Sarazen's Vengeance: Book 1.1 (17 page)

His beast was constantly throwing himself at the bars of his fleshy prison. Relentlessly seeking freedom. If Ohlen released him, the snow would run red with blood. Friend or foe, it didn’t matter. As long as it brought his mate back. He bent his head. Bent forward to suck in stinging breaths of cold air. Struggled to stay sane. Andi needed him to stay sane.

Tarut gave a raspy roar.

Ohlen jerked upright to see the old beast circling a place in the snow. Digging at it with his paw before bending to sniff the slush. The mottled gray beast had uncovered some kind of trapdoor

His hand shook when he lifted it to touch the com in his ear.

“Brennaugh,” Ohlen’s voice sounded as though it had been shredded.

The commander responded immediately. “Here. Have you located Andi?”

“Not yet. Tarut has located some kind of hatch in the middle of my old territory. I am preparing to enter.”

“You will hold!” Brennaugh’s order had him giving a coughing roar into his comm.

“I will not hold if my mate is here. Mark my position. I will update you-“

“Ohlen. Wait for us to follow. That is an order!”

“Would you wait to find Tara?” Brennaugh didn’t answer immediately.

Ohlen knew the former commander would act exactly the same if it was his mate missing. Tarut moved out of his way so he could lift the hatch. Both of them nearly fell back at the overwhelming reek of blood and death that whooshed up from inside the dark hole. It was so thick, he choked on it. Choked back the urge to roar for Andi.

“Wait here. Your old bones will break at this height.” Tarut slapped him with his paw in reprimand.

Ohlen sucked in one more breath of clean air, touched the side of his torque to activate his armor and dropped down into the hole.

****

Ohlen had to breathe through his mouth, the scent of gore so thick it was almost solid. The ventilation must be damaged in some way for it to be this bad. Bad enough that it made his eyes water. The underground den appeared to be some kind of abandoned military post. One that looked to be from before his tenure in the military. He passed one, then two bodies in the darkened hallway. The lights flickered, most of them broken to reveal the carnage in horrific relief. One of the bodies in the hall had a laser pistol lying beside his lifeless corpse. Ohlen scooped it up, noticing there was only one pair of bloody paw prints on the floor. Claw marks raked down their backs, down the walls. The warriors had been running from a singular beast. Counted ten warriors so far, scattered in pieces throughout the post. Shredded to ribbons. None of the faces were ones he recognized.

What he did recognize was the scent of his mate.

“
ANDI
!” his roar echoed down the hallways.

He waited, paused in an open doorway with the laser pistol in front of him. Waited to listen for her answer
.
All he heard was a low, vicious snarl
.
It didn’t sound like the familiar rumble of Andi’s cat, but he followed it anyway.

“Andi? Answer me! Where are you?”

The snarl came again, louder. Guiding him down a hall and into what remained of a once sterile laboratory. There were monitors splashed with blood. A scanning table with sinister equipment in pieces nearby. Everything in the lab was meant to be used for experimentation. Injectors with unknown substances in them, restraints. Blades waiting to be used to cut open the subject. The warriors in the hall were lucky they were already dead. Lucky, all of the instruments scattered around the room, held not one single bit of his Andi’s scent. The viewing window directly in front of him had been smashed from the inside. His boots crunched on the glass when he moved forward, the smell of blood thicker here. Recently spilled. He looked down into a small white room. Or rather, it had been white. Now it was crimson.

A female Sarazen in her beast form was crouched over the remains of what he assumed had been the traitor responsible for using the equipment. The coward responsible for monitoring the female’s vital signs from the safety of the room above. The female had leaped three times the distance of what she should normally have been able to. Busted through glass meant to stop laser cannon fire. She must have grabbed and thrown the traitor down into the cell before having gone on her killing rampage.

“Andi?”

The female’s head swung up to him. Her truly horrific visage made a shudder ripple down his spine. She had grown to be even twice his height. Her muscled body covered in short black fur. Her crystalline claws flexed in the flickering light. Red and wet with blood. Her face was that of her beast, her lips peeled back to show him her gore spattered fangs. Her eyes were…savage. Bright orange with only a sliver of pupil left.

She was crouched possessively over her kill. Snarling at him in a low, warning rattle to keep him away. Her tail lashed back and forth, sending viscous arcs of blood through the air. One look and he knew what had happened. He had seen females in the grip of blood-lust before. Feral. Unreachable once their beast so fully took over. Something about their primal nature to protect what they claimed as theirs, a cub, a mate, a kill, made it impossible for them to be brought back. Every female who had succumbed to blood-lust that he knew of, had been put down.

Not this time. Not his mate. Andi was a hybrid and had thus far exceeded every expectation of what that might mean. She was strong enough to overcome this. He believed it with every fiber of his being. Ohlen put the laser pistol down. Released his armor and put his hands out to his sides. He spoke softly to her, remembering how Tarut had done the same to him when he was a feral cub. It didn’t matter what he said to her. In this state, she wouldn’t understand the words. Just the tone. His scent.

“Please, forgive me. I promised you no one would ever hurt you again. I gave you my promise in blood and look what happened. I am so sorry, Andi. I should never have let you out of my sight. We were in plain view of so many. I thought you would be safe there. Safe with me. I failed you. My heart, you can come out of there now. I’m here. I’m here. Please come back to me.”

The creature that was Andi made an odd sound. Half growl, half whine. Moving a few steps away from her kill towards him.

“That’s it. It’s safe now. You can come up. Come up to me, Andi.”

Quick as a flash, she leaped up to dig her claws into the opposite wall and launched herself off. Diving through the hole she’d made in the glass. It was an impressive move. One he recognized. He had given her that memory. That specific maneuver through the information download.

She hit him like a battle cruiser. Took him to the floor hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. Hard enough to make the glass shards beneath him, slice up his back. He forced himself to ignore the pain.

“For so tiny a thing in your human form, my one, you are impressively large. Ga’rae will be beside himself with curiosity to know you can take a half form.”

At the sound of the medic’s name, he saw the barest flash of his mate inside the feral female’s eyes. She recognized the name. His words. He moved slowly, easing his palms down the fine hairs on her arms. Turned his head to let her snuffle at his throat. The blood on her muzzle was beginning to congeal. Sticky. Cold.

“Gwen will be quite jealous. To know you can shift half way 
and
 completely? All of the Sarazen females will be jealous. You have made a mess of our enemies and left none for me to dispatch, my heart. Once word of this is spread, perhaps these traitors and their accomplices will think twice about attempting to take our mates. It would please me very much if you would change back. I need you in my arms, Andi.”

Her throat rattled with a soft whine. The beast turned her cheek to rub it on his chest, her claws digging into the floor on either side of his head. So sharp they made barely any sound at all as the metal gave way. He wasn’t afraid that she would hurt him on purpose. He wasn’t even afraid that she might harm him unintentionally. All he cared about was that at the end of all this, she was alive and alright.

“Can you do that? Can you shift back? No? I can help you. Do you remember when you changed for the first time? How frightened you were. You trusted me to guide you. You let me in, Andi. Can you trust me again?”

“Ohlen!”

Brennaugh’s voice, booming down the corridors had Andi crouching over him. The same way she had over the corpse in the cell below. Her roar was more of a shriek. An ear piercing sound that made the broken glass vibrate on the floor around them. Bounced several monitors off the table to the left. Brennaugh would see her like this and know she was in thrall to the blood-lust. See her crouched over him and assume the worst.

“Shh, it’s our friends. Our pride, Andi.”

He shifted his head farther to the side, activating his com with a nudge of his shoulder.

“Brennaugh, don’t come any farther.” he kept his tone calm and smooth. No change to his voice. Hoping the sound of it continued to soothe Andi.

“Report! What’s going on?” the commander barked.

Andi picked him up off the ground like he was a cub. Carried him into a corner with her to…to protect him. Gods, if only she could feel him through their bond. He would have stood a chance of reaching her then. If Brennaugh and his team advanced, there was no guarantee that Andi would be able to keep from trying to kill them. And they would be forced to kill her. Then him soon after.

“Andi has shifted into a half form. She is responsible for the carnage in the halls. You need to stay away until I can reach her.”

His warning came too late. Brennaugh and three other warriors spilled into the room. Andi lunged. He threw himself in front of her, arms spread wide.

“No!”

Ohlen was uncertain why Andi stayed behind him. He knew his body was not enough of a shield to protect her, but if Brennaugh ordered his warriors to fire, he was going to die with his mate.

“Ohlen, she’s a slave to her blood-lust. You know as well as I do there is no return from that for our females.” Brennaugh spoke with sorrow. Like Andi was already dead. Already lost to him forever.

“Then you may as well shoot us both now. She’s protecting me,”

The words left his mouth and her tongue stroked across his back. Across the bleeding wounds where she’d pressed him into the glass. Brennaugh grimaced with pained understanding. Shook his head and all four of the warriors lowered their weapons.

“She is too far gone. Look at what she’s doing, Ohlen.”

He braced his feet at the rasp of her tongue along a particularly deep cut. Felt the sting ease immediately. Hope surged almost savagely at her gentle trill.

“She’s cleaning my wounds. Healing them. She doesn’t want to hurt me.”

Twenty One

She doesn’t want to hurt me…

Andi’s ears popped. Like someone had stuck a pin in a balloon. Sounds came rushing back to her in a boom of overwhelming noise. Ohlen’s voice. Brennaugh’s voice. The smell…oh god, what was that smell? She gagged. The scent of blood and decaying flesh was so thick. Oh god! It was all over her…

“Andi? Easy, don’t panic. I’m right here, shh, you’re alright.”

Ohlen put his hands on her, but that didn’t make the panic ease by much. She tried to tell him something was wrong. She felt wrong. What came out instead was an inhuman, garbled, whine.

“If you let your beast loose again, my one, there is no guarantee you’ll come back to me. Calm, just breathe. Can you change back?”

What? Change back? Why did he look so short? What was going…Another inhuman sound of terror came out of her. Something huge and hideous had just passed by her. She saw its reflection in the mirror. Blood all over its grotesque face. Blood all over everything. It took her a moment to realize that grotesque creature was her. Andi looked down at herself and saw all the blood. The short fur that lay so flat to her hideous body, covered in gore. Thick. Sticky. Disgusting.  
Ohgodohgodohgod
!

“Andi. My one, look at me.”

She tore herself away from looking at the disgusting thing she’d become. Looked at Ohlen and saw none of the same disgust she felt in his expression. He was relieved. She could see that. Smell it.

“Change back. Come back down here to me. I’m getting a crick in my neck looking up at you. Is this how you feel all the time?” humor danced in his eyes. Crinkled the skin at the corners.

He thought this was funny? She was hideous! He just kept talking her down. Promising her everything was alright. Told her how much he wanted to take her out of this terrible place. Take her home. She wanted that desperately. Needed to get out of here. Needed to not smell everything with such precision.

“I know the smell is awful, my one. But you must breathe to center yourself. Focus on me. On my scent. Let me take you out of here. Let’s go home.”

Andi groaned as her beast finally retreated. As her bones twisted and crunched loudly to take their previous human shape. It was agonizing. Almost as bad as the very first time she’d changed. The taste in her mouth was so disgusting she gagged. It was so horrifyingly awful, she dropped to her knees and heaved her guts up in the corner. Until all that came up was bile.