Chapter 680: Scouts Are Coming

A sharp, ragged intake of air slipped past Veylara’s parted lips as Sol’s fingers dug deeper into the curve of her hip, pulling her hips tight against his groin.

For half a heartbeat, the newly crowned Layer 5 sovereign of the northern expanse teetered on the razor’s edge of losing her composure completely.

She could feel every hardened inch of his cock pressing against her belly with the same blunt heat from earlier passion, completely unconcerned with the fact that they were standing in the aftermath of a heavenly commotion.

Her head involuntarily tilted back, with her throat arching beautifully under the slowly dying moonlight, as the red ring circling her sapphire irises flared with an involuntary, molten heat.

The raw, primal instinct that had governed their last several hours under the weeping willows threatened to flare back up, ready to drag them straight back down into the dirt.

Her hand drifted up to his shoulder, nails biting into his sun-bronzed skin just enough to leave red half-moons.

"Sol..." Her voice was thick, caught between a sovereign growl and a ragged sigh, her breath moving over his jaw. But just as her hips betrayed her by subtly shifting forward, her ears twitched.

Far down the jungle trail, beyond the thicket where the corpses of forty beasts still reeked in the cool air, heavy, frantic footfalls were pounding against the gravel.

Dozens of armed warriors, hunting scouts, and clan sentries running at breakneck speed, their breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps as they charged toward the source of the cataclysm.

Reality crashed back down on them like cold mountain spring water.

Veylara’s hands snapped up, pressing flat against Sol’s hard chest, her cheeks burning with an uncharacteristic flush that she hastily masked behind a cool, haughty glare.

"Enough," she breathed, her voice raspy, fighting to drag the icy mask of the Warchief back over her flushed, heat-struck face. She straightened her posture, smoothing down the simple linen tunic she had thrown over her shoulders. "Pull yourself together, Sol. The scouts are coming. If they find us like this..."

Sol clicked his tongue, reluctantly letting his hands drop from her waist, as he had also sensed the people rushing, though his crimson eyes lingered on the faint, reddish bruise peeking above the rough linen neckline of her tunic.

Her gaze flicked pointedly down his torso towards his towering manhood.

Even with the blood washed away by Zephyra’s water sphere, Sol was standing stark naked under the fading moonlight, save for a single, oversized fern leaf knotted around his hip with a frayed piece of jungle vine.

His thick chest was mapped with healing scratches from the essence gale, his hair was a wild, wet mop, and her own scent clung to him so heavily that any scout with half an awakened nose would smell what had happened from fifty paces away.

As for herself, while the linen tunic covered her, she had rushed into it without an under-sash. Her hair was tangled from where his hands had gripped it against the willow bark, her lips were swollen, and if anyone looked closely beneath the collar of her tunic, the faint purple bruises along her collarbone told an unmistakable story.

If the clan scouts burst through the willows right now and found their supreme ruler and their newly minted Saviour standing together in this state, no amount of grand talk about ancestral miracles or heavenly decrees would save them from the obvious, scandalous truth.

Even if both of them possessed three tongues each, they wouldn’t be able to explain away the sheer, filthy decadence of the scene.

The clan needed to revere their Warchief as an untouchable titan of war, not gossip over how she had spent the aftermath of a historic battle getting thoroughly bred under the willow trees.

Some truths were best kept behind closed fur curtains.

"Let’s move now," Veylara commanded, her voice dropping into that sharp, authoritative cadence that brooked zero argument. "Before they reach here."

Looking down at his makeshift loincloth, Sol let out a low snort and scratched the back of his neck.

"Yeah, can’t argue with that. As much as I enjoy the breeze, even by tribal standards, walking back into camp with my cock tied behind a salad plate isn’t exactly the triumphant warrior look."

"Quiet and move," she hissed, though the faint twitch at the corner of her lips betrayed her amusement.

They didn’t take the main path back. With Veylara’s newly forged Fifth Layer lightness and Sol’s high-frequency Dreadwing agility, they blurred through the upper canopy of the eastern tree line, leaving no broken twigs or foot-scuffs.

Below them, the sound of the approaching search party grew louder. Torches flickered through the dark brush... scouts from the perimeter guard, their spears lowered, shouting frantic warnings back toward the main settlement.

As Sol vaulted across a high ironwood branch beside Veylara, he glanced back down into the secluded clearing they had just abandoned. He couldn’t help but chuckle internally.

The essence tornado had done one good thing, at least: its violent, spiraling winds had literally scoured the ground clean.

The gras where they had rutted against the willow tree was ripped to shreds, the muddy ground where they had rolled was dug up into craters, and the ambient spiritual fallout had obliterated any lingering bodily fluids.

To anyone arriving now, the clearing looked like an apocalyptic battlefield where a divine strike had flattened the ground. Which, technically speaking, wasn’t far from the truth.

There wasn’t a scrap of evidence left behind, save for the slaughtered beasts lining the gorge that Sol had butchered bare-handed.

"Spread out!" a captain’s voice barked through the dark. "Check the perimeter of the pool! Form the shield line!"

"By the ancestors, look at the ground... what kind of beast could have done this?!"

By the time the vanguard of scouts reached the edge of the clearing, shouting in panic at the sight of the butchered Blood-Bore and the pulverized ground, Sol and Veylara had already skirted the settlement’s southern palisade, slipping through the darkened perimeter without alerting a single sentry.