Kael hunkered down in the jagged mouth of a forgotten cave, the northern wastes stretching out below him like a frozen graveyard,endless slabs of ice-cracked rock, skeletal trees clawing at the gray sky, and a wind that howled like a bitch in heat.
Sleet stung his face, but he barely felt it. His broad frame shoulders stood like boulders, the scarred muscles in his chest from years of brutal "training" blocked most of the chill, as his dark hair whipped wild around his storm-gray eyes.
A fresh scar tugged at his jaw from some skirmish he couldn't even remember, a reminder that survival was just another day of not dying like a fool.
He knew he couldn't go after Kain alone. Had known it the second the bond screamed Riley's pain through his skull—sharp as silver, twisting like guts on a hook. Storming the Peak? That was suicide, a dumb fuck's way out.
