Scanning the trees, she could see nothing and when a new puff came, she dove for the ground and rolled, flicking back to her feet and circling the two men, trying to find where the darts were coming from.
"I'm going down…" Uzo warned, his body swaying and she swore as he dropped to his knees and then his hands.
Wanting nothing more than to go to him, she growled as her impotent fury bubbled, hating that she couldn't, or her pause would end with a dart in her.
A rustle had her looking up and she saw a flash of movement.
Turning to Daemon, he was glaring at her, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer.
"Go to Faerie and wait. I'll get Uzo there," he hissed, but he seemed to be struggling to focus on her.
"No, I'll stay nearby and get to you," she whispered, and he nodded, the movement making him sway.
She pulled her arm free and jumped back from a double puff, they were playing with her, seeing how long they could make her move.
Turning, she threw one last glance for Daemon and streaked into the forest.
A yell went out and she cursed as movements above her were no longer subtle, they were coming after her.
A massive body landed down beside her, and she threw herself sideways, claws missing her by a breath as she changed tactics, and she got a brief flash of huge teeth and orange-brown fur covered in mud and leaves.
Sneaky cats knew how to camouflage well in their surroundings, and they were as fast as her when running but she had the stamina they lacked.
Why couldn't the cats be as friendly as some of the others? Just willing to listen? No, they had to try and dart her, which was exceptionally rude.
Cutting off her mental criticism of the werecats, she changed direction again and headed back in the direction she had come, forcing her pursuers to change direction with her.
She saw him coming and she threw herself to her knees, her boots being the only thing keeping her skin from being shredded on the rough ground and he flew over her.
Rolling, she leapt back to her feet and was off again, unable to help but enjoy the chase.
She was on him before she even knew he was there and her sudden momentum change had her curling around his fist as it found her stomach and she whimpered, feeling something very long and very rough sinking far too deep into her.
Her scream cut off very sharply as the claws sank into her and she looked up at the sound of a roar, Daemon seemed to still be awake.
Looking up from bone armour and feathers, to his leather arm strap covered in little darts, to his pierced flesh and to his face, she smiled just slightly as his bared fangs disappeared behind his fuzzy lips and his golden eyes went from rage fuelled to confused.
"Hi Jagum," she breathed, blood dripping from the corner of her lips.
She had wondered what it would be like to have those six-inch claws sinking into her and now she knew. It wasn't a good feeling.
He stared at her, horror crossing his face as he tried to figure out if he should rip out the claws or leave them in her.
So long as he didn't move it wasn't quite as bad as she expected.
"Princess?" he asked, seemingly unable to comprehend the situation and his tribemates were around them, triumphant that she had been stopped.
"Could you not move?" she asked as his hands began to shake and the tiny vibrations were sending pain rippling through her body.
He quickly disengaged the claw from his wrist and curled his arm around her, his giant paw catching her around her chest while being careful not to bump the claws.
"How is she not dead?" one of them demanded and a general growl went up.
"I'll finish the job," someone else said behind her and she clenched her jaw, ready for the blow that would end her life, but Jagum caught the descending weapon, and she shivered at the rush of air over her.
"You can't kill her, she's the lich's wife. Princess of Ayathian," Jagum snarled, throwing the weapon away from whomever had been about to kill her.
At that point she was pretty disappointed that he hadn't killed her, all things considered, and she poked the bone claw that was sticking out of her stomach.
She wasn't entirely sure she was going to survive it anyway, so a quick death might have been nice.
Jagum lifted her easily off the ground and into his arms, earning him a hiss of pain at the movement having the claws cutting into her further.
"I should have beaten your face in when I had the chance," she wheezed and he snorted.
Looking up, she found six oversized men looking down at her, all wearing various designs of bone, horn and leather armour. They all had different patterns of fur and in various shades of browns, oranges and even one soft grey.
They were looking down at her in concern now that they knew who she was.
"Didn't you say she had dark hair?" a black furred male asked, sounding sceptical.
"She did," Jagum growled and she smiled up at him, causing more blood to bubble out of her mouth.
"I will," she said and his eyes narrowed at her.
They had started moving and she looked up at Jagum, his jaw set and his eyes hard as he led the streak of tigers and she noticed something above them. There were rope bridges everywhere, the trees set with large huts and she realised the cats had set their home up in the canopy.
Fascinated, she followed the lines that crisscrossed the empty air and joined homes and businesses together in a tangled web that made no sense from below.
Coming to a small platform, Jagum shifted his weight on her and she tilted her head back to watch one of the tigers pulling on a rope, the platform beginning to rise.
Lifting her brows, she watched his tail swaying and found it to be a little hypnotic to see, swaying back and forth, back and forth.
She shook her head hard, refusing to give in to blood loss. Lifting her head, she looked down at the damage and made a silent note of just how much blood there was.
A scream had her looking up once more and she found Daemon had been locked in a little hanging cage that was far, far too small for him.
He was furious, his legs dangling free from a little gap in the bars, staring down at her with furious glowing eyes.
She gave him a little wave and she was certain he would have set that cage on fire had he been able to.
Uzo was in a cage nearby, his poor face mashed against the bars and drooling as he slept. But Daemon seemed to be fighting it with every ounce of energy he had.
When they reached the canopy, Jagum turned and came to a sudden stop, an ancient looking tiger standing before him, grey streaking his face and chest.
His eyes were cloudy but they still locked onto her with eerie certainty.
"Kill her and the other two," the man said, and Daemon growled, his eyes searching the cage.
"We can't kill her, she belongs to prince Epharis," Jagum said, clutching her tighter to himself.
"The prince?" the old man said, his face thoughtful. "That's interesting, what might he do to get her back?"
"Not a whole lot, we're not talking right now," she wheezed, her head beginning to spin, and the old tiger looked down at her, smiling coldly.
"Get her help, if she survives we will decide what to do with her."
Jagum nodded and she felt a terrible moment of vertigo as the bridge swayed under him and she knew full well a fall from that height would kill them both. She didn't like being that high up when she couldn't be certain of her own safety.
She soon found out that the cats had cut away at the bark of the trees so that the trees wouldn't die but it gave them more room to work with.
The huts themselves were larger than they had appeared to be from the ground, a healthy ten paces between the outer wall and the trunk allowing plenty of room to be left open with the walls covered in storage and the trunk being carved into bunk beds.
The cat who approached her was a woman, though it wasn't overly easy to tell the difference between the men and women.
She was smaller, without as broad of a chest and she had six nipples running down her abdomen and she wore a short skirt that was split at the sides, much like a loincloth only wider.
She had no skin piercings and her face was kinder. Otherwise she looked almost exactly like the males.
It was her smell that spoke of her sex though, the men being quite musty but she had a sweeter, softer scent that she accented with jasmine.
She looked down at the wound and frowned, looking back to Jagum who gave a guilty shrug.
"Why don't you just kill her and put her out of her misery?" the female asked, eyeing the wound.
"She's important, we need to keep her alive," Jagum growled and the woman sighed, shaking her head.
"Put her down then, I'll do what I can."
The removal of the claws was considerably worse than their going in and her screams echoed through the trees, muffled by Jagum's heavy paw on her face but she made no effort to try and be quiet.
With a final, horrible sucking sound the claws were removed and the female pressed down hard on the wound with a cloth pad.
"You heal, right?" Jagum demanded, horrified by the large holes the claws had left in her.
She could only nod, her head spinning terribly and she motioned for a bucket.
Jagum gave it to her and she emptied her stomach of blood and what little food she had eaten into it, heaving that made blood flow freely off the bed and onto the floorboards.
The woman cursed, working quickly to dig out any splinters of bone and Jagum was quick to silence her new screams of pain as the metal tool dug around inside her.
Blissfully, she found the world beginning to darken and she eagerly welcomed the darkness, wanting to be free of the pain.