Beastly Passions (15 page)

Fear had
the sweetest tinge to its scent. It was intoxicating. It unfurled and wafted downwind so beautifully that Asha found her eyes closing as she leaned forward for another inhale. The acceleration of heartbeats along with the change of breathing made her ears shudder. She backed away slowly and eased towards the right, intending to circle them from behind. However, she stepped on a small dead branch and the break in the wood sent all three on alert. The ringleader didn’t hesitate to withdraw a Sig Sauer, aiming it directly towards her though he couldn’t see her as of yet. Asha froze, questioning whether or not she should continue backwards or simply charge and chase them all off.

“There is a chance that’s nothing but big game, yeah?” the brit whispered. “Perhaps a deer?”

“Deer does not growl,” the other stout man snapped. “That is not deer. That is something else and it is watching closely.”

Smart. He didn’t underestimate what he felt nearby. Unfortunately, it didn’t change much by way of outcome. Asha was still going to terrify them all for a simple laugh. And once she was done, she’d trot back home and enjoy the comfort of the oversized claw foot tub in her bathroom. Then perhaps she’d finally discuss food with Magdalena. If her temperamental spouse trusted the woman, and she hadn’t tried to poison his meals as of yet, then Asha could at least try to adjust one thing about her stay on Verochka lands.

“Quiet,” ringleader commanded. “Need to hear.”

She shifted another step and his eyes levered in her direction. “There.”

The other men looked and the secondary Russian counterpart treaded a few steps behind himself to take hold of a hunting rifle. It was then that Asha abandoned the previous plan to circle around and remained where she was, dipping her spine into a bow.

One of the braver of the two stepped up, his weapon at the ready and started forward, his face set in grim determination. As he eased closer, her ears flattened and her lip curled upwards. She could feel saliva pooling over her canines at the thought of latching onto his shoulder and separating the muscle from the rest of him.

“Careful,” ringleader warned.

“Whatever it is, is not impervious to bullet. Concern is very little.”

“Don’t overestimate shot.”

“Not overestimating,” the rifle holder replied. “Underestimating distance and speed.”

Asha lingered where she was, planting her paws into the soft ground beneath them as she watched his continued prowl. She counted each step, calculating the power behind the leap it would take to reach him from where she was and once he was less than ten feet away, her muscles snapped and flexed, sending her sailing towards him.

His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. Asha’s own spread into what she knew was a menacing grin and before he could pull the trigger, she was on him. Her claws dug into his chest as startled yelps were ripped from the other two members of his small group.

He landed on his back, his rifle skidding away in the dirt as he gasped for breath under the weight of her form pressing him down. The Sig Saur was jerked in her direction and her head yanked up as she released a low growl. The brit stumbled backwards and the ringleader released the safety.

“Do not move,” the rifle holder grunted beneath her.

“What do we do?” the brit muttered out of the side of his mouth, stilling.

Asha lifted her chin, opened her maw and released a roar that she hoped thoroughly translated into, “
Run.”

Taras heard
the rumble of his wife’s roar and pumped his legs harder, every move strengthened by the determination to reach her before she was harmed. Red had blurred his gaze and he couldn’t reason with the beast anymore. It wanted blood for the intentional violation of his space, for the disturbance of safety he’d been able to provide for his new bride.

She was
gone when he woke. That would have normally alarmed Taras, but in coming to study and understand his wife, he’d learned that she was as naturally inquisitive as most of their kind so it was likely that she’d simply wandered off and would find her way back. Either that or he’d have to go looking for her. However, after almost thirty minutes had passed, he’d discovered that it would have to be the latter because the sun was setting and he feared she would need his guidance. On his way he’d picked up the scent of human men along with that of gun oil and knew what they had to be doing here. It was then that worry truly did set in and he’d taken off in a dead run towards her smell.

Find. Protect. Kill everything else.

The forest floor was a haze of greens and browns. He paid no attention to the smaller things scattering out of his way. He couldn’t be bothered to care about his headlong run into what could possibly end in several bullet wounds. Asha’s scent grew stronger, rage and something else that he couldn’t quite determine wafting off of her.

The sound of panicked cries led Taras to where he needed to be and the moment he heard someone scream out, “Just shoot the fucking animal already!” he barreled through the tree line, extending his body until he stretched out and came to land beside his wife who had a human male pinned. Her previously narrowed gaze snapped up in surprise and he cast her a brief glance before stalking past her to stand off with the other two who were now casting alarmed stares about. Their eyes bounced from him, to the human, to Asha and back again as they started to retreat.

Taras dipped his head and allowed a warning snarl to pass.

“I’m going to run,” the tallest of the three men commented, his voice heavily accented with English influence.

“You run, he chases,” the one beside him said. “Mated pair. He won’t hesitate to split you into tiny pieces.”

Oh Taras fully intended to do so regardless of whether or not the man ran. They’d invaded his territory, set up camp to harm some unsuspecting soul and had held his spouse at gunpoint. Blood was the only reparation he’d willingly take for this.

The brit shifted nervously and sweat broke out over his brow. “Then someone do. Some. Thing.”

Taras circled them, woofing.

The stench of terror enchanted him and he swayed closer. Good. He wanted them terrified. He wanted these last moments to be full of horror. It was nothing less than they deserved for their barbarianism. He would never truly understand how full-humans could have so many things at their disposal, so much life, so little complication, and still want to destroy just because they could. Just because they felt entitled to. What was the lure of hunting outside of absolute necessity? Taras had been referred to as a sociopath on more than one occasion but he had never left the comfortable confines of his home to breach that of the average man, kill him and skin him alive just so he could place his head over a fireplace or his pelt on his office floor. It was all so twisted. And the longer he rounded the thoughtless intruders before him, the angrier he became. A moral compass he was not. But at least everything he did had a purpose, a reasoning that went far beyond his own selfish desires.

“Fuck this,” the brit said lowly, suddenly turning to take off.

Without even thinking, Taras went to follow, hind legs extended, maw open but a pop whistled through the air and something whizzed by his head. He rotated and growled at the only man left upright as his distended hand trembled, the Sig Saur in his white knuckled grip vibrating. The man fired again and Taras rolled out of the way, coming to stand at a distance, dodging each shot. A glare of colored fur suddenly hurtled by and the man was on the ground, taken down by his wife who’d abandoned the third hunter. He watched her clamp down on one shoulder and the man let loose wail that he was sure could be heard for miles.

A quick lurch of her head and she was flinging him. The man went flying towards a nearby pit dug into the ground and attempted to scramble to his feet after a few stunned moments of silence. Sadly, he lost his balance in a fearful jerk backwards when Taras snarled and tumbled in. Asha’s smaller form nudged Taras away with that done and he focused on the last intruder, intending to tear something off of him when she blocked his path.

Taras stopped in confusion, watching her head sway in a shake. She didn’t want him to kill them. Men who’d come here for the sole purpose of murdering, she didn’t want dead. No. Absolutely not. If he did nothing else this day, he’d send a very clear message as to what was tolerable on his land.

He attempted to go around her, but she made her way into his path again. Growling low, Taras flattened his ears against his skull. Asha imitated the stance, not in the least bit intimidated. So focused on one another, neither paid attention to the third hunter grasping onto the flung away handgun until it was too late. The scramble of hands on machinery finally garnered his focus and Taras didn’t have the dexterity needed to close the gap between himself and the full-human before he could pull the trigger.

The powerful echo of a chamber emptying slapped his ears, jarring him as he watched the recoil of the weapon send the man stumbling and Asha’s form jolting. A pained yowl bound from her throat and then she simply staggered forward, blood splattered on her coat at her abdomen. She had been shot in the hip.

Taras’ vision became clouded with crimson and he began to charge the man, his beast screaming that he remove the human’s head. And yet, once again, before he could take a step, Asha shoved him out of the way, dove for the human at a pace that he found to be alarmingly fast as he stood rooted in absolute horror, grasped him by the leg and flung him towards the hole in much the same way she’d done her previous victim. She then rushed forward and rammed him into it with her head at his torso. He went screaming, but since Taras could still hear the rapid pace of his heartbeat—as well as his counterpart’s—he knew the fall wasn’t enough to kill either. It was just a way to seclude them from causing any more trouble or injury. Speaking of which…

His wife loped back his way, limping slightly as she favored her right side as opposed to her left where the bullet had lodged. He stared on through narrowed eyes as she ambled right by him, going back the way they’d both come. The moment they cleared the area, he shifted.

“Asha.”

She halted in her trek, but refused to give him her attention.

Taras gritted his teeth and repeated her name in a harsher tone.
“Asha.”

Finally, she focused her glaring eyes his way as she took to her human form once more. He somehow managed the arduous task of keeping his gaze on the soft lines of her face and the rigid set of her jaw as she regarded him impersonally.

“Explain,”
he ground out. “You wander out here and run headlong into danger. Why? Then you stop me from—”

“Dispensing of them like rodents?” she interrupted, folding her arms across her chest. “You expected me to what? Allow that?”

“My land is not to be used for blood sport.”

“Unless
you
are the hunter, correct?”

“I was trying to protect you!”

“And what do you think
I
was doing?!” Asha practically roared. “Did you believe I was simply tussling with them for my own amusement?” She unflinchingly pressed a hand to her waist and drew it away, showing him the red staining her fingers. “I was attempting to prevent this from occurring on a larger scale, to someone who was not aware of what was being done. I have seen what these men are capable of. I
know
what they intended. I’ve fought this same battle before.”

Taras slammed a fist against his chest. “And yet you stop me from doing what is necessary.”

She’d been hurt.
And it could have been worse. Did she not understand that choosing others over herself—over him—could result in damage that couldn’t be repaired?

“It wasn’t necessary to kill them, that is the point.
That
is what you need to see.” She jabbed a finger in his direction. “You allow instinct to lead where you should quiet it.”

When she put her back to him with the obvious resolve to walk away from him, Taras said, “I let instinct lead because I find that it does not rely on skewered logic and righteousness that make no sense.”

Asha stopped. “Do you know why I did not allow you to leave them cold on the ground?”

He waited.

“Because there were too many variables,” she continued. “Their idiocy is blinding and their disregard for other lives absolutely disgusting, but I question who each of them left behind to come here and desecrate your land. I asked if there was a wife unaware of her husband’s shameful practices. If perhaps some child would be in search of her father returning home tonight to read him or her a fable before bedtime. And if so, who would go through the lengths needed to track them down? How many others would come and ignorantly skip across these grounds in search of them? Prepared for an all-out war on whatever man eating monster that came lunging?” Asha gave him a look over her shoulder weighed down by disappointment poignant enough that his previous rage evaporated. “Did you pause to conclude for a moment that I too wanted to see them broken and bloody? Staining the dirt with their insides? That was not me choosing them over you
,
Taras. That was me stopping to consider the consequences of my actions. We kill two of them on today and days from now ten return to kill twenty of us. Understand that you did not marry a coward, but I am also not a mindless animal incapable of seeing things reasonably when it is called for. If this is to be my home now, then I plan to defend it how I see fit because despite what you may assume, I wasn’t one to sit atop a pillow and be petted while others around me fought to ensure my safety. That has
never
been who I am.”