Sekhmet POV

  ‘Nyx, Sekhmet, take control of the battlefield! Keep everyone together as much as possible! Use Pride defence if you must. We can win this! Stay strong!’

  The instructions from their Pride leader rang through the Pride chat, making sure that everyone was aware of the new order of command.

  ‘I will direct my pack and the small canines on one flank. The horned beast leader must lead the other flank with the shelled beasts. You direct the rest of the Pride,’ Nyx told the lioness briskly, already orienting herself to face the oncoming wave of beasts. Sekhmet could see that they were all shapes and sizes, from small beasts barely bigger than cubs with razor-sharp teeth that hopped forwards eagerly, to big beasts which stood on two legs, their heads containing massive, teeth-filled jaws that would no doubt bite through bone easily. Worse, there were far more of their opponents than of the Pride members.

  ‘Agreed,’ Sekhmet replied quickly to Nyx – against such an army, they didn’t want any question of whose instructions to follow.

  ‘My amesheks will howl to earn us some time – be ready,’ Nyx told her. Sekhmet sent a quick acknowledgement.

  ‘Pride members, prepare to pounce!’ she instructed, sending further clarifications about the kesh staying behind the front lines to throw their rocks and the albuhas leaping into the air to battle above them. Fortunately, it didn’t require much readjusting of their lines – their strongest fighters were already at the front.

  They couldn’t ambush their prey; they couldn’t run to hide. Attacking was the only option left open to them.

  A fraction before the lead beasts could hit, they were struck with the power of the amesheks’ howling attack. The albuhas chimed in barely a moment after. The grass wave of beasts coming towards them was briefly halted. Taking advantage of the moment, Sekhmet roared and led the strike, leaping forwards and snapping at the beast before her. Claws sinking deep, her teeth sank deeper and crushed the small creature’s skull.

  But that was only the start of it – there were far more beasts to attack than just this one.

  Biting and swiping, she threw her whole strength into the blows, transforming them from strikes that drew blood and raked across her opponents to attacks which ripped off loose bits of flesh and broke thinner bones. She was aware of it when the amesheks released their attack because the beasts around her started fighting back.

  Surrounded by enemies, she did not escape unscathed, flashes of pain in the areas not covered by the defensive skins weakening her bit by bit. The world was full of blood and flashing teeth and ripping claws and pain.

  ‘Leader! Help!’

  The cry broke through the haze she had fallen into. She crunched the skull in her jaws and then backed off for a moment, a brief lull in the battle offering her the time to search for the speaker.

  There. One of the monkeys had got himself surrounded somehow. Sekhmet snarled – the monkeys were supposed to be behind the front lines, throwing their rocks! Roaring in anger, she directed the three of her sisters to rescue it from the crowd trying to tear it apart.

  While they did that, Sekhmet scanned the battlefield to see how things were going. Dismay filled her heart as she saw her bloodied and torn Pride-mates – and the still-unending wave of beasts flooding towards them.

  Even the odd carcass going up in golden smoke wasn’t helping much – the smoke aided the opponent as much as it did the Pride-member using it. They had spread too far out!

  ‘Everyone pull together!’ Sekhmet ordered, retreating back to the greater mass of the Pride herself. No one argued with her command or tried to defy it and the moment they were packed together, she activated the defence that Dominic had instructed her to use if necessary.

  It took just a moment for Leo to give permission and then that water-like shield formed over their heads, giving them a break, no matter how brief it would be.

  ‘Everyone, heal,’ Sekhmet instructed, following her own instructions as she touched a carcass at her feet with her nose and instructed it to heal her. The carcass dissolved into golden dust which swirled up to be absorbed through her skin. She immediately felt a little better, some of her wounds improving even if few of them healed outright.

  Around her, the rest of her Pride-members did the same, their healers extending their golden auras to heal those around them even more quickly.

  Even as she absorbed another carcass, Sekhmet eyed the beasts beyond the barrier warily. They were pressed against the barrier itself, the pressure of their packs beyond them giving them no choice but to try to force their way through the shield which barely seemed to exist. Yet somehow, it resisted them. Though not, Sekhmet realised, without taking damage. Somehow, she knew that if the pressure continued mounting, the shield would shatter and they would be left defenceless.

  Worse, the beasts were starting to spread around the shield – if she was not careful, their protection would end up leaving them surrounded when it dropped, their weakest members no longer able to shelter at the back.

  But it was not all hopeless, she realised as she looked at what they had already accomplished. Though the mass facing them was as threatening as ever, they had already slain at least their own number and they hadn’t lost any of their own.

  She looked over to where Nyx had moved to, heartened by what she saw. Nyx and her pride had joined with the smaller canines similar to those she’d fought in the underground trap room. They were fighting on one of the Pride’s flanks, stopping the beasts from encircling them there. The amesheks were howling out short-lived attacks which slowed and damaged creatures in the oncoming waves, offering excellent targets for the smaller canines to rip and tear at.

  On the other side, she could see the horned beasts fighting to make their way through to the Pride once more – they had somehow got separated from the main body. She could see that one of the big herbivores had fallen, and guessed their other allies had also lost a few of their numbers, but they seemed to be holding on despite the fury of the beasts. Even as Sekhmet watched, the horned beasts charged and burst through the last lines of beasts separating them from the rest of the Pride. The lioness’s ears relaxed slightly in relief – they were no longer at risk of being surrounded.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  Dominic also seemed to be doing fine – he was significantly outnumbered and had multiple wounds scoring his sandy fur, but none of them seemed to be impacting him significantly. The poison mist he had warned them about before releasing had now dissipated and he was once more fighting in earnest.

  A rock impacted the shield and Sekhmet almost flinched as she felt that that strike had ripped a little more of the shield’s power away from it. She snarled at the culprit – one of the monkeys!

  ‘Don’t do that again!’ she ordered him angrily, then ran her gaze over her Pride-mates. They looked almost entirely healed. Good. ‘Prepare to fight! When you are injured, pull back to the healers and be healed, then join the fight again.’

  She dropped the shield and the beasts which had been plastered up against it fell forwards, momentarily vulnerable at the unexpected movement. Her sisters knew exactly what to do with that opening – they struck.

  Once more the world dissolved into nothing but the next attack, the next dodge, doing her best to avoid as many attacks as possible, and to make her opponent pay for any that got through.

  She sensed one of her Pride-mates fall, and then another, their presences vanishing from the Pride chat. She mourned them even as their loss prompted her to fight even harder.

  The beasts felt unending, but already she felt herself approaching that point where she would be able to choose aspects of herself to enhance, to grow abruptly in strength. It wouldn’t take that many more deaths to get her there.

  Triumph went through her when she realised that she was able to increase her strength. Determined to do so, she was about to call for her sisters to help cover her when there was abruptly a lull in the battle.

  Sekhmet’s head jerked upwards as she searched for the reason for the sudden change. And then she saw it – him.

  A male, even bigger than Dominic with an inky black mane, standing proudly before his own pride. He roared at her and she understood what he wanted to communicate almost as clearly as Dominic’s own messages.

  ‘Surrender to me! Join my pride! I am a strong and virile male. I will protect our pride and my cubs if you join me now.’

  Sekhmet hesitated for a long moment as she took in the picture of a desirable male…yet he didn’t hold a candle to the one they already had. A roar shivered through the air, not carrying any of the pleasant tingling feeling that she’d benefited from a few times already, but still reminding her of exactly which male was the one she wanted.

  Shaken from her daze, she snarled contemptuously even as a few of her sisters projected a hint of continued uncertainty. He might be bigger than Dominic; he might have a darker mane than Dominic. But Sekhmet could sense that he wasn’t nearly as powerful. In fact, he might even be less powerful than Sekhmet herself, though he was bigger and surely physically stronger. But there was no way he was as smart as Sekhmet’s male.

  ‘You are weak!’ she accused him, projecting her own certainty in her words, bolstering her sisters’ flagging spirits. She sent them memories of Dominic killing a large lizard with a single blow, rampaging through an army, and convincing several beasts to now fight at their sides, then directed their attention to the battle even now being fought by him against a large clan of hyenas – a battle which he appeared to be winning. Her sisters straightened by her side and snarled their own rejections to the male’s offer. ‘Our Pride leader is far more powerful than you are!’

  The male snarled at her threateningly, his own females echoing the sound. Around them, the battle continued to rage, but here, the lions dominated the space.

  ‘Even now your pride protector fights against the matriarch, the one who no other has defeated. He will fall, and then you will be unprotected. Join me now and you will lose no more of your sisters as I protect you.’

  ‘We have no need to be protected!’ Sekhmet growled at him, her lips pulled back fully from her teeth. ‘We are strong enough to protect ourselves.’

  The male seemed angered by that.

  ‘Against me? You will fall! And your sisters with you!’

  Sekhmet thought quickly. It was true that the male was strong even if not as powerful as Sekhmet herself. But her sisters were weaker than she was, and probably weaker than the male. They might indeed get hurt.

  Then her gaze fell upon Dominic and she was inspired by what she had seen him do several times.

  ‘I challenge you! You against me to submission or death. If you win, we will join your pride until our Pride leader shows himself to be more powerful than you. If we win…all of you will join our Pride.’ As she made the demand, she felt almost as if the world hesitated around the two of them. She sensed the attention of Pride leader Leo turn to them briefly and then return to his own fight, but he left behind his permission for her to fight on behalf of the Pride.

  The male looked at her for a long moment. Sekhmet saw as his caution warred with his desire to increase the size of his Pride. And then she saw it as his desire won out over his caution.

  She sensed his acceptance even as he started running forwards towards her, his killing gaze fixed on her alone. Inexplicably, she felt as though her tiredness dropped away. The wounds she had collected no longer pained her and she felt as full of vigour as she had been when she began the fight, almost as if she’d accepted the invitation to grow in strength.

  For a moment, she was frozen by what she had just done – challenged a male significantly larger and stronger than she was to a fight wherein her death or submission had consequences for more than just her.

  And then her survival instincts kicked in and she leaped to the side to avoid the male’s charge and biting teeth. She suddenly remembered her realisation: the male might be larger, but she was faster and more powerful than he was. And she was wearing these defensive skins too which he was not.

  Whirling back on the male, she struck at his shoulder with a paw strike as strong as she had ever dealt.

  Her blow landed true and the male yelped as she felt the crack of bone beneath her paw. In pain, he lunged for her. Sekhmet leaped back, and then took inspiration from her Pride leader once again. Pushing off the ground strongly, she propelled herself into the air and over to the other side of the male.

  Once more, she struck at the male, this time hitting him on his hindquarter a moment before she lunged forwards and bit at the connecting skin between his back leg and his belly.

  The male twisted around as fast as he could, but Sekhmet was faster, swiping him in the face with a claw-filled paw that raked across his eyes. He let out a wounded noise and backed away, putting his weight on a limb that buckled beneath it.

  Sekhmet struck again, her swipe raking across the male’s face from the other side, blood streaming into his eyes on both sides.

  The male snarled, but the sound was weak with him now blinded. Sekhmet darted around and struck again at the first limb she had attacked. The male lunged unexpectedly, but his teeth snapped shut just short of her fur – the limb she had just attacked was also buckling.

  Sekhmet twisted away from the male and then lunged at him, committing her full weight and power to that one blow. She struck the male on his forequarter…and he fell onto his side.

  Unable to brace due to the damaged hindleg and unaware of the attack coming, due to his blindness, he had crumpled before her shoulder-check. Sekhmet’s own shoulder felt heavily bruised – it might have been a successful move, but the lion was still bigger and heavier than she was.

  She didn’t let that stop her, though, pressing her attack to bite into the male’s momentarily vulnerable throat.

  ‘Death or submission,’ she sent to him using her Telepathy. ‘What do you choose?’

  here!