Claimed By the Horde King by Zoey Draven

Prologue

Iwatched her in the darkness. She was small, sad, focused, and completely unaware of the danger she was in.

Foolish.

A foolish human. Not the first I’d encountered. Not the last either.

A sense of dread pooled in my belly as I watched her load her bow with a worn arrow. The frayed feathers at the end of the shaft were thissie feathers, plucked directly from the wings. In the moonlight, I recognized the bright blue shimmer as she leveled her bow, the cord pressing into her cheek, keeping her weapon steady. Thissie were rare, delicate, beautiful things.

When I sensed movement to my left, I held my hand out, stilling my pujerak from approaching. As of yet, the vekkiri female had not committed a crime. We were to wait and watch.

I heard her exhale a small puff of air. I could not peel my gaze away from her as she released her arrow. I heard the whistle of it. Then I heard it squelch into the rikcrun, emerging from its burrow for a night of gathering.

Still, I watched her. I thought her dark eyes looked sad and I studied the way her shoulders sagged. That dread returned, tenfold.

To my left, my pujerak said quietly, “Vorakkar, we must take her now.”

Mercy.

The word—the human word, which made me uncomfortable and doubtful—rang through my mind, but as Vorakkar, my mind was already steeled. It had to be. Vekkiri knew the laws of our world. As of late, they had pressed and challenged those laws. The evidence of it was right in front of me.

Still, I hesitated.

“Vorakkar,” my pujerak urged. “We must—”

I cut him a dark look, tearing my gaze from the vekkiri female for the first time since I spied her through the dark trees. My pujerak, my second-in-command, immediately locked his tongue behind his teeth. I understood his impatience. He wished to return to the horde encampment, for, in his eyes, small matters like punishing vekkiri were beneath him.

“We wait,” I said.

My eyes returned to her. As a horde king of Dakkar, I knew what I had to do, what was required of me.

I had to make an example of her, of the small thing that reminded me more of a thissie than a law breaker.

Mercy.

It was something I could not grant her.