Kyter took one last deep breath and started down the hill, his step faltering as he approached the village. The hill was more a part of him than the village had ever been. He had spent most of his life up on it, looking down on the village, watching from a distance as ceremonies took place. Especially when they were mating ceremonies.

He never could bear being in the village for those. They only reminded him that he would never have such a thing.

There was no fated mate for him out there.

Now he had to take part in the worst ceremony of all.

He entered the boundaries of the village and kept his gaze fixed straight ahead, on the main building and the people gathered there. The acrid scent of smoke still filled the air, reminding him that only a week had passed since the attack on his kin. A week ago, she had been alive and now she was dead.

Murdered.

Had she been afraid? Had she tried to fight or escape? Had she begged for mercy? For her life?

What had he been doing?

Laughing over a glass of Hellfire in his bar with a pretty little mortal female who had been trying to get his attention all night.

She had been fighting for her life, and he had been laughing while it happened.

Tears burned his eyes and he scrubbed them away, refusing to let them fall. He should have been here. He never should have left.

He reached the edge of the gathered and all eyes turned to him, a hush falling over the village. He ignored them and averted his gaze to the earth, shutting out the pointed looks and the silent accusations that pressed down on his already trembling shoulders.

Kyter glanced at the lead elder of the pride, a tall slender male with short greying hair, and caught the coldness in his golden gaze. More ice than usual.

It had been a long time since Kyter had left this place behind, but he hadn’t forgotten the hostility of his pride. He could never forget. They had made sure of that. His back burned, each laceration feeling as if it had only just happened. The lash of the whip rang in his ears. His own pitiful cries followed it.

He closed his eyes against the memories and turned away from the older male.

The gathered parted for him, which was more than he had expected from them, and he swallowed hard, his throat tightening by degrees as he lifted his head and approached the dead.

Males. Females. Children. All laid out in rows. They numbered in their twenties. Almost half of the pride, and all of their strongest males. Their finest warriors.

Kyter looked at one of them and stopped dead as a vision of the male as a boy filled his mind. A violent collision of fear and hope flooded Kyter’s heart as he stood before the boy, eye-level with him, and the boy pointed at him. The big elder male beside him signalled to two other adult males. Kyter backed away, shaking his head. They clamped strong hands down on his arms and dragged him across the square in front of everyone.

To the column.

The sound of females sobbing yanked him back to the present and he breathed again, his hands shaking as his heart thundered against his ribs.

Kyter stared blankly at the women off to his right, the village of old disappearing to reveal them to him as they clutched each other, consoled by their shared grief and bonded by it.

He flexed his fingers, filled with a need to tell them that he was sorry for their loss, even when he knew that they wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say. They would only look upon him with scorn and disgust.

He hadn’t come for them anyway.

He had learned long ago not to give a damn about them, because they didn’t give a damn about him.

He had come here for one person.

Kyter’s eyes shifted to a small form on a pyre off to the left of the square, her body laid apart from the others and covered only in a piece of pale cloth. Ice and fire speared his chest, freezing and burning his heart at the same time. His throat clogged. Tears stung his eyes.

Not only born of grief.

They were born of fury too. Anger that even in death they were punishing her and holding her away from them, when she had loved them all so dearly. All because she had made a mistake. Duped by a male.

A growl curled up his throat, his anger growing as he realised that they blamed her for what had happened to the pride.

He knew they blamed him. They always blamed him.

The product of her mistake.

He slowly walked towards her, his eyes locked on her, his heart labouring in his chest. His legs shook with each step, his strength leaving him as he drew closer to her, and then gave out when he saw her bruised and lacerated face.

His beautiful mother.

He collapsed to his knees beside her and pulled her cold body into his arms, gently lifting the top half from the palm leaves. Her scent filled his senses and he gathered her against him, buried his face in her throat and cried out the grief ripping him apart inside. Tears spilled in an unstoppable flow as he breathed in her scent with each ragged inhale. He shook to his core and clutched her closer, unable to stop the words from spinning around his mind, damning him.

She had been fighting for her life.

He had been laughing.

Kyter rocked with her, with each hard sob that racked his body, and growled against her mottled skin.

“I should have made you come with me. I shouldn’t have left you behind.”

He chuffed, the low coughing sound that begged for reassurance and comfort reverberating in his throat, but she didn’t answer him.

She would never answer him again.

That knowledge tore him apart inside, ripping him to shreds, leaving him in pieces. He growled again, restless with a need to shift and roar out his agony so the entire rainforest would know his pain and know it had lost one of its most beautiful creatures.

He barely leashed that urge, fighting to maintain his human form and to hold with tradition. He had to endure it all in this form.

He was still a slave to tradition, even though he tried not to be. He had tried to break free of the pride, but he had never been able to remove himself from them and view them as strangers.

He was weak.

He had wanted to be strong.

He had wanted to show her that her son was strong. He had wanted her to be proud of him. He had intended to create a place for her where they could be happy and then come for her. He had done the first part, but had never been strong enough to do the second. He had never been strong enough to come back to this place.

Now she was gone.

And he was here.

He sniffed back his tears, laid her down on the pyre and eyed the tattered piece of cloth that covered her. He had known the bastards wouldn’t honour her and send her to her ancestors in a manner fit for her.

He removed his backpack, unzipped it and carefully removed the beautiful embroidered brown and gold tunic she had given him as a parting gift. She had called it a reminder of what he was and where his home truly was.

He had told her that his home was with her. It always would be.

A dark-haired male dressed in the traditional blue and gold tunic of an elder stepped forwards with a clear intention of stopping him from dressing her as she should be for her funeral.

Kyter snarled at him, baring his emerging fangs to warn him away.

The male hesitated, but still looked as if he would intervene.

If he did, Kyter would fight him, and the man would have to be a bloody idiot not to know that. There was too much pain in him. Too much fury. He wouldn’t be able to stop himself from unleashing his animal form and taking out all that raw pain and anger on anyone who came near him.

The dark-haired male looked to the greying elder, clearly saw an order to stand down, and backed off.

Kyter kept his narrowed gaze locked on the male until he halted at a distance and then returned to his grim task.

He unbuttoned the tunic, his trembling fingers making it slow work. He blinked away his tears whenever they blurred his vision and focused on his task, trying to use it to give him a moment of respite in which he could shut down the pain burning within him and rekindle his strength. The last gold button came free and he opened the two sides, revealing the quilted black interior, and dressed his mother in silence, slipping her slender arms into it and closing it over her body before removing the rag they had dared place on her.

He breathed hard to hold back his tears as he fastened the buttons that formed a line down her chest. When he was done, he brushed his fingers through her long sandy hair, neatening her appearance, and then sat back.

The tunic was too big for her, and it was meant for a male, but she looked beautiful in it. Tears raced down his cheeks. He scrubbed them away and then took hold of her hand, clutching it tightly in his fingers.

They trembled against her cold skin.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice gravelly with tears and thick with the emotions raging out of control inside him. “I swear… I will find who did this and I’ll make them pay.”

“That will not change what happened.” The familiar deep voice stirred hatred in his heart and Kyter brushed his tears away before turning a glare on the grey-haired elder, meeting his golden eyes.

Kyter pulled down a steadying breath to settle his jaguar side, released his mother’s hand and rose to his aching feet.

“I know.” He stared hard at the male, his shoulders squared and his feet braced apart, ready for the conflict he felt coming. “But it’s what I have to do.”

The male’s gaze darkened. “It won’t atone for your sin.”

“My sin?” Kyter barked and took a step towards the male, unable to stop himself from closing the distance between them as his hackles rose. “What about your sins? At least I’m willing to do something. You’ll do nothing.”

Several other males edged closer to him. Coming to defend their precious elder. Kyter shot them all warning looks and fur rippled over his arms, his fingernails briefly transforming into claws. They ground to a halt, maintaining their distance but still watching him closely. They could attack if they wanted. He would welcome a fight right now and welcome tossing a few more bodies onto their pyres.

“How many have died because of you?” the grey-haired elder said, snapping Kyter’s attention back to him. “How many because of her?”

Kyter launched a fist at the male, grabbed the front of his blue and gold tunic, and snarled as he dragged him closer, so they were only centimetres apart. He barely leashed his dark fury, the fierce need to lash out and deal pain to the bastard who had given it to him so many times.

“Back off. Leave her out of this. She had nothing to do with his.” Kyter shoved the male away from him.

The elder stumbled back a few steps and held his hands out at his sides, stopping the other males in their tracks as they growled and advanced on Kyter.

Kyter eyed them all again, his heart pumping hard, and part of him wanted to goad them into a fight. He needed the violence and the pain. He looked back at his mother and that desire instantly vanished, a calm settling over him and carrying away his dark urges. She valued tradition. He didn’t want her to see him break with it.

Kyter turned his glare back on the greying elder. “Just tell me what the fuck happened here. Which pride attacked us?”

Everyone fell silent.

Everything.

It felt as if the whole rainforest had stopped breathing.

He looked around at the faces of his kin, seeing the wariness in their eyes, tension that filled him with a sense of dread.

“It was not another pride.”

Those words leaving the elder’s lips made Kyter cold inside.

He didn’t want to put it out there, or know the answer because he feared it, but he had to ask.

“Who?” He looked back at the elder, sending a prayer to his gods that he didn’t say what he knew he was going to say.

“Demons.”

Kyter stared at him in shocked silence, reeling from that blow even though he had expected it. Demons had attacked prides in the past, decimating their numbers, but those attacks had ended centuries ago when the prides had left the mortal cities and had settled back in their traditional habitats.

There hadn’t been a demon attack on the prides since he had been born.

Kyter’s gaze drifted back to his mother and he swallowed hard.

He knew who had orchestrated the attack on his pride and who was responsible for the death of his mother. He knew who he had to hunt down and make pay for what had happened here. It settled like a lead weight in his gut and an angry growl curled from his lips.

His father.