Change of Darkness (The Change Series Book 3) by Jacinta Jade (best new books to read txt) 📕

harder surface might have broken her back. She blocked out the pain as best as she could and raised her head, looking around as she fought back a bout of dizziness.

The feeling that she had been hit by a solid wall proved partially true. A number of body lengths away from her stood a six-footed rilander, its chest heaving as it pawed the ground, clearly preparing its large grey-green body for another charge.

Siray blinked a couple of times, trying to clear the fogginess from her head, but as she tried to surge to her feet, the world spun slightly and she fell back down. Her large lungs huffed. She had to get up.

‘Sirraaay! Siraaaaay!’

Kovi’s screams were louder, more desperate—urging her with every bit of breath in his lungs to hurry. Siray turned her head, the world titling at funny angles, and saw the first soldier’s head reach the top of Genlie’s platform. At the same time, from the corner of her eye, a sudden movement alerted her that the rilander had begun its second charge. Her mind evaluated every possible option so quickly that she wasn’t even aware of it—but it did produce an answer.

She couldn’t risk revealing her sevonix form, but in her current state, she was too unsteady to remain as a yeibon.

The rilander was just a body length away from her when she Changed to her normal form and rolled, it’s heavy front feet slamming down where her head had been an instant before.

Clear of the rampaging beast, Siray got one foot under her and then she was away, sprinting towards Genlie’s platform on the outer edge of the arena. Although the pain in her body from being thrown by the massive animal was sharper in this form, her head was clear enough that she managed to keep a fairly straight line as she made for her friend’s platform, darting around to the opposite side from the soldiers.

Unencumbered by weapons, Siray managed to climb the ladder in half the time it had taken the first soldier, yet she knew it would be close. Driving her aching body hard and fast, her hands and feet touching the rungs that kept her from falling for only the briefest of instances, she practically ran up the ladder.

Her head came even with the top of the platform … in time for her to see the lead soldier leer at a struggling Genlie and then sink a long knife into the female’s stomach.

A terrible drawn-out scream came from Siray’s right—Kovi.

Everything seemed to slow down, as if the world was cruelly pausing so that the realisation of what had happened could fully hit them all.

Siray felt her muscles automatically push her up from the ladder and onto the platform.

Saw the lead soldier turn to glance in Kovi’s direction, a horrid smile slowly spreading across the Faction male’s face as he took in the emotional suffering of the male on the nearby platform, while behind him, more soldiers were climbing up and onto the platform, their faces turning to Siray.

And then Siray’s whole vision was filled with Genlie—the shock on her friend’s face as the blade had driven through her training gear and deep into the flesh of her stomach, and the pain that rapidly rose to replace the shock, forcing her gentle and usually fair face to contort.

As the lead soldier began to withdraw his knife, Siray’s eyes found that blade, Genlie’s blood glistening on it.

And as the guard drew the weapon out of her friend, something began to rise up from deep within Siray. It was anger—but it was unlike anything she had felt before. Not the drug-fuelled battle rage she had experienced in the previous days. Not a burning need for revenge. Instead, it was a rage that seemed to feed on itself as well as the images and sounds she was taking in, going blazing hot as the sharply honed end of that dripping blade finally emerged from her friend’s body.

And as Genlie’s long frame went limp against her bonds, darkness staining her clothes, Kovi’s scream contorted into a thing of horror and frenzied hatred.

The rage within Siray became an inferno. Went from hot to searing in a heartbeat, burning so hard and furiously that it became cold. Siray’s mind went white with it, like the glowing edge of a sword as it’s forged. She felt the core of power within her surging to meet the demand of her honed mind.

And just like the sword being shaped by its creator, the wrath scorching through her mind was reshaping it, making it into a harder and more deadly weapon—with one sole purpose.

Destroying all of them. The soldier who had hurt her friend, the others still advancing. The ones watching from around the arena. She would wipe them out.

Yet somewhere in the background of her mind, hidden within the whiteness consuming her, she heard an agonised whisper …

Don’t …

But the voice was weak, its quiet plea quickly burnt from Siray’s mind.

By the time her heart beat a third time after Genlie had been stabbed, she was upon the soldier, a large paw batting away the hand with the knife, her wickedly sharp claws splitting the flesh of that arm down to the bone in ragged strips.

The male screamed in pain and shock, even as the weight of Siray’s heavy body bore him to the ground. Then she ripped his throat out with her teeth.

As she stood on top of him, his body writhed once, then twice, as his nervous system kept firing. Then it stilled. Her jaws dripping blood, Siray slowly raised her head until her feline eyes were staring at the soldiers standing frozen on the platform, their faces filled with horror as they realised what stood before them.

What they had unwittingly unleashed.

Siray’s mind flared white again, and in complete silence, she leapt for the closest soldier. Her outstretched claws pierced his flesh, and she swiped one forepaw across his face before leaping from him to the next male.

This one had