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Jarrod fought his fear, containing it, bringing his fractured thoughts into control. All was not lost if he was forced across his border. He had survived it before, more than once. The pain was bearable, for a time. But the rest of his clan... Thea. The betrayal of Thea shook Jarrod to his core. To turn against your own was unthinkable. The clan was everything. Murdering her family. It was untenable. Nothing came before his people. Her banishment had been because her spiteful attempt on Skye’s life had put them all at risk of utter destruction. Now she actively sought it.
His rage was jagged, ripping him apart inside. No. His people wouldn’t end. Not like this. He wouldn’t surrender. Not to her.
Summoning all the strength of will that he could, drawing deep on everything inside him, he resisted the binding that paralysed him, trying to sever it from where it gripped him within...and felt it give, like tentacles losing traction. He pushed harder, straining with all that he had. Every fibre of his being that had been honed in controlling the hundreds at his command, and sharpened in leading his people for countless years by sheer will, he threw at the strangling vine threaded through him and drew it from his being, gagging as he threw it off.
He was free.
Sinking level with his clan, he closed his eyes against the horror being carried out, so that he could tap into the threads tying them to one point, focusing on where the summons originated. His blue eyes opened, cold and lethal. He had her now. He sped through the water like a spear, aimed straight at Lithus Rock.
