Every head turned.
Pearl was shaking so badly that the small horns on her head trembled, and her soft brown hair stuck to her damp cheeks.
She looked nothing like Odette.
There was no sharp defiance in the line of her body, no blood-soaked pride, no strange ancient scent waiting under mud.
She looked young, frightened, and almost breakable, but she still stepped out from the roots with her hands clenched at her sides.
An elder snarled, “Go back inside.”
Pearl flinched, but she did not move back.
“No.
I want to go with Odette.
I must leave with her.”
The females stared at Pearl as if she had become someone else in front of them.
She had been quiet.
Sweet.
Easy to overlook.
The kind of female elders thought would lower her eyes until they chose a den for her.
No one had known that escape had been growing silently inside her too.
A wolf elder struck her across the face.
The slap was not a warning.
It was a full, open-pawed strike that snapped Pearl’s head sideways and sent her stumbling.
Blood sprayed from her split lip in a fine red mist.
She hit the ground hard on one knee, the impact jarring her small horns.
Her soft brown hair fell over her face, and for a second she stayed down, trembling, one hand pressed to her bleeding mouth.
The elder’s claws had left four thin red lines across her cheek, but she lifted her head again.
“No,” she whispered, then louder, with her voice breaking.
“I would rather die than stay here.”
Her voice cracked on the last word, but she still lifted her head.
Blood ran down her chin and dripped onto her chest.
She looked small and breakable, but something stubborn had rooted itself deep in her eyes.
She herself knew she had only gained this sudden confidence because of Odette.
Odette stared at her.
Pearl was terrified.
Her scent was sharp with fear.
Her mouth was bleeding, and her whole body looked ready to fold in on itself, but she had still chosen danger over the hollow.
She had chosen the road, the forest, the unknown war-pride, and whatever death waited there, because Thorn Hollow had become worse than fear to her.
Rauvan was already turning away.
In his mind, Pearl had already been dismissed.
Another hollow female meant extra weight on a road where even the strong were struggling to keep moving.
He had what he wanted.
The rest could die where they stood.
He had no reason to drag Pearl into a migration of thousands, with wounded hunters, crying cubs, old ones who could barely walk, and enemies waiting in the trees.
Odette saw that truth in the slight shift of his shoulder, in the way his interest stayed on the blood under her skin instead of Pearl’s shaking form.
So Odette spoke before he could refuse.
“She comes with me.”
The words came out rough.
Odette tasted fresh blood in her mouth as she spoke.
Her crushed hand throbbed so hard it made her vision pulse.
Still, she kept her eyes on Rauvan and did not look away.
Rauvan stopped.
Slowly, he looked back at her.
The whole hollow seemed to hold its breath again because Odette had just received the protection every beast here feared, and she was already bargaining with it.
She was half dead in the mud, one hand crushed, neck bleeding, ribs bruised, and still she dared to put a condition before Rauvan as if she had anything to offer him in return.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“You bargain from the ground.”
His voice was quiet, but it carried.
There was no anger in it.
Only a dark, almost curious amusement, like he was watching a wounded animal still trying to bite.
Several of his warriors shifted, clearly surprised he was even entertaining this.
Odette’s throat moved as she swallowed blood.
“Then leave me on it if you want.
But I will not go without her.”
A sound moved through Rauvan’s chest.
It was low and rough, more growl than laugh.
The sound rolled out of him without permission, and every saber-tooth male nearby went still.
Rauvan did not laugh often.
When he did, it usually meant someone was about to bleed.
Rauvan had seen females who fought.
He had seen females who killed.
He had seen females who stood beside males with blood on their mouths and blades in their hands.
But he had not seen a female sitting at the edge of death, covered in filth, with one breath left in her body, still gambling like the world owed her a better throw.
For the first time, his attention settled on Odette completely.
He looked at her like he was truly seeing her for the first time — not the mud, not the blood, not the broken body on the ground, but the thing underneath.
The thing that had killed a baboon by herself.
The thing that still had enough fire left to bargain while dying.
His pale blue eyes stayed on her a moment too long.
Something ancient and instinctive moved behind them.
Then he looked at Pearl.
“She may follow,” he said.
“If she survives the road.”
Pearl’s face went pale, but relief still flashed through her eyes so brightly that Odette almost hated how young she looked.
The baboon envoy snarled again, but not at Rauvan this time.
His rage had found an easier place to bite.
Behind him, his males shifted toward Thorn Hollow’s broken gate, and the elders realized too late that Rauvan had not solved their problem.
He had only taken himself, Odette, and Pearl out of the teeth.
Rauvan turned and walked away.
His war-pride moved with him.
No one waited for Odette.
No one asked if she could stand, if she could see through the blood in her eyes, or if her crushed hand still worked.
That was the first lesson of Rauvan’s people, and it came without words.
In the wild, protection did not mean softness.
If she had been placed under his fang, then she had been given a path, not arms to carry her.
Pearl rushed to Odette’s side and pulled one of Odette’s arms over her shoulders.
She was too small, too weak to support her properly, but she tried anyway, hooking her thin arms under Odette and pulling with everything she had.
Her face tightened with panic and determination as Odette’s body sagged like dead weight against her.
Odette’s injured knee dragged through the sand, leaving a dark smear of blood and mud behind them.
“Come on.
Please, Odette.
Please move.”
Behind them, the baboons attacked.
The first scream came from the thorn gate, then another from deeper inside the hollow.
Males roared.
Females cried out.
Children shrieked as bodies crashed against roots and thorn walls.
The sound followed Odette like claws scraping down her spine, but she did not turn around.
If she looked, she would see Thorn Hollow falling again.
If she stopped, she might become part of it.
They had brought this upon themselves.
They had known the paths were wrong.
They had ignored the warnings.
They had locked females away, traded fear like law, and called weakness protection until stronger beasts came to collect the price.
Still, when a child’s scream cut through the trees, Odette’s eyes burned.
She kept walking.
The forest swallowed them quickly.
Giant roots rose from the wet ground like old ribs.
Vines hung low enough to brush Odette’s hair.
Small monkeys crouched in the branches above, chattering with bright eyes as they watched the war-pride pass beneath them.
Insects clicked inside rotting bark.
Somewhere far off, a crocodile beast bellowed near dark water, and the smell of crushed fern, damp stone, blood, sweat, and moving bodies filled the air.
Then Odette saw Rauvan’s people.
Thousands.
They moved through the Red Canopy like one enormous beast with many hearts.
Saber-tooth males walked along the edges, eyes scanning the trees.
Females with blades carried bundles of herbs, meat, and sleeping cubs against their hips.
Wounded warriors limped between stronger bodies.
Old ones were helped over roots.
Children were kept close in the middle, where claws, teeth, and watchful eyes surrounded them.
Hunters returned from side paths with fresh blood on their arms.
Some females walked with bellies swollen beneath hide wraps, and even they carried sharp bone or stone at their sides.
This was not Thorn Hollow.
No one hid the females.
No one treated them like soft meat waiting behind roots.
But no one softened the road for them either.
Odette tried to keep walking.
Her ribs burned hotter with every breath.
Her hand had swollen until her fingers felt like crushed roots.
The cut on her neck pulsed with each heartbeat, and the blood loss made the forest tilt around her.
Pearl kept whispering encouragement, her voice shaking as she begged Odette to place one foot in front of the other, but the sounds began to stretch, then fade.
Odette’s knee buckled.
Her body simply gave out.
One moment she was forcing one foot in front of the other, the next her leg folded like wet rope.
She went down hard, the impact knocking the last of the air from her lungs.
Sand stuck to the blood on her neck and chest.
Her crushed hand landed palm-up in the dirt, fingers swollen and useless.
Pearl gasped and tried to catch her, but Odette was too heavy for her small duiker body.
They both stumbled, and Odette slipped from her hold, hitting the sandy ground with a dull thud.
Pearl dropped with her, crying now.
“Odette— please— please get up—open your eyes—”
Odette did not answer.
Pearl’s panic broke loose.
She looked up at the passing warriors, at the females with blades, at the males who turned only because her fear scent had sharpened.
“Help her!
Please, someone help her!”
No one moved.
They looked toward Rauvan.
Vasha saw Odette lying helplessly on the sandy ground a slow, satisfied look passed over Vasha’s face before she smoothed it away.
She didn’t need to say anything.
If Rauvan left this broken hollow bird on the sand, then nature would finish what the baboon and Gorran had started.
Vasha could wait.
She knew that Rauvan would never turn back for a female he just met.
To her Odette was a dumb female who failed to realize in their war pride if you can’t fend for yourself and earn your place, you are gone for good.
If Rauvan walked away, if he left the hollow bird there for the road to decide, then Odette would become easy to remove later.
Vasha’s mouth almost curved.
Then Rauvan who was stil walking stopped.
The entire column of thousands slowed and then halted around him.
No one spoke.
No one asked why.
They simply stopped because he had stopped.
He turned.
Slowly.
His pale blue eyes found Odette on the ground, Pearl kneeling in the sand beside Odette, shaking, crying, and trying uselessly to lift her.
Odette lay limp at her side, mud-covered, blood-streaked, and some blood still leaked from the cut on Odette’s neck.
For a long moment he didn’t move.
The war-pride watched in complete silence.
Even the forest seemed to hold its breath.
Then he started walking toward her.
(Hey guys, how do you like the book so far?
Is it goodddddd😭 do you guys have any advice i would love to know, maybe I could add it when writing.
Also if you love it i would love a review from Y’all💕)