I flinched and put my hand on the hilt of my sword when someone put their hand on my shoulder. I was so engrossed with the sight of Saiph being held above the crowd on pikes that I didn't notice the person until they had already touched me.

  The person leaned over and whispered in my ear, breaking the unnatural silence of the gruesome scene, "The winds feel strong today."

  "There must be gales coming from over the plains," I replied without thinking.

  "Come," he grunted before letting go and walking away.

  My eyes trailed him for a moment, but I couldn't stop myself from glancing back at the bloody corpse of the man I had just seen at my wedding. I shook my head and slinked my way through the crowd toward the man.

  He spoke a code phrase to me and Merfellen's familiarity with it led me to reply without thinking. This meant that this man was a spy from Clyclostro. This wasn't what I came here for, but these people were still hunting my wife and mother-in-law. They must have recognized Merfellen, despite the different attire, and decided to approach me. I might be walking into a dangerous situation, but I had confidence in my ability to shrug off wounds that would kill most people. I should take the opportunity to gather as much information from them as I could before they realized I wasn't who I said I was. Merfellen's memories were sporadic and messy at best. I wasn't sure how long I would be able to keep up the charade.

  The human man wearing a dirty brown long coat turned a corner into an alley and took me to an unassuming, unmarked door. It looked like the back door to a business of some kind. He gently knocked on it in a pattern I recognized as a code knock, and nodded to himself when the door on the other side responded as he expected. The heavy wooden door ground against the door frame as it opened, revealing a heavyset hog beastkin man behind it. He looked over me appraisingly before grunting and stepping out of the way. I gave him a glance as I followed the human man inside and down the hallway.

  The room we entered had a flight of stairs that led into a basement. I quietly followed him while making a mental map of the building. It wasn't too large, so I wouldn't get lost in the hallways, but there were a lot of rooms along the path that I could be ambushed from while trying to escape. The longer I followed, the more I thought this might have been a bad idea, but I pressed on anyway. None of the assassins who tried to kill me after they attacked Luna had been much of a threat. I'm sure I could escape from here.

  The human man finally opened a door and sat at a simple table with two chairs. It reminded me of an interrogation room without the two-way mirror. I sat down on one side without asking, recognizing that this was intended to be some kind of debriefing. The man took a moment to look over my armor again before sitting down. He hadn't asked for my weapon, so I supposed he trusted my appearance. There weren't many people who could take the face of his colleague like a changeling could. I might be an entirely unique threat.

  "Merfellen, I had heard that you died. How did you make it out of there alive?" he asked.

  I still didn't recognize the man, though he clearly recognized me. I had hoped that he had just recognized my face, but no, this man had known her. "The dragon's entourage was more dangerous than we expected. I got separated from the group and attacked by some kind of monster. Did anyone else make it back alive?" I asked.

  "No. Only the long-distance observers. One of them told me he saw you get ripped in half."

  I shook my head. "It wasn't quite that bad, my entire front was ripped open by the creature from neck to hip," I said, gesturing across my armored torso, "and I was knocked out. When I came to, I was freshly healed and managed to break out of the cell with some of the tools I had sewn into my fur. They missed them when they removed my equipment. I found a merc taking a piss near the outskirts of the camp and took his armor before slipping away." Merfellen was a natural-born liar. The story she was spinning came to me reflexively. Her instincts were leading me to build a story that wouldn't be too difficult to remember but had enough detail in it to make it sound credible.

  He glanced at my breastplate. "It looks nice. High quality. Was the fight for it difficult?"

  I shook my head. "Literally caught him with his pants down. Slipped in behind him, he never even saw me."

  "As you likely guessed, the assassination was a failure. Did you get any information on the daughter while you were there?" he asked.

  "Just that she's a fire mage and she's working with some other hunters. It seems she isn't as coddled as we expected going in. I didn't get much of a look because the monster knocked me out too quickly. Do you have any idea what the fuck that thing was?" I want to know how much they know about me.

  He leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair. "No fucking clue. A northern beastkin with shifting abilities is our best guess, but I've never heard of one quite like they were describing. The reports I received were grisly, though maybe a bit overembellished considering you weren't actually torn in half."

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  I shifted in my chair, projecting nervousness. "What's next? Are we going to try again?"

  "We have to. Our orders were to kill the dragon's daughter or die trying."

  "Why are we trying to kill her family, without trying to kill her directly, anyway?" I asked.

  He gave me a weird look. It seems that the question completely caught him off guard. My hackles rose as his demeanor shifted. It seems like I tripped over a question that made me look suspicious. He looked over my gear again before settling on my sword. It was Maxwell's old sword that I carried since he got his newer magic one. His eyes flicked back to mine, and I could tell my cover was blown. He just didn't know what to do with the information yet.

  "Who the fuck are you?" he growled.

  I pumped mana through my body and into my armor. A fight was about to break out. I could feel it. The man must have noticed because he suddenly tried to jump up, but I was faster. He reached up with his arm, but I grabbed it with my left and punched him with my right. I was aiming for his throat, but he expected that and flinched out of the way. The punch to his shoulder was still painful though, and he yelled out in pain as he was thrown against the wall of the small room.

  All at once, I shifted into my armored umber hound form and towered over the man. He looked up at me and screamed. I could see the light of my eyes reflect in his own as I tore his throat open with my claws. Shifting to my full size in here wasn't exactly comfortable, but if I was going get out of here, I wanted access to my full strength. My eyes glanced down at the man one last time before I left him. Part of me wanted to eat his heart to gain more information, but the other part of me was disgusted with myself for even considering it.

  When I pushed myself through the door frame and into the hall, there were already people there armed with clubs. Their eyes widened when they saw me, but their reactions were mixed. Some charged angrily at me while others spun on their heel to run away. I swept the people charging me into the wall and chased the ones fleeing. Something primal inside was more interested in the chase than playing with the weaklings.

  I slashed my claws through one on the right before clamping my jaws over the shoulder of one on the left. My teeth sank right through his gambeson and painfully snapped his collarbone in half. The man screamed as the other tumbled to the floor. I ripped out his throat and tossed him to the side before pouncing on the last one running. This one had been a draco woman, and in my excited state, I couldn't stop myself from ripping her chest open and finding her heart inside. I was so much faster than all of them that this only took a brief moment, and everyone here was already dazed or dying.

  My mind caught up to me, and I sobered to the reality of what just happened. This wasn't quite the same as losing myself to my instincts. I did follow them, but they felt closer to my natural thoughts this time. The line was getting blurred even more. I wiped the blood from my muzzle, probably not doing much but smearing it around. I hadn't gotten everyone yet. There would probably be others coming to investigate shortly. I grimaced at one of the ones I had shoved into the wall. He was unconscious but still breathing.

  This man wants to kill my wife. All of them do.

  I tore the man's throat out before moving to the next and making sure each of them were dead. There was a pit in my stomach as I finished each of them off one by one. I felt sick to my stomach, but the umber hound part of me was still singing with the elation of eating a new heart. I was a bit of a hypocrite, being disgusted by my actions one moment and being enthusiastic the next. I shook my head and turned around when I heard heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  The tall hog man that guarded the doorway froze at the bottom of the stairs when he looked over the carnage. His eyes met mine, the look of shock turning to anger. He drew a sword and ran at me. I deflected the blade with a gauntlet before slashing my claws against his gut. His skin was tougher than I had expected and the wounds I left were superficial. He grunted and stepped back before thrusting his sword toward me again. He had aimed the blade for my cloak of umber hound fur, probably hoping to find a soft spot, but the sword tangled against the hide until it caught the shoulder guard next to it.

  Switching tactics, I punched the pig man in the snout this time instead. He yelped in pain and stumbled back, clutching his sensitive nose. I considered summoning my axe, but I didn't have the time, and the hallway was so cramped between the two of us. I wasn't sure if a weapon would actually help me at all. I would be better off grappling him. I darted forward and deflected his blade again with my armored forearm before gripping his bicep and kneeing him in the gut. The man tumbled back onto the stairs and grunted in pain as a few of the wooden steps collapsed under our combined weight.

  He struggled against my grip, trying to swipe at me with his sword, but ineffectually waving it behind me. His other hand tried to grip at me, trying to find some purchase so he could push me off of him. The two of us wrestled on the ground for a bit, but I had the advantage of being on top while he was partially embedded in the stairs. Eventually, I managed to grip his other arm with my claws and leave the man open to my teeth.

  The hog screamed in agony as I tore large chunks of his meat off his chest. His struggling became frantic, and he screamed as I tore into him. I was disgusted by how good I found he tasted to my tongue. The man's struggling eased before stopping as the man died from blood loss, but that didn't stop me from continuing to eat him as he died. I was repulsed by what I was doing, but my umber hound instincts screamed at me to continue, and I couldn't fight them while I had this much adrenaline pumping through my veins. I broke through his sturdy rib cage and tore through his innards until I found his heart too. A shiver went down my spine as the magic that empowered his body flowed through me. He must have been an experienced delver, because his heart tasted rich with magic even when compared to the others I had killed here.

  I eventually managed to tear myself away from the half-eaten man lying in the stairs. I grimaced at the look of pain and horror on his face. Blood trailed out from his pig-like snout and down his face until it dripped into his bloody chest cavity. It was obvious he had been partially eaten, I could see my own teeth marks on his bones.

  These people wanted to kill my wife.

  Taking a deep breath, I turned and started to look through the other rooms. I grabbed any documents I could find and made sure I didn't leave anyone here alive. If I was going to go this far, I needed to at least make sure they were all actually dead. I didn't know if there were other people out there at this time of day, but it was likely. I wonder what they'll think when they come across the hog man's torn-up body.

  Or die trying, the man had said about their mission. If that was how things had to be, that's how they would be. I'll kill them all myself if I have to.

  Hello! Bit of an unexpected turn, but that's what happens when you walk around as someone else, you might get recognized! Clyclostro's spies aren't quite done involving themselves with Helena and her group yet. I hope you enjoyed the chapter, thanks for reading!

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