The Vilka's Servant: Scifi Alien Romance (Shifters of Kladuu Book 1)
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“These aren’t ships, Vera.” Rebeka’s voice carried an undercurrent of guilt. “They’re turret guns with safety enclosures. They’re not flight pods at all.”
“What are we going to do?” Isma asked, panic written across her face like a neon sign. “They’re going to find us here. They’re going to catch us and kill us!”
Before the panic could spread, Vera grabbed Isma’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. “Calm down. We’re out of the mountain. That’s a step in the right direction. There could still be something around here we can use. First, blockade the doors.” She pointed to the enormous hangar doors. She wasn’t entirely sure how the Vilkas even moved the things, but the women needed something to do while she thought things through. “That will buy us time to look around. Okay?”
Rebeka was the first to nod, although it was slow, and Vera figured the woman was only agreeing to keep Isma and Niva calm. While Vera scaled the outer wall to get a view of the land, the others pushed the heavier pieces of debris toward the hangar doors.
After wading through the river then climbing the shaft, Vera’s body was about to give out, but she forced herself to put hand over hand and ascend the rough stone surrounding the landing pad. From the top of the wall, Vera gained a view of the sheer cliff dropping straight down the mountain to the inky black depths of a valley far below. Kladuu had two moons low to the horizon that illuminated a dense jungle far to the south. Along the east and west, a sprawling mountain range divided the valley from whatever lay behind the Vilkas’ mountain.
Vera squinted up at the aurora-filled sky, catching what looked like a falling star streaking through the heavens. It winked out as soon as she spotted it, burned out and gone in a flash.
“Vera!” A strong masculine voice shouted from the other side of the hangar doors. They thudded against the debris piled up by the women.
It was Rayner. He’d found her. Her heart began to pound in time with the dancing aurora far above her.
“They found us!”
“Shit, what do we do?”
“We need to hide!” Rebeka pulled open the hatch they had used to arrive, but as soon as she did, the sound of voices carried up from within. She slammed it shut. The women looked up at Vera, but all she could do was shake her head.
They were trapped.
Vera jumped down from her perch, her ankles shooting fire at the impact, but she didn’t have time to shake off the pain. She hobbled over and helped shove a large piece of a ruined combat pod over the hatch. But that still gave the women nowhere to go. Vera spun in a circle, looking around the deck and racking her brain.
“Vera, you’re not safe out there!” Rayner called. The door banged against the blockade, scraping a few inches across the floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
Why was he saying they weren’t safe? Was he trying to save her from the Vilkas who’d followed them down the stream? She looked between the hangar doors and the service tunnel they’d come through.
Deciding to trust him, she moved toward the giant door.
“What are you doing?” Rebeka shouted at her.
“He’ll help us. Trust me.” Vera ran toward the door as it banged against the debris, Rayner’s yells muffled from the other side.
Another shooting star flashed overhead. The brightest shooting star she could have ever imagined. Right as she reached the hangar door, an ear-splitting roar filled the sky above them. She spun in time to catch the edge of what looked like a long tail disappearing behind the mountain.
The women started screaming, and Rayner’s shouting and thudding against the door increased tenfold. From the other side, he yelled, “Take cover!”
But Vera didn’t hear him. Her eyes were locked on the sky.
A massive creature with shimmering green and yellow scales appeared around the peak’s other side, aiming itself straight at the flight pad. Its mouth was open in another deafening roar, eagle-like talons outstretched toward her, a sweeping pair of wings beating the air on either side of its giant body.
Is that a dragon?
She couldn’t move, transfixed and completely incapable of comprehending the danger she was in. The creature was beautiful in a terrifying sort of way with its long snout and twisting back.
The hatch burst open the same moment Rayner squeezed through the hangar doors. Laser-fire lit the night as Gerrit and Nestan leaped out of the hatch, aiming their weapons skyward.
Above, two more dragons descended, each one saddled with a rider. From the tight, body-hugging armor the riders wore, Vera realized they were women, their long hair streaming behind them like comet tails.
And they were firing arrows down at the flight deck.
16
Rayner
Rayner caught Vera around the waist and towed her behind the hangar’s doors. She stumbled into the other women, her eyes wide with fear as the Draqons continued to roar in the sky above, coordinating their attack.
“Stay in here!” Rayner shouted at Vera and the women. “Don’t come out no matter what you see. The Draqons spray acid. It’ll kill you instantly.”
“I’ll help!
Vera tried to follow him out, but he barred the opening with his arm, and her chest collided against him. She shot him a glare, her mouth open and ready to argue, when a Draqon swooped by, acid flying across the destroyed pods. Its human mate rode atop its back and shot acid-tipped pronged arrows, a war scream on her tongue. One arrow hit right alongside the doors, inches from Rayner’s back.
Vera’s mouth hung open, frozen.
“Don’t come out,” Rayner growled. “No matter what.”
He didn’t move until Vera had closed her mouth and nodded.
Her silent agreement would have to be enough. Nestan and Gerrit were holding the deck, but they needed his help against the Draqon scouting party. He could only hope one hadn’t retreated to call for backup.
He spun from the hangar and ran. Above him, scales slid through the spotted cloud cover. A spray of arrows pelted the rock in front of him. He twisted, avoiding more incoming shots, and rolled. As he gathered his legs beneath him, he sprung into the air.
He shifted in seconds.
When he hit the ground, his claws dug into the rock with a screech. He sprang off the rock ledge and turned back, racing for the Draqon bearing down on Nestan.
But the wind shifted, blowing over the mountain and carrying the women’s scent toward him. His legs faltered, his snout twitching up into the air. His eyes glazed over and his mind tumbled in fits. Even the Draqon’s diving roar was muffled in his head.
He smelled Vera for the first time in his Vilkan form.
His world shifted. The planet he loved and served faded around him, and through the laser blasts firing above his head and the arrows raining around him, he found Vera’s wide eyes from the hangar’s entrance. She was screaming, her hair twisting around her face. Her attention jerked to the sky.
“Rayner!” she shouted, pointing up. “Above you!”
He lurched to the side, narrowly avoiding an acid spray. It sizzled the rock on which he’d stood seconds ago. The Draqon executed a flip in the air, his mate low on his neck, and prepared to dive at Rayner again.
Bright white laser bursts flashed at the Draqon. Positioned at a working pod’s turret, Gerrit hit the diving Draqon twice in the side, just below his mate’s leg.
Rayner growled as he sprang across the deck on Nestan’s heels. Careful, Gerrit, he thought as if the young royal could hear him. Kill his mate and the Draqon will fall into a frenzy and tear apart the entire mountain.
Rayner knew two rules about Draqons and two rules only. The first was never, ever fuck with their mates. The second: never, ever fuck with their mates.
The Draqon spiraled down, avoiding the laser blasts from the pod. Gerrit was the best shot, but the beast moved fast, its body lithe and long with wings twice its body’s length. It opened its snout, white tongue lashing out, and a spray of acid splattered onto the deck.
Rayner leaped. He swiped with his claws, reaching, reaching toward the softer scales of the Draqon’s belly.
His claws sank deep into the flesh. As he fell back toward the deck, he dragged his nails down the flying beast’s skin, slicing nearly to its tail.
The Draqon screeched, its roar matching its mate’s, and rolled in the air, dislodging Rayner and sweeping its wings along the deck. A claw-tipped wing collided with Gerrit’s pod, knocking him loose from the seat. The Draqon righted itself and swooped away.
Gerrit jumped back into his pod. Rayner shifted. Before his fur had fully shed, he was in a pod and firing into the sky where the Draqons circled.
“Yellow one!” Gerrit shouted over to him. “On your right!”
Rayner swung his pod to the right and fired, the blast of the shots rattling through the entire pod. He gritted his teeth and clenched the turret’s grips in his hands, tracking the Draqon’s path toward the deck. He connected a spray of shots, matching the Draqon’s path with the gun’s sight.
“The blue one!” Gerrit yelled.
Rayner pulled his sight off the retreating Draqon and swung the gun back toward the group circling above the deck. He fired a few shots upward, knowing they wouldn’t hit, as he searched for the blue one. He saw the retreating yellow one, which he’d hit, the wounded green one, and a high-flying deep red one.
But no blue.
“Where—”
A ripping howl filled the air.
Already shuddering through the change, Rayner flung himself out of the pod. He hit the ground and rose in Vilkan form. On the deck, the blue Draqon had ghosted in, flying in low on a draft of air without a flap of its wings.
It had Nestan with its talons. The crazy Vilka appeared to be smiling in the Draqon’s hold. Together, they flew low across the deck. Nestan swiped a paw, catching the Draqon’s throat. With a skull-smashing roar, the Draqon tossed Nestan aside. The Vilka skidded across the deck. Rayner leaped over him and raced after the retreating Draqon. From the side, Gerrit fired his pod turret, but the shots scattered off the fully armored scales of the dragon’s side.
Rayner swiped at its tail, but the Draqon was already rising too far into the air.
Another pod from the far side of the deck swiveled. Laser blasts fired and hit the dragon in the chest, the spray connecting perfectly.
The Draqon screamed and flung itself to the side. The laser blasts followed perfectly, striking its belly until thick black blood flowed. With two more unsteady flaps of its wings, the Draqon was gone, rising too far into the air, but it was heavily wounded.
Rayner skidded to a stop and looked up at the mass of circling Draqons. Behind him, Nestan shifted slowly and stumbled onto the deck, his naked body riddled with cuts, his muscles like bunched cables straining beneath his scarred skin. He threw back his head and howled up at the sky.
The Draqons disappeared deeper into the clouds. Rayner waited. He scanned the mountain range alongside their hollowed home and the clouds around the peaks, watching for a flanking maneuver. When a moment passed and none came, he let out a heavy breath.
“They’re gone,” he called.
Gerrit jumped out of his pod and ran straight toward Nestan.
“I’m fine,” Nestan snapped, his hands pressed against the shredded skin along his ribs. His long black hair was wet and tangled around his face. Among his new cuts, which dripped blood onto the pad, Rayner saw older scars, long and raised. Savas hadn’t been a lenient father to his only son.
Rayner turned his head away before Nestan saw him looking.
“Let me see,” Gerrit insisted.
“Fuck off, pretty boy.”
“Nestan—”
Rayner tuned them out as he strode toward the pod on the far side of the deck. It swiveled toward him, the gun smoking. Vera emerged, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. His heart pumped at the sight of her, on the deck, amid the puddles of flesh-searing acid. She’d been right here during the fight.
Vera saw his face then. The half-smile tugging on her lips from the glory of the fight fell away. She backed up a step as he closed in, her eyes stretching wide. She threw up her hands. “Rayner,” she said, “calm down. You needed—”
He reached her, his naked chest thumping against hers. As she teetered back, he grabbed her arm and held her against him. “I needed you to stay in the hangar like I told you to,” he snapped.
He loomed over her as she craned her neck back to glare up at him. “It looked like you needed help.”
“You’re reckless—”
“You’re stubborn—”
He growled at her. She punched his stomach. And yelped. He released her as she shook out her hand, her knuckles turning bright red. She cradled her hand to her chest and shot him a dirty look.
With a sigh, he glanced back at Nestan and Gerrit. Gerrit was trying to help Nestan off the deck, but the wounded shifter kept shoving him back and cursing at him. At the hangar, Niva stuck her head out. At the sight of the naked shifters and Vera, she mumbled something back to the other women.
Rayner turned back to Vera in time to see her drop her hand, her shoulders slumping.
“I just wanted to get them home,” she said. Tears shone in her eyes.
Now the pain came. The pain he’d put off when he hadn’t found her in the pit or back at his quarters. His heart felt ashy in his chest. “Vera—”
“I wasn’t going to leave,” she said before he could finish. “I just wanted to get some of them to safety.”
He hated the relief that filled him. It would only be temporary, he knew. The Draqon attack hadn’t gone unnoticed. He had no time to protect Vera from what was about to happen.
“I know.” He pulled her against his chest. This time, instead of punching him, she laid her head against his skin and took a shuddering breath. He buried his nose into her hair and pulled in more of her scent. Now that he’d been in his Vilkan form, he finally understood the oddly compelling scent he’d caught the first time he saw Vera. The heat lingering in the undercurrent of her smell snaked out and wrapped around him.
Changed him. He was forever shifted.
Vera reached up to his face and pulled his mouth down to hers. With his naked body pressed against hers, he claimed her mouth, holding her so tightly to him that he might have left bruises on her pale, freckled skin.
A siren whirred to life inside the mountain. Rayner pulled back from the kiss and pressed his forehead against hers. “I won’t be able to protect you from this,” he whispered.
The words ripped him apart because of their truth. But his instincts roared inside him, screaming that he would burn the world to protect her. She’d crossed a line, broken the rules, and he’d always upheld the rules. Unknowingly, she’d pitted him against his clan.
She took a deep breath before she pushed against his hold. Reluctantly, he let her step away from him. She blinked away her tears. “I’m not asking you to. I knew what would happen if we were caught.”
“Here.”
Rayner turned in time to catch the pants Gerrit had tossed at him. Extras were kept all over the mountain. He pulled them on right as a unit of shifters poured through the open hangar. They ran onto the flight deck, some in their Vilkan forms, and searched the skies.
“Small scouting party,” Gerrit said to the unit. “You can stand down.”
The captain of the unit signaled to his squad. His gaze searched the freshly ravaged deck and Nestan’s bloody chest. His eyes fell to the women near the hangar and then on Vera. “What happened here, Beta?”
“I tried to escape,” Vera said before Rayner could respond, as if she could take all the blame onto her shoulders. “I led the human women here after I stole a map from Rayner’s desk. I thought the pods were ships.”
It was enough for the captain. Vera mi
ght as well have handed him the noose to hang her. To his men, the captain called, “Get the women. Put them in cells.”
“No!” Vera lunged at him. Rayner caught her around the waist. “I did it! Don’t arrest them! Arrest me!”
“Easy,” Rayner murmured into her ear. When she stilled, he let her go but kept a close eye on her in case she thought to attack again.
“Just arrest me. Leave them alone,” she said, quieter this time, her voice wavering.
The captain motioned to his men. One guard holding a set of cuffs stepped toward Vera. Rayner growled. The shifter froze, his eyes darting to the captain.
“Sir,” the captain said to Rayner, “we have to take them to the cells if they tried to escape.”
Rayner clenched his fists. With a tight nod, he stepped away from Vera. He had to look away as the shifter put her in cuffs, her small wrists making the metal hang loose.
The shifter jerked her forward.
“Watch it,” Rayner snarled. The shifter glanced back at him, not quite meeting Rayner’s eyes, and gave a halting nod. When he went to lead Vera off again, he let her set the pace, his grip on her arm as loose as possible.
“What happened out here?” the captain asked. Gerrit and Nestan came over. Nestan had a silk wrap around his ribs. Between the healing properties in the Arakid silk and his own faster rate of recovery, the slashes would scar over in a matter of days.
“We told you,” Gerrit snapped. “The women escaped. We tracked them up here. A scouting party must have been searching the area and saw the women on the deck. They attacked.”
Nestan shrugged when the captain looked to him to corroborate Gerrit’s story. It was no surprise Nestan was up here with them. He was always in a fight.