For the Reign

by Debbie Cassidy

  “Quit it, Elias,” Logan snapped. “Find something else to drool over.”

  I glanced sharply at Logan, and he snapped his mouth closed. His jaw flexed as if he was pissed. Pissed that he’d spoken up in my defense? His expression shuttered. Blank and emotionless, as if he were watching paint dry. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the metal.

  He cared. He’d shown me in both action and words, but he was pulling away again. Blocking me out. He’d forced me to feel when all I’d wanted was to be numb, and now he was taking himself out of the equation. Fuck that. We’d see about that. But not now. Not here.

  “Light her up, Carter. Let’s get this show on the road.” Kira gripped the handle bolted to the ceiling and adjusted her stance.

  The engine roared and then we were in motion.

  My butt was numb, and my limbs ached for relief. “Can we stop for a few minutes, get some air and stretch?”

  Kira was on the floor now, her back to the wall with the hatch built into it. “If you want.”

  Yes, I wanted. “We’ve been driving for three hours. I think we should stop for a few minutes.”

  With the sun high in the sky, and no threat of Feral, we climbed out onto the road. Fields stretched to the left and right, overgrown grass swayed in the breeze.

  “I’m going to stretch my legs.” I set off into the grass, running my hands over the spiky tips.

  “Stay close!” Kira called.

  I raised a hand in acknowledgement and then inhaled the scent of nature. In moments like this it was easy to forget that the world had gone to shit. Ash’s scent hit me, and then his hand was in mine.

  We walked together through the grass as his thumb made circles on my hand. The van grew distant and the world closed in around us. The grass grew sparser and then there was a thick-trunked tree.

  “You want to sit?” I looked up at him.

  His expression was intense. His pupils dark and large. He shook his head and reached up to slide his hand into my hair. That look… I knew that look, and then he was backing me up against the tree. His hand slid down my neck to my chest and over my breasts, and then his mouth was on mine, hungry and rough. Sudden heat flared through me, but this was the heat of desire, the heat that begged for the rasp of him inside me. There was no time. Urgency flooded me. We had to be quick. I needed him quick and hard.

  My hands were on his jeans, fumbling with the damn buttons that wouldn’t come undone. But he already had my slacks off and down my legs, until they were pooled at my ankles.

  I had him free. Shit, he was like silk-covered steel in my hand. He stepped over the slacks so they were hugging the backs of his ankles and then lifted me up with my ankles still bound by my slacks. The material of my trousers bunched at the small of his back as he entered me in one hard thrust.

  We fucked with our gazes locked, with hard, deep thrusts and guttural grunts up against the rough bark of the tree. The scrape of wood through my shirt was overshadowed by the spiraling, tightening sensation at my core. It came quick and violent.

  “Harder.” I dug my nails into his shoulder and pushed my hips up. “Oh, fuck, oh…”

  He kissed me and we came together, mouths fused, tongues tangling, throaty moans mingling.

  The knots in my body had melted away by the time the van came back into view. We returned to knowing looks and sly smiles, and I didn’t give a shit. We loaded up and Kira took her spot by the window at the front of the van.

  The engine purred just as we heard the crackle and sizzle of Kira’s radio flaring to life.

  She unclipped her radio from her belt. “Kira here. Over.”

  Static followed by a crackle.

  “Hello, who is this? Over.”

  “Help. Help, please!”

  It was a child’s voice.

  “Who is this? How did you get the radio? Over.”

  “They’re killing everyone. Please, you have to come help. The Claws are dying. They’re all—"

  Static, and then nothing. That voice … It had sounded so much like Benji … “Kira?”

  Kira stared at the radio as if it were a poisonous viper clutched in her hand.

  “What is it? Kira?” Carter called out from the driver’s seat.

  “How far are we from camp?”

  “We left it behind us about an hour ago.”

  “Turn us around and get us there. Get us back in half that time. Do it.”

  The van swerved, knocking me into Ash and squashing Sage up against me, and then we were gunning it, burning fuel as we made our way back to the Claw camp.

  Forty minutes. Carter got us to the camp in forty minutes. Stomachs churning, weapons at the ready, we filed out of the van.

  “Stay here!” I pushed Jamie back inside and slammed the door on him.

  Elias sniffed the air. “Blood.”

  “Lots of it,” Logan added.

  Kira and her crew were already running toward the gates.

  Ash shook his head slowly and signed, but I didn’t need anyone to translate for me; the look in his eyes, the downward curve of his mouth told me all I needed to know.

  We were too late.

  I strode through the gates after Kira’s crew with the guys at my back, tulwar at the ready just in case, and stopped. The sword slipped from my grasp and hit the ground with a soft thud.

  “Oh, God.” Jace pressed a fist to his mouth.

  Bodies, so many bodies, all in their human form, all sightless and twisted and mottled with black and red veins. Shrunken and wrinkled and dead. Kira stood a few meters ahead of me, her hands slack at her sides, her shoulders heaving as she turned in a slow circle, taking in the carnage.

  “This isn’t natural,” Jace said. “This is …” He staggered back, turned, and ran out of the gates.

  “Jace!” Logan made to go after him, but I grabbed his hand.

  “It’s okay. He’s going to get Jamie.”

  Logan’s fingers closed around mine for a brief moment before he tugged himself free and stalked off toward Kira.

  “Arsehole,” Sage muttered to Logan’s back.

  Ash chuffed.

  They might as well have high fived.

  I crouched by the nearest body of what had once been a female. Her clothes hung off her shrunken frame, and her mouth was open in the rictus of a scream. Her neck was red and raw, savaged … Bitten.

  “Look.” I pointed at the wound. “She was bitten. Do you think she was drained?”

  Ash shook his head and pointed at the mottled colors, the red and black veins.

  He was right, this was something else, something more.

  “The shrunken body is a sign of being drained, though,” Sage agreed. “But Ash is right, those veins are something else, almost like she was infected by something.”

  Jace came back through the gates a moment later with Jamie in tow. The science guy faltered, his hands fisting at his sides as he took in the carnage, and then his face set in grim lines and he hurried toward me.

  “Let me see.” He gently nudged me aside before pulling a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and snapping them on. “Drained of blood and most of the bodily fluids.” He gently touched the woman’s jaw and tilted her head to the side. “A bite—impression looks like a Fang, but the space between punctures is too wide to be Vladul or regular Fang.”

  He traced the veins. “Some kind of toxin.” He sat back on his haunches. “Look at the ground. Does it look darker to you?”

  Come to think of it, it did.

  He pushed the body, tilting it onto its side, and gasped. “Oh, God, look, look at that.”

  The back of the woman was covered in dry crimson and a gunky yellow substance. “What is it?”

  “Her blood and plasma. The ground is wet; the rest of the fluid from her body must have seeped into it.”

  “What are you saying?” Sage asked.

  “He’s saying that this woman wasn’t drained by that bite,” Jace said. “He’s saying that she secreted her body fl
uids through her pores.”

  Shadows fell over us as Kira and her crew joined us.

  Jamie carefully laid the woman back down. “This could be a virus, something we’ve never seen, and if I were to hazard a guess, it was delivered via that bite to her neck.”

  “How? What could have done this?” Kira’s voice shook; in fact, her whole body was trembling. “They’re all dead. All of them.”

  “Eva!”

  My head whipped up as a small, bedraggled figure came hurtling toward me. Benji? I stood in time to catch him as he flung himself at my thighs and wrapped his arms around my waist. Oh, thank God he was alive. The voice on the radio had to have been him.

  I leaned down to hug him tight. “Oh, God. You’re okay.”

  He turned a tear-streaked face up to meet mine, but then his gaze slid past me and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He tried to pull away, but I grabbed hold of him.

  “Benji, what is it?”

  He pointed, and I tracked the direction to find Elias watching us with a devastated frown.

  The pieces began to click into place. “No. No, Benji. Elias is with us. He won’t hurt you.”

  Benji shook his head. “They did. They hurt everyone. Men like him.”

  “Elias is … different.” I cupped his face, but his attention was still on Elias, as if pinning him with his gaze would keep him immobile. “Look at me. You can trust me.”

  He tore his gaze away from Elias and blinked up at me. “He’s not like the others?”

  “No. He isn’t.”

  He swallowed hard, nodded. “Okay, then come. You have to come quick.”

  I released him, and he grabbed my hand and tugged hard. There was nothing to do but follow. We wove through the sea of dead bodies, past torn and shredded tents, climbing over debris made up of broken, splintered wood and limbs, into a break in the fence and into the woods.

  “Benji, where are you taking us?” Kira asked.

  But the little boy didn’t break stride; his grip on my hand was unrelenting, and then a figure came into view. Bloody and broken, but from the erratic rise and fall of its chest, still alive. It was propped against a tree, its red-rimmed eyes fixed on our approach.

  “Nate?” Kira broke into a run.

  “Motherfucker.” Logan picked up speed, and a soft sob broke from Benji’s tiny frame.

  We reached Nate a moment after Kira.

  “What happened?” Kira asked. “Who did this?”

  “Vladul.” Nate grabbed Kira’s hand. “They brought death. A new creature. They kill with a bite … Not Feral … something else. Minutes … mere minutes.” His chest rattled and his eyes rolled. “Plan to kill all supernaturals … You are the last … last of us, Kira.”

  “No. No, you’ll be fine. I’ve got you now.”

  He shook his head and held up his arm. The sleeve was soaked in blood. Kira gently peeled back the fabric to reveal the wound, two widely spaced puncture marks. The skin around was mottled, and the infection was spreading.

  Nate smiled and reached up to touch Kira’s cheek. “You were always … always tenacious, Kira … just like your father, Randall. Hold on to that tenacity … Live. Live so that we too can live on. You are the last … last of the female Claws, Kira.”

  “No. Not for long. We have a cure.”

  His eyes lit up and then he exhaled. “In that case, I can die in peace.” His eyes fluttered closed.

  “Nathanial. Nate!” Kira shook him.

  Black veins crawled up over his face and then his body began to cave in on itself.

  Kira shuffled back, her hand going to her mouth in grief and disgust. “Oh, God.”

  Benji clung fast to me, his face pressed to my thigh as my mind turned over everything Nathanial had told us. I covered the back of Benji’s head with my palm, wanting him not to see, but needing to witness this—to say goodbye to the last of the alphas. He deserved as much. The other alphas were dead, killed by the Claws when Elias had released them into the camp a few days ago.

  Nathanil was the last, and now he was gone.

  His body crumpled, and a collective sigh went up in the clearing. Kira made a strangled sound that was part sorrow and part rage, and then she turned on Elias.

  “You. You did this.”

  “What?” Elias looked stunned, but then his expression hardened. “No. This wasn’t me. I didn’t know about this.”

  But something dark flitted across his face.

  I looked to Sage, the djinn with the ability to see the truth of someone’s words in the color that surrounded them. “Sage?”

  The djinn was watching Elias with narrowed eyes. “He’s telling the truth, but … there is guilt there too. What is it you’re not telling us?”

  Elias made a sound of exasperation. “I knew he was working on a weapon. I didn’t know what it was, though. The lead scientist wouldn’t tell me, but she assured me she’d hold off on deployment until I returned.”

  “Is she part of your resistance?” Logan asked snidely.

  “Not officially. We used to be lovers.” He looked me straight in the eyes. “A long time ago.”

  Why did he feel the need to clarify that? It wasn’t as if any of us cared about his love life. “So, she lied to you.”

  “No. She hates Malcolm as much as I do. Something must have happened to force her hand.”

  “You couldn’t have known, then,” Jace said softly. “This isn’t his fault.” He was looking at Kira, who was still glaring at Elias as if she wanted to scorch him to death with the power of her gaze.

  “Hurting him won’t bring them back,” Sage said.

  Kira closed her eyes and inhaled deeply before exhaling a long breath. She turned her back on Elias and crouched in front of Nate.

  “Rest well, my alpha.”

  She pulled him toward her, and his body made an awful sucking sound as it came away from the tree trunk. Gritting her teeth, she hauled him up onto her shoulders, got to her feet, and without a word strode past us back toward camp.

  “Kira, wait!” Carter ran after her.

  I turned to Sage. “We need to get to the djinn camp. We need to go now.”

  His brow creased in confusion and then cleared a moment later. “You think the Vladul will find it?”

  “You heard what Nate said. They plan to kill all supernaturals. We need to warn your people. Take them with us. It’s not safe on the outside. Not anymore.”

  “Come on.” Logan peeled Benji from my arms and lifted him up. “You’re okay, buddy. We got you.”

  No time to ponder the shit that kid had seen. There was nothing we could do but be there when he had nightmares about this day. Right now, we had to get to the djinn camp and hopefully save lives.

  Kira was hauling bodies into a heap while Carter watched helplessly.

  “Kira, please.”

  “We have to burn them. They deserve that much.” Her jaw was tense with determination.

  “We need to get to the djinn camp,” Logan said. “They could be next.”

  “Then go,” she snapped. “Take the van and go. I’m not leaving them like this.”

  And there was no way I could leave her like this. Not just because she was the last female Claw, and not because she was Nathanial’s beta and, now that he was gone, the only one with the claim to being alpha. But because she was right. The Claws deserved better. I opened my mouth to say as much, but Sage beat me to it.

  “We all help, and we get it done.” He hauled two bodies onto the pile, careful not to tear limbs. “Come on.”

  We set to work. It took almost a half hour, but we made the pyre and without words or tears lit it. The flames caught quick, rising into the air in black smoke that stung our eyes.

  Tears streamed down Kira’s face as she watched her brethren burn, but then she pushed back her shoulders and turned away from the scene.

  It was time to get going.

  Chapter Three

  We rode in silence. Hurtling down the road way too fast.
Sage was up front, directing Kira, who was commanding the wheel as if it were a foe. Logan had taken the spot beside me with Benji on his lap, and Elias had claimed Logan’s spot opposite me. Ash’s fingers were entwined with mine, but no one met anyone’s eyes.

  The massacre was fresh in our minds—the odor of burning flesh, the stench of death. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the image simply became clearer.

  Logan’s hand slid onto my knee. He squeezed once and then pulled away. My knee tingled for a long minute and anger licked at my chest. Fuck him. Fuck him and his tidbits of contact. I shuffled closer to Ash and laid my head on his bicep. At least with Ash I knew where I stood. At least his comfort and his attentions were consistent.

  Elias caught my eye, his expression somber. His people had done this. The people he thought he could save had done this. It was playing on his mind now, it was in his eyes, in the tension in his shoulders and the white-knuckled fists he was making.

  I closed my eyes. His guilt, however twisted, couldn’t and wouldn’t be my problem.

  “ETA five minutes!” Kira called out from the front seat.

  The back of the van was suddenly alert and ready for action. The van slowed down a moment later and then swerved.

  “We’re going off road,” Sage said.

  The rustle and scrape of branches followed as we bumped down the track. Benji let out a sharp squeal of fright, but Logan soothed him back into silence, and then the terrain leveled out, and we ground to a halt.

  Elias pulled the side door open, and we piled out into the sunshine and onto soft grass.

  “Just through that patch of woodland,” Sage said, indicating the tree line to our left.

  His glance caught mine and his anxiety was echoed there. The djinn camp was hidden well, protected by wards, but the wards were there to keep Feral out, and the Vladul weren’t Feral.

  We set off toward the trees, our strides turning into a jog as we approached. Urgency was like an infection spreading through my blood; it heightened everything, including the twitter of the birds and the shudder of the leaves on the trees. Slender trunks and willowy branches whizzed by, the aroma of fragrant earth surrounded us, but there was something missing. Sage came to a halt, his palm pressed to a tree, his chin tucked in.