it – to our benefit, not our disadvantage.’

  Dominic was silent for a long moment. Ultimately, though he still resented the lion for being so critical when he hadn’t been the one making the decisions, and though he still felt like he hadn’t had much choice…the lion did have a point here. He needed to get a much better control of Rage before using it in combat like that. He could only be relieved that it hadn’t directed him to attack any of his own people.

  ‘Perhaps more practice will enable us to control Rage better,’ he agreed, offering an olive branch to Leo. ‘Or if not, yes, learning how it works can only help us plan for the disadvantages. But I still say that I chose what I thought at the time was the best option for us to survive. And in the end, we did, so….’

  ‘Just,’ Leo conceded, but Dominic took it as the returned olive branch that it was. ‘Unfortunately, not all of our Pride can say the same.’

  Dominic hesitated, not wanting to know, but still knowing he had to face up to reality.

  ‘I know we lost those two juveniles at the beginning, but…did we lose anyone else?’

  ‘One of the albuhas was pulled out of the air and killed before anyone could get there to rescue her,’ Leo told him bluntly.

  ‘Which albuha?’

  ‘I believe it’s the one you called ‘Speedy’.’

  Dominic mentally sighed in relief even as his stomach clenched in regret. Three deaths before they’d even properly met the elves…that wasn’t a good omen. Or perhaps it was a wake-up call that he needed to change his strategy. He felt guilty at feeling relief that at least the ones who had been lost hadn’t been any of those close to him. Though the loss of the albuha would definitely be felt – there were already few enough of the winged canines remaining as it was. Dominic wondered if they regretted joining his Pride.

  ‘On the positive side, the lead females have indicated almost all of the Pride members have blurred at least once. The juveniles who survived,’ Leo sounded rather grumpy about the loss – probably because at least one of them had to be a female, ‘have gone up by three levels. They will be better prepared for the next battle.’

  Dominic agreed that that was a positive outcome – the one he’d wanted, to be honest.

  ‘Alright, good. So what can you tell me about events while I was gone?’

  Leo proceeded to give Dominic an accounting of what he’d been able to get from Nyx and Sekhmet while his body and brother were sleeping.

  As it turned out, the elves had both been informed that Dominic and his Pride were there to help them and had seen them fighting the beasts. Fortunately, as a result there hadn’t been any more awkward situations where the elves had turned around and tried to attack any Pride members. Nyx, Jenkins, Sekhmet, and the two matriarchs had helped to ensure this by keeping the Pride together and at a distance from the elves.

  A number of the beasts had fled – for obvious reasons. Leo had been unable to get numbers, even approximate ones, out of their Pride members. The kesh struggled to count further than twelve it seemed. And from the looks of it, the elves had their own injured and dead to cope with, though fortunately it didn’t seem that there were many of the latter. Dominic would have felt immensely guilty if his attempt to help had inadvertently caused more deaths than would have happened otherwise.

  Consequently, neither party had yet contacted the other. The Pride members felt that it should be Dominic who did so rather than Sekhmet. Perhaps the elves were too wary or were just waiting for the Pride members to come to them. Dominic was glad of it – he’d have been uncomfortable if a whole lot of diplomacy had happened while he’d been out.

  Now, of course, was another matter. Finally opening his eyes, Dominic saw that he was resting in the middle of a rough circle of Pride members. They had managed to get under a tree – an umbrella thorn tree or something similar – so they weren’t too hot in the sun which was well on its way towards the horizon. He didn’t remember seeing the tree when they’d been fighting.

  ‘No, it just grew not long after the battle had finished,’ Leo contributed helpfully. ‘The female canine pulled our body into the shade. She did ask my permission first,’ he clarified after a short pause.

  Interesting – the elves’ work? If so, Dominic was grateful – he’d never realised how hot the sun could get before he had come to Africa. Or whatever this place was called now, if anything. And even with his new Temperature Tolerance and heat-adapted body, it could still become very uncomfortable.

  Pushing himself to his feet, the rest of the Pride lying around him either lifted their heads or stood up themselves in reaction. They were apparently ready for whatever instructions he would give them. Dominic could only be grateful that they were still willing to follow him despite his poor planning in the most recent battle – and the losses of three of their number that they had suffered.

  It was time to say goodbye to the cubs who had barely lived, and the albuha who had had more to offer the world.

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