Chapter 99: Her First Step (2)
Yoa broke the surface with a gasp, unintentionally shifted back into his human form, his hair plastered against his face, water streaming down his chest. There was nothing but calm waves, the turquoise waters as far as his eyes could see.
His breath heaved in his lungs, and he scanned the horizon again. But there was nothing. The Akhlut was gone.
He remained in the water, searching. Waiting. But the feeling had slipped away like a whisper stolen by wind.
One thing he hadn’t anticipated was the Akhlut’s cowardice. He cringed at the term. It wasn’t right. He was sure from the legends passed down through the guardians’ that this was the most lethal of all the Ancients.
Coward it was not. Lazy or bored? Perhaps. The Akhlut tried to get an easy meal by claiming one of the children and when that didn’t happen it only lingered a moment more, surveying the threat following it and vanishing after deeming him not worthy.
Yoa glared at the water and turned to the shore. By the time he reached land, he shifted back into his jaguar form in one clean motion. He didn’t bother drying off or question why he’d shifted in the water. There was no time.
He shot into the trees like a shadow reborn, weaving between trunks, leaping over gnarled roots and gliding beneath fronds that sliced the sunlight into pieces. It was only by luck that those children weren’t the creature’s next meal. Yoa couldn’t patrol the coast all the time, and that was the only instruction passed down to him in handling it.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t do more to help the tribes of Tayun. He had to inform the chiefs about the dangers. All of the chiefs.
Even him.
Yoa’s lip curled in his feline form as the thought of Vulcan flashed across his mind like bile. The Nokari mark on Nova’s collarbone burned into memory. That coward hadn’t earned the right to breathe the same air as her, let alone mark her. But this wasn’t about blood or pride. It was about the island.
He was responsible for everyone, including beak brain. The Akhlut had already proven it would go further inland, and that might possibly stretch to the Silver Feather tribe.
Yoa shot across the island to the tribes, shifting into his human form and sending signals to their chiefs so they knew Yiska wasn’t there to hunt or cause trouble. Their tribes were ready with sharpened weapons or warriors stationed near them but a single hand signal from Yoa forced their leader’s hand into sending them away so he could speak to them in private. He would have preferred sneaking into their lands and popping out of nowhere, but this was urgent.