Follow me, the Tiger King said.
So that’s what Sin did.
~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~* ~ *~ * ~
Zai slowly awoke to the muffled sounds of low growls and muted roars.
As he came to his senses, the sounds gradually sharpened and increased until they surrounded him from all sides, and the cacophony boomed against his head like heavy mallets beating against war drums.
The first thing he realized when he regained awareness was that he was bound tightly with thick ropes, lashed to a tree. In front of him, the biggest tiger he’d ever seen sat on its haunches surveying a group of about two dozen feline predators of all sorts.
There were two groups, apparently.
One group comprised of four Beasts, a dark-maned lion, a jaguar, a black panther and a golden lioness. The other group was basically a pissed off liger and a stunned and gaping human boy.
The aggressive sounds Zai had awoken to were the involuntary animal vocalizations to the violent thoughts that Zai could now discern through his mind link with Sin.
For once, he was thankful for the ability to understand Beasts. But when he began to comprehend the ongoing debate, he realized that perhaps ignorance was bliss.
…he killed countless of our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers!The male lion was snarling.
He cannot be allowed to live! I will accept nothing less than thejusticeof personally tearing him limb from limb before putting an end to his miserable life.
We should scatter pieces of his body around the Dark Fortress,the jaguar hissed.
And deliver his head to the new Dark Queen. That will make them think twice before hunting us again. We will strike back twice as hard!
No,the panther inserted.
He needs to suffer as we have suffered before we deliver the gift of death to him.
We should do what Gaia did to our own. Tear the skin from his flesh while he breathes, pull the fingernails from his hands and his teeth from his mouth the way she took our people’s claws and fangs.
We should gouge his eyes out and cut out his tongue, then rake his raw flesh with our claws the way her soldiers flayed our own with those whips.
We could keep him alive for weeks just like the Blood Moon Queen did with the Beasts she kept alive for torture. Even if he suffered months and years every moment of every day it would not be enough to assuage my thirst for vengeance…
On and on the graphic depictions of what the animals wanted to do to him continued, growing more bloodthirsty with each Beast’s contribution.
All the while, Sin emitted a continuous chuffing roar from deep within his chest, like a warning and a battle cry, as he stood facing Zai’s accusers with ears flattened back, yellow eyes glaring, lips peeled back to reveal dagger-like fangs, and muscles tensed to stone.
He didn’t bother speaking through their telepathic link like the other felines did. Zai recognized that Sin was beyond speech at this point.
He was violence and vengeance incarnate. He was poised simply to tear the perceived threat to pieces in order to defend what was his.
Which was apparently Zai.
For his part, Zai didn’t bother to come to his own defense. There was no point.
This was exactly why he should have left while he had the chance. In a perverse way, he didn’t regret his decision to stay.
The last few days had been worth it. Especially last night.
He’d never felt the sense of rightness and belonging he felt with Sin. He’d never shared his body with another that way, and perhaps, however he might refute it, also a piece of his soul.
If the animals tore him apart as they hungered to do, it was no less than he deserved for the violence he’d perpetrated against them, no matter the wherefores and whys.
He didn’t have to obey Queen Gaia’s commands, after all. To refuse the position of Master Hunter when she demanded it and to not carry out her edicts in that role would have been to consign himself to the same fate as the Beasts she hunted. If not worse.